Life in Kosovo discusses about emergency situations
Tonight, Life in Kosovo will broadcast a debate on the emergency situations in our country.
Read more
Every Thursday starting from 20:30, Radio Television Kosovo, RTK, broadcasts the TV debate show "Life in Kosovo", a joint production of BIRN and RTK.
Read more
NATO, UN to Get Tough in Kosovo
19 November 2007 Local Serbs warn that possible moves by KFOR peacekeepers and UN
police to tighten security in northern Kosovo may lead to renewed
violence.
By Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade and Krenar Gashi in Pristina
NATO and the UN police in Kosovo are reportedly planning
to tighten their control over the predominantly-Serb north, if Kosovo
declares its independence after talks on its future end next month.
The
action would be aimed at preventing Serb-run areas from joining Serbia,
in case Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian-dominated parliament proclaims
independence, once the current phase of talks on the UN-administered
territory’s status are concluded on December 10, an international
diplomat told Balkan Insight on Monday.
The UN police and the
NATO-led KFOR peacekeepers “are planning to take over Serb-run Kosovo
police stations” in the ethnically-divided city of Mitrovica, the
neighbouring municipality of Zvecan and the towns of Zubin Potok and
Leposavic, the Belgrade-based diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
“KFOR
will also gradually seal the border between Kosovo’s north and Serbia.
After completing that action, KFOR will mount a series of raids aimed
at discovering weapons caches in Serb communities and at arresting
potential troublemakers,” the source said.
Mitrovica – known to Serbs as Kosovska Mitrovica - was the site of fierce ethnic clashes in early 2000 and 2004.
Referring
to the planned moves, the diplomat said that that “through this action,
KFOR will also send a message to Serbia’s leadership to stay out of
meddling in Kosovo’s affairs.”
The diplomat added that “the
Serbian military and police will get a clear message not even to think
about moving forces closer to the Kosovo border.”
Asked by
Balkan Insight if he could confirm the report, Alexander Ivanko,
spokesperson for the UN administration in Kosovo, UNMIK, said that his
organisation was “doing some planning for the repositioning of UNMIK in
the north”.
“However, we cannot talk about our plans”, Ivanko said.
Meanwhile,
an officer with KFOR confirmed to Balkan Insight that that peacekeepers
were planning to carry out raids to discover weapons held illegally by
members of the public, and that they will try to highlight those
considered “troublemakers” in the north.
However, he did not comment on the reported plans to take over Serb-run police stations or tighten border security.
Kosovo Serbs have reacted with concern to the security measures KFOR and the UN are reportedly planning.
"I
fear Serbs will feel cornered and will react with their hearts rather
than their minds, and that means violence," Oliver Ivanovic, a Serb
moderate politician from northern Mitrovica, said.
"I also fear
if KFOR and UNMIK attempt to do such a thing, we will witness violence
similar to that in 2000 and 2004," he told Balkan Insight.
"I see this as an attempt of UNMIK and KFOR to secure Kosovo's territory in its entirety."
Milan
Ivanovic, a Mitrovica-based Serbian official said that "such a move
would be a clear sign of violence against Serbs and will turn KFOR and
UNMIK into an occupation force."
According to Milan Ivanovic, the developments were not entirely new.
"We
have recently spotted the unusual deployment of an entire KFOR
detachment along the boundary" between Serbia and northern Kosovo,
Ivanovic said, and added that "Serbs will resist any such move with all
peaceful means."
"That would include civil disobedience,
protests, blockades of roads and KFOR and UNMIK who are in Kosovo to
prevent violence instead of provoking it."
Four months of
internationally-brokered talks over Kosovo’s long-term future between
Serbia and Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders, aimed at producing a
mutually-agreed settlement by December 10, appear to be deadlocked.
Kosovo
Albanians are demanding outright independence while Serbia is holding
on to an offer of autonomy for the territory which has been under UN
administration since the end of the 1998-99 war.
The United
States and most of its European allies are backing Kosovo's
internationally-supervised independence, a proposal put forward earlier
this year by the UN’s special envoy, Martti Ahtisaari.
However,
Ahtisaari’s blueprint was rejected by Serbia, and was subsequently
blocked in the UN Security Council by Russia, thereby leading to the
current phase of talks which opened in August.
Several Kosovo
Albanian leaders have said their homeland should unilaterally declare
independence after December 10 when a Troika of envoys from the US, the
EU and Russia are scheduled to present their report to UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
According to the diplomatic
source, UNMIK and KFOR believe that “the pacification of northern
Kosovo will also serve as a warning to Serbia not to try to flex its
muscles” in its southern, predominantly-ethnic Albanian municipalities
along the boundary with Macedonia and Kosovo.
The volatile
region comprising the municipalities of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja
is still recovering from a year-long ethnic-Albanian insurgency that
ended in 2001 with a NATO-brokered peace deal that secured the rebels’
disarmament and their integration into society.
The situation in Serbia’s south remains, at times, tense, marked by occasional flare-ups in violence.
Dragan
Sutanovac, Serbia’s Defence Minister, recently pledged swift action in
case of a spill-over of potential violence from Kosovo or from
Macedonia where police and armed ethnic Albanians clashed earlier this
month.
Aleksandar Vasovic is BIRN Serbia editor. Krenar Gashi is BIRN Kosovo editor. Balkan Insight is BIRN`s online publication.
THE PROCESS OF JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS AND REAPPOINTMENTS OF JUDGES AND PROSECUTORS
The report on the process of judicial appointments and reappointments analysis the flow of this process, specifically focusing on the bright and dark sides that have marred the process to its final stages.
COURT MONITORING ANNUAL REPORT APRIL 2010 - FEBRUARY 2011
Court monitoring report is published as a result of a continuous monitoring of all municipal and districts courts of Kosovo. The findings of this report are based on the monitoring of 2,147 court hearings, by BIRN monitors.
THE PROCESS OF JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS
This report presents the results of part of BIRN's court monitoring project, specifically on the process for the appointment and reappointment of judges and prosecutors.
Follow the Paper Trail
\"Follow the Paper Trail\", a guide to document-based journalism in Kosovo, explains relevant laws, access to public documents, how to publish safely, where to find databases on investigative journalism, and how to locate documents online through various search engines.
Courts Monitoring Report 2010
A detailed analytical report about the work and administration of the courts in Prishtina, Peja, Prizren, Gjilan, Mitrovica, Ferizaj, Gjakova, Decan, Vushtrri, Poduleva, Lipjan, Klina and Istog. The report contains important information, collected by the network of monitors, placed in the major municipalities of Kosovo and aims to identify the key problems and issues that the justice system in Kosovo is facing.
REPORT: Monitoring the Courts 2009
Monitoring the work and administration of courts in Prishtina, Peja, Mitrovica, Gjilan, Ferizaj, Vushtrri and Skenderaj.
DIRECTLY ELECTED MAYOR SYSTEM IN LOCAL GOVERNANCE
The report on Directly Elected mayor System in Local Governance aims to provide a critical overview of the rationale and feasibility of the implementation of a municipal governance system that places the mayor as the central executive figure, during the third year of its application. The efficiency of this system was assessed based on the following pillars: the relationship between local government bodies, accountability of the municipal executive, respect for the law, the link between the mayor and the citizens, provision of public services (water supply and waste management, capital investments (in school and road projects)), level of transparency, public consultation and citizen participation in decision-making.
BIRN Report on Monitoring the Education System
Report on monitoring the elementary and high schools in Prishtina: Mitrovica, Ferizaj, Peja and Gjilan
Analytical report of the situation and the problems in the University of Prishtina
Report on Kosovo`s Healthcare System
Monitoring report on all primary, secondary and tertiary (University Clinical Center of Kosovo, UCCK) healthcare institutions in Pristina, Prizren, Peja, Mitrovica, Gjilan, Ferizaj, Gjakova, Klina, Decan, Istog and Vushtrri.
Situation and the Problems at the University of Prishtina
Analytical report of research into the standards and problems at the University of Prishtina. Ten years since the end of the war in Kosovo, the University of Prishtina (UP) continues to suffer from a variety of problems, resulting in persistently low quality courses being offered. For this reason, BIRN conducted research into the problems faced by UP students. The data gathered suggests that, out of the many issues reported, the most significant are: the non-implementation of contemporary teaching and assessment methods, the lack of practical work for students, the lack of appropriate academic literature, arbitrary assessments by
professors and generally poor relationships between students and their professors.
Download Here
Buy DVD
Click here to buy a copy of 'Does Anyone Have a Plan?,' BIRN's feature-length documentary on Kosovo's final status.
"Life in Kosovo" debates also available on DVDs now!
Read more
Post Your Comments
Write your comment on BIRN debates and other activities.With the new web-site BIRN looks forward to receive direct opinions from our readers via comment section.
Read more
Balkan Investigative Reporting Network
The opinions expressed in Balkan Insight are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.
Comments:
No comments have been posted.