These 300 houses on Kosovo soil, will soon be filled with Serbs

Official Pristina says there is no evidence that this settlement has received the necessary permits from the local government.

The question of the return of displaced persons to Kosovo after the war in 1999 is the topic of talks on dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia in Brussels, which Kosovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti, and Serbia's president, Aleksandar Vuciq, have agreed to at the September 7th meeting, but have not disclosed the details.

According to UNHCR data, 2016, it is believed that displaced outside Kosovo are about 107 thousand people, of whom 88 thousand in Serbia, more than 1,400 in Montenegro and over 600 people in northern Macedonia.

Magnification of the Number of Displaced

Ljiljana Periq from Fushe Kosova, in the vicinity of Pristina, since 1999, along with her family lives as a displaced person in Gracanica, this Serb-run municipality.

In a conversation with Radio Free Europe, she stresses that her residence in Fushe Kosovo is usurped. She adds that she has been addressing nearly all competent institutions to help her solve the housing issue. But, as she says, so far no one has wanted to hear her problems.

Periq also shows that representatives of the Republika Srpska Commission for Refugees and Migration, as well as representatives of Pristina's provisional municipal bodies, operating within the Serbian system and that since Kosovo authorities are considered parallel institutions, days ago they visited displaced persons at the collective centre in Gracanica. This visit, according to her, was designed to register all those who want to apply for residential units being built within the residence for returnees, “Sun Valley” in Zvecan.

“asked who wants to apply for it. I showed up. Why wouldn't I go live there? Do you know what conditions we live in here”, said Periq.

How “was built Sun Valley”

A settlement construction agreement for returns “The Valley of Sun” was signed in 2015 by the Office for Kosovo of the Government of Serbia, Raska Diocesa and Prizren of the Serbian Orthodox Church and the interim body in Zvecan, operating within the Serbian system.

Head of this body is Ivan Todosijevic, former Minister of the Government's Local Power Management of Kosovo, from the ranks of the Serbian List, the largest Serbian party in Kosovo. The value of the project is around 14m euros.

The settlement has been being built since 2016 and so far over 250 residential units have been built, while the works are also being completed for the construction of children's nests, churches and branch facilities.

On the basis of available information on this settlement's website, the wider location included the area of 24 hectares of land, but for the area of 15 hectares, construction of about 300 residential units in which some 1,500 perts displaced by Kosovo will be deployed, and which have shelter or residence in Serbia, Montenegro and other Western Balkan states.

The residential units in “The Valley of the Sun”, with which the interim body of the Zvecan municipality manages, are not sold but given to displaced persons, with the aim of resolving the social and displaced persons' residence issue.

In this spirit, during the church ritual, the sanctification of the cornerstone for the construction of the temple in “The Valley of the Sun”, in early June, the bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Theodosije, stressed that the settlement is being built for those Serbs who want to remain in Kosovo's space, as well as for those “who have been forced to flee from different parts and cannot return to their homes”

What do Kosovo institutions say?

From the Kosovo Ministry of Economy and Environment of Government, under which spatial planning is under authority, they say the work of building the settlement “Sun Valley” is being done without permission from Kosovo authorities.

The chief inspector in the Ministry of Economy and Environment, Bedri Halimi, told Radio Free Europe, that the ministry has asked for documents from the directorate for urbanism in Zvecan, but that for days it has not brought any documents. After the directorate or municipality has not responded to the demands, the process has been passed to the court.

Because this director has not responded to the Inspectorate's ordinance with construction documentation, the Inspectorate to this directorate has made initiative in court”, Halimi said.

Although it has already been two years since the court was given the case. The Ministry of Economy and Environment has not yet received any answers.

The head of the Office for Community and Return to the Zvecan Community, which operates within the Kosovo system, Lulzim Peci, estimates that the settlement construction issue “The Valley of the Sun” has already passed to the central level.

