OPEN LETTER/ Come to the dialogue and listen to me speak, otherwise I will cut off your scholarships, you will rot in prison. Please!

 Kliko këtu për të tjera
Voxpress:

"Sleep in the bed where she slept with her son, I can still smell it", the chilling confession of Erjona's mother, the 20-year-old who was killed by her ex-husband: I took her to the grave with...

2024-05-28 17:39:55Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

"Sleep in the bed where she slept with her son, I can still smell it",

The coldness of the walls of the room, which used to be filled with laughter, whitens and terrifies the days of Milihate Cokli.

In every corner of it you see dreams that were lost and you hear words that were not said.

The pain that grips his chest becomes unbearable when he touches her frozen face in the photograph.

"I continue to say 'good morning' and 'good night' to Erona every day", Milihatja says with a trembling voice.

Her 20-year-old daughter was killed on April 12 in Ferizaj - a city in the southeastern part of Kosovo. Her ex-husband, with whom Erona had a son of one year and two months, was arrested as the main suspect for the act.

The couple had been divorced for almost a year and Erona had a legal obligation to meet her son with his father every week at the Center for Social Work in Ferizaj.

In the meeting that would be their last, she was shot dead, while her brother Driloni, 15, who was accompanying her, was wounded.

"In those moments, as if something pierced my heart", Milihatja remembers the time when colleagues at work told him that "a woman was killed".

"I didn't know she was my daughter. I was in the kitchen working and I said to myself 'how are people so broken'".

Still without realizing it, anxiety had gripped him. He does not remember how much time had passed when his brother-in-law appeared at the restaurant where he worked - a few kilometers from the house in the village of Bablak in Ferizaj.

"I thought we were going home... When he left the city, I asked him: why are we going to Ferizaj?" He told me: Erona and Driloni were injured".

There, the worry for them had suffocated him. But, a thread of hope that he would find them alive, kept him.

"When I saw Drilon injured in the hospital, I knew that he would recover... and I started to scream: where did I go?"

From that moment, he says he doesn't remember anything, except being surrounded by doctors and other staff.

"How much pain... The light in my eyes was taken away from me."

Milihatja believes that Erona's husband used physical and mental violence against her for years, although Erona tried to keep it hidden.

They were connected when the girl was 16 years old and, very soon after, "she started to get depressed, she didn't eat the same, she didn't laugh the same".

"He would come home and tell me that he would never return to him... but something would happen and he would still go."

Milihatja remembers that, once, he noticed signs of violence on his daughter's body, but that she told him that she had fallen in the bathroom.

Despite her parents' insistence, she had returned to him.

"I was convinced that he threatened him with us... And Erona did everything for his pleasure, just so he wouldn't harm us."

He says that he does not know the motives of this behavior, but his fear was proven when Erona's ex-husband "started to threaten" her older brother, that he would allegedly suffer if Erona left him.

Erona, meanwhile, became pregnant and during that period, her mother says that she cut off contact with her family.

Although only a few kilometers away from home, she says she knew nothing about her daughter.

"We took the eldest son, Rinor, away from Kosovo so that the worst would not happen... and we reported the case to the police."

"Several times we turned to the regional police in Ferizaj... I told them that I miss my daughter... but they told me that they are in contact with her and that she refuses to talk to the family".

The worry, fear and anxiety of the family lasted for months, until Erona, six weeks after the birth of her son, returned with him to her parents - "tired, weakened, traumatized".

With their support, she had decided to restart her life from the beginning, seeing in her little one motivation and hope.

Milihatja says that together with her husband they were ready to do everything, just so that they did not lack anything.

As he remembers the voices and his grandson's crawling on the ground, the oil stops his confession.

"It is the most expensive gift that Erona left me", says Milihatja and starts to unfold his clothes.

"She probably...", he says through his teeth.

After Erona's murder, the boy went under the guardianship of her ex-husband's mother, and Erona's family meets him "every two weeks, for three hours".

Milihatja says that he will try to return the grandson under his custody.

As she confesses and writhes around the room, her husband, Gazmendi, remains silent and overwhelmed by pain.

"She was extremely close to her father," says Milihatja about Erona.

The father doesn't want to talk too much, but says he has only one hostage: "Why didn't I stay closer to him, every step of the way...".

Less than a week after the murder of Erona, another woman was killed in Peja - about 90 kilometers from Ferizaj. Even in that case, the police arrested the husband as a suspect.

From 2010 to April of this year, a total of 57 murdered women have been identified. In most cases, the perpetrators of the murders were husbands, then fathers and sons.

According to organizations that deal with women's rights, the justice system in Kosovo is sending "encouraging" messages to the Doras with, as they say, "light sentences".

Serious murder in Kosovo is punishable by a minimum of 10 years of imprisonment and a maximum of life imprisonment.

But, even according to the Kosovo Institute for Justice, which monitors the justice system in the country, cases of murder of women "receive low sentences, go back to retrial or drag on".

Despite REL's occasional requests for comments, the Kosovo Judicial Council has not responded.

The data of the Kosovo Police show that, last year, 2,460 cases of domestic violence were reported, with the victims mainly women.

According to civil society representatives, their number is much higher than the official figure. They say the violence is underreported for several reasons, including: social pressure on women, their lack of economic independence and failure to inherit wealth from their parents.

In Erona's case, the obstacle was "fear" - she did not lack family support.

Erona was afraid to leave her abusive husband, Mimoza Thaqi, personal development trainer in an online club, which Erona also attended in the last months of her life, tells Radio Free Europe.

"Erona's dream was freedom and her son. Because, she was like a captive of that person... She only saw her future in the boy", says Thaqi.

He says that Milihatja has also become a part of these clubs, "to manage the situation in which the family went through and is going through".

Psychologists say that families with such tragedies experience "emotional shock".

"They find it difficult to accept and believe the reality. I convey the feeling of guilt... that they had the opportunity to do something more, to notice the problems earlier and prevent the murder", Gyltene Derguti, a clinical psychologist at the Family Medicine Center in Ferizaj, tells Radio Evropa e Lire.

Milihatja does not want to talk about Erona's killer, but prays that he receives the "deserved punishment". In the room where Erona slept with her son, she now sleeps. There he says he can still smell their laughter and smell.

While for a moment he seems to be haunted by beautiful memories, the pain soon awakens him.

"I took her to the grave with a veil... because she didn't wear the white dress when she got married."

"That day I saw her as a bride... Erona was beautiful, but that day she had become even more beautiful"./REL


Në përputhje me standarded JTI

Video

SHIKO KANALIN NE YOUTUBE
×