Kosovo reopened on Saturday evening, September 7, the two border crossings with Serbia that had been closed during the night from Friday to Saturday following demonstrations by the Serbian population that blocked traffic. The Kosovar government had first closed traffic at Brnjak, then at the largest crossing point at Merdare in the north of the country.
Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla explained on Facebook that the decision to reopen them was taken after news broke that the blockades by “Masked extremists on the territory of Serbia had been raised” and therefore there was not “no obstacles to movement to and from the border crossings of the Republic of Kosovo”.
The two crossings were closed after dozens of protesters in Serbia blocked their access from Serbia on Friday to prevent traffic into Kosovo. The Kosovo minister accused protesters of stopping “selectively and with fascist behavior citizens who want to transit through Serbia”.
Several dozen Serbs had announced the blockade of three border crossings with Kosovo to prevent traffic. Eventually, two border crossings were blocked, with protesters claiming they were protesting the closure of the Serbian-run parallel administration in the Serb-majority north of Kosovo. The blockade was to last until Kosovo police “withdraw from northern Kosovo and return usurped institutions to the Serbs”protesters said. They also demanded that the NATO-led peacekeeping force, KFOR, “take control of northern Kosovo”.
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Residents urged to avoid border crossings
The blockade came days after Kosovo authorities raided five municipal offices linked to the Belgrade government in ethnic Serb areas near the border. The operation is the latest in a series aimed at dismantling the parallel system of social services and political offices supported by the Serbian government inside Kosovo.
Kosovo’s foreign ministry had urged residents to avoid transiting through border crossings with Serbia due to the blockades. Meanwhile, Kosovo’s foreign minister, Donika Gërvalla-Schwarz, told reporters on Friday that threats to block border crossings were a “further evidence of Serbia’s provocative and destabilizing actions”.
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Tensions between Kosovo and Serbia have persisted since the war between Serbian forces and Kosovars in the late 1990s. Kosovo declared independence in 2008, a move that Serbia refuses to recognize, encouraging Serbs to reject their loyalty to Pristina. New tensions between Serbia and Kosovo have been simmering for months following the introduction earlier this year of a rule making the euro the sole legal tender in Kosovo, effectively banning the use of the Serbian dinar. The move angered Belgrade, which continues to fund the health, education and social security systems of Kosovo’s ethnic Serb minority.