This is the ministry's competence. The ministry and government are aware of everything. So this issue has surpassed local level competencies”, says Lulzim Peci for Radio Free Europe.

He explains that this project is implementing Serb parallel structures and that the Office for Community and Return has been unable to do anything.

Nothing has been done through the organs of the Republic of Kosovo”, he points out.

The calls of Radio Europe Free Radio have not been responded either to Vucinina Jankoviq, head of the Zvecan municipality, nor to Ivan Todosijevic, chairman of the Zvecan interim body, this Serb parallel institution.

However, there is no comment from the Government of Kosovo, therefore, neither from the Office of the Prime Minister of Kosovo nor from the Ministry for Communities and Kthim, at the helm of which Dalibor Jevtic is from the Serbian List.

Meanwhile, Kosovo's Aquial Prime Minister, Avdullah Hoti, has declared at the end of July of this year that he will not allow the implementation of projects in the north, which Serbia finances and that are contrary to Kosovo laws. At a day event in Pristina, he had estimated that in northern Kosovo there have been a lot of shares that have not been done in accordance with Kosovo's laws.

“E know we have difficulty implementing the law in that part of the country, but from that requirement we will never give up and we will not allow the situation to go that way”, Hoti stressed.

By the time the building had started “settlement The Valley of the Sun” in Zvecan in 2016, then Kosovo Prime Minister Isa Mustafa, had stressed that this construction would not be allowed because permission does not exist. But the work has continued.

At the same time, Kosovo's Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning, at the top of which time was Ferid Agani, had declared that no one had informed and consulted about building the settlement and that the decision to build it was illegal because competent municipal bodies had not provided permission for construction.

Earlier, Democratic Party of Kosovo deputy leader Enver Hoxhaj has stressed that construction of the settlement for returns “The Valley of the Sun” in the Zvecan municipality is an effort for “colonization” and a change of ethnic structure in northern Kosovo.

Serbia is continuing with colonisation projects, with which ethnic structures are changed in northern Kosovo. These dangerous actions create tension, instability and ethnic confrontations, the EU must immediately condemn and block such operations”, Hoxhaj stressed.

Who's building “Sun Valley”

In Serbia, in March 2016, three months before the start of the settlement for returnees, “Sun Valley, name company “D.O.O.” Sun Valley, Dare Society with Limited Responsibilities “Valley of the Sun” in Gracanica.

According to data that is registered in the Agency for Business Records in Serbia, “D.O. Sun Valley. O” is owned by the Diocese of Raska and Prizren of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

As company activities, the rental of real estate, personal or rented property and management of “are highlighted.

The company's director is Slobodan Mihajlovic, who is also director of the <x0 project. The Valley of the Sun”, meanwhile, chairman of the watchdog council is Teodosije Shibaliq (the Bishop of Theodosije), and in, the council's members are Alecandar Radovanovovic, Borislav Tajq, Savo Smigiq, Milosav Gvodovic.

From Raska's and Prizren Diocese have told Radio Free Europe that over property issues over the company “The D.O.O.” Sun Valley will respond to their legal team, but until the time of the publication of this text, the answer has not come.

According to Martti Ahtisaari's document for resolving Kosovo's final status in 2007, under which Kosovo's independence was declared in 2008, the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo is the only “owner of its property in Kosovo, with exclusive discretion to manage its property and approach its” objects.

Professor and constitutional expert Riza Smaka says that if the church builds objects that are in service to the church or religious rituals, it can also act. But according to him, the church cannot build residential quarters.

This is abuse that it's not about cult objects, while those buildings are not. They're for individual civilian interests, and in this group case. It is designed to become colonisation, to build Serb colonies here and there through Kosovo”, Smaka said.

Middle of 2019, under the Government of Serbia's decision, the Commission for the Election of Benefiters has announced public calls for the distribution of part of residential units in the settlement for returns “The Valley of the Sun”, which is destined for people displaced with social needs.

However, these homes have not yet been introduced into a housing facility.