Representatives of the Serb List held an extraordinary press conference on September 5, regarding the invitation they received from the Kosovo authorities for an interview. From this party, they said that they will respond positively to this invitation.
Kosovo authorities have confirmed that they will interview five people from the five Serbian parallel institutions, which were closed at the end of August. The persons to whom these calls for interviews were sent are officials of the Serbian List, the largest party of Serbs in Kosovo, which enjoys the support of Belgrade.
At the press conference, Igor Simič, speaking on behalf of the people who received these invitations for interviews, said that they see them as “political persecution” not only of the individuals who led the parallel institutions, who were invited for interviews.
He said that this decision is “persecution of the Serbian people”, since according to him, the closed institutions provided services to the citizens.
“It’s not a question of how Igor Simiçi, Ivan Zaporozhiani will act tomorrow, but how the people they served while we were in charge [of parallel institutions] will do. As for these institutions, the Kosovo authorities have always known of their existence. It is nothing new that these institutions existed in this city and they were discussed at the international level, and it was negotiated in Brussels on how these institutions will function in the future”, said Simic.
On August 30, Kosovo authorities closed five parallel Serbian institutions in northern Kosovo that had been operating under the Serbian system.
According to state officials in Kosovo, those institutions have violated the constitutionality and laws of the Republic of Kosovo”.
The institutions closed on August 30 were: the District of Mitrovica of Kosovo, the parallel Municipality of Mitrovica, the parallel Municipality of Zveçan, the parallel Municipality of Zubin Potok and the parallel Municipality of Leposaviç.
Simic said that these institutions have provided legal services to all citizens, and “have not violated any law”.
During the conference, Simic, who was previously a member of the Serb List in the Assembly of Kosovo, also spoke about the issue of opening the main bridge over the Ibri River for vehicle traffic.
The government of Kosovo has expressed the intention that this bridge should be opened, but it has encountered the opposition of internationals who have argued that for security reasons, the bridge should not be opened now.
Simic said this is the moment for “the international community to show its face”.
“We’ll see if they do anything,” he added.
The United States, the European Union, France, the United Kingdom and Germany have criticized the action of the Kosovo Police for closing Serbian institutions. The West has described this as a unilateral action by Kosovo’s institutions, writes Radio Free Europe.
In Kosovo, there are municipalities, public companies and enterprises, kindergartens, primary and secondary schools and public universities that are directly financed by the Government of Serbia, and which are located in the cities and towns where the Serbian community lives.
According to the laws in Kosovo, these institutions are illegal.
In 2013, Kosovo and Serbia, in the dialogue for the normalization of relations in Brussels, reached an agreement on the extinction of parallel institutions, but this agreement has not yet been fully implemented.
