Rapajic: It is no coincidence that the decision on residence permits in Kosovo will start being implemented now

Aleksandar Rapajic, program director of the NGO Center for Advocacy of Democratic Culture from North Mitrovica, says that the obligation for citizens without Kosovo documents to register with the police upon entering Kosovo, as well as to obtain residence permits, will affect many people. He believes that the decision made by the Kosovo authorities at this particular moment was intended to create as many problems as possible.

Although the law requiring residence permits in Kosovo has been in force for many years, police are only now announcing controls and warning citizens about the rules for entering and staying in Kosovo.

Rapajic points out that there are many people living in Kosovo with Serbian documents who, for various administrative reasons, are unable to obtain Kosovo ones.

“Kosovo institutions will not accept their documents issued with addresses on the territory of Kosovo, and on the other hand, they do not have other documents with which they could register. That is one problem. Another problem concerns the large number of people who come here to work. The university is especially affected because many professors, assistants, and even many students come from central Serbia. If students list their residence as a dormitory, those certificates will not be valid, because we know that Kosovo institutions do not accept documents issued by the Republic of Serbia,” Rapajic told Kosovo Online, pointing out possible problems.

He also believes it is no coincidence that the decision will begin to be implemented now, after the summer.

“Imagine if all those Albanians who came from abroad during the summer had been required to register with the police and sort out their documents after three days. The institutions waited for that wave of Albanian diaspora arrivals to pass, and now, when Serbian students and people from Serbia are supposed to come, they are enforcing this measure. I think it is deliberately aimed at the students and the university, to reduce the number of people coming,” our interlocutor said.

According to him, many people have been trying for years to resolve their document problems.

“It’s not that they don’t want to take Kosovo documents. Because of certain administrative hurdles and obstacles created by the institutions, they simply cannot obtain them. So now they have no other choice but to keep trying as they already have. And when it comes to people coming from outside, we first have to see what the procedure will look like, because right now all we know is that they need to report to the police station and will then be referred to a further procedure, but we still don’t know what that further procedure is,” Rapajic says.