"Families of enforced disappearances face profound emotional, legal and social challenges that often remain invisible to the general public. Fighting for justice and searching for answers about the fate of their loved ones, family members go through long-term uncertainty, pain and institutional obstacles".
That's what she told "Vijesta". Adela Nurković - Kulenović, whose father is Halit Nurković, from Rožaj, disappeared in Kosovo 25 years ago, and has not yet been found.
"After the end of the NATO bombing, on Saturday, July 24, 1999, our father, as a taxi driver, set off with a customer from Rožaj towards Kosovo. Dad's colleague joined them, Derviš Murić. Around half past eleven in the morning, Dad stopped in front of his sister's house, who lived in Vitomirica, a suburb of Peja. He said hello from the car and told her that he would stop by on the way back, to rest and drink some coffee. He never came back. Neither he, nor his colleague Dervish. That's where the darkness begins and even today we don't know anything about their fate".
"News" from the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) did not respond to an inquiry related to the disappearance of Halit Nurković.
The International Day of Missing Persons is celebrated on August 30. On that day, the Center for Civic Education (CGO) said that "they consider that the systemic efforts and commitment are insufficient to find and identify all the forcibly disappeared persons of the 90s, which would determine the circumstances and outcome of their disappearance, and provide the families with the right to know the fate of those closest to them".
Damir Suljević from CGO, said that "the list of missing persons in Montenegro with 51 names remains unchanged, with an unofficial announcement that one case could be closed by the end of the year".
"The largest number of missing people, according to the data of the Government Commission for the Missing, dates back to 1999 - 35 of them," said Suljević.
Addressing institutions without feedback
Halit Nurković worked as a driver in the company "Gornji Ibar - Servis trans" in Rožaje, and after retiring as a taxi driver. At the time of his disappearance, he lived with the then 18-year-old Adela, while the rest were his daughters, Azrena, Samira, Indira, Sanela i Elsana, lived abroad. Wife Muniba she passed away in 1997, two years before Halit's disappearance.
Adela Nurković - Kulenović told "Vijesta" that her father's disappearance was reported the next day to the MUP in Rožaje, as well as to the KFOR forces in Peć.
"The same was done in the International Red Cross, the UNMIK police, and then every other institution or organization that we heard existed and dealt with missing persons. We went to some of them dozens of times, each time we gave detailed statements, left photos, gave all the information we had. Unfortunately, we never received any feedback," she said.
At the time when her father disappeared, as she added, "international forces were just establishing the basic administrative structures in Kosovo, with practically no relations between Kosovo and Montenegro":
"The situation certainly changed after the Montenegrin recognition of Kosovo's independence, when the two countries began establishing official relations and cooperation at different levels. On the tenth anniversary of our father's disappearance, in 2009, six of us sisters wrote a letter to the highest institutions of Montenegro, begging for help in finding our missing father. This was followed by a series of meetings, including those with the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Red Cross of Montenegro, the Montenegrin Commission for Missing Persons, and other competent institutions. However, everything again came down to taking our statements, without any concrete feedback on possible progress or steps towards solving the case”.
Nurković - Kulenović said that she and her sisters were forced to search for their missing father by themselves.
"When our father disappeared, we followed various rumors, went to everyone we could reach, who might know something. "Information" found us on its own, accompanied by various forms of manipulation, humiliation, robbery and physical danger. People would come to our house and claim that our father was alive, that he was in prison and that they would help us free him. Forced to go into all this alone, without any possibility for protection and help from state institutions, exposing our lives to danger, we were deceived on three occasions by the people from Kosovo, when with the promise that our father would be released, the entire family savings were extorted from us." , she said.
During that period of constant searching for her father, she says, they tried to get to the truth through people who were in high positions, Kosovo politicians and UN representatives. In 1999, help was promised, among others, by Hashim Thaci i Bernard Kouchner.
"That's the end of it," he says.
Nurković - Kulenović said that the reaction of the institutions, "both at the beginning and later, was frighteningly inadequate - mainly focused on explanations that none of them is responsible for the search for a missing person".
"Representatives of the system, hiding behind dry bureaucratic language, dismissed us like a ping-pong ball, shifting responsibility from one to another, instead of reacting and taking all necessary steps to find him as soon as possible and bring the perpetrators to justice. Every time we thought we had come to the right place, we were brought back to the beginning, never finding the insistence that would take responsibility and start really working to shed light on the fate of our missing father," said Nurković - Kulenović.
The daughters of Halit Nurković in connection with the disappearance of their father in Kosovo filed a criminal complaint against unknown persons to the Basic State Prosecutor's Office in Rožaje, the Special Prosecutor's Office for War Crimes in Bijelo Polje, and the Supreme Prosecutor's Office in Podgorica.
