Lumir Abdixhiku recaps on the main developments of the last week splitting them into four parts. The first is the joint meeting of the governments of Kosovo and Albania was merely a photo opportunity and a symbolic handshake gesture and failed to address the real concerns at hand. “They met, got pictures taken, got fed well and said nothing; not even a single decision after a six-year inter-state cooperation – as if they were both starting at year zero”, writes Abdixhiku.
The second event, or second act as the author calls it, is the fifteenth anniversary of the Reçak massacre. This led Abdixhiku look for statements of Serb officials regarding the case and found interesting ones. In one made on the day of the massacre in 1999, the current Serbian Prime Minister and at the time spokesperson for Milosevic’s Socialist Party, Ivica Dacic, said his party fully supported actions of Serbian state institutions in fighting terrorism in Kosovo. Ten years on, at the anniversary of NATO airstrikes, Dacic said the bombing of Serbian targets came as a result of “false accusations of the fabricated massacre of Reçak”. Abdixhiku says he is not surprised by these statements as he expects no humanity from someone who is Milosevic’s successor. “But what I do expect from my government, that of my state and country, whose foundation lies on the massacres like this of Reçak, is dignity with regards to individuals who think like this”, he writes.
The third act is the news of a group of Albanians posing with Al-Qaeda flags somewhere in the battlefields of Syria and this was very troubling. Events and videos like these should serve in Kosovo as starting point for investigations into possible links of these groups with Kosovo.
Amidst all political problems, Kosovo is now facing an “unjust” request for changing its Constitution to extend reserved seats for members of communities. The only way to prevent these dangerous scenarios unfolding, in Abdixhiku’s view, is for Kosovo to head to elections in the hope that this process will be free and fair and not manipulated.
