Vujinovic: March in Pristina pressure on Hague court, Kurti’s absence noteworthy

Security studies researcher Nikola Vujinovic assessed that yesterday’s “March for Freedom” in Pristina amounted to pressure on the Specialist Chambers, which are due to deliver their judgment against the former KLA leaders in four days.

In a statement to Kosovo Online, he singled out two main messages conveyed at yesterday’s gathering.

“The first message was one of support for the suspects—or rather, the defendants—and that everything they did, they did for the Albanian community, for the people of Kosovo, for the freedom of so-called Kosovo, and that whatever the decision may be, it will not diminish the standing they enjoy in society. The second message, which I find somewhat more ominous, is that the Court should think carefully about the decision it makes. Mr Hamza was particularly explicit when he said that they must be careful about what they decide because it will have consequences, whether positive or negative,” Vujinovic said.

He added that the defendants enjoyed significant support from the broader Albanian community.

“Tens of thousands of people from Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia and the diaspora came to support the gathering. I was surprised that the rally remained peaceful. I expected what was attempted in Gracanica, and prevented in North Mitrovica, to take place on a much broader scale—that there would be attempts across Kosovo to provoke the Serbian community. Clearly, someone issued explicit instructions on how people were to behave, and we can see that the Kosovo Police are capable of enforcing the law properly when they want to. Their decision to stop the convoy heading toward North Mitrovica came as a major surprise to me. But that only means that responsibility lies where we can already see it lies—with the international community,” Vujinovic said.

He noted that it was interesting that Albin Kurti had not appeared at the march and that his MPs had said they did not know why he had not attended the event.

“I think this is something we should bear in mind when interpreting the judgment—namely, how it will affect internal stability, because Self-Determination is viewed as being responsible for these people being brought before the Court and will be blamed regardless of the outcome. If there is an acquittal, they will try to claim some credit for it, but I think they will face a much greater problem if the judgment is one of conviction,” Vujinovic said.

He believes that yesterday’s gathering constituted pressure on the Court, which is due to deliver its judgment against the former KLA leaders on September 16.

“It is definitely pressure. Mr Gucati, who heads the KLA veterans, said as much when these gatherings were announced. They are operating under the umbrella of a non-governmental organization that organized the event so that responsibility cannot be attributed to political structures and, consequently, so that they can avoid accountability if anyone interprets it as pressure on the Court. Their aim is for it to appear that citizens gathered spontaneously. But it is pressure on the Court. The fact that Mr Kurti was not there and that the Self-Determination Movement, as an organizational infrastructure, evidently did not support the gathering—because it would have been much larger had it done so—suggests to me that the rally failed to achieve what its organizers wanted in terms of demonstrating unity within the Albanian community,” Vujinovic said.