Serbia’s Interior Ministry (MUP) said on Tuesday they had banned rallies that the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) planned during the “Mirëdita, dobar dan” festival, but the radicals said they would hold it, reports regional broadcaster N1.
Vojislav Seselj’s party scheduled the gatherings for May 30 and 31 and June 1, in central Belgrade, to protest the festival that has been held since 2014, with an aim to get Pristina and Belgrade closer to each other by getting to know their respective cultures better.
Mirëdita stands for “good day” in Albanian or “dobar dan” in Serbian.
MUP said it had banned the rallies for “security reasons, public health, moral and the rights of others.”
But the Radicals disagreed and said that “the festival violates Serbia’s Constitution and sovereignty.”
They said that MUP, in fact, recognised Kosovo’s independence by referring to the festival as “the encounter of Kosovo and Serbian cultures.”
“If the state does not want to prevent the festival, we will prevent it,” the Radicals said.
The festival website says that “by introducing the audience with artists and performers, who are representatives of the modern Kosovo cultural scene, the festival is aiming to initiate changes in Serbia’s and Kosovo’s social and cultural communities.”
It adds that “the festival seeks to establish the tradition of cooperation through arts, which will contribute to the permanent normalisation of relations between Belgrade and Pristina.”
