Petkovic wrote to the International Community over the University: Pristina wants to finish what it started in 1999 and 2004—take urgent measures

The Director of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija, Petar Petkovic, sent a letter to representatives of the international community warning of Pristina’s attempt to prevent the University of Pristina, temporarily seated in Kosovska Mitrovica and operating within the Serbian system, from functioning. He pointed out that this sends a message to Serbs and other non-Albanians—as well as to the international community—that they are ready to complete what they began in March 1999 and 2004. For that reason, he called on international representatives to urgently and unconditionally take all necessary steps to halt the continued persecution of Serbs.

Petkovic addressed the letter to the Dialogue Facilitator Peter Sørensen, the ambassadors of the Quint countries, the Head of the EU Delegation in Belgrade, the ambassadors of all EU Member States, the Head of the UN Office in Belgrade, as well as other relevant international representatives.

In the letter, which Kosovo Online has seen, Petkovic stated that a group of Albanians—who, he says, were clearly acting on the orders of the “regime Self-Determination (Vetëvendosje)”—entered the building of the Faculty of Technical Sciences of the University of Pristina, temporarily seated in Kosovska Mitrovica, without a warrant, authorization, or any other legal basis; that they searched the premises; and that they delivered to employees, in an insolent and arrogant manner, an ultimatum to vacate the building within 30 days or sign a “lease agreement” with an Albanian university which, already after 1999, usurped the premises of the University of Pristina located in Pristina.

The Director of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija stated that break-ins into institutions and their violent, unlawful takeover, along with intimidation of employees and citizens who happen to be there, has already become the “modus operandi of Albanian extremists who control the levers of power of the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government in Pristina.”

He recalled that facilities of Serbian institutions have so far been forcibly shut down, and that more than 20 percent of the Serbian population in Kosovo has been forced to relocate and seek refuge in areas in central Serbia. He said these are clear indicators that all activities by Pristina are part of a well-organized and widespread campaign of persecution aimed at completing the ethnic cleansing that began back in 1999, and also a testimony to the futility of all public condemnations and statements by the international community.

“Once again, we warn that the already established unbearable living conditions for Serbs and other non-Albanians are ‘only’ an overture to a new wave of persecution which Albanian extremists and usurpers of the levers of power are announcing for 15 March this year—that they will declare Serbs and other non-Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija foreigners in their own homes,” Petkovic wrote.

In this way, he warned, the regime in Pristina wants to send a strong message to Serbs and other non-Albanians—as well as to the entire international community—that they are ready to complete what they began in March 1999 and 2004.

He noted that the targets of these attacks, according to rough estimates, will include more than 10,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians who are permanently resident in Kosovo and who do not have documents issued by Pristina.

“Thus, more than 10,000 people are at risk—contrary to agreements reached in the dialogue, but also contrary to all international standards—of being declared foreigners in their own country and becoming a direct target of a policy of persecution which Pristina is continuously and openly implementing,” Petkovic warned.

He also stated that the most vulnerable group among them certainly includes families in which one or even both parents, as well as their children, do not possess (and often cannot possess) documents issued by Pristina, and who will be “easy targets” for what Pristina calls the enforcement of the “rule of law”—a euphemism, he said, for expulsion from one’s family home into exile.

Petkovic further indicated that Pristina has also thereby targeted the paralysis of the work of healthcare, educational, and religious institutions, in order to cut off any possibility of sustainable survival for Serbs in Kosovo.

“For a clearer overview of the scale of the problem, we point out the fact that out of 1,180 teaching staff and associates at the University of Pristina, temporarily seated in Kosovska Mitrovica, as many as 550 do not have the required documents. This also applies to more than 50 percent of students and pupils, and to a significant number of medical and education workers, as well as to monastics and clergy,” Petkovic stated.

He emphasized that each of Pristina’s unilateral escalatory steps—about which he has regularly informed the international community in recent years—constitutes in itself a blatant violation of the normalization process between Belgrade and Pristina, and of the EU’s demands for urgent de-escalation of 3 June 2023.

“But the steps Pristina is now openly announcing will strike at the very foundations of the Community of Serb-Majority Municipalities, agreed almost 13 years ago as a mechanism for the protection of individual and collective rights, as well as of the hard-earned peace in the Balkans. We emphasize this in particular because we will consider that, alongside Pristina, others who have, through action, inaction, or omission, contributed to this will bear part of the responsibility for all possible consequences,” Petkovic wrote.

In that sense, he appealed to representatives of the international community to urgently and unconditionally take all necessary steps to stop the continued persecution of Serbs and other non-Albanians in Kosovo, and to preserve peace and stability in the region.