CEMETERIES OF MARTYRS AND PARTISANS
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This 3 ha memorial park includes both the Partisan Cemetery (Varrezat e Partizanëve, Partizansko groblje), inaugurated in 1961, and the Martyrs' Cemetery (Varrezat e Dëshmorëve, Groblje Mučenika), established in 1999. There is also a separate grave of the first president of Kosovo, Ibrahim Rugova (1944-2006), which is guarded around the clock. The Partisan Cemetery is located on the Matiçani/Matičansko hill (679 m above sea level). It houses an ossuary where 220 Serbian, Montenegrin and Kosovo Albanian partisans who died during the Second World War are buried. It is a flower-shaped structure designed by the Yugoslav architect and sculptor Svetislav Ličina (born 1931). But since the end of the Kosovo war, the ossuary has been left abandoned. The new authorities even considered destroying it before changing their minds in the face of opposition from former partisans. Since 1999, all attention has been focused on the Martyrs' Cemetery. Located below the hill, to the south-west, it now contains 26 graves of Kosovo Albanian militants who have died since 1998. This part of the cemetery is controversial. Certainly, there are the graves of authentic pro-independence activists, such as the intellectual Adem Demaçi (1936-2018), the "Mandela of Kososvo", who spent twenty-eight years of his life in prison. But it is also here that the nine activists who carried out the unexplained attack on Kumanovo in 2015 are buried, leaving eight dead in this northern Macedonian town.
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