The license plate crisis, which began in July, is degenerating. Serbian President Vucic warns: “We will protect our people”
Tre black sedans, Serbian license plate. The Kosovan border guards who make them pull over. And they ask for documents. And they peek through the tinted windows. AND they recognize it: where does Patriarch Porfirije, the metropolitan of the Serbian Orthodox Church, want to go? “Christmas is coming – His Holiness replies – and as patriarch, as a priest, as a citizen I go to my home: the ancient church of the Serbs of Pec”. Brief consultation. A couple of phone calls. The answer is quick: nothing to do, His Holiness can even go back to Belgrade… Because it’s not really air. And on the eighteenth day of protests, all we need is the rock patriarch, this guitar- and marijuana-loving Porfirije, drugging the Kosovo Serbs with his nationalistic solos.
Tension never seen. Neither since the 1999 war nor since independence in 2008. In Mitrovica, the divided Belfast, the barricades to block the streets of the city for the first time and no longer just those towards the border. Trucks loaded with stones and placed sideways, the Serbs picketing. At Christmas, someone fired on a patrol of the 3,700 NATO soldiers, the Italian-led peacekeeping force. The Serbian government has tripled the soldiers on the border, proclaiming a state of maximum alert: “We will protect our people and preserve Serbia,” warns ultranationalist president Aleksandar Vucic. And Prime Minister Ana Brnabic, for whom “we are on the brink of war”, replies annoyed to journalists who ask her if “the patriots on the barricades of Mitrovica” are not by chance agitators sent from Belgrade: “I don’t want to discuss with you”.
The license plate crisis, which began in July when Pristina decided that cars registered in Serbia could no longer circulate, degenerated on 10 December: theand mass resignations of public officials, the arrest of a “terrorist” policeman, the shootings, street protests… «Let’s defend our right to survive!», shout the 120 thousand of the Serbian minority. “It is a revolt organized at the table – says the Kosovar Interior Minister, Xhelal Svecla -, behind it is Russia which wants to destabilize the Balkans”. The head of the Serbian armed forces, Milos Vucevic, reviews the troops on the “administrative line” (forbidden to call it a border) and points the self-propelled guns towards the south, just to clarify that they are serious. And maybe it’s true: the image immediately ends up on Putin’s TVs.
December 27, 2022 (change December 27, 2022 | 22:46)
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