Tomic: Kosovo does not want incidents to be portrayed as interethnic, but rather wants everything to be presented as ideal

Political scientist from Gracanica Ivan Tomic said that, when it comes to ethnically motivated incidents, the most important issue is how the investigation is conducted, specifically how the motive behind the attacks is established, since the Kosovo Police does not want problems, crimes or clashes to be portrayed as interethnic, but rather as ordinary criminal offenses, so that it can present to the international community that everything on the ground is ideal.

Tomic explained that the international frameworks are quite clear when it comes to ethnically motivated attacks.

„As far as the OSCE is concerned, for any attack to be characterized as ethnically motivated or as a hate crime, it needs to meet two criteria. The first criterion is that a criminal offense has been committed, and the second is that the motive for that offense was bias or affiliation with a particular group. Such affiliation can be defined on the basis of linguistic, ethnic or national identity. Therefore, we cannot say that it is enough for an incident to occur between a Serb and an Albanian for it to be characterized as ethnically motivated“, Tomic told Kosovo Online.

He added that the problem arises when a particular criminal offense occurs and the police then take over the case, noting that the key issue is how and in what manner the investigation is conducted and how the motive for the crime is established.

„Practice shows that the Kosovo Police is not sufficiently committed to characterizing crimes that occur between Albanians and Serbs in this way. This is probably also politically motivated, because it does not suit Kosovo for incidents to be portrayed as interethnic. Instead, they want to present to the international community that everything on the ground here is ideal, that there are no such crimes, so that Albanians can fulfill everything they dream of and everything they want to implement at some point“, Tomic pointed out.

He notes that, on the other hand, there is also a problem when a crime is reported, specifically when a person is questioned in connection with it.

„That person will certainly not admit on their own that an ethnic motive was the actual motive for the attack. Instead, if a robbery or any other attack occurs, they will try to characterize it simply as an ordinary criminal offense, rather than as something that may have an ethnic motive“, Tomic explained.

He pointed out that it is also important to pay attention to the problem of intervention by the international community, since it generally acts on the basis of official data and what can be seen on paper, while remaining „deaf and blind“ to what is happening on the ground.

„This is something that needs to change – the international community must stop looking only at the numbers and instead genuinely investigate what is happening on the ground, whether there are patterns of conduct by both the Kosovo Police and Albanians, whether crimes committed against Serbs are being properly prosecuted and whether those who committed these crimes are being punished. In this context, the international community needs to pay much more attention and respond accordingly in the future“, Tomic concluded.