All border crossings between Kosovo and Serbia are opened, after the removal of the blockades

2024-09-07 18:05:13, Kosova & Bota CNA

All border crossings between Kosovo and Serbia are opened, after the removal of

All border crossings between Kosovo and Serbia have been opened for full and unhindered traffic, after all the blockades on the Serbian part of the border were removed on Saturday afternoon.

The Minister of the Interior of Kosovo, Xhelal Sveçla, announced that the two border points that the Kosovar authorities had closed on Friday night, in Bërnjak and Merdare, have been opened. The checkpoint in Jarinje was opened on Saturday morning.

Their reopening comes after Serbian associations lifted all the blockades they had imposed on Friday afternoon to protest against the closure of parallel Serbian institutions in the north of Kosovo, which is inhabited by a majority of Serbs.

"After receiving the announcements that the blockades created by masked extremists that were placed yesterday in the territory of Serbia have already been removed and seeing that there are no obstacles to traffic from and to the border points of the Republic of Kosovo, we made the decision to open for circulation of border points Merdarë and Bërnjak", Sveçla said on Facebook.

Dragisha Miriq, president of the Koreni Association in Serbia, announced on Saturday afternoon that the blockade in Merdare has been lifted.

Miriq said that his association will wait until October 1 for the fulfillment of their demands by the Kosovar authorities and warned of a new border blockade, if the demands of the Serbs are not met.

The organizers of the blockades want Kosovo to withdraw the police from the Serb-majority municipalities in the north, to allow the use of the Serbian dinar currency, which was banned at the beginning of this year, and to allow the work of parallel Serbian municipalities.

On Saturday morning, the deputy director of the Kosovo Police for the northern region, Veton Elshani, said that in Jarinje there are no more obstacles in the circulation of all vehicles on both sides of the border.

"This morning at the border point in Jarinje, the circulation of vehicles on both sides of the border, including vehicles with Serbian license plates and those with Kosovo license plates, is taking place without a problem," said Elshani.

Xelal Sveçla said on Friday that these two crossing points in Merdare and Brnjak were closed because masked persons on the Serbian side of the border had "selectively and with a fascist approach" stopped citizens who wanted to transit through Serbia.

Sveçla said that all this happened "before the eyes of the Serbian police".

The REL team has seen masked persons near the blockade placed on the Serbian side of the border in Brnjak on Friday night.

Serbian associations set up these blockades on the Serbian side of the border with Kosovo as a sign of protest against the closure of parallel Serbian institutions in the north of Kosovo by the Kosovo authorities on August 30.

The closure of these parallel institutions was preceded by the banning of the Serbian dinar and the closure of several branches of the Post of Serbia in the north earlier this year.

The decisions of Kurti's Government have been severely criticized as "unilateral and uncoordinated" by the international community, which has said that they risk increasing tensions.

However, the Government of Kosovo says that it is trying to establish law and order, especially in the north of Kosovo inhabited by a Serb majority, by extinguishing the parallel Serbian institutions.

In 2013, Kosovo and Serbia, in the dialogue for the normalization of relations in Brussels, reached an agreement on the abolition of parallel institutions, but this agreement has not yet been fully implemented./ REL