Ylfete Humolli was 16 years old and had left school to join the protest with her younger brother Mentor, then 14.
According to Mulaomerovic, she was shot twice in the head. “I remember she was wearing a grey jacket,” he said.
Back in Pristina, reviewing the footage he had captured, Mulaomerovic spotted a police car and two officers, who had raised their weapons and fired into the crowd.
“The policemen had stepped out of the vehicle and fired at the demonstrators,” he said. “It was clear then that the fatal shots came from them.”
Dozens of people died in the unrest following Milosevic’s abolition of Kosovo’s autonomy. But Humolli’s death was particularly chilling.
That afternoon, Mulaomerovic and his colleagues went to edit the footage at Radio Television of Pristina, which at that point still broadcasted in Albanian, and obtained the signal to broadcast on TV Sarajevo.
“While we were editing, an editor at TV Pristina decided to broadcast the material,” he said. “At the same time, a crew from Germany’s ZDF offered a huge amount of money for the footage, but we refused.”
The footage had an immediate impact. “International media were reporting that police had opened fire on children,” Mulaomerovic said.
Over the next two months, Serbia imposed more repressive measures, including a nighttime curfew, and, in July 1990, forcibly shut down Radio Television of Pristina, firing all its Albanian employees.
Mulaomerovic remembered discussing with colleagues at the time “how difficult it was to imagine any reconciliation between Albanians and Serbs”.
His footage was aired in Sarajevo, Pristina, Ljubljana and Zagreb, to the consternation of Belgrade.
“Then I understood something,” said Mulaomerovic. “That day, the war started.”
