Glas javnosti - Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia

The Position of Minorities in Serbia – Under Constant Pressure
in Belgrade, the heads of the Preševo Assembly Šaip Kamberi and Jonuz
Musliu claimed that the Serbian police was staging spectacular actions in
order to convince international institutions to suspend the Ground Security
Zone. The letter also asserted that the government was consciously
avoiding the responsibilities it accepted by signing the Agreement on the
Reconstruction of the Coordination Body, and that this was “proof of the
disingenuous intentions of the Serbian government towards the Preševo
valley Albanian community, which considers itself betrayed.” 321
At the end of July, an assembly of aldermen of the municipalities of
Bujanovac, Preševo i Medveđa adopted a political declaration demanding
that Preševo valley be offi cially designated as a region. According to Ragmi
Mustafa, there are many grounds for the formation of a Preševo region:
“The political justifi cation is the referendum from 1992, through which
the citizens elected to strengthen political, cultural and territorial autonomy,
and to move closer to Kosovo. The economic rationale is that all three
municipalities are among the least developed in Serbia, and the developmental
reasons relate to the possibility of future cross-border cooperation
with Kumanovo, Gnjilan, Bulgaria.” 322
According to Riza Halimi, the declaration demanding regionalization
comes as a response to the ignorant attitude of the Serbian government
towards the problems and needs of Albanians. The Albanian demands
include the demilitarization of the region, abandoning all Serbian Special
Forces operations, the proportionate participation of Albanians in
state institutions, especially in the local and border police, the offi cial
international community, because its own intelligence agencies provide information
on the activities and arming of certain groups in Kosovo and Metohia hailing from the
municipalites in Southern Serbia.
321 “The Municipality of Preševo Requests the Withdrawal of the Gendarmerie, Dačić:
There Will be No Withdrawal,” RTS. On another occasion, Kamberi warned
that the Serbian Administration was attempting to marginalize the Coordinating Body:
“We do not agree with the statement that the Coordinating Body is a round table, we
consider it to be an offi cial state agency with the concrete mission to implement the
program of the Serbian government.”
322 “The President, Prime Minister and Ministers are ignoring the South of Serbia, as if it
were an occupied territory,” Borba, 3 August 2009.
249