The decades-long practice in our war-torn regions has been to remain silent about one’s own crimes, but not about one’s victims. It could also be the other way around: to lament one’s own victims while speaking about the crimes of others. Experts in transitional justice have been warning for years about historical revisionism across the Western Balkans and the exaggeration of victimhood. Efforts to undertake a joint initiative to establish historical facts—even in recent history—have been marginalized. When ethics are absent, the path is cleared for propaganda and fake news. It could also be the other way around: in the storm of propaganda, the truth is extinguished—even when it comes to large-scale violence.
The anniversary of March 17, 2004, was once again marked this year in Albanian-language media with the relativization or outright ignoring of the event itself and its immediate consequences: that it was the largest ethnically motivated violence since the arrival of international forces; that the media played a significant, if not decisive, role in inciting the situation; and that it was never proven that Serbs were responsible for the drowning of three Albanian boys, with misinformation preceding the violence.
However, multiple media outlets, now including social media platforms as well, have chosen to recycle an old article with the same title—one that was published on various portals at least five years ago.
These outlets decided to define the large-scale violence, which Serbs call a pogrom, as an „eruption of rebellion against UNMIK.“ Some outlets, by carefully choosing softer language, relativized the direct human tragedy—both individual and collective—by attributing it to dissatisfaction over the unresolved final status of Kosovo and its path to statehood.
„21 Years Since the Eruption of Rebellion Against UNMIK“
This headline is from a uniform text by an unknown author, flagged as fake news by Kontakt Plus Radio, yet published by Klan Kosova, Bota Sot, Gazeta Blic, Indeks Online, and Ekonomia Online.
“Twenty-one years ago, a popular uprising against UNMIK took place. After the war ended in June 1999, the UN mission was installed in Kosovo, enabling the creation of parallel Serbian structures and stifling Kosovo’s economy. On March 17, 2004, unrest erupted, later widely referred to as the ‘March Unrest.’ The riots began after two Albanian boys drowned in the Ibar River in North Mitrovica. Some children who survived that night told reporters they had been chased by Serbs, and while fleeing, two boys drowned in the river. During the riots, 19 people were killed, 12 of whom were Albanians,” the text states.
The article is identical to ones published in previous years by outlets like Telegrafi and Sinjali.
A video report aired by Klan Kosova on March 16 this year marked the 21st anniversary of the March violence through the testimony of two parents about the drowning of their two sons (Out of three boys) from Cabra, emphasizing how grief has grown over the years. Aside from noting that the drowning of the boys led to 19 victims, 12 of whom were Albanians, no other references were made in the report. Notably, the father of one of the deceased boys stated that the children had been playing when they angered a Serbian neighbor, and that their “only option” was to cross the Ibar, which at that time had “swollen with water” and had “overflowed its banks.”
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A Softer Version
Another version of the coverage appeared under the headline: “21 Years Since the March Unrest,” published by Gazeta Express.
Beneath this neutral headline, the article cites part of the tragic statistics, focusing only on the number of “civilian casualties” and the total number of injuries, with an emphasis on the fact that the majority of the victims were Albanians.
The article explains the reason for the riots—the drowning of two Albanian boys “due to Serbian violence”—while adding that “the cause of this tragedy has never been fully clarified.”
It continues with testimonies reportedly from the surviving boys, stating that they were “fleeing from Serbs who were chasing them,” followed by the assertion that “protests erupted across Kosovo and quickly escalated into violence.”
“These riots awakened many decision-makers. Everyone realized that little could improve in Kosovo without resolving its final status,” writes Gazeta Express, before explaining why Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide was sent to Kosovo as the envoy of then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
„Eide took this task very seriously and, after numerous visits to Kosovo and the Balkans, met with representatives of all parties, communities, and religious groups. In October 2005, he submitted his report. Although Eide pointed out many areas for improvement in the report, he recommended that the time had come to begin negotiations on Kosovo’s final status. A few days later, Kofi Annan made the same recommendation to the United Nations Security Council.“
The article concludes by emphasizing that Kosovo declared independence based on this report, and that:
“The Constitution of Kosovo, which grants it all the powers of a state, came into force on June 15, 2008.”
“Time Is Running Out for Kosovo”
In both cases, what is being revived is a narrative first introduced immediately after the violence on March 16-17, interpreted in some circles as an effort to mitigate the damage—an effort that, as it turned out, was highly successful.
