After months of delay, parliament will vote on Friday on the establishment of the new court to judge alleged war crimes committed by Kosovo Liberation Army fighters during the 1998-99 conflict, while veterans’ organisations and opposition parties have vowed to try to stop it.
The Kosovo parliament will vote on whether to accept constitutional amendments which will pave the way for the creation of specialised legal chambers within the Kosovo judiciary, whose main institutions will be based outside the country – according to local media, in the Netherlands.
Veterans’ organisations have announced that they will protest against the ratification of the amendments, starting early Friday before the parliament session opens.
“We have already protested three times against the formation of the court, and will do it again if need be and strongly oppose the creation of the court,” said Xhevdet Qeriqi, the head of the Council for the Protection of the Rights of Veterans.
The establishment of the so-called Specialised Chambers, often referred to as the ‘special court’, first became public in an exchange of letters between Kosovo President Atifete Jahjaga and the EU’s foreign policy chief last year.
It is widely considered by the Kosovo public and most political parties to have been imposed by Pristina’s western allies.
“An injustice is being committed against the Kosovo Liberation Army struggle by the internationals,” said Qeriqi.
The US has also threatened not to continue opposing Russian attempts at the UN Security Council to establish a Kosovo tribunal if the new court is not established.
Opposition parties have blamed the ruling parties for bowing to international pressure and acting against Kosovo’s interests.
The Vetevendosje opposition party has announced that it will support Friday’s protest.
“A parallel justice system is being imposed on Kosovo, a court that will differentiate along ethnic lines, which aims to change the truth about the liberating struggle of the Kosovo people,” the party said in a statement.
The parliamentary vote has been postponed several times so far because there was no majority to pass the law. For constitutional amendments, a two-thirds majority of the ethnic Albanian MPs and a two-thirds of the minority community legislators needs to vote in favour.
Parliament head Kadri Veseli, from the ruling Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), who is also a KLA ex-fighter, met the veterans on Wednesday to try to convince them to back the court.
“We must vote in favour of the court to prove that there were no crimes against humanity in Kosovo, that there was no organ-trafficking and that the crimes were committed by the Serbia of Slobodan Milosevic,” said Veseli
Kosovo’s partnership with “the western world” was at stake, he added.
The mandate for the court is derived from a report published in early 2011 by Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty, who claimed that crimes against civilians such as kidnapping, torture and organ-harvesting were committed by members of the KLA during the conflict.
The report implicates the former political head of the KLA and the ex-prime minister of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci, who is now foreign minister. Thaci strongly denies the allegations.
Xhavit Jashari, head of the KLA veterans’ assocation, also said he opposes the new court.
“The innocence of our fighters has been proven [at the UN war crimes court] in The Hague as well as in the courts in Kosovo. We do not want to sully the KLA’s war,” said Jashari.
As tension mounted ahead of the vote, Donika Kadaj-Bujupi, an opposition MP from the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, tore up a copy of the bill in front of local media.
Kadaj-Bujupi said that her party would “take all appropriate actions to counter the bizarre behaviour of the government and the ruling majority”.
