A 9-year long struggle to record, produce and present to the world video documentation about Kosovo tragedy has been a tremendously powerful experience for me. In the process, I have become very much aware of how hard it has been to document simple facts of life and death of Serbs living in Kosovo. However, presenting these facts to the media (in Serbia or elsewhere) has been even harder to achieve.
As a Serb, I have often felt frustrated because of the lack of wisdom, interest and solidarity among Serbs themselves (regardless of where they live) considering this tragedy of ours. It seems to me that If we were any different, if we truly cared and believed in the values that we express so easily, we would have been able to defend all the people of Kosovo and remain worthy of our cultural heritage.
Unfortunately, our hearts have turned cold and our minds have become confused. We often talk about "patriotism," "tradition," and "democracy," but we have forgotten the basic issue – the "stuff" that all of these ideas are made of, such as loving each other, feeling compassion for our fellow human beings and being loyal to one another. In losing this, we might lose it all.
Thus, we have already lost the capacity to bear witness to this tragedy and to simply even acknowledge our own people as well as Albanians as fellow human beings.
That is why even the simplest thing such as documenting and recording the images of this tragedy, and presenting such documents to the world could not have been done by the official, professional media, but was left to "enthusiasts," or someone who might do it by chance.
The time has now come for all of us (Serbs and Albanians) to face who we have become. If we fail to do so, we will not be able to cure ourselves, to change, or to progress any further. We will simply perish as a nation or a civilized society.
Kosovo might very well become "independent" from Serbia, but it will continue to haunt everyone involved as a bad conscience tends to do and will not leave us independent from Kosovo. Unfortunately.
All that is left for me now is to try to successfully perform another "Don Quixote-style" task – to leave a DVD copy of my documentaries in political institutions, libraries, universities and major cultural institutions for some future students of history, religion or political sciences at various Universities all over the world.
If this video document helps them examine the downside of the "forced global democracy" in the Balkans, and warns future world leaders from causing it somewhere else, it will only mean that all of the Kosovo victims of ethnic hatred have remained relevant and did not simply vanish in vain.