This
article was originally published on Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso on October 3, 2011, by
Tatjana Lazarevic.
The security situation in the North of Kosovo is deteriorating, following the continuous confrontation between KFOR forces and the local Serbs. On September 27 a violent clash left many injured. OBC’s update.
Volleyball again
The deafening car honking and Serbian flags got back on north Mitrovica streets on Sunday night to celebrate another victory of the Serbian volleyball players. Just like the Serbian golden boys last month, the volleyball ladies have unexpectedly won the European championship. The victory against the German girls came even sweeter for Kosovo Serbs. “If they lose the fifth set, Merkel will send them all down in Jarinje”, was a joke by a north Mitrovica resident on her FB wall. This is how Serbs ‘pay back’ the demonstration of the German military strictness in Jarinje and Brnjak
.
But only the victories of the Serbian sport players, apart from the weddings, have been celebrated for a while in north
Kosovo. Any other siren alerts Serbs to pour onto the streets, while flags are waving to show their loyalty to their motherland Serbia.
Whose are the north Kosovo Serbs?
While one of the hot issues in
Serbia is the current census, there is no such activity in the place of what Serbia calls its province. To common people, a more shocking news than the very absence of the Serbian census officers is silence. Both, media and leaders are silent over the issue, almost by the same intensity as the northern Serbs were earlier this year encouraged to boycott Kosovo census and ensured to be rather included in the fall Serbian census. Serbs were longing for the fall.
“It was earlier recommended to the Serbs here to ignore Kosovo census and Kosovo Serbs were identified then as Serbian citizens. Now, they extracted us out of the census in order to avoid a conflict with the mighty countries which recognized Kosovo’s independence”, says Slavka Drekalovic, 56 from Zvecan. She says that although Kosovo IDPs in Serbia are included in the census, other Kosovo Serbs from Kosovo are “punished”: “Now the north Kosovo Serbs are written off. We do not exist”, Slavka added bitterly.
KFOR shoots for the first time to unarmed civilians?
Finding out that they are ‘written off’ is only another bad news to north Kosovo Serbs. There are several injured Serbs recovering in Mitrovica Hospital since 27
th September, when numerous eyewitnesses claimed that the American soldiers shot at the civilians in Jarinje, an ambulance vehicle and a young man while pulling out an injured man from the fire.
Early that morning, KFOR removed the roadblocks in Jarinje and took the control over a newly constructed alternative road, just above the custom checkpoint. The residents behind the administrative boundary line who later tried to cross to Kosovo and go to their work were halted.
The leaders of Leposavic municipality requested from KFOR to pull out from this road, but with no success. Some of the leaders were even captured for a while.
It made Serbs to go for an action of freeing the road for pass, when they sent a lorry to remove a barbwire off the road. The eyewitnesses said that it was then when a few American soldiers, all of a sudden, pointed the rifles at the Serbs and opened a fire on the lorry and the rallied Serbs. The latter claims they had no guns which was clearly visible to KFOR. Cameras filmed a part of the clash between Serbs and KFOR, showing no physical assault against the soldiers.
“I was initially hit in my leg, but when the people gathered to help me, they (KFOR) shot again and hit me in the stomach… And while I was carried down the hill towards the ambulance car, they shot a young man who was carrying me in his chin… And then, they shot the ambulance car”, the injured eyewitness Nebojsa Radojicic from Leposavic explained to Belgrade’s daily “Kurir”. Nebojsa claimed that there were women and children at the roadblocks. “We sheltered them with our bodies, while women were screaming and running away”, he added.
KFOR and EULEX deny
In another sterile press release, KFOR brings not much information, except to reassert its mission to provide “the rule of law”.
The press release reads that EULEX and KFOR “carried out a joint operation to take control of an unauthorized crossing point”:
“The initial phase of this operation passed off peacefully. Later, some individuals tried to break through the KFOR lines. Violence was shown towards KFOR soldiers who were trying to enforce controls over the illegal crossing point. A number of people including protestors and KFOR soldiers were injured” was emphasized in the EULEX’s press release.
