• Osmani speaks at Democracy Summit, presents three main commitments (media)
• Macron: We will organise a conference for Western Balkans in June (RFE)
• EP on Tuesday about fight against organised crime in Western Balkans (EWB)
• Kurti says criminal group in the north must be tried in Kosovo (media)
• Serbian List opposes U.S. decision on criminal bosses (media)
• Kosovo Serbs close to Serbia’s rulers join US blacklist (BIRN)
• Kosovo arrests Serbian citizen for war crimes on border (BIRN)
• Junior doctors protest failure to allocate special budget for wages (BIRN)
• Kosovo youth train as bakers, waiters to get quick jobs abroad (Reuters)
• Prishtina-Durres railway, Kosovo sets aside €1 million for feasibility (euronews.al)
• Consequences of Vucic’s “passivization” campaign on thousands of Albanians in Serbia (Exit News)
• The anger you’re entitled to (Kosovo 2.0)
• COVID-19: 19 new cases, one death (media)

Osmani speaks at Democracy Summit, presents three main commitments (media)

Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani spoke on Thursday at the Democracy Summit organised by U.S. President Joe Biden. She said that Kosovo has long fought authoritarian and genocidal regimes. Below is Osmani’s full statement:

Honorable President Biden,

Dear participants,

I am addressing you as President of the Republic of Kosovo, one of the newest but also most active democracies in the world.

Soon, Kosovo will mark the 14th anniversary of independence, but we have fought authoritarian and genocidal regimes for a much longer time than that. Democracy is at the foundation of our society, it is deeply rooted in our historic struggle for freedom and human rights. And, as our founding father, President Rugova, predicted, our Republic relies heavily on three pillars: freedom, independence, democracy.

Today, Kosovo continues to thrive through free and fair elections, with a peaceful transition of power, pristine media freedom, and the highest human rights standards enshrined in our constitution.

But Democracy is never a completed or time-limited project. Therefore, today, I will present the commitments of Kosovo for the strengthening and development of our democracy to ensure that it resists time. We'll:

1. Strengthen the rule of law through the full implementation of the National Rule of Law Strategy, and a vetting process that will root integrity, impartiality and professionalism at the heart of our justice system. We are committed to enacting and enforcing advanced legislation on confiscation of illicit property, imposing travel bans on foreign individuals involved in serious human rights abuses, banning foreign government funding for political parties, and banning of public institutions to use surveillance technologies from unreliable manufacturers.

2. We strengthen the role of women in our society by initiating actions to harmonize all relevant laws with the provisions of the law on gender equality, to guarantee the proper place of women in public institutions and decision-making roles. We will also adopt a bold national strategy against gender-based violence to implement the Istanbul Convention, curb this epidemic through prevention and protection, and increase minimum sentences to reflect the seriousness of gender-based crimes.

3. I will establish a Presidential Council for Democracy and Human Rights, which will bring together public institutions and civil society to advance and monitor the implementation of our commitments. This council demonstrates our long-term commitment to improving our democracy.

We must not take democracy for granted and we must defend it without ever giving up. Whether a country big or small, we can all make a difference, especially if we join forces. Therefore, we pledge to work with you all to achieve our goals, to share best practices, to oppose Russian interference and propaganda, and to promote peace throughout the world.

In this spirit, I will organize a Global Summit for Women in Peace and Security in 2022 that will bring together leaders from around the world.

In the battle between democracy and autocracy, history teaches us that the accommodation of autocrats never works. Today is more than a summit. It is our common voice that rejects autocratic tendencies and our common voice in defense of democracy.

I want to thank President Biden for his leadership in this effort!

From the most pro-American people in the world, thank you all and goodbye!”

Macron: We will organise a conference for Western Balkans in June (RFE)

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that during the French presidency of the European Union he will organise a conference for the Western Balkans. “Our closest neighbors are the Western Balkans. In June we will organise a conference for the Western Balkans because the Balkans is more than a neighbor, it is in the heart of Europe. You only need to look at the map and our history,” he said.

