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In March 1999 a brutal war in Kosovo exploded into an international crisis as NATO commenced an air campaign against Yugoslavia.
The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia led by Slobodan Milošević and the Kosovo Liberation Army had been in full-out warfare for more than a year.
Aerial view taken 15 June 1999 shows Pristina's central post office destroyed by NATO bombing. Serb forces pursued their pullout from southern Kosovo on Tuesday hours before the midnight deadline. (Photo by POOL / AFP) Photo: AFP
After the failure of peace talks, the NATO offensive was the international community’s response to a new wave of ethnic cleansing by Serbian forces against Kosovar Albanians.
Ethnic Albanian Kosovars walk 25 June 1999 on their way back home on a road between Pristina and Mitrovica, after spending three months in refugee camps in Macedonia. The UN refugee agency and NATO were gearing up for the organised return to Kosovo of thousands of ethnic Albanians after being caught off-guard by the return of refugees under their own steam. (ELECTRONIC IMAGE) (Photo by JEAN-PHILIPPE KSIAZEK / AFP) Photo: JEAN-PHILIPPE KSIAZEK
More than 850,000 Kosovars started to flee or were forced out of their homes, seeking safety in Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro, and some eventually in Aotearoa.
In this episode of Here Now, we look back at 25 years of life for Albanian refugees to New Zealand, featuring Osman and Julieta Lleshi and Ermal Fusha.
A French armored vehicle patrols in a village abandoned by its inhabitants after the withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo in the outskirts of Pristina 21 June 1999. (ELECTRONIC IMAGE) (Photo by JEAN-PHILIPPE KSIAZEK / AFP) Photo: JEAN-PHILIPPE KSIAZEK
The Lleshis married in Kosovo, and look back fondly at their 50-year-long relationship's beginnings in what was then Yugoslavia.
A happy life took a different turn from 1989 when the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under Slobodan Milošević began to break up. The separation of the Balkan Peninsula into the nations we know today was anything but peaceful.
Osman and Julieta Lleshi arrived in New Zealand as refugees from the Kosovo conflict in August 1999. Photo: Kadambari Gladding/RNZ
Many ethnic Albanians in Kosovo had long been engaged in nonviolent resistance against Yugoslavia. But that resistance took up arms after Milošević began revoking their rights to autonomy.
In June 1999 the NATO aerial intervention ended and Serbian and Yugoslav forces pulled out of Kosovo. By then, more than 800,000 Albanians had been displaced.
Ethnic Albanians wait in line 22 March before casting their ballots in Pristina, in underground elections aimed at sending a defiant message to the Yugoslavian authorities in Belgrade. Some 1.1 million people are registered to vote in the polls, regarded as illegal by Belgrade, to elect a president and 130 deputies to sit in the parliament of the self-proclaimed Kosovo Republic. (Photo by JOEL ROBINE / AFP) Photo: JOEL ROBINE
In 1999, 400 people from the region of the Balkans were received as refugees by New Zealand under a special arrangement, above the then-yearly quota of 750.
Listen to the full story on Here Now with the community commemorating that journey 25 years ago.
