Former Serbian politician and writer Vuk Drashković has stated that the Serbian Orthodox Church has never condemned any crimes committed by Serbs, starting from the wars that led to the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia.
In an interview for the program “Without Censorship”, Drashković said that the Church did not even condemn the murder of six young Serbs at the “Panda” café in Peja on December 14, 1998 — a crime he claims was committed by Serbs themselves, with the intention of blaming Albanians and fueling hatred.
“What I’ve said, and what is even more disturbing, is that our Church has not condemned a single crime committed by Serbs in the wars that killed Yugoslavia. It hasn’t condemned the great crime against Ukraine, and it hasn’t even condemned the murder of our children at the ‘Panda’ café in Peja. Our children were killed by the Wehrmacht in 1941 in Kragujevac, and by Slobodan Milošević’s regime and the UDBA in 1998 at the ‘Panda’ café in Peja. Why? So that this terrible crime — the murder of six Serbian children in a café — would be blamed on Albanians, and hatred toward Albanians would grow in Serbia. That was the goal,” said Drashković.
On December 14, 1998, armed individuals entered the “Panda” café in Peja and killed six young Serbs.
Following the incident, more than 150 Albanians were arrested in Peja, and on December 17, 1998, six young Albanian men aged between 17 and 22 were also detained. They were tortured, and one of them confessed under torture. However, in court, they were found not guilty, as there was no evidence linking them to the murder. They were sentenced to one year in prison for disturbing public order.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, in a statement to TV Pink about 11 years ago—before he assumed the presidency—acknowledged there was no proof that the crime was committed by Albanians:
“There are many horrifying things we must face, such as the murder of Serbs in the ‘Panda’ café in Kosovo in 1998, for which there is no evidence that Albanians were responsible, as was believed,” Vučić said at the time.
In August 2023, the Serbian Organized Crime Prosecutor’s Office received a request to question President Vučić as a witness in the “Panda” case.
The request was filed on behalf of the victims’ families by attorney Ivan Ninić.
In the request, Ninić stated that the parents of the victims want Vučić to be questioned about the case, in connection with his repeated public statements about it from 2013 to 2018.