The former international slogan “Standards Before Status,” used to prepare the ground for Kosovo’s independence from the former state, was transformed into “Standards and Status” after the violence, eventually evolving into “Status Before Standards.”
Pushing for “standards and status,” the then-influential NGO International Crisis Group (ICG) wrote in its 2005 report: “Towards Final Status”:
„Time is running out in Kosovo. The status quo will not hold. As evidenced by the deadly rioting in March 2004, Kosovo Albanians are frustrated with their unresolved status, the economic situation, and the problems of dealing with the past. The Albanian majority expects the international community to begin delivering this year on its independence aspirations. Without such moves it may act unilaterally. In such circumstances, given the dismal record of Kosovo Albanians with regard to minorities, Kosovo’s Serbs may call upon Serbia’s armed forces to protect them, and the region could be plunged into new turmoil“.
Responsibility for moving toward Kosovo’s final independence was placed on the re-established Contact Group (from the early 1990s), while UNMIK, constrained by its Resolution 1244 mandate, began preparing to scale down its role and influence.
„Few in Contact Group ministries believe Kosovo can be returned to Belgrade’s rule without re-igniting an armed
rebellion from the province’s near-90 per cent Albanian majority. If no significant new violence erupts by midyear, some movement on status — though what, as yet, remains quite unclear — can probably be expected. But opinion is divided on what the response should be if there is more violence. Some emphasise that: „We have publicly linked status to standards. If new violence occurs then 2005 is lost. We would lose all credibility if we just caved in on status“.11 Others, more cynical, suggest renewed violence may be the only way to produce enough international political will to take tough decisions on final status.12 Few believe there is a viable long-term containment option. With calls on resources from the Iraq and Afghanistan theatres, pressures to downsize KFOR are growing. Willingness to sustain the roughly $350 million annual cost of UNMIK is also not infinite.,” the report states.
Recognizing this, in its own words, the Contact Group—whose reports at the time also served as a guiding reference—nevertheless recalled the efforts within the UN and UNMIK that supported resolving Kosovo’s status.
“Two recent key UN appointees have shown refreshing clarity on the need to move forward on transfer of powers and final status. In a hard-hitting report on the political situation submitted in July 2004, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy, Kai Eide, argued that further delay would reduce the international community’s leverage to deliver a managed, negotiated solution and recommended that „serious exploratory discussion of the future status question should be undertaken by the UN beginning this fall“. On his mid-August 2004 arrival in Pristina, the Secretary-General’s new Special Representative (SRSG), Soren Jessen-Petersen, declared that resolving status was the key to stabilising the wider Balkan region, chided lack of initiative, and noted „I think there’s a limit to how long you can keep a place in limbo“.
With the responsibility and mandate for addressing Kosovo’s status—framed as the ‘normalization of relations between Serbia and Kosovo’—transferred to the EU, UNMIK’s role on the ground has since been marginalized. The narrative depicting this mission as an unnecessary presence in Kosovo and an obstacle to the establishment of an independent and sovereign state has been echoed in UN Security Council meetings, particularly by Western countries that supported Kosovo’s independence. However, on the ground, UN Security Council Resolution 1244 from 1999 remains formally in effect.
The role of UNMIK was thoroughly addressed by the ICG in its report shortly after the March violence. ‘Collapse in Kosovo’ was published a month after the riots.
„By 18 March the violence mutated into the ethnic cleansing of entire minority villages and neighbourhoods. The mobs of Albanian youths, extremists and criminals exposed the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the NATO-led peacekeeping force (KFOR) as very weak. Kosovo’s provisional institutions of self-government (PISG), media and civil society afforded the rioters licence for mayhem. The international community urgently needs new policies — on final status and socio-economic development alike — or Kosovo instability may infect the entire region“.
The Role of Media and “Patriotic” Journalism
Other credible reports, following the March violence, addressed the role of the media. A special report by the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media in Vienna identified “clear spin”, as well as “reckless and sensationalist” reporting by Albanian-language electronic media leading up to the riots.
“It should also be noted that the media, particularly the broadcasting sector, displayed unacceptable levels of emotion, bias, carelessness, and falsely applied ‘patriotic’ zeal. In particular, the reporting on the evening of 16 March by the three main Kosovar TV channels deserves the strongest possible criticism,” states the OSCE’s April 2004 report.
