Concrete barricaded at the bridge over Ibar/Ibër River in northern part of Kosovska Mitrovica, which was set in 2011 as a ‘symbol of resistance’ of Serbs to integration into the legal system of self-declared Kosovo territory, yesterday was replaced by the “Park of Peace”.
The barricade was removed without prior announcement in the night between Tuesday and Wednesday. Danas’ sources claim that the Park emerged following the gathering, protests and swearing of dissatisfied and upset inhabitants of Northern Mitrovica. The Mayor of Northern Mitrovica Goran Rakic, who didn’t want to comment on removal of the barricade until the Director of the Serbia’s Kosovo Office Marko Djuric arrived, admitted in his presence that he is ‘aware of the fact that activity which is ongoing is disturbing and unexpected for the most of citizens, and that he made the decision on construction of the “Park of Peace”. Rakic claims that the decision was made in coordination with Serbia’s leadership.
News that ‘a group of citizens removed the barricade with heavy machinery and trucks’ was assessed by the provincial branch of the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) in Kosovo as ‘political cynicism’, particularly because the ‘turnout of three per cent, 423 voters unofficially, on parliamentary elections for Kosovo Assembly, is a clear indicator that Serbs in northern Kosovo don’t agree with the politics led by Tomislav Nikolić and Aleksandar Vučić’. DSS assessed in the handout that ‘removal of the barricade over the Ibar River comes as the result of Vucic’s agreement with Angela Merkel’.
“Removal of this barricade, set during our tenure, by the Serbian local self-government, will not encourage migration, instead it will be encouraged by incompetent people in power who don’t take care about interests of Serbian people. The barricade has lost its meaning after Kosovo elections were held in the north”, said official of the New Democratic Party (NDS) and former minister for Kosovo, Goran Bogdanovic to Danas.
Provincial branch of the DSS and Goran Bogdanovic both claim that the next step is renovation of the mosque in Northern Mitrovica, what was actually confirmed to Danas by several diplomatic sources.
In the eve of removal of the barricade speculations have spread through the town that the one in charge for removal of the barricade is actually the controversial businessman Zvonko Veselinovic, who allegedly was the one to set the barricade in 2011. Veselinovic was reluctant to comment those speculations to daily Danas and stated that ‘his family and himself are suffering for three years now and that they are blacklisted because of the barricade, and that he is not interested in who is removing it’.
