Following protests by the Serbian population that blocked traffic, Kosovo closed two of the four border crossings with Serbia on the night of Friday to Saturday, a Kosovar minister announced on Saturday, September 7. The government first closed traffic at Brnjak, then at the largest crossing point at Merdare in northern Kosovo.
Justifying this decision, Kosovo’s Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla said: “Masked extremists inside Serbian territory (…) selectively and with fascist behavior arrest citizens who want to transit through Serbia”. “And all this in front of the Serbian authorities”he said on Facebook.
Several dozen Serbs had announced the blockade of three border crossings with Kosovo to prevent traffic. Finally, two border crossings were blocked, the demonstrators having argued that they were protesting against the closure of the parallel administration run by Serbia in the north of Kosovo, which is majority Serb. The blockade will last until the Kosovo police “withdraw from northern Kosovo and return usurped institutions to the Serbs”protesters said. They also demanded that the NATO-led peacekeeping force, KFOR, “take control of northern Kosovo”.
Residents urged to avoid border crossings
The blockade comes days after Kosovo authorities raided five municipal offices linked to the Belgrade government in ethnic Serb areas near the border. The operation is the latest in a series aimed at dismantling the parallel system of social services and political offices supported by the Serbian government inside Kosovo.
Kosovo’s foreign ministry has urged residents to avoid transiting through border crossings with Serbia due to the blockades. Meanwhile, Kosovo’s foreign minister, Donika Gërvalla-Schwarz, told reporters on Friday that threats to block border crossings were a “further evidence of Serbia’s provocative and destabilizing actions”.
Tensions between Kosovo and Serbia have persisted since the war between Serbian forces and Kosovars in the late 1990s. Kosovo declared independence in 2008, a move that Serbia refuses to recognize, encouraging Serbs to reject their loyalty to Pristina. New tensions between Serbia and Kosovo had been simmering for months following the introduction earlier this year of a rule making the euro the sole legal tender in Kosovo, effectively banning the use of the Serbian dinar. The move angered Belgrade, which continues to fund the health, education and social security systems of Kosovo’s ethnic Serb minority.