Macron said that the region is currently going through a phase of tensions. “History sometimes returns in a tragic way too. Therefore we have a special responsibility toward the Western Balkans. We need to implement the policy of a new engagement there, but also investments so that we can favor the economic integration of the region, help resolve minority issues and fight against influences and manipulations that are a result of the engagement of powers that want to destabilise Europe through the Balkans,” he said.

Macron said that political and economic engagement in the Western Balkans is the real agenda for the sovereignty of Europe because “we cannot build Europe in peace for the next 50 years if we leave the Western Balkans in the current state”. “This means that we need to explain the European perspective, invest in the region, in its unity and to have shared ambitions for the coming decade,” he added.

EP on Tuesday about fight against organised crime in Western Balkans (EWB)

Members of the European Parliament will discuss and vote next Tuesday on the EP Resolution on fighting corruption in the Western Balkans. According to the text of the Resolution, corruption, disinformation, elements of state capture, inequality, and foreign interference by undemocratic regimes such as Russia and China, are key factors of vulnerability of countries of the Western Balkans.

The text of the Resolution was agreed upon among the EP groups in July this year. After the discussion, the MPS will decide on its adoption on Tuesday 14 December. Lukas Mandl from European People Party will present the Resolution during the plenary session.

The Resolution stresses that organized crime and corruption first and foremost hurt the citizens of the Western Balkan countries, as they undermine their right to safety and social cohesion as well as their trust in the democratic system, create obstacles to democratic reforms, and hamper the accession process, while also having potential and actual negative impacts on the security and stability of EU Member States.

EP Members underlines that depriving countries of the Western Balkans of a European perspective is worsening the situation as regards organized crime and that it can be improved by fostering the EU integration process and cooperation with the Member States.

According to the Resolution, linking visa liberalization for Kosovo with the fight against organized crime is counterproductive as isolation encourages criminal activities. The resolution underlines, once again, that Kosovo has fulfilled all criteria for visa liberalization and calls on the Council to grant visa liberalization without further delay.

It states „rule of law and the fight against corruption and organized crime are the crucial areas in which the Western Balkan countries need to show tangible results to make more progress on their EU path.“

MEPs urge countries of the Western Balkan to significantly ramp up their efforts to advance the necessary reforms and call for the EU to promote, as a priority of enlargement policy, the correct transposition and implementation of the relevant international instruments that support the rule of law and target corruption and organized crime through financial assistance and practical cooperation.

EP regrets the lack of genuine political will among parts of the local political elites to fight organized crime and corruption and eliminate any elements of state capture. It deplores the lack of independence and proper functioning, in many cases, of the judiciary in the Western Balkan countries and urges for a more strategic approach to be adopted in addressing challenges posed by organized crime and calls for the EU to provide further assistance to stimulate a culture of criminal justice professionalism and performance and to improve the integrity of the judiciary.

The situation in the Western Balkans is the topic of the last plenary session of the European Parliament this year. Thus, a debate and vote on an urgent resolution for Serbia were planned for December 16, due to the latest developments in the country.

Kurti says criminal group in the north must be tried in Kosovo (media)

Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti said on Thursday that Zvonko Veselinovic and his group from the north of Kosovo who were placed on sanctions by U.S. authorities, must be investigated and tried in Kosovo. Kurti said the decision of the U.S. authorities is proof that crime and corruption should have no place in EU countries or in any country that wants to become a member state of the European Union, such as Kosovo. “The next steps and this is our job is for the judiciary to closely follow all the decisions of U.S. authorities that have sufficient information, so that these people and groups do not have sanctions only from the U.S., but for them to be sanctioned, investigated, tried and convicted in Kosovo too,” Kurti said.

Serbian List opposes U.S. decision on criminal bosses (media)

The Serbian list has made an official reaction after the deputy chairman of this party Milan Radojicic was included in the list of sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department. This political party has opposed the decision, saying that the sanctions are a coordinated campaign to weaken the unification of Serbs in the northern areas.

“Unfounded accusations at the expense of established members of the Serbian List and Serbs from northern Kosovo and Metohija are a coordinated campaign aimed at weakening the unity and defense of our people in these areas.