KFOR was more concrete. Local “KIM” radio from Gracanica reported on the KFOR’s statement that one soldier had been injured during the Serbian break-through of the roadblock. “The second soldiers, after the warning shot, then shot a driver and injured him. The situation then deteriorated, the smoke bombs were thrown at the KFOR’s soldiers and the shooting was heard”, “KIM” radio reported on KFOR’s spokesman’s statement.
KFOR blamed Serbs to try taking a rifle from a KFOR’s soldier, while Serbs at the roadblocks claim that the Serb tried to take the rifle from the soldier after the latter “suddenly opened fire at the crowd, together with other soldiers.”
The International sources in Pristina do not confirm Serbian accusations that KFOR used weapon cartridges. All Serbian north Kosovo leaders and the State’s top leadership speak about the shooting at the unarmed civilians. They have been requesting since days ago an independent investigation which would involve UNMIK. The taken pictures of the injured body parts and the extracted bullets from the bodies circulate in Serbian media.
Unnamed OSCE and UNMIK sources in Leposavic claim that during the last week joint municipal Security Team meeting with the local leaders, it was confirmed that the shelled 5.56 millimeter cartridges were found and collected behind the barbwire, at the Serbian side. It was also confirmed that until the day of the meeting, the cartridges were kept in a local police station.
Media speculated earlier that Kosovo Serbian police officers and EULEX police had collected the evidence material and that the American KFOR requested the cartridges back on the same day. It was even speculated that the Americans tried to trade the captured lorry for the cartridges.
The poultry flipped out, too
In the meantime, KFOR expanded its area of control in Jarinje and installed barbwire around it to the estimated some 500 meters towards Leposavic, occupying many private properties.
Another military base was thus installed next to “Nothing Hill”, where several times per day helicopters with supplies, soldiers, EULEX police and one custom officer land. There is not much work for them to do though. No one crosses the checkpoint. It is the same in Brnjak.
About a hundred Serbian households are now disconnected in between and cut off from the rest of Kosovo. A village cemetery has been ‘captured’ within the base. Only a small part of Sarpelj hamlet is still connected to the railroad and the Serbian roadblock checkpoint. There is a village health house with some seven houses in this part of the hamlet, but the nurse comes only until the roadblock checkpoint. The largest number of the houses are however, completely cut off. The villagers are even denied the access to their cemetery, which they find extremely difficult, due to the cult of the dead among the Serbs.
In a telephone conversation, Dusan Premovic, 65, from Sarpelj village speaks about “the days under the siege”:
“To tell you the truth, I thought to spend my retirement days peacefully in my land. I am an invalid and an old man. But the chops are flying above my head, taking off and landing all the time in just a less than 150 meters from my house... And they are even closer to my neighbor. I have some animals. The chickens and pigs all flipped out as the chops are flying all the time. This is a disaster”.
Fuel gallons and human lives
The Brussels talks are interrupted. Both, Albanians and international officials blame Serbs. Belgrade repeats it agrees “only to a peaceful solution to the crisis”, but also that it cannot discuss “the technical details”, while Serbs “are being shot at and the situation in the field is violently changed”. Belgrade requests to talk to the international side about Jarinje and Brnjak. One more Security Council meeting was held on north Kosovo. The marginalized UNMIK is trying to get back to the game, with the help of the Afghan diplomat Farid Zarif.
While KFOR removes Serbian roadblocks, Serbs block the roads again with the heaps of gravel. The roadblocks are now installed even on the Serbian side of the administrative checkpoint.
As soon as KFOR closes an alternative road, the Serbs start digging a new one. The high barricade of gravel on the main Mitrovica Bridge was reinforced by a conquer cementing. It was the Serbian response to the positioning of KFOR troops next to the bridge on the southern.
An elderly Serb from Orahovac was killed on Sunday morning by a hunting rifle in the south of Kosovo, while his son sustained grave injuries. The Serbian statistics counted him to be the 69th Serbian victim in Orahovac in the last 12 years.
