What is Freedom? Writings by children from Kosovo

FREEDOM

What indeed is freedom?

Is it something so beautiful,

or just something sacred?

Freedom is when you are joyful,

you go to school and you're free,

when you love, when you smile, and when you do not fear.

My freedom is dangerous, frightening, and poor,

my friend, brother, dad die under fire,

In it we get killed, as if we're made of mire.

Andjela Ivic, Primary School "Sveti Sava", Susica, Badovac           

NINETY NINE

Ashamed you will be of nineteen ninety nine, oh world,

For encroaching on Serbs,

For the bombs and missiles used.

Why did you move against the Serbs?

Are we guilty for being alive,

For being born, for learning our first words

In the land of Kosovo?

For making our first steps here,

For learning of big things,

 Should we just leave it all behind,

Our homes, our roots?

No way will we allow them

To desecrate our dead!

 What is their guilt in not being alive?

Let them rest in peace,

Let villains not touch their bones.

Even me, still a young child,

Must feel the pain of the kidnapped's mother,

And all the things that happened

In the gruesome ninety nine!

Jelena Arsic, Primary School "Miladin Mitic" - Laplje Selo

BOMBARDMENT

It was a clear and sunny day,

It was a day beautiful and gay,

And all of a sudden, thunders broke,

Birds were dead, no one spoke.

It was like a slumber,

When bombs came from up there,

When kids stopped dreaming,

Awake and screaming.

No one asked for it then,

No one called for it then,

Bombs falling all around,

 Safety nowhere to be found.

It was all so dim,

It was all so grim,

No one managed to find their way,

Far away from the bombs they couldn't stay.

Not a bird was left alone,

Many of them were dead and gone,

One fell in my lap, couldn't find its way,

Far away from the bombs it couldn't stay.

Milica Gigic, Primary School "Dimitrije Prica" - Donja Brnjica

I AM STAYING

People are afraid,

They cannot take heave,

So for their fear,

Kosovo they leave.

I don't know that much,

I'm in my early day,

But even though I'm young

I would like here to stay.

I don't like such new places,

Though pretty they may seem,

Because I think that elsewhere,

Of old home I would dream.

Those that have still gone,

Complain much of their lives,

In tears they must admit to us

They are missing their old hives.

Though it may be dangerous,

I feel no real remorse,

I've made my firm decision:

Stay in Kosovo, of course.

Andrijana Jovanovic, Primary School "Sveti Sava" - Susica - Badovac

HOPE

A sad girl walks down the street,

She sheds no tears, but her whimper we hear,

In passers by she looks for her father,

And speaks out loud "My father is here".

She wonders now if she has to cry.

Can her father hear?

The dusk has come, the light now vanes,

The night has arrived, but hope remains,

Perhaps tomorrow, or who knows when,

Her biggest hope - see father again.

Jovana Djordjevic, Primary School "Dimitrije Prica" - Donja Brnjica

MARCH 17, 2004

You don't know the hurt and pain

Things burnt down in March had lain

Wounds inflicted late at night,

Forget this we never might.

We were doomed to depart this place,

Our native land that once shined,

Saying goodbye to many a face,

Leaving a graveyard behind.

Churches and monasteries burning all around,

For salvation babies cry out loud,

The hand of brutes has ravaged us all,

Only whimper and gloom now stand tall.

So many aches and wounds there were,

On those nights and days without rest,

So many poor mothers, in tears and somber,

An answer to this no one can suggest.

Why did things need to be so?

Why leave our houses, run away, go?

An answer, I fear, no one will provide,

Dreaming of it, forever I will hide.

Milica Zivkovic, Primary School "Ugljare" - Ugljare

PEACE PIGEON

I'd like to become

a pigeon of peace,

bringing freedom,

water, and bliss.

I'd become a pigeon,

either big or small,

to make real peace,

for children, for all.

I'd become a pigeon,

Flying high above,

Offering to people

Repentance and love.