Also, the obvious intention of the joint propaganda pausing actions, which is seen by Albin Kurti's reaction, is to provide justification for the recent attacks on the Serbian people and the shedding of Serbian blood by injuring Srecko Sofronijevic during the brutal time actions of Kosovo police, as well as alibi for possible new unilateral actions of Pristina in the north KiM.

It sounds incredible that the Kosovo police have been coming out with reports for several years in a row stating that the number of crimes in northern Kosovo and Metohija is relatively lower than in environments with the Albanian majority in the south, and that it is about crime in those environments you don't talk about they are starting any kind of actions.

The Serbian List calls on citizens to restraint, because this is a newer form of a hybrid attack on our freedom, which is used for the purpose of weakening our position and unity, but it is our duty to remain restrained and persistent in the intention to remain ourselves on our own Well, because that is our inalienable right.

Anyone who thinks that these false accusations will scare and divide the Serbian people is being deceived badly, we will remain our own always ready to defend the truth, justice and our right to life and stay in the north of Kosovo and Metohija,” reads the press release.

Kosovo Serbs close to Serbia’s rulers join US blacklist (BIRN)

The US is taking aim at a number of Kosovo Serbs with known links to politicians in both Serbia and Kosovo.

Officials in Kosovo have praised the decision of the US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control, OFAC, to impose sanctions on a controversial Serbian businessman from Kosovo, Zvonko Veselinovic, Milan Radoicic and on 12 others.

According to OFAC, Veselinovic heads an organised crime group “engaged in a large-scale bribery scheme with Kosovo and Serbian security officials who facilitate the group’s illicit trafficking of goods, money, narcotics, and weapons between Kosovo and Serbia”.

Its press release said that sanctioned group “has also conspired with various politicians in several quid pro quo agreements, including the early 2019 bribery of Kosovar security officials to allow their smuggling operations between Serbia and Kosovo and the late 2017 bribery of Kosovar border security officials to allow safe passage for smugglers”.

Collectively, blacklisted individuals and companies are called Specially Designated Nationals or SDNs. Their assets are blocked and US persons are generally prohibited from dealing with them.

Radoicic, leader of Srpska Lista, the Kosovo Serb party remote-controlled by Serbia’s ruling Progressive Party, and Veselinovic, a well-known businessman, are often seen as shadowy rulers of the Serb-run north of Kosovo.

Read more at: https://bit.ly/31Kd71S

Kosovo arrests Serbian citizen for war crimes on border (BIRN)

An unnamed Serbian national was arrested on Wednesday at the Jarinje border crossing on suspicion of having committed war crimes against civilians during the Kosovo war.

A Serbian citizen, named only as D.A., was arrested in Kosovo on Wednesday on suspicion of having committed war crimes against civilians during the Kosovo war, the Kosovo Special Prosecution announced on Thursday.

Police said suspect was arrested on Wednesday at the border crossing between Kosovo and Serbia in Jarinje and taken into custody on a court order.

“The Special Prosecution, within the legal time limits against the same (suspect), will make a request for detention,” the prosecution announcement read. Other details on the case are still not public.

The head of Kosovo’s Special Prosecution, Drita Hajdari, told BIRN in July that her office was prioritising cases of wartime massacres due to the big backlog. She also said she was exploring legal loopholes to bring old cases back to the court.

The Special Prosecution has only four prosecutors and is due to hire at least two more. Hajdari had said that four prosecutors were not enough to complete all the work because they had inherited 900 war-crime cases from the EU rule of law mission EULEX and 2,000 files for missing persons, alongside accepting other cases. “Currently, we have 1,000 cases,” Hajdari had told BIRN.

Read more at: https://bit.ly/3IEDdoa

Junior doctors protest failure to allocate special budget for wages (BIRN)

Medical specialist trainees in Kosovo are demanding more pay for night shifts, while self-financing colleagues seek inclusion in stalled Wages Law.

Regularly funded medical specialist trainees are continuing to protest over demands to be paid for night shifts, while their colleagues who are self-financed seek  inclusion in the Wages Law.

Despite holding two protests within two weeks, for the same reason, their demands to meet the Prime Minister, Albin Kurti, and the Minister of Health, Rifat Latifi, have not been realized till now.

