Europe, Headlines, Human Rights

KOSOVO: In Mitrovica, Ten Minutes Is a Long Drive

Apostolis Fotiadis

MITROVICA, Feb 23 2009 (IPS) - It was a bus ride from one part of the city to another. Or was it.

Around 200 Serbs had gathered in front of a local polytechnic in the north of the Kosovan town Mitrovica. They were waiting to board buses to the southern part of the city, where Serbs do not normally venture after the city was divided into a Serbian enclave in the north and the mainly Albanian south following the ethnic war in the 1990s.

But this day the Christian Orthodox Serbs were headed to a cemetery in the south to celebrate Zadusnitse, a religious festival to honour the dead.

The festival comes twice a year. Not many take the ride because it is considered risky, even if no incident has been reported over the past few years.

“There are many more people who would like to visit but they are afraid,” said Milan Smilic, political science student at the University of Belgrade. He is visiting his grandfather’s tomb.

A ten-minute ride, without security escort, takes the Serbs to the cemetery, guarded by international and local policemen. The Serbs clear ice from the graves, and place over them the favourite foods of those they loved. They sip some rakia, the local alcoholic beverage, and spill the rest on the graves. Others place lit-up cigarettes next to the gravestones.

The church in the middle of the cemetery stands destroyed, and many tombs have been desecrated. Nada Savic, an elderly woman complains that since her last visit her husband’s tombstone has been removed. “Go see the Albanian cemetery in the north of Mitrovica, there is no harm done to it. Albanians do not respect anything.”

The invisible boundary between the Serbs and the Albanians runs deep. Before 1999 Mitrovica, an hour’s drive north of Pristina, was an ethnically mixed city. People enjoyed a good quality of life thanks to employment in the heavy industry situated around the city.

Before the 1999 Kosovo war when ethnic Albanians rose against Serb control in what was, and is still claimed by Serbs to be, the southern part of Serbia, Mitrovica had a population of 68,000 Albanians, about 9,000 Serbs and 10,000 or so others, mostly Roma, the ‘gypsy’ population of Europe believed to have migrated to Europe from India since the 14th century.

After 1999, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) bombing of Serbia to end the repression of Albanians, Serbs living in the south of the town were pushed to the north, and the vast majority of Albanians in the north were displaced to the south.

A small number of Albanians still live in the Bosnian Mahala in the eastern part of northern Mitrovica, and in three buildings at the western edge. But they are isolated from their Serbian neighbours.

The new population figures are not very different from the old, with an estimated 70,000 Albanians living in the city and about 10,000 Serbs. But now the two are not mixed, they are divided.

The division has hit the industry, much of which is now shut down. Unemployment has risen above 70 percent.

Since the 1999 war the city has become a centre for ethnic clashes between the two communities, aggravated by the presence of extremists on both sides. The bridges linking the two sides of the town were guarded by armed groups determined to prevent incursions by the other side. Between 2001 and 2004 there were around 150 violent incidents on the main bridge.

In 2004 the death of an Albanian child in the river was blamed on Serbs. This provoked the worst ethnic classes since 1999. Seven were killed, hundreds injured in firing between the two groups. The unrest spread all over Kosovo.

In March last year an attempt by the international force to evacuate a building in the north provoked riots in which a Ukrainian international police officer was killed. Many Serbs and others in the NATO peacekeeping Kosovo Force (KFOR) were injured.

In December last year several days of ethnic tension followed an attack on a Serbian student by Albanian youths. Some Albanian shops in the Bosnia Mahala were destroyed and many attacks on passers-by were reported.

The violent history of the town has forced the international community to maintain a constant presence.