End of status quo

Vetëvendosje Movement member of parliament Ilir Deda writes from Pristina:

Kosovo has entered a turbulent year. The winter started with the election of a new government composed of former rivals – the PDK of Hashim Thaçi and the LDK of Isa Mustafa. The Western Embassies were satisfied – the status quo seemed ensured. Three out of twenty-one cabinet posts were given to the Serbia-created, -funded and politically -controlled Serbian List, which emerged victorious among Kosovo Serb political parties.

The new American/German brokered government, whose sole purpose is to maintain the status quo, signaled the end of hope for Kosovo’s people, 70 percent of whom voted in the June 2014 elections against the PDK in government. On November 20, 2014 – a day after it was announced that PDK and LDK would govern together, buses of hopeless citizens began leaving Kosovo towards Hungary – through Serbia – and on towards Western Europe. As a direct consequence of the creation of the PDK-LDK government, over fifty-five thousand people have left Kosovo since the end of November.

Amid this despair, the leader of the Serbian List, Aleksandar Jablanovic, led a bus with Serb pilgrims who were trying to come to the western Kosovo town of Gjakova to celebrate Orthodox Christmas. Jablanovic was accompanied by Djokica Stanojevic, the former ethnic Serb mayor of Gjakova during Milosevic’s occupation of Kosovo, who was directly involved in crimes against Albanians in the city and the area.

Gjakova proper and the surrounding area was among the worst hit areas during the Kosovo war in 1998-99, where not only some of the strongest fighting took place, but also thousands of civilians were executed and massacred. Thousands more went missing, and still are unaccounted for. The leading association of missing persons, “The Call of Mothers,” organized a protest to block the visit of the Serb pilgrims. The bus was stoned. Jablanovic called the protesters “savages.”
While over the last 150 years he is not the only Serb politician who called Albanians savages, he is the first Kosovo Serb minister of the government of the Republic of Kosovo to do so. Several days later, Jablanovic questioned the well-documented record of war crimes committed by Serbia’s police and military forces, saying he “didn’t know” whether they had occurred.

A week later, Serbia’s Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, came to Kosovo for a “religious purpose” – to celebrate the Orthodox New Year. When asked whether Serbia would apologize for the state crimes in Kosovo, he added fuel to the fire by responding “everybody can dream.” To the protesting Albanians he said that next time he would bring “books to educate them on politeness.”

Vucic was a minister in the Milosevic’s government in 1998 – 1999, which was responsible for ethnic cleansing, war crimes, execution of civilians, deportation of Albanians and destruction of public and private property in Kosovo. The apology cannot be a “dream” but a firm political position of the Kosovo government as a precondition for normalization of relations with Serbia.

The first two protests were held in Gjakova on January 10 and 17, gathering five and ten thousand protesters respectively, organized by “The Call of Mothers,” Vetëvendosje and few civil society organizations. The same demand was repeated the following week when thousands took to the streets in eight other Kosovo cities.

Amidst these protests, the government sponsored a law to nationalize Trepça – a mine rich in zinc, silver and lead, with deposits worth more than $14 billion – in an attempt to save it from liquidation. Serbia protested and held a joint meeting with the three Serbian List ministers of the Kosovo government. The Kosovo government backtracked on its initial a plan to nationalize Trepça because of Serbia’s opposition. The public was left aghast to see that 15 years after the war and removal of Serbia’s say in Kosovo’s domestic affairs, and almost seven years after the declaration of independence, Serbia still had a say in Kosovo’s affairs. This reversal of history is unacceptable to the people of Kosovo.

On January 23 “The Call of Mothers” and Vetëvendosje, supported by other opposition parties, civil society organizations, unions and independent public figures organized the largest protest held in Kosovo since 1999 in Prishtina, gathering over thirty thousand people. The government was issued a deadline – to dismiss Jablanovic and sponsor the law on nationalization of Trepça in two days, or the protest would continue. At the end of the protest, a small crowd of several dozen people threw rocks at the government building.

The government and its controlled media began the expected propaganda, accusing Vetëvendosje of being behind the violence. The international sponsors of the government followed the same line. Meanwhile, all the security institutions in Kosovo had credible information that Vetëvendosje was not behind the violence, but did not come forth publicly with this information. Instead, the government said that Jablanovic would not be dismissed.

January 27 saw twenty thousand people gathering in Prishtina. Since early morning the police, under orders from the government, showed hostility and brutality – it did not allow the organizers to set the stage in the center of the city, confiscated protest materials, and prevented citizens from other cities from joining the protest in Prishtina. The police started throwing tear gas at the crowd while the speeches of the opposition figures were ongoing. One hundred seventy people were injured, as the police used tear gas, water cannons, and UN-banned rubber bullets on the protesters, while the protesters threw rocks at the police. The clashes lasted over six hours. Almost two hundred protesters – mostly young – were arrested. Such police brutality has not been seen in Kosovo in the last fifteen years. Nor was such anger of young protesters, who blame the government for the lack of hope.

The government accused the opposition of wanting to “violently overthrow” the government. Prime Minister Mustafa went further – he accused the media of aiding the opposition in the “destabilization of the state,” because media were broadcasting live scenes and reporting from the protest. In the US, it is quite normal for CNN and other media to broadcast from such events. In Kosovo, the PDK-LDK government began using rhetoric similar to the worst totalitarian regimes.

On February 3, the prime minister informed the public that Jablanovic would not be part of the Government any more, while the opposition halted the protests to await the response of the government on Trepça. If the law on transforming Trepça into a public company is not proposed soon, the protests will continue.

The protests brought the return of hope among the citizens, who see that an arrogant government can be forced to be accountable to its people, and not only to Western Embassies. The protests were not against the Kosovo Serbs, as alleged continuously over the last month. The anger of Kosovo’s people 15 years after the war with the overall state of affairs – no economic development, high unemployment, high corruption, Serbia’s destabilizing role, and alarming poverty of half of the population – has reached extreme heights. There is no more space for unconvincing justifications of incompetent politicians. This is the beginning of the end of the fifteen years status quo in Kosovo. The majority of people who are determined to stay in Kosovo are resolute to see the state succeed. They are determined to have a dignified life in the Republic of Kosovo.