I'd become a pigeon,

Flying up for good,

I'd bring people joy,

Happiness and food.

So they could keep the memory

Deep down in their thought,

Forget the time of sadness,

For it is not their fault.

Children's hearts are small,

They hope to become calm,

Trusting the peace pigeon,

To land in Kosovan palm.

Tamara Djordjevic, Primary School "King Milutin" - Gracanica

THE WISH

I once had a big wish,

To give love to everyone,

To meet many new people,

And keep friends with each one.

Such bad days have now arrived

No energy that I can find,

I no longer have a friend,

Or a person dear and kind.

All our life they took away,

And they took our houses, too,

But they couldn't steal or hurt

The love that my heart keeps for you.

I shall dance and I shall sing

To defy those people low,

For it's only song that's left,

For my country to bestow.

Jovana Dimitrijevic, Primary School "King Milutin" - Gracanica

KOSOVO

Kosovo's in our soul,

But no one to console.

Kosovo nights grow longer,

And the sadness only stronger.

Sorrow wells up in our eyes,

Ahead of us only darkness lies.

We are left with no real choice,

Nothing left now to rejoice.

We are gloomy, that's our plight,

They will say it serves us right.

Jelena D. Miladinovic, Primary School "Dimitrije Prica" - Donja Brnjica

LIVING IN KOSOVO

            Kosovo, this is my homeland. I was born in Kosovo and I wish to keep on living here.

            Freedom! A word that means so much to a person. We know that people lose their freedom because they have broken the law or done some evil deeds. However, it is unthinkable that in the twenty first century, in the Balkans, in Europe, there are men, women and children who are deprived of freedom, that they live in prisons or in the open air, just because their faith is different.

            On the 17^th and 18^th March 2004 there was an ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Kosovo. Many foreign politicians admitted this, but not Albanian ones. Many houses were burnt down, many children and people were expelled from their homes.

            Instead of living together, in harmony with the Serbs in Kosovo, Albanians want to live alone in the Serbian territory.

            Why can't Kosovo Serbs live in freedom? Why must Serbs in Kosovo live in enclaves? What is it that Serbian children have done wrong so that they cannot even reach their capital? I keep wondering, but answers never come.

            Answers never come, and we live in this insecurity every day - we wonder what will happen next.

            What is it that tomorrow brings?

Jovana Zarkovic, Primary School "Ugljare" - Ugljare

HOLOCIDE OVER SERBS IN KOSOVO AND METOHIJA

- CHILDREN SPEAK OUT -

            In the early 21^st century, in Europe, thanks to the "Merciful Angel", the ultimate saint for our Christian brothers in America and Europe, in Serbia, in Kosovo and Metohija, after it had been occupied by NATO alliance in 1999, a generation of Serbian children grew up, not knowing the meaning of freedom, where the idea of the present leaders of the world is that they never should learn its meaning. They ask us if "this is something beautiful, or perhaps sacred...?" We leave it to the countries that took part in the bombardment of their country so as to prevent a "humanitarian disaster" to one day answer this question for them.

             The Judeo-Christian civilization, i.e. its part made up of Europe and the United States, which, due to its globalist goals, often proclaims itself "the international community", took exactly 1999 years to conceive of the most hypocritical, the most vicious, and the cruelest criminal enterprise in the history of the so-called mankind, or, perhaps the better word is unmanliness, under the guise of an angel showing mercy.

            This project is a holocide, not genocide, because the aim of the plan was not only to kill and banish Serbs from Kosovo and Metohija, but also to rename the ethnically cleansed towns. Therefore, today, in Obilic, Urosevac, Srbica... not only is there no Serbian head, but there is no Serbian name, either. They are now Kastriot, Ferizaj, Skenderaj... Serbs are deleted from times present, past and future, from the memory, the space and time of Kosovo and Metohija.

