In May 2001, a mass grave was discovered 12 miles away from Belgrade, Serbia, less than a year after the overthrow of President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia. Bitter Land writes that the remains of 744 people were found, and all of them belong to Kosovo Albanians, the majority of whom are Muslim, who were murdered in the spring of 1999 by the Orthodox Christian Yugoslav Army, Serbian police, and paramilitaries during the Kosovo War.
The Kosovo War started in February 1998 and lasted until June 1999, with the Kosovo Liberation Army, made up of Kosovo Albanians, fighting against Serbian forces led by Milosevic. Enika Abazi writes in A New Power Play in the Balkans that although Kosovo first declared independence in 1991, the Yugoslav government responded with a wave of oppression that eventually led to the Kosovo War. Al Jazeera reports that approximately 13,000 people were killed during the Kosovo War, many of whom were Kosovo Albanians.
According to Humanitarian Law Center, the bodies found at Batajnica belonged to adults and children of all genders, most of whom were civilians, and for many, the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head, “suggesting that the victims did not die in combat but as a result of execution-style killings outside situations of combat.” Some of the bodies were also reportedly moved between April and June 1999 in an attempt to hide the evidence of the massacre.
