Diturije dies

By Julius Strauss in Likovac

30 November 1998

Diturije Deliu, the tiny survivor of Kosovo's most brutal massacre in which Serbian forces slaughtered more than 16 members of the same family in a forest clearing, has died aged three months because of a lack of medical care.

Despite world-wide media coverage of the killings which eventually spurred Nato to threaten air strikes against President Milosevic's forces, Diturije had received no food aid or medical attention since her ordeal two months ago.

The fact that she survived the massacre at all was a small miracle. On 5 October the Daily Telegraph revealed how she was found by her father Ymer smeared in the blood of her dead mother Lumnije, in whose arms she lay.

Nearby lay the slashed and bloodied bodies of her 10-year-old brother Jeton and four-year-old sister Menduhije, whose ponytail had been cut off and stuffed in her mouth.

The killers apparently spared Diturije because of her age although her 18 month-year-old cousin Valmir had not been so lucky. He had been stabbed and his head was smashed in.

Diturije's father Ymer, who discovered the bodies, believed she too was dead until she unexpectedly opened her eyes. He carried her for two hours along back paths to a nearby village while the Serbian forces rampaged through the area.

Unlike many other massacres in Kosovo the Gornje Obrinje killings were well documented by diplomats and international journalists who inspected the site before the bodies were buried. All of the victims had been killed at close quarters and many with knives.

Descriptions led to a scrambled response by Britain and other western countries which included the threat of air strikes against Serbia. But the limelight has since moved elsewhere, and Serbian promises to allow international war crimes investigators to the site have not been honoured.

At the time the Deliu family appealed for a doctor to visit Diturije and for milk formula and creams, but none ever came. International aid organisations operating in Kosovo said that Likovac, where Diturije lived, was off limits because of the danger of mines in the area.

Four of Diturije's first cousins, the oldest of whom is five-year-old Besnik escaped as the massacre began. They were found a day later found, their clothes soiled with blood. Thirteen-month-old Arlinda had a small shrapnel wound.

Besnik's tearful accounts to his family show that he witnessed at least part of the massacre and subsequently was forced to watch as Serbian police units tortured and beat another three villagers before killing them.

After tortuously piecing together the story of the young children over the course of several visits the Daily Telegraph last Friday organised the first visit to the family of a western child psychiatrist.

For Diturije, help is now too late. After the massacre she vomited when the family began feeding her with cow's milk but improved when they managed to smuggle in formula.

But the doctor in her village had been driven out by Serbian forces, his house and surgery burnt down. When she became sick again, the family, which first had to beg neighbours to borrow a car, was also unable to use the only asphalt road in the area for fear of patrolling Serbian police units.

In a desperate late-night attempt to save her life, they set out along a mud track to try and reach a doctor who lived six miles away across the fields. They drove down the very same track that aid workers say is too dangerous for their vehicles. But Diturije died in the car.

"We had nothing to give her," said her grieving grandfather Bajram Saferi. "We did not even have thermometer to measure her temperature with. If only there had been somebody to come to see her, she might be alive today."

Last Thursday I visited the house in Likovac where the grieving family had gathered to mourn Diturije's passing. A coloured towel hanging by the front door invited friends and relatives to the wake, which will yet last several days.

According to the Albanian custom, in the case of a family death men and women gather in separate rooms to mourn in a ceremony they call "saving the head" - a reference to its therapeutic value.

Women in bright skirts and head-scarves cried as they commiserated. Bedrije, Diturije's aunt who had been charged with caring for the baby, appeared close to a breakdown. Three-year-old Albert, the only of Diturije's three siblings now living, had a lucky charm pinned to his pullover, his only protection against harm.

The day after she died, Diturije was buried in the sad forest graveyard where her slaughtered relatives had been buried six weeks before. It was the very same graveyard that I had fled during my first visit in the autumn after Serbian forces nearby targeted us with machine gun fire and mortars.

This time it was eerily silent. A heavy snowfall had hidden the pairs of shoes that stood at the head of each grave in place of headstones. Diturije's father Ymer scraped the snow from her grave to show where she lay next to her mother.

"I tried to bury all three of my children as close to their mother as possible so that they can comfort each other," he said.

"I believe in God and know that when a person's time comes, there is no denying it. But I can't help thinking that the whole world knew our story and the story of the massacre. Why couldn't just one doctor have come?"