"We always gave detailed statements and submitted all available information. We submitted information to the Montenegrin Prosecutor's Office about the author's book 'Be not afraid for you have sons in America' Stacey Sullivan in which, among other things, the name and surname of a person from Kosovo who knows who killed our father and why is given. Based on what was written, as well as based on the communication we had with the author and the protagonist of her book Florin Krasnići, we believe that they could provide additional information about the crime that took place in 1999 in which our father and his colleague Derviš Murić were killed. That's why we asked the Prosecutor's Office to take official statements about the allegations from the book," explained Nurković-Kulenović.
As she said, "it is unknown whether our institutions took any steps regarding this information and whether they investigated it further".
What is missing, she adds, "is the real political will to put the issue of the missing on the agenda."
“In our case, the situation was further aggravated by our father's 'inappropriate' ethnicity. The voice of a person who does not belong to the majority ethnic groups, whether in Kosovo or Montenegro, is often ignored or minimized. There is no association behind us that would put pressure on the authorities to seriously deal with the issue of our missing father, and for the institutions, an individual case does not bring enough 'points', so our efforts for justice are often neglected".
Institutions not to shift responsibility
On behalf of herself and her sisters, Adela Nurković - Kulenović tells the institutions to stop looking at the missing as numbers or cases in files.
"Behind every disappearance is immense human pain, uncertainty and trauma that never ends," she said.
According to her, institutions could significantly improve the process of searching for missing persons through several key steps:
"It is necessary to legally clearly define the competences of all relevant institutions in order to avoid the transfer of responsibility and enable faster and more efficient action, without legal or bureaucratic delays. Also, it is necessary to provide faster access to key data and resources, as well as provide families with greater insight into the course of the investigation. "Transparency in the work of institutions, along with improved communication with families, are key areas that would significantly facilitate and speed up the process of searching for missing family members," she said.
The greatest support for the families of missing persons is, as she added, concrete work and true commitment to solving the fate of the missing person, as well as the criminal prosecution of those responsible:
"Knowing that a missing person is being actively searched for brings the greatest comfort, so it is crucial that the work of the competent institutions be transparent, and that information about the progress of the investigation is easily available to the families."
Nurković-Kulenović also said that "providing legal and administrative assistance to the families of the missing would significantly facilitate navigating the complex legal system":
"Long-term and continuous psychological and emotional support would be extremely useful, given the enormous emotional burden and trauma to which families are exposed."
She told "Vijesti" that "institutions must show more empathy, responsibility and proactivity":
"It is necessary that they devote themselves to each case with a real determination to provide answers, and not to reject us with bureaucratic answers and formalities. We are not looking for pity, but justice, truth and dignity for our loved ones. Every step that institutions take in this search can mean hope for families living in the constant darkness of uncertainty. That space is a deep void, a place where the presence of absence is felt at every moment. This emptiness is not only emotional, but also legal, because it denies our loved ones a basic right - the right to exist! The presence of absence is not just a metaphor, it is the actual tangible reality we live in, where the memory of our loved ones becomes the only evidence that they ever existed. We carry this invisible burden with us, trying to maintain their presence in a world that has forgotten them".
Their father's pension was also taken away
The Nurković sisters received their father's pension in the period from his disappearance in 1999 to December 2002. They had the right to that pension as students, until it was suspended. After that, there was a lawsuit by the Republic Fund for Pension and Disability Insurance, in which they demand a refund of money in the amount of 5.124 euros.
"The Montenegrin pension fund sued us for paying my father's pension after his disappearance. Although we, as full-time students, had the right to his pension, in order to exercise that right, we needed an official certificate of his death. Because of this, we were forced to declare my father dead through the court, even though we still believed he was alive and searched for him in Kosovo. With the abolition of the pension, our only source of income has been abolished," said Nurković-Kulenović.
The daughters of the missing Halit appealed to the pension fund and begged for the lawsuit to be withdrawn.
"They didn't hear us. Instead of help and protection, the state exposed us to a long, painful and degrading process, additional difficulties and costs. Thanks to the long-term legal assistance provided by the Fund for Humanitarian Law from Belgrade, that process was resolved in our favor after a long series of years. Considering that in the end it was established that the PIO Fund sued us without any basis and thereby exposed us to a painful process of many years, we asked them, through a lawyer, for a public apology. Unfortunately, they refused, and we gave up, wanting, above all, to finally stop the unprecedented torture by the representatives of the state insurance fund".
Bonus video:
