Simic: The unity we have with our people will be stronger than any unlawful intention of Pristina

Member of the Presidency of the Serb List, Slavko Simic, has warned that "with the new law, Albin Kurti wants to legalize his so-called military bases and police facilities and declare them a public interest, with the plan of taking over and therefore legalizing a larger area of land leading to such facilities," Politika reports.

"The unity we have with our people in our intention to preserve what is ours will be stronger than any unlawful decision of Pristina, and a united and peaceful resistance will be the response to every unlawful and violent attempt of Pristina to seize other people's land," says Simic, concluding that "Pristina has usurped Serbian land, but it will never take it away and appropriate it."

Simic's comment is related to the fact that the authorities in Pristina have initiated a procedure to adopt a law on the expropriation of Serbian land in northern Kosovo, completely ignoring the lawsuits that the legal team on behalf of injured Serbs addressed to the Kosovo judiciary. 

This measure could cause new tensions and conflict in that part of Kosovo. Namely, since mid-last year, Pristina, led by Prime Minister Albin Kurti, has illegally seized over ten hectares of land in Zubin Potok, in an area called Brankovo Brdo, and illegally expanded police bases in Brnjak for the needs of the special unit of the Kosovo police, ROSU. In the municipality of Zvecan, in December, it illegally set up a ROSU checkpoint, where they inspect vehicles around the clock with long guns. Moreover, in early February this year, Pristina began and then interrupted work on expropriated land in the municipality of Leposavic, in the villages of Zaselje and Dren, planning to build a police base and, according to many interpretations, a military base on 83 hectares.

Also, near the Jarinje administrative crossing, in the area where the old checkpoint was located ten years ago, the Pristina administration illegally set up a base for the Kosovo police special unit on Serbian land, with a concrete block fortification, and seized the hill above the police base where the French KFOR "mini-base" used to be, with spotlights and surveillance cameras installed. Kurti's plan, which he calls the seizure "for the needs of public importance," is to build a base in the purely Albanian village of Kosutovo, in the municipality of Leposavic.

Regarding the law that is in the procedure, the director of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija, Petar Petkovic, highlighted in a statement sent to Politika newspaper that Pristina "literally wants to legalize the land grab in northern Kosovo and build military and police bases on it." He stated that "literally any Serbian facility or land that Kurti points his finger at, the authorities in Pristina can declare as 'public interest' and build illegal police and military bases there."

The latest decision by Kurti was sharply criticized by Slavko Simic, who told Politika that he is "secretly preparing a new anti-Serbian law on expropriation of land and that it is a law that paves the way for the legalization of the land grab of Serbian hosts in northern Kosovo."

"Pristina is undoubtedly preparing new legal violence on the ground that is directly aimed at the survival of the Serbian people. It plans to seize land from Serbian hosts where it would build military and police bases, and all of that would be covered by some law. Together with our country Serbia, the legal team of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija, the non-governmental sector, and our people, representatives of the Serbs from Kosovo will address this problem to all relevant international addresses. It is very important that, first and foremost, the international community reacts and prevents such an unlawful act from entering parliamentary procedure. Therefore, the reaction of the international factor is necessary in order to thwart the perfidious intention of the government of Albin Kurti," Simic says.

When asked how Serbs will react if Pristina starts work again in the part of the hill that partially relies on the Serbian villages of Dren and Zaselje, which they stopped after the round-the-clock vigil of Serbs from the beginning of February this year, Simic says:

"The intention of Pristina is obvious - to provoke conflicts with brutal legal violence and to try to deal with Serbian entrepreneurs, farmers, doctors, teachers, professors, and all those who oppose the seizure of Serbian land in Leposavic and Zubin Potok. The Serbs in Dren will decisively, unitedly, wisely, and peacefully defend their ancestral land, as they have been doing until now. Their voice has been heard by the entire international community, which is why Kurti had to stop his dangerous plans. Now we see that he wants to bring a new law to legalize that land grab," Simic stated.