Anxious for the payment of significant pensions, Kosovo war veterans threatened street protests next week if government does not publish a final list of former fighters in the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA.
The head of the a Kosovo war veterans group, the Council for the Protection of the Rights of KLA Fighters, on Monday warned of streets demonstrations on February 10 if the government does not publish a final and complete list of war veterans. The row concerns the payment of pensions to fighters for the country’s independence. Kosovo’s parliament has allocated 24 million euro for war veterans in its 2015 budget and has promised pensions for them starting from January.
Unemployed veterans will receive a monthly pension not less than the minimum wage – 170 euro for people over 35 and 130 euro for those under 35.
Xhevdet Qeriqi and other veterans meanwhile hung posters on the government building’s outside fence, one of which accused officials of “politicising the veterans of the KLA”.“If the list is not published by February 10, we will immediately organise a demonstration, because war veterans keep asking me to do that as soon as possible,” Qeriqi said. He said that the government had promised to have the list published by February 10th, “after they failed to publish it on January 20th”.
The government commission tasked with verifying who actually fought for the Kosovo Liberation Army, headed by Faik Fazliu, has refused to give a deadline for the commission to end the process of verification.
Shkumbin Demalijaj, representing the former Operative Zone of Dukagjini, told BIRN that some 20,000 people had filed claims that they had been part of this operational zone. “Many people from the diaspora have applied but their applications were not fully filled out. We don’t want to eliminate them before we make sure they really fought or not,” Demaliaj told BIRN. He added that the commission had received a total of more than 68,000 applications and around 4,000 remain uncheckedc.
Demaliaj said the number of verified former fighters in Kosovo stood at around 22,000 but he expected the number to rise to about 23,500 veterans. “The number cannot get higher then this,” he noted. Demaliaj stressed that once the list was published, the government would pay retrospectively from January 1st, 2015, as it had promised.
He also added that KLA HQ, Brigade 114 of Drenica and the KLA fund “Homeland Calling” are not counted so far.
