Memories of the war in Kosovo 20 years on

(18 May 2019) LEAD IN:
2019 marks 20 years since the end of the Kosovo War during which hundreds-of-thousands of Albanians were forced to leave Kosovo to seek refuge in neighbouring Macedonia .
Now a museum dedicated to the wartime expulsions has been set up in the border zone between Kosovo and what is now North Macedonia.
To commemorate, former refugees have been travelling back  - some for the first time since the war - swapping memories of darker times and life in refugee camps.    
STORYLINE:
For the thousands of refugees that fled Kosovo during the 1998-1999 war this locomotive was a lifeline.  
The train comprising of three wagons will now stand at the Bllace border crossing to commemorate Kosovo's biggest exodus.
Hundreds of former victims are embarking on the same journey they did 20 years ago, in memory of the wartime expulsions - revisiting the Kosovo-Macedonia border  - the place where tents were raised to shelter the refugees arriving in 1999.
Former passengers and old friends, Fatmir Krasniqi and Shaqir Shaqiri met on this train 20 years ago and are travelling back today.
"Do you remember? I had no bread for two days. And you gave me biscuits," recalls Krasniqi.
Shaqiri remembers it like it was yesterday.
"I had been with my wife, children, three brothers, with two sisters. We have been 22 family members. We left homes empty at the hospital quarter."
Some-440,000 ethnic Albanians were displaced and expelled by the Serb army to then Macedonia, mostly transported by train.
Beaming with excitement Shaqiri never thought he would be travelling back to Kosovo.  "This is happiness," he says.
Staring out of the window, the journey is a chance for long-time friends to share new memories.
The train makes several stops, picking up people en route to southern Bllaca - where the new museum will be located.
Passenger, Xhelal Krasniqi, first travelled this route as a 15-year-old with his parents.
He recalls how he never found out what happened to fellow passengers as they were separated by the police.
"We don't know about their fate, if they were alive or if they were killed," he explains.
He remembers, "Police officers burnt down a school near the railway station."
"We saw the police officers and we saw the house, a big house that was burnt," he explains.
According to the UNHCR, thousands of ethnic Albanian villages in Kosovo were destroyed by burning or shelling during the February 1998- June 99 Kosovo War that saw Serb and Montenegro forces crackdown on Kosovo Albanian separatists.
There were many claims of Serb police burning homes, herding people into trains and shipping them off to neighbouring Macedonia.
Twenty years later, Krasniqi is filled with relief, "Emotions are different because we hope for our future, for a better future," he says.
In April 1999 refugees streamed across the border into what is now known as North Macedonia.
Along the railway between the Kosovan capital, Pristina, and the Macedonian capital, Skopje, a line of refugees stretched as far as the eye could see.
They carefully followed the tracks of the railway to the safety of a Macedonian camp.
Besnik Tahiri was travelling from Pristina with his family at the time.
"We went to the train station; unfortunately, it was full of people. My mum was sick. We had to push her through the window in the train. We left the road. We reached Hani i Elezit. It was raining. Full of people. We were walking through this way. We were told that there are minefields. We reached at the Bllaca, mud. We stayed for 13 hours. Full of people," he says.

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