Tensions are growing stronger as the weeks go by. Hundreds of Kosovo Serbs erected barricades on a highway in the north of the country on Saturday, blocking traffic at two major border crossings with Serbia, police said.
Trucks, ambulances and agricultural machinery have been installed to block traffic, amid tensions marked in recent days by explosions, shootings and an attack on a police patrol. A Kosovar Albanian policeman was injured in this attack.
controversial arrest
According to local media, minority Kosovo Serb protesters are outraged by the arrest of a former ethnic Serb policeman suspected of involvement in attacks on Kosovo police.
Emergency sirens sounded in several Serb-majority towns in northern Kosovo to kick off the organized movement on Saturday, according to an AFP journalist.
The protesters told AFP that they wanted to prevent “the transfer to Pristina” of the arrested ex-policeman.
Kosovo’s Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla said the arrested ex-policeman was one of two suspects detained after attacks on police patrols in the past two days.
The latest tensions erupted after the decision of the Kosovar authorities to organize local elections next December 18 in municipalities with a Serb majority that the main Serbian political parties have announced that they want to boycott.
Explosions and gunfire were heard on Thursday as election officials visited two townships in northern Kosovo to prepare for elections, but no injuries were reported.
Shortly after the barricades were erected, Kosovo’s President Vjosa Osmani announced that she had decided to postpone local elections until April 23.
high voltages
The attack in which the policeman was wounded on Thursday followed the deployment in northern Kosovo of Kosovo Albanian policemen. According to the government, this deployment was decided after the collective resignation of Serbs working in public institutions, including the police. Members of the Serb security forces and civil servants had resigned in protest of the Kosovo authorities’ decision to replace Belgrade-issued registration plates with those issued by Pristina.
Serb protesters had blocked traffic at the two main border crossings between Kosovo and Serbia in September, to express their anger over the license plates.
The Serb minority in Kosovo, which has a total of around 120,000 members, denies its allegiance to Pristina with the encouragement of Belgrade, which does not recognize Kosovo’s independence proclaimed in 2008.
Source: BFM TV