The Head of the Council of Specialists, neurology specialist trainee Arianit Zajmi, together with several other representatives of medical specialists, last week met the Minister of Finance and Transfers, Hekuran Murati, but described the meeting as “the most disappointing meeting in my life”.

“We were told that if it is in our interest to leave the country, we could leave. Although the meeting was very disappointing, we have continued, and are going to, protest,” he said.

The Kosovo parliament’s Committee on Budget and Finance last week failed to approve the demands of self-financing trainee specialists to be awarded regular salaries, with the provision of a special budget for them.

There are subsidies for self-financing specialists but they are not drawn from the regular budget of the government. The Ministry of Health told BIRN that 2.8 million euros had been allocated for subsidizing self-financing trainee specialists.

“Our demands have fallen on deaf ears. We will continue with protests until they are met. We do not want to give a political direction to the protest, we are troubled people because we work only in the public sector, not the private one, and do not get support from state institutions”, Zajmi told a press conference.

Plastic surgeon specialist trainee Amire Demolli says she carries out 120 hours of night shifts per month but is paid only 79 cents per hour for them.

According to the Ministry of Health, Kosovo has 661 specialist doctors in the seven regional hospitals.

In July last year, the Ministry of Health, headed by Armend Zemaj, opened a competition for more specialist training throughout Kosovo, four years after the last call.

In the last three weeks, Kosovo has seen a weave of union protests and strikes over pay and conditions.

Both public and private workers’ unions have organized protests, demanding salary increases and more assistance from the government, their main demand being the adoption of the Law on Wages, adopted by the previous government in 2019.

Kosovo youth train as bakers, waiters to get quick jobs abroad (Reuters)

Dashurie Cahanaj kneads a mound of dough in a vocational school in Prizren, Kosovo, studying for a baking qualification she hopes will give here a quicker ticket out of her country than her hard-won nursing degree.

The 23-year-old, like a growing number of her contemporaries, is desperate to leave to get a job in more affluent parts of Europe, lured by better wages and wider opportunities.

She could start filling out the paperwork and visa forms to transfer her medical skills. But competition for such work is fierce and time is pressing.

“From here it will take years until I will get a working visa for a job as a nurse in Germany," she told Reuters. Instead she has already made contacts at bakeries in Slovenia who are ready to take on lower-skilled staff right away.

Once based in the European Union, she will be in a stronger position. "I found out that getting a job in a bakery in Slovenia and then applying to work as a nurse in Germany is much faster for me.”

With gross domestic product per capita of $4,300 and one third of the working population unemployed, Kosovo ranks among poorest corners of Europe.

As many as 78% of Kosovars aged between 18 and 35 said they would move abroad if given an opportunity, in an International Republican Institute survey in late November.

A total of 203,330 Kosovar citizens left the country between 2008 and 2018 and applied for asylum in the European Union, according to a study published by the European Policy Institute of Kosovo - raising fears of a looming labour shortage in the country.

The Professional Training Centre in Prizren is one of six vocational schools in Kosovo offering young people short courses in everything from baking and make-up to welding and electrical work.

The centre's general manager, Sinan Gashi, said the number of students had doubled since 2015.

“There is no future for youth (here),” said Rilind Babatinca, a trained economist from the town of Podujevo in his twenties.

He said he had already started making plans to set his own qualifications aside and apply for a visa to work in a fast food restaurant in Germany.

Prishtina-Durres railway, Kosovo sets aside €1 million for feasibility (euronews.al)

The Government of Kosovo has foreseen a budget of around 1 million euros for the research study on the feasibility of the Prishtina-Durres railway.

According to the minister of Infrastructure, Liburn Aliu, through this study they will be able to have a clearer understanding of the exact costs, the route as well as the time needed for the construction of this railway. Aliu also added that after the memorandum of cooperation between Albania and Kosovo has been signed, and after the visit to Italy, this railway is on its way to completion.

The Durres-Prishtina railroad isn’t only important in terms of a geopolitical perspective, but also an economic one.

PM Albin Kurti has declared that this railway “is important from an economic aspect, just as much as a geopolitical one, because it helps the region as well as our neighbors, with whom we share a common past, but also a common future.”

Consequences of Vucic’s “passivization