Attack on Serb man in Kosovo, "lynch atmosphere" condemned

Attack on Serb man in Kosovo, "lynch atmosphere" condemned

The police said they launched an investigation into the attack which occurred on Saturday.

Director of the Serbian Government Office for Kosovo and Metohija Marko Djuric condemned the attack on Stevic and called for urgent tackling of the incident.

"Because of the attack on a young life and the fact that such incidents trigger fear and unrest in the Serb community in Kosovo and Metohija, the police needs to shed light on all the circumstances and identify responsible individuals," Djuric said.

He denounced "the atmosphere of lynch and a lack of reaction and condemnation from Pristina" as the essential problem leading to repeated attacks targeting Serbs.

Djuric accused "most extreme of political parties of Albanians in Kosovo" of creating this atmosphere "continuously" while "clear condemnation and concrete reaction from Pristina's elites and institutions is missing."

"Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija, especially in enclaves and returnee areas, are continuously exposed to attacks, whether ethnically motivated or to classic criminal acts made out of greed," Djuric warned in an interview for the Belgrade-based daily Vecernje Novosti, and added:

"When somebody is openly threatening to destabilize and block the entire society because of the formation of the Community of Serb Municipalities (ZSO), it is natural that somebody understands it as a declaration of an open season for hunting Serbs."

According to him, "the reaction of the (Kosovo) police when it comes to attacks on Serbs has changed for the better to a certain degree."

Djuric also said that the ZSO will be "an instrument of protection and progress of the Serb community in Kosovo and Metohija" adding it was "difficult to understand the resistance with which the Albanian political public is receiving that idea, because it is not endangering anyone - except those Albanian politicians whose programs are based on chauvinist concepts."

"The formation of the ZSO is an irreversible process. It seems the international community, as the guarantor of the agreement's implementation, is no longer in a mood to tolerate various nonsensical excuses for making the normalization process more difficult, and that makes me hopeful the ZSO will be formed soon," said Djuric.