(13 Dec 2022)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rudare , Kosovo - 13 December 2022
1. Various of helicopter flying overhead, transporting load
2. Various people in street
3. Serbian flags on lamp posts
4. Wood burning
5. Various of women sitting by tents
6. Various of people in street
7. Various of trucks blocking road
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kosovska Mitrovica, Kosovo - 13 December 2022
8. Various of Kosovo police officer in street
9. Traffic in street, Kosovo and Albanian flags hung above
10. Various of Kosovo police
11. Police vehicles
12. KFOR (NATO-led international peacekeeping force) vehicles
13. People in street with Serbian flags hung above
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Milica Andric Rakic, project manager of “New Social Initiative" NGO:
"The security situation is quite unstable. We have....the trust here has been broken, I am afraid, beyond repair. And it goes both ways. Neither the Kosovo Serbs trust Kosovo institutions, nor do Kosovo institutions trust Kosovo Serbs who were integrated and left Kosovo institutions which is almost 3,000 people. The rest were people that worked for Serbian institutions. They, to begin with, were not considered okay by the Kosovo government. So this means that over two thirds of population here are not meeting the standards of the Kosovo government or what the Kosovo Serb should be.”
15. Street scene
16. SOUNDBITE (English) Milica Andric Rakic, project manager of “New Social Initiative" NGO:
“It is not looking like this is going to change soon because there are no signs of any confidence-building measures taken between the institutions and the community, and I do not see that this is a situation from which we can exit easily and without major escalations.”
17. Street scene
18. SOUNDBITE (English) Milica Andric Rakic, project manager of “New Social Initiative" NGO:
“I think that the first step is on the Kosovo government to show the community that they see more than just criminals, and that their grievances are real and not instrumentalized. Because, at this point, whatever comes out of the Kosovo official statements is that any request of the Kosovo Serb community is just a request of Belgrade and they are in this way diminishing or illegitimizing, as well, the genuine requests of the community.”
19. Street scene with Serbian flags hung above
STORYLINE:
Tension remained high on Tuesday in northern Kosovo, home to a sizable ethnic Serb minority, with Serbs blocking roads and Belgrade saying it would ask NATO-led peacekeepers to let them send troops to defend their brethren.
Belgrade claims a U.N. resolution that formally ended the country’s bloody crackdown against majority Kosovo Albanian separatists in 1999 allows that.
Serbs have blocked roads with heavy trucks and barricades have been erected to protest the recent arrest of a former Kosovo Serb police officer.
Last weekend Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said he would ask the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo to permit the deployment of 1,000 Serb troops in the Serb-populated north of Kosovo, saying they are being harassed there.
Some 4,000 NATO-led peacekeepers, who have been deployed in Kosovo since the 1999 war, would have to give a green light for Serb troops to go there.
That’s highly unlikely because it would de-facto mean handing over security of Kosovo’s Serb-populated northern regions to Serbian forces — a move that could dramatically increase tensions in the Balkans.
Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti accused Belgrade of trying to destabilize Kosovo.
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