Surlic: It seems the police in northern Kosovo are a tool for discriminating against the Serbian community

Stefan Surlic, an assistant professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade, believes that security is the key issue in northern Kosovo and that the actions of the Kosovo Police seem to act as a tool for discriminating against the Serbian community.

"It seems that the police in northern Kosovo today are an instrument for discriminating against the Serbian community, and something must urgently be changed in this regard. We cannot speak about any kind of integration or survival of Serbs if their safety and security in everyday life are not first guaranteed," Surlic stated to Kosovo Online.

He emphasized that security is a crucial issue for northern Kosovo, which is why the topic of Serbs returning to the Kosovo Police must be part of the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina and should begin immediately after the February elections.

"Security is the key issue in northern Kosovo and must be addressed at the start of the year. Both parliamentary and local elections provide an opportunity to initiate this process, particularly the return of Serbs to the police. This must be one of the top priorities in the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina. It is evident that the police force is completely ethnicized, Albanian. Citizens in northern Kosovo do not feel safe, and they report various types of harassment, complaints about treatment, cases of police beatings, unjustified arrests, and other issues," Surlic explained.

He further noted that the Kosovo Government had previously presented to the public that the Serbian community in northern Kosovo was intimidated by Belgrade and certain Serbian groups, and that the arrival of the Kosovo Police would instill trust.

"What happened to the Kosovo Government’s narrative compared to what we now see on the ground? There is a significant gap between what Pristina portrays as the role of the police in the north and what citizens experience on the ground. They do not see the police as a friendly institution but as a repressive apparatus building special bases and appearing only in specialized units armed with heavy weaponry. This is not an environment where trust can be built or where voluntary integration of the Serbian community into Kosovo society can be discussed," Surlic concluded.