Hikers from Nis, participants in the Albanian Golgotha remembrance march, banned from entering Kosovo

Seven hikers—men and women—from the association “Stazama slavnih predaka” (“Along the Paths of Glorious Ancestors”), who set off yesterday, 10 January, from the Patriarchate of Pec to Durrës on a 200-kilometer march marking the 110th anniversary of the retreat of the Serbian Army across Albania, crossed from Kosovo into Montenegro, but were told that they are banned from entering Kosovo for the next year, Niske vesti reports.

Milan Lapcevic, one of the hikers, said that Kosovo police intercepted and checked them several times on the route from Gracanica to the border with Montenegro, and that at the Kula crossing toward Rozaje they were detained for two hours and informed that they would be barred from entering Kosovo for the next year.

Lapcevic said that the first day of the march was “a true replica of those harsh days 110 years ago, because cold rain poured throughout the night and morning, then turned into heavy, wet snow and a full-blown blizzard.”

“Snow is falling nonstop; on Cakor there is more than 70 centimeters of it, but when the goals are lofty and the will is steely, obstacles are merely passing stumbles. We move on,” Lapcevic emphasized.

The seven hikers from Nis set out on the march, as they said, to remind the Serbian public of the sacrifice their ancestors made during the retreat across Albania, as well as the fact that more than 240,000 people perished in that retreat.

Their destination is Shkodër, where they will visit the Serbian cemetery and pay tribute to the fallen. On 15 January they will then travel to Corfu to attend a commemorative ceremony marking the 110th anniversary of the landing of the Serbian Army.

On 16 January they will go to the island of Vido to lay wreaths and flowers at the “Blue Tomb.”

The association “Stazama slavnih predaka” organized a similar march ten years ago, on the occasion of the centenary of the Serbian Army’s retreat across Albania.