Petkov: In Brussels dialogue, we raised Dragica Gashiqi issue

The director of the so-called Office for Kosovo in Serbia government, Petar Petkov, said that under dialogue with the Kosovo delegation held Wednesday (7 July) in Brussels, he also raised the issue of Dragica Gashi, the Serb from Gjakova, who returned to live in this city, but faced a series of objections from the Albanian community, as well as a lawsuit exercised against it by the Parliament of this city.

“We raised the case of Dragica Gashici, the woman in Gjakova, whose indictment has been filed to expel her from her residence in Gjakova. Why? Just because it's the first woman back in Gjakova. I told Mr. Bislimi that if you want a single-ethnic Gjakova like many other cities that no longer have Serbs. They are single cities, while you do not want to establish the Association of Serb majority municipalities, which you say is the one-ethnic concept”, Petrovic said at the end of talks between the two delegations with the European Union's mediation.

Petrovic said he has received no answers to any of the issues raised. The Kosovo delegation was led by Deputy Prime Minister Besnik Bislimi.

The agreement on establishing the Association of Serb majority municipalities has been reached within Brussels' dialogue in 2013, which the agreement has been ratified in the Kosovo Assembly. In 2015, an additional agreement has again been reached regarding forming association, but the Constitutional Court of Kosovo had estimated that many provisions of this agreement were out of harmony with the country's Constitution.

Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti has said there can be no one-based association.

Gashiq case

Dragica Gashic, on June 6th this year, has returned to Gjakova, as the first person from the Serb community to return to this town after the 1999 war, when she was displaced from there.

The Gjakova municipality has handed over a lawsuit to the Gjakova Foundation Court, under which “anisation of the contract for rent of the apartment at a provisional requirement for”, for Dragica Gashic.

The decision to grant the residence, Dragica Gashici, in 1997, in the time of Serbian power, was made by the then Gjakova Municipal Assembly. The residence was rented for an indefinite period of time, says the contract, published by the political subject, the alternative to Mimoza Kusari-Lila, which is part of the executive.

Dragica Gashic has issued her residence in Gjakova on June 30th, because, as she points out, she does not feel secure. She tried to change the outer door of the apartment and replace it with an armoured one, but police did not allow her to do so, explaining that she should get a municipal permit for something like that.

In a statement, Gashi says that no one has done anything wrong and that he will resist all temptations.

But, she says it's heavy for her that it's undesirable in Gjakova and that, as she says, her fellow citizens attack “almost every day.

I call the police that they attack me, that they shoot me, they shoot me, they take pictures of me at the door of the apartment, they knock at my apartment door, which has faded like a rose. If you kick him with a kick, he's gonna kick his ass.

Dragica Gashic explains that prior to the war and before being moved from Kosovo, she had worked in Serbia's Police in Gjakova, but only as a janitor of the facility.

She adds that she has no clear reason why someone is holding back from returning to her residence.

In a conversation on July 6, she said that she was now staying with her sister in the village of Krushevo the Great Community.

In Gjakova, during the war in 1998 and 1999, more than 1,000 Albanian civilians have been killed, most of them males. Some of them are still homeless.

Nysrete Kumnova from the association “mothers' calls” by Gjakova had claimed REL that the families of the missing persons did not approve Gashi's return to Gjakova.

Bekim Blakaj from the Fund for Humanitarian Law in Kosovo has expressed the opinion that each displaced person enjoys the right to return to his own property and to the place where he lived before, in case he expresses his wish.

This cannot be conditioned to anything else. I fully understand the families of the victims in Gjakova and I understand that there are huge numbers of deaths and disappearances in Gjakova and that their families have so far seen no justice. But, however, it should not be conditional on the return of persons to their properties, to their homes. In this context even Mrs. Gashiq has returned to his apartment and I think security institutions, in the first place, should offer security and make sure no one bothers him”, Blakaj said. /rel