Caring Prince Charles’s hug for families of the missing
THEY WERE the hugs that broke royal protocol and showed the victims of Europe’s deadliest conflict since the Second World War just how much Prince Charles cares.
The emotional scenes unfolded after the heir to the throne pledged his support to the families of those still missing from the Yugoslav Wars.
Charles, 68, was embraced by relatives trying to find out what happened to their loved ones during the Balkans conflict of the 1990s.
It came after the Prince gave a speech revealing how he had invited the delegation to Clarence House after being deeply moved by the stories about those who had gone missing and the tireless efforts of their loved ones to find the truth during a visit to Kosovo last year.
Charles said: “In the months since I have thought a great deal about those stories and have been determined to do something to support you, the families, in your exceptional work to promote reconciliation and justice.
“Loss always brings grief but I know how easily loss can also bring despair at the pointless cruelty and destruction we witness in our world and at our own inability to understand it. When we do not know what has happened to our loved ones there is no closure to that grief – no remedy for our despair.”
The Prince said that we owed it to our children and grandchildren to find out the truth of what happened to the 40,000 people missing since the end of the war in 2001, of which 12,000 remain unaccounted for.
He added: “Only reconciliation offers the assurance that our children and grandchildren will not suffer the same agonies as our own generation has endured.
“It is my profound hope that your countries will be changed by your quest for truth through cooperation and that by working together with the International Commission on Missing Persons you will offer a model of reconciliation that will inspire others around the world.
“That work requires tremendous courage, the courage I believe we must all try to summon from the depth of our souls, however great the pain.” Praising the relatives for their “courage, dignity and determination”, he added: “Accept my hospitality today as a demonstration of my personal support for your constant and tireless efforts.”
MORE THAN 140,000 people were killed during the fighting inside former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 2001 which saw the ethnic cleansing and the displacement of more than a million people. The ICMP has helped to identify 28,000 of the 40,000 missing. During a visit to Pristina, Kosovo, last March Charles was told about the challenges faced by families in their search for justice, with newly established governments refusing to take responsibility for locating the missing.
On Wednesday, relatives told their harrowing stories. Kosovo Albanian Sevdije Frangu, 55, told how her daughter, husband and father have been missing since 1999. She said: “Sixty people were taken including my daughter who was 19 years old. There were elderly people including one as old as 103.
“They were massacred – some were even buried alive. There were children of nine and 12 who witnessed everything.”
Serbian Olgica Bozanic, 57, told how she was driven out of Kosovo in 1999 and never saw her two brothers again.
“These were honest people, ordi- nary citizens,” she said. But thanks to the work of the ICMP, DNA analysis led to her brothers’ remains being found in a mass grave.
“It wasn’t just the deaths that was difficult to accept, it was the fact that there were no bodies,” she added.
“All I wanted to do was kiss my brothers’ heads but they were gone. We need to know how long did they live for, and who killed them?”
Croat Marin Brkic, 47, traced his father with the help of the ICMP but three relatives are unaccounted for. He told how his uncle was forced to dig his own grave before being killed. His grandmother was then thrown on top of her son and buried alive.
He said: “I don’t have a headstone for my father or a monument to my family.”