Murati: We sent all the decisions by mail; Vlajic: When the law is not respected, cruelty occurs

At the public debate on expropriation held in the municipality of Zubin Potok, the Government of Kosovo is represented by the same delegation that was in the municipality of Leposavic. Driton Murati, in front of the expropriation office, greeted everyone who came to the public hearing and conveyed to the present citizens some of the most important legal provisions as well as examples from his past practice during expropriations that had taken place in Kosovo.

"We are here to present expropriation procedures, as well as expropriation fees," he explained in the opening part of his address to the locals.

Murati explained that on February 2, 2023, the Government of Kosovo had made a decision for further consideration of the request for expropriation.

"After the government's decision was made, we shared that decision with the owners, and in parallel with that, we forwarded the request to the Ministry of Finance, which makes the compensation. The goal of holding public hearings is to get all the proposals, comments, and opinions of the owners up close because my office in Pristina received official comments from the property owners, I received about 50 complaints. In Leposavic, I mentioned the complaint submitted by lawyer Vlajic on behalf of the parties. We mailed all their decisions, which were sent in the Serbian language, and inside that envelope was the expropriation law, and some of those envelopes were returned to us because the owner was not at the address in question," Murati says.

Lawyer Nebojsa Vlajic interrupted Murati in his presentation and noted that the inhabitants of Zubin Potok had not come to listen to the provisions of the law and how the calculation of compensation was going, but to get answers from them.

In response to the residents' objection that they did not need an interpretation of the law, but answers, Murati said that he had visited some parts of Leposavic and that he had been convinced that there was a lack of energy development there. To which the citizens asked aloud "do we need bunkers".

"At the beginning, I must say that it is unfortunate that those who have to enforce the law, namely the police, the prosecutor's office, and the court, are the first to break the law and give the citizens a clear message that this is a territory where there is no law. Thank you for your concern for our economic development, if you had good intentions, you would have come to the municipality of Zubin Potok first to present your plans to us and to come to an agreement in cooperation with us, but you never came," Srdjan Vulovic, former mayor of the municipality of Zubin Potok said.

Vulovic exhaustively listed the dates when municipal officials tried to prevent the contractors from taking illegal action.

"Citizens came to me on the first of July with a report that someone had usurped their land, on the same day a municipal employee went to the field with them and noted that some machines were performing work at the repeater on Brankovo Brdo in Gornji Jaseneovik. Neither the citizens nor the municipal employee was allowed access; members of the ROSU police with rifles did not allow them to approach the works. After that, we officially informed the contractor to stop further works, to come to the municipality of Zubin Potok, and to discuss what is being done. No one ever came," Vulovic said.

"The decision of the government was made much later and it is clear to everyone that you have broken all the laws and everything you said a little while ago is not true, you should have come before all this so that we could talk, and you have created a base, you are harassing people, and your goal is to expel us, which unfortunately you will not succeed because we will stay here," Vulovic said.

Lawyer Nebojsa Vlajic said that when the law was not respected, cruelty occurred.

"If 20 of us play football and respect the rules, then we are playing football, and when ten people take guns and beat ten others, then it is not football. I thought, Mr. Murati, that you learned something after our discussion in Leposavic, but you learned nothing, you are again telling us stories and quoting the law. The law is valid in Switzerland; it is not like that here. You are not even answering the question. What do you want to build? You know it, but you have an order from the government not to tell us and we all know what you are going to build, you already did it, you just won't say it publicly. You took the land and built a base, it used to be called a barracks. You built a barracks and now you organized a public hearing. Did you tell the government that it was breaking the law - you didn't. What is the purpose of this hearing - to justify what you did and to fake the law," Vlajic said.