Kosovo Police have launched an investigation after the town of Zubin Potok, in Serb-run northern Kosovo, was plastered with pamphlets saying members of the local Serbian community members who worked for the Kosovo Security Forces, KSF, would be dealt with.
The pamphlet was signed by an unknown group called Severna Armija [Northern Army].
“The police are working on it. We have informed the prosecution. The pamphlets have been found hanging in some places in Zubin Potok,” Besim Hoti, regional deputy director of police, told BIRN.
The pamphlets call on people not to allow local Serbs who joined KSF to “live, work or be” in Zubin potok, and to “break their bones”, if they do so.
“Apart from them … the target of our attacks will be also Zubin Potok municipality and all owners of the shops who provide services to these traitors to their nation,” the letter says citing the names of several Serbs.
“Neither the municipality nor the police will protect you,” the pamphlet reads.
Kosovo Security Forces, Kosovo’s first quasi-military body, was launched at the beginning of 2009, while it became fully operational in 2013.
Its mission is to conduct crisis response and civil protection operations and assist the civil authorities in responding to natural disasters and other emergencies.
It is currently comprised of 2,500 active and 300 reserve members who are lightly armed.
Ibrahim Shala, from the Kosovo Security Force Ministry, said around 6 per cent of the members of the KSF come from the Serbian community and are well integrated into the institution.
“They are all treated very well within KSF. They perform their duties according to standards and do not have any problem at all,” he told BIRN.
Over the last year, Kosovo institutions tried in vain to change the KSF’s mandate, to make it more of a regular army.
President Hashim Thaçi was forced to abandon an initiative to transform the KSF into an army, the Kosovo’s Armed Force, FAK.
He had hoped to avoid the constitutional obligation requiring a “double majority” in parliament, meaning the support of two-thirds of all MPs and two-thirds of the 20 ethnic non-Albanian MPs.
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