The sudden announcement of Pristina that soon may start talks on the Association/Community of Serb municipalities (ZSO), for number of Serbs who work in institutions such as the judiciary, health and education has created the fear of falling “into the hands” of Kosovo’s systems.
The fear that they could be manipulated by the Pristina reflects in the form of appeal of teachers and staff of the Law Faculty of the University of Pristina (relocated to North Mitrovica), to be found on the website. This appeal expresses concern that the Serbian University in Kosovo could be “taken out from its home system – the state of Serbia”.
Dušan Čelić, Professor of the Faculty of Law, explains for Sputnik that the appeal has been triggered by the discussion on higher education that took place in the Kosovo Assembly . The insinuation of these talks was that the ZSO in future could be in charge of “order and rule” in these vital Serbian institutions. He cites the following arguments for this:
– We consider that our founder is the State of Serbia, as says the current Law on Higher Education. Therefore, we oppose these rights to transfer from the Republic of Serbia to the Community of Serb municipalities, because, as we know, according to the Brussels agreement, the Community of Serb municipalities will not operate within the legal system of the Republic of Serbia, than in the legal system of the unrecognized state of Kosovo.
He says that their fear was justified because it is not clear exactly how the ZSO in fact will look like. He notes that ZSO does not exist in the Constitution of Serbia or in the Law on Local Self-government of Serbia and thus he explains the possibility of this University to become an institution of so-called Republic of Kosovo.
Oliver Ivanović, leader of the CI SDP says that something like this has happened before and that there were attempts to manipulate with the Serbian health and education but notes that the role of the ZSO is actually to prevent it.
He notes that Education is one of the vital aspects of social life for the survival of Serbs in Kosovo and that Serbs did not agree with this idea and before.
