The former leader of the Vetevendosje Movement, Albin Kurti, writes in an opinion piece today that the teargas that he threw at the Assembly of Kosovo last week was of small quantity and it was no mass attack, arguing that lots of cans with teargas were thrown in the past towards Vetevendosje activists and dissatisfied protesters. “Moreover, we did not use rubber bullets on Thursday. What is this hysteria and this panic?”
According to Kurti, the ruling-coalition MPs were up against the Republic and the Constitution of Kosovo, against the society and against Kosovo’s identity and history. “Since 25 August, the MPs turned into rebels. Therefore, the teargas was necessary against these rebels. These rebels had occupied the Assembly hall, pretending that they were MPs, and wished to function as if nothing had happened on 25 August. Fortunately, the teargas dispersed them,” Kurti writes.
The author writes that the special court for war crimes and the Association/Community of Serb-majority municipalities would be both formally installed in the same way, within the Kosovo system but controlled from abroad. “The special court will write a different story for the war in Kosovo. The special court and the Association are both in the opposite direction of state-building in Kosovo; the special court makes the justice in Kosovo become a foreign issue, while the Association makes Serbia an internal issue,” Kurti writes.
Furthermore, he notes that with the Pristina-Belgrade dialogue, Serbia has removed the barriers towards the European integration while for Kosovo were added more obstacles in the state-building process. “For the sake of the past (those who were killed in our own country) and for the sake of the future (those who will be put in danger if we stay silent) we must not stop,” Kurti concludes.