            Why is this holocide and not holocaust, why was it so that not only were Kosovo Serbs burnt down with their Orthodox temples, but the "international community", embodied in the UN, has also issued a request that over 135 Serbian churches and monasteries that were incinerated in Kosovo and Metohija should be restored only if they are renamed as "Byzantine legacy of Kosovo people", read: Albanians, because in Kosovo today there is no other people. According to the laws of this new state in Kosovo, there is no other people, because all the others are national minorities. And what would this really look like, if a constituent nation did not have a single monument in its state, but  only endowments of a minority nation.

            In June 1999, upon the entrance of NATO troops in Kosovo and Metohija, the persecution and ethnic cleansing of Serbs started. That year, by the end of the summer, all major towns in Kosovo and Metohija were ethnically cleansed: Pristina, Pec, Prizren, Gnjilane, Urosevac, Djakovica. All of them, except a part of Kosovska Mitrovica, were cleansed of Serbs. The methods the Albanian terrorists used for this, fervently supported by KFOR and UNMIK, included: murder, kidnapping, battering, rape, burning down of mothers with children, and other atrocities; however, a thing seen for the first time in the Balkans, obviously under the influence of US instructors, was public lynching. This is a cowardly way to express and execute collective justice, i.e. verdict. It is so popular in the tradition and practice of western nations, especially the US. Yet, it has remained virtually unknown among the often cruel, but always proud and dignified Balkan nations. This way, over 250,000 Serbs were banished from Kosovo and Metohija, and, with them, tens of thousands of Romanies, and even some disobedient Albanians. Over 150,000 Serbs who stayed in spite of this unseen terror, now live the life similar to that in safari reservations, as victims whose movement is restricted by barbed wire, while Albanians may shoot and wound children from their cars passing by, for the sake of their own pleasure or fun, or to give Serbs a warning of what the future holds. And all this before the watchful eyes and allowance of their mentors, the banners of UN, NATO and EU waving in the sky.

            The second phase in the execution of the holocide of the international community and Albanian terrorists against the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija started on 17 March 2004, where the idea was to complete the ethnic cleansing in small towns and start the ethnic cleansing of major Serbian villages. They started with shots again, aimed at a boy in Caglavica, went on with burning the last Serb in Prizren, then the Health Station in Kosovo Polje, then Devic monastery and a hundred or so other churches, followed by the persecution of monks and nuns. In these few horrendous days Albanian terrorists, assisted by KFOR and UNMIK, were successful in implementing a part of their plan, so that ethnic cleansing was almost completed in: Obilic, Kosovo Polje, Lipljan, Kosovska Kamenica... German soldiers from KFOR particularly excelled in their cooperation with the Albanian terrorists, in line with their glorious tradition in this part of the world. The perpetrators have never stood trial, nor will they, as long as the world is governed by this, so-called "international community", which has rewarded the Albanians for these crimes against the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija with the first state of terrorism and terrorists in the world.

            Subconsciously, one always poses the question whether this evil should be talked about. For us coming from Kosovo, talking about it is the most difficult, but it's even more difficult when the truth is kept silent, for, as old sages once noticed, "undoing makes a crime complete". This is exactly what these rulers of lies and injustice hope for. Former NATO spokesman Jamie Shea once said: "Let us bomb the Serbs and remain calm, as they will soon forget all about it." The message of this book is: do not be calm all of you who have committed crimes. By keeping silent, we have forgotten the name of the girl from the vicinity of Gnjilane who died, actually suffocated during an asthmatic fit on the administrative border with Kosovo and Metohija: American soldiers did not allow her parents to take her to a hospital in Vranje. Her agony lasted a few hours. Is this world better, do we feel better for forgetting her name and their undoing?

            In the name of this oblivion, do we have the right to forget the name of the little Danilo, who made his first steps along with his parents after returning to Kosovo, and ended up massacred, along with dozens of other returnees? Among them were also Dragovic sisters, two young girls who had been so happy that morning for returning to their village: Mirjana got killed, and her sister was heavily wounded. In the same area, the responsibility of the English KFOR, a day before his eighteenth birthday, along with another thirteen mowers from Staro Gracko, the young Novica was killed. We have no right to keep silent and no one has the right to make us be silent. Speaking and testifying does not mean causing hatred and new crimes, but preventing those crimes from happening again. No one does this better than these children.