This report was also announced by the Crisis Group in its report ‘Collapse in Kosovo’ earlier in April 2004, but they too briefly touched upon the role of the media.
„During the evening of 16 March, RTK — Kosovo’s public television channel — broadcast an interview with a twelve-year old boy from the Albanian village of Caber, on the north bank of the Ibar near Mitrovica. Journalists reported – although the boy did not explicitly say so in his interview – that Serb youths with a dog had chased him and three companions, aged nine, eleven and twelve, into the river. The companions were missing, presumed drowned (two bodies have since been recovered). Updates were provided throughout the evening, with RTK running a news ticker underneath other programming that provided a sense of crisis. In the news broadcasts, regional UNMIK police spokesperson Tracey Becker’s twelve-second soundbite appealing for people to reserve judgement was drowned out by local „human rights“ activist Halit Berani’s blaming of „Serbian bandits“ for the children’s deaths. The next morning, as Koha Ditore and Epoka e Re blared the news that Serbs had caused three Albanian children to drown, the stage was set for an explosion“.
In its recommendations, the ICG emphasized Kosovo Albanian institutions, including PISG, media, and civil society should: „Accept that media coverage of the violence was indefensibly one-sided and inflammatory, and cooperate with the Temporary Media Commissioner and the OSCE in finding a way forward, including by reforming the management and board of the public broadcaster, RTK, and seeking sustained technical assistance from experienced European broadcasting professionals“.
A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report from the same month, “Failure to Protect”, referenced the OSCE’s findings as well.
“As a detailed report by the OSCE’s Representative on Freedom of the Media later showed, the ethnic Albanian media played an irresponsible, inflammatory role, broadcasting information that was still unconfirmed: the surviving ethnic Albanian boy never publicly stated that the group were chased into the river by Serbs, only that the young Albanian boys had been sworn at by Serbs from a distant house.”
This report primarily describes and summarizes the severe consequences for the non-Albanian civilian population, particularly Serbs, and highlights the devastating failure of international forces and police to protect civilians. Additionally, the organization’s experts examined the role of media reporting in these events.
“The interpretation that the boys were chased in the river by Serbs came from other sources, such as Halit Berani, a Mitrovica-based ethnic Albanian human rights activist. Such subtleties didn’t matter to the private and public state-funded media, who began broadcasting and printing unequivocal reports that the ethnic Albanian boys had been chased into the river by Serbs.
Moderating voices, such as the UNMIK spokesperson Tracy Becker, who warned that an ethnic motivation for the incident had not been established, received almost no airtime, while ‘experts’ who denounced the Serb ‘bandits’ were given unfettered and unchallenged access.
For example, Halit Berani, the chairman of the Council for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms in Mitrovica-an ethnic Albanian human rights group with a strongly nationalist agenda-was given more than 4 minutes of the RTK news broadcast, compared to the 12 seconds given to the moderate UNMIK spokesperson. Berani, who had not witnessed the incident, told the audience:
‘Today around 16:00 in the village of Cabrё (Cabra in Serbian), Zubin Potok municipality, while six children from the above mentioned village were playing, a group of Serb bandits attacked these children, the Serb bandits also had a dog, and [were] swearing at their Albanian mothers, they forced the Albanian children to run away. Two of them managed to hide in the roots of the willow trees by the river Lumebardh (Ibar river in Serbian), whereas the other four fell into the river. It is known that the Lumebardh river, apart from being very deep, has very cold water and is fast-moving. Most probably, the children couldn’t swim well. There is no information about the fate of three of them, whereas one survived after making it to the other side of the river.
We are used to these Serb bandits. We think that it is in revenge for what happened in Caglavica [i.e. shooting of Serb], the case that showed what the Serbs are willing to do when the situation is getting calm in Kosova.’
The sensational reporting on the Serb ‘bandits’ drowning young Albanian children set off a firestorm of protests and violence across Kosovo. However, while the drowning of the three children was a tragedy, a thorough investigation by the United Nations and a respected ethnic Albanian judge from Kosovo casts serious doubt on the allegations of Serb complicity in the drownings, citing inconsistencies in the accounts given by the surviving boy, and a lack of corroboration of the boy’s account by the two other surviving children and an elderly Serb who was working in the area. The U.N. investigative team did a thorough search of the area where the drownings took place, and could not find any Serbs who fitted the description given by the surviving boy.”
Déjà vu
Even credible international reports highlighting the incendiary role played by leading Albanian-language electronic media—most notably Kosovo’s Public Broadcaster—during those days did not help. The same broadcaster repeated the mistake two decades later in a retrospective on the event: „The Albanian boys drowned while fleeing from a group of Serbian youths.“
A news report from 20 years ago was simply copied, despite the fact that this very sentence had triggered the violence, the Journalists’ Association of Serbia (UNS) reacted, after which more than 50 employees of the Kosovo Public Broadcaster’s Serbian-language channel distanced themselves from the report.
Although Serbian-language version of the report was later slightly modified, UNS issued another response, highlighting the relativization of violence, incomplete reporting, and historical revisionism.
The absurdity of the media landscape in Kosovo is further illustrated by the broadcaster’s justification. Employees of the Serbian-language channel claim that their website, Facebook page, and YouTube channel are not under their editorial control:
„RTK2 neither journalistically nor editorially stands behind this content. On the contrary, reports by RTK2 journalists on the commemoration of the March violence, such as the report on the memorial service in Gracanica, were not published on the Serbian-language website,“ they stated.
Following a similar pattern, Koha presented its report last year:
„Riots broke out following reports that Albanian children drowned in the Ibar River as a result of Serbian violence, although the cause of the tragedy was never fully clarified. The children who survived recounted on camera late that night that they were being chased by Serbs and ran away, leading to some of their peers drowning in the river. The next day, March 17, protests erupted in many cities across Kosovo, quickly escalating into violence. During the riots, several Serbian houses and churches were set on fire. Similar incidents occurred with Albanian homes in Serbian-majority areas. Serbs responded by setting fire to mosques in Serbia.“
International Assessment
At least 19 people (8 Serbs and 11 Albanians) were killed. Around 286 Serbian houses, more than 35 churches, monasteries, and cemeteries were destroyed and torched, and over 4,000 Serbs were expelled in the two-day violence—eventually halted by KFOR. However, contrary to some reports, there were no „similar incidents with Albanian homes“ in Serbian-majority areas—such events did occur in Serbia. In a wave of violent demonstrations, Bajrakli Mosque and Islam-aga Mosque were set on fire, and Gorani and Albanian-owned shops were vandalized in several cities. It was later established that Serbs were not responsible for the drowning of the Albanian boys.
The Vetëvendosje Perspective
The claim that Serbian youths chased the Albanian boys toward drowning aligns with the position of the ruling Vetëvendosje party. After visiting the graves of the drowned children in Cabra near Zubin Potok last year, the party declared that the children had been “murdered,” while “peaceful Albanian demonstrators were shot at by organized Serbian criminals,” and “that the protests were spontaneous across Kosovo,” and that “most of the victims were Albanian.” They further claimed that “justice had not yet been served” and that their account was “consistent with the findings of an international judge.”
In a slightly milder tone, at the height of his popularity, Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti acknowledged the Serbian and Albanian casualties and losses but stated that it was never clarified who directed the protesters toward Serbian neighborhoods and Orthodox churches and monasteries. However, he also reiterated that „the children jumped into the Ibar to escape the pursuit of Serbian youths.“
This year, there were no publicly available reports on whether officials attended the anniversary of the children’s deaths in Cabra or what they said there.
The Machinery That Shapes the News
Propaganda teams distort facts, and narratives are carefully shaped. Words—whether harsh or omitted—often stand in the way of the truth about major crimes in the Balkans.
Excessive reactions or the complete absence of them from authorities continue to nurture a culture of hatred and misunderstanding among peoples. When judgments are delivered by politicians and the media before investigations are concluded, the very process of justice is undermined. If those in power do it, why wouldn’t those reading the news do the same?
„Relating to a situation in which people are more likely to accept an argument based on their emotions and beliefs, rather than one based on facts“—we didn’t need a dictionary to define ‘post-truth’ to realize we have reset to factory settings.
Tatjana Lazarević
Preuzimanje i objavljivanje tekstova sa portala KoSSev nije dozvoljeno bez navođenja izvora. Hvala na poštovanju etike novinarske profesije.
