After the British government sent a warning to its citizens not to travel to municipalities in the north of Kosovo due to risks of security incidents, thus causing intense reactions in the public, the UK government in Pristina issued a statement that the British embassy ”advised against all but essential travel to the northern municipalities for several years, due to a number of recent violent incidents linked to organised crime in northern Kosovo. ”
This explanation caused even harsher reactions, according to the portal KoSSev.
The head of Serbian diplomacy, Ivica Dacic, and the chairman of the Serbia’s Assembly Committee for KiM Milovan Drecun, reacted.
Apart from criticism at the expense of this embassy and their security assessments that do not include other factors such as ISIS returnees and heads of the organized Albanian mafia in Kosovo institutions, Drecun accused the British Embassy of collecting operational information from the field and disturbing the signal of mobile telecommunications.
A former journalist, current member of the Serbian Progressive Party and the chairman of the Committee for KiM, Milovan Drecun told Belgrade-based news agency Tanjug that the British Embassy’s statement is ”politicization and an attempt to show the north in a bad light in order to justify possible actions by Pristina in the north, including violent actions. ”
Drecun claimed that the warnings coming from Britain had caused a lot of suspicion and doubt among the Serbian public.
”Someone is constantly pointing fingers and indicating that the north is under the control of some Serb criminal groups, that anarchy rules there, that nothing functions there, and the fact that such a situation is actually present in the south of the Ibar is being completely overlooked, ” Drecun underlined.
He stressed that Kosovo is a black hole in Europe ”precisely due to the activities of Albanian criminal groups. ”
”It is practically the European Colombia,” he explained.
According to Drecun, the leaders of ”organized criminal groups” are Kosovo Prime Minister, Ramush Haradinaj, Kosovo President, Hashim Thaci, along with Javit Haliti and ”all other key politicians that came out of the terrorist KLA. ”
”They actually represent the greatest risk to security and protection against criminal activity, ” Drecun stated, adding that even though there is a ”real danger” of this kind of organized crime, these groups ”are not as visible in the north as the ones south of the Ibar. ”
”There is no dilemma that there is a clear security risk in Kosovo and Metohija which is reflected in the presence of radical Islamic extremists, terrorists, jihadists, returnees from the jihad battlefields, from Syria and Iraq, people who fought in the Islamic state, in Al-Qaeda, but they are not focused and their bases are south of the Ibar, they are not located north of the Ibar, ” he explained, adding that in addition to the ”western targets” there is a real danger that the Serbian population could come under attack.
Drecun said that he could understand the warnings of the danger of radical Islamism and crime, but not the claims that ”all evil is in the north.”
”The strongest criminal groups are in the north?! So, who are they jeopardizing?! Are they jeopardizing the Albanians south of the Ibar? Of course not! These are the auxiliary criminal groups working for the interests of the organized Albanian mafia,” he emphasized.
The British placed the north under intensified observation
Drecun shared his belief that the explanation of the British Embassy is ”insufficiently convincing” and asked the following question: ”Could some services know that the destabilization of the north is being prepared?”
”If they know this, they should inform us about it. So that we see who is preparing the destabilization because any destabilization is a threat to the survival of the Serbian people in the north or in Kosovo and Metohija in general,” he added.
He further claimed that the British intelligence service is carrying out intensified observation of the north of Kosovo.
”We are just wondering why they are doing this in jeeps with civilian license plates, why are they not in uniforms, why do they have mobile phone blocking devices?”
Finally, Drecun asked one last question:
”Could somebody be planning a simultaneous destabilization of the north during the protests of the opposition in Belgrade on April 13th?”
The Serbian List responded with an informal campaign #ŽivotNaSeveru (#LifeInTheNorth)
The Vice-President of the Serbian List, Igor Simic also reacted to the statement of the British embassy by calling on citizens to publish photographs of life in the north of Kosovo.
”All of us who, despite the advice of some embassies and constant attacks on our freedom, are born, live, build, learn, fall in love, make progress and survive in the NORTH OF KOSOVO AND METOHIJA!” Simic wrote in a description of a photograph of him with his party colleagues Milan Radojevic and Nenad Rikalo in the center of North Mitrovica.
The response to the call is low for now. Students from the Faculty of Medicine, Economics, Faculty of Arts and Technical Sciences posted several photos on Instagram, while a group of students posted a photo taken in front of the rectory.