            This small reminder was necessary to better understand the circumstances in which these children grow up and live their childhood, that they often want to forget, to understand their daily lives, where they often try to forget, and the future they fear.

            And how they live, in happiness, or suffering, they say best themselves. In this introduction, only the big instances of evil have been described, those leaving scars on our souls. But power and water lack every day. How one lives without them, without freedom and so many more things, you will hear from these children - they are small, but big in so many respects.

            When a friend of mine named Rastko gave me a few collections of children's pieces last year, I took them and flapped through out of pure curiosity, because by that moment I had been convinced that such writings were much more an unfulfilled dream of parents than a genuine achievement of children. I read a few papers and turned silent. The work of this children, who had to face the dreadful reality of the life of Kosovo Serbs all too early, made me lose my breath.

            And so this book came into being. Yet, to myself, its history is a bit longer. As it may be, when in the early nineties serious divisions started between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo, they seemed to somehow first become visible in schools. The official story was that, on the one hand, Serbian children no longer needed to learn the Albanian language, while, on the other, Albanians refused to study in accordance with the official syllabus, requesting that their children should go to separate schools, and the like. At that time I wrote a joint address to Serbs and Albanians, more out of a premonition than because I knew what was about to happen. In the part in which I addressed the Serbs, I reminded them that language was a token of consciousness and an expression of the human mind, and that no one had the right to use it in order to divide people, for the noble role of language is quite the opposite - to create peace and harmony among human beings. On the other hand, my suggestion to the Albanians was that no one had the right to say - I am a parent, I will instill hatred into my child, that is my free will. Our children we owe to God, and to God we owe our love of them and their love of the world. No one wished to hear my address then, it was a lonely voice in a desert, and perhaps it still is.

            I remain convinced, though, that man was not created at that moment in which he understood the power of tools, as we are made to believe watching the all-praised "Space Odyssey", but rather at the moment in which he felt compassion and shed his first tear. Cain did not become a man when he realized that he had the weapons and power to kill his brother, but rather when he heard the voice of God, realized what he was doing, and ultimately repented. Since God is hardly an old DJ sitting among the clouds and playing his voice over a Hi-Fi system, this would have been the first time that a man heard the voice of his soul, the voice of man.

            This book begins with the title "What is Freedom" by the little girl Andjela and ends in the title "A Gift Called Peace" by the young boy Luka. Between the two, there are ten years of hope, suffering, and turmoil. The book is a testimony by children born in Kosovo, around the venue of the Battle of Kosovo, that is the central part of the province, between Obilic and Lipljan, and Gracanica and Kosovo Polje, and this is certainly important for us if we wish to understand their experience of the world.

            All the hope, love and gentleness given in this book come from the children, while all the gloom, bitterness, and bad words originate in the world surrounding them.

            They say:

            "Kosovo, my love, you are now in chain,

It is war and violence and helplessness that reign,

A bent down Serb, his face looking down,

Through you he walks, town after town."

This book is a gem to help all those wishing to wake up come out of their dream, a dream lacking in reality.

If the prayers of these children and the powerful people in this world are addressed to the same source, let us remember what He said about freedom and peace:

"The truth will set you free."

"Peace be with you."

GUARDIANS OF THE SUN

Like grass between the rail's tracks,

A child from Kosovo so much lacks.

Dragons in the sky leave them with no choice,

In pauses they must work, learn, grow, and rejoice.

Dear to all, they are noble and plain,

but no one is ready to come and remain.

You guard the Sun, the skies and your spark,

Never let others spread out their dark.

Although they are small, they will always say

" Crawling to the truth, you cannot make your way!"

Dragan Nicic Cinoberski