Once upon a time and never again – Mary Kelly – The Irish News

One of the perils of journalism is a tendency to see the negative side of life a little too often.

It came to mind many years ago when I saw the new school photos of my children. “They’ll be used if anything happens to them,” was my first dark thought.

On a trip to Kosovo last week, that nightmarish vision was realized at an exhibition at a Prishtina library, where a whole wall was given over to the smiling pictures of children killed or missing in the war there in 1998-99.

More than 1,000 children were killed and 109 are listed as missing, presumed dead. When those happy family snaps were taken, how could they have foreseen the horrors they would come to represent?

Entitled ‘Once Upon a Time and Never Again’, it also features poignant displays of toys and drawings by these children who would never grow up.

The horrors are unimaginable. One young boy, Gramoz Berisha, who survived a massacre at his family’s pizzeria, intended to be dead so as not to be noticed by the Serbian forces who were transporting the bodies of his family members who had just been killed.

Loaded on to a truck, under 49 bodies, he kept his eyes closed, and miraculously discovered his mother and her sister had also survived. They escaped by jumping off the speeding truck.

A group of 10 journalists from Northern Ireland were on an exchange trip to the previously war-torn country to see for ourselves how their society has emerged from its bloody past. In a few weeks, we’ll be returning the favor when our host journalists from Kosovo visit Belfast and Derry.

Their divisions run much deeper than ours. The scale of the bloodshed – some 13,000 people died, Albanian Kosovan women raped in their hundreds, and many others were forced into exile.

The continuing separation of Kosovans of Serb or Albanian background make our own distinctions seem slight.

They don’t speak the same language, don’t attend schools together or learn each other’s language, instead communicating in English as a neutral form of dialogue. They don’t often meet socially or marry. In Metrovice, a bridge patrolled by UN forces, including Italian carabineri, remains closed between the Serb and Albanian districts.

The Albanians want it opened, the Serbs are opposed, even though other crossings downriver are open to movement from both sides. It’s become a symbol of separation.

Their war started in 1998, just when we achieved a largely peaceful settlement in the Good Friday Agreement.

When they’re here, there’ll be the inevitable visit to the most obvious sign of our continuing division, the infamous peace walls.

But we aim to be able to tell them a more positive story too. And it’s only when you see the extent of post-war damage in another country that you begin to realize the positives we have managed to wrest from 30 years of conflict and more than 3,000 deaths.

When we were away we kept in touch with news from home, including the burning and wrecking of foreign-owned businesses in the university area. It was shaming.

But in subsequent days it was heartening to see the large crowds of anti-racist protesters hugely outnumber the knuckle-draggers, who include older people who should know better as well as bored youths who enjoy a bit of recreational rioting, like the yobs in Derry this weekend.

The continuing separation of Kosovans of Serb or Albanian background make our own distinctions seem slight

Despite what the right wings on social media say, Northern Ireland takes the least number of asylum seekers in the UK. According to Home Office statistics, a total of 2,248 were given support up to March 31 this year.

They don’t get benefits and they don’t qualify for social housing while their claims are investigated.

We also learned that the hotel our Kosovan guests will be using had a brick smashed through its window after being wrongly identified as housing refugees. Céad Míle Fáilte, eh?