Prishtina, 27 October 2022
Today and tomorrow I was supposed to be part of two important events in Belgrade. Initially, today at the Forum for Ethnic Relations roundtable, in a discussion with the diplomatic corps in Serbia and civil society organizations, where discussions on Kosovo and the region’s journey towards Europe were due to take place. Tomorrow, at the Belgrade Security Forum, I was supposed to be part of a debate where the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue was to be discussed. Thus, four important concepts: inter-ethnic relations, the journey towards Europe, security and dialogue. We have planned several other meetings and interviews for the Belgrade media and the Kosovo media there. We therefore submitted a request to the authorities last week and it was approved. Today, everything has been regular, until at a certain moment we were told that Serbia cannot provide security or that there has been a breach of security, which for us is a signal that Serbia is still not ready to work towards normalization. It is a bit absurd that in a security conference, Serbia acknowledges that: 1) there are criminal elements who want to undermine security; 2) admits that it is weak to provide security for the participants.
The reason behind sending us back stands somewhere else, because we aimed to provide Belgrade, the diplomatic corps and the citizens there with Kosovo’s version of the developments in Kosovo and towards the normalization of the situation. You know that citizens in Serbia are exposed to quite terrible propaganda from the Serbian Government and are served a fabricated truth about the developments in Kosovo and the dialogue with Serbia. It seems that there was great resistance to preventing and making possible the presentation and version of the other side.
As far as I know, we were stopped somewhere around 85 km before arriving in Belgrade. It means it is illogical for the security breach to be detected immediately. This could have happened here (at the border), so that we would not need to make all this way, but this was also proof of how Serbia sees the desire or readiness for normalization of relations with Kosovo.
A police car joined the convoy and then asked to pull aside at a roadside area and then communicated to our liaison office that we had to turn back due to the security breach.
Here (in Merdare) there have been delays and there have been statements that a part of the visit will not be allowed, since the organizers failed to announce it on time, but we did not take this as a provocation, rather it was a provocation towards the organizers, yet they took care to get rid with this immediately.
We will try to join the security forum (roundtable) via Zoom or Skype tomorrow. At the same time, I apologize to the entire diplomatic corps, civil society organizations and organizers, for not being able to be there and show our viewpoints on the processes we are going through.
We did not have any information regarding security threats. I think it was completely fabricated. The goal was to prevent the participation of the Kosovo Deputy Prime Minister in such a forum in Belgrade, since it is the major forum held this year there, and I think there has been great resistance to presenting the Kosovo truth in such a forum.
The same police escorting us close to Belgrade had no information about a security breach, but then another car asking us to return had additional information.
The international factor is informed of this, so everyone knows, and we will see how we are going to move further.
There was a request, actually a decision to return. If it was a recommendation, namely if the decision was on our side, we would have continued on our way. We have not felt threatened, I think this was completely artificial, but when the authorities decide, it is a problem for us to say that we want to continue the journey without the authorities’ permission.
Last modified: October 28, 2022