Government says dialogue with local Serbs, but not publicly

“S recently, more precisely last week, Prime Minister [Albin Kurti] has held a meeting with ten local Serbs, leaders of civil society organisations in the country”, Government Free Europe spokesman for Kryeziu told Radio Free Europe.

Therefore, communication and dialogue with local Serbs is taking place, but it is developing in a way that does not affect them by themselves”, he said, without providing further details.

About the lack of institutional dialogue with local Serbs was addressed Monday in Pristina during the publication of a research titled “The Serb community's stances in Kosovo” by the non-governmental organisation Active, headquartered in North Mitrovica.

The director of this organisation, Midorag Milliq, said the lack of such dialogue also led to the departure of northern Serbs from Kosovo institutions.

It is very clear that we have an institutional vacuum, for which, at this moment, no one can say with certainty when it will be eliminated and if the function of institutions in northern Kosovo” can be established, Milliq said.

Due to the official Pristina insistence that Serbs in northern Kosovo register their cars with license plates issued by Kosovo, not Serbia, members of the Serb community left Kosovo institutions in the north including police, judiciary and municipalities in early November.

Their departure was supported by Serbia, which pledged that the retired workers would compensate for the salaries they received from Kosovo institutions.

Some Serbs who spoke earlier about Radio Free Europe have said they have resigned because of various pressures within the community.

The active organisation published research “The Serb community's stances in Kosovo” for the seventh consecutive year.

She said this year's poll has been conducted with 540 people from ten Serb majority municipalities in Kosovo in the June-August period.

Actively, the poll has been conducted in a <x0mosphere of added tensions” and with “a growing sense that the security situation is slowly deteriorating”.

Intensions in Kosovo have started in late July, when some Serbs in the north have set up barricades because of the Kosovo Government's decision to begin the process of reregistering cars.

They have moved up until last week, when Kosovo and Serbia, with EU mediation, have reached an agreement under which the Government of Kosovo has withdrawn from the decision to reregister cars, while Serbia has pledged it will not issue new license plates to Serbs in the north.

What else do the research results show?

Research results “The Serb community's stances in Kosovo” also show that members of the Serb community in Kosovo are not satisfied with the current political and security situation.

Only about seven percent of respondents have responded positively to the question of whether they think things in Kosovo are going in the right direction.

Milliqevq, too, has said that institutional protection of Serbian rights has been raised to the level of the international community, because official Pristina “does nothing about it”. As an example, it has been named “the fact that Kosovo's current prime minister, Albin Kurti, has not appointed any of the minority communities to be head of the Office for Communities in his cabinet”.

This office is led by Elizabeth Gowing from Great Britain, who is adviser to Prime Minister Kurti for communities.

In the current government, Deputy Prime Minister for Community Emilia Rexhepi, who comes from the ranks of the Bosniak community.

Is there really dialogue with the Serb community?

Igor Markovic, from the active organisation, says that despite some Kurti warnings that he will start internal dialogue with members of the Serb community in Kosovo, this has not happened.

Kurti has cited domestic dialogue with Serbs in Kosovo since the 2019 election campaign, when he said this dialogue is “much more important than the one being conducted with Serbia in Brussels”.

Markovic says that even the leaders of other central or local Kosovo institutions “do not have sufficient motivation” to co-operate with non-communal communities.

Darko Dimitrijevic, editor of Radio Gorazdevc, which is located on the territory of the Pec municipality, tells Radio Free Europe that members of the Serb community in Kosovo currently have no where and with whom to address the problems they face.

According to him, even Kosovo institutions have fewer Serbs.

There are more and more problems gathering”, he says.

Branimir Stojanovic, Serbian opposition politician from Gracanica ʹ in the vicinity of Pristina, says the Serb community's situation in Kosovo has deteriorated during Prime Minister Albin Kurti's mandate and that “nothing is being implemented in behalf of Serbs”.

As an example, Stojanovic says Kurti has insisted on reregistering cars by calling into the Brussels Agreement on normalising relations between Kosovo and Serbia, but on the other hand, “does not want to form the Association of Serb majority municipalities”, which is also envisioned with this agreement.

“Basically, there is no will to do something that would a little calm the situation and create better conditions [for living] for ordinary people”, Stojanovic says.

What has the Serb civilian sector in Kosovo asked earlier?

In addition to calling on Kosovo institutions for greater co-operation with members of the Serb community, the non-governmental organisation active earlier has also called on the Serbian List to take responsibility and actively participate in solving problems.

The Serbian list is a party operating in Kosovo with the support of official Belgrade and has received nearly the absolute majority of votes in central and local elections.

However, officials of this political subject do not nearly ever speak publicly, in the Assembly or Government of Kosovo, about the problems of the Serb community.

For this reason, the civil sector has called on it in some cases to contribute peacefully through institutional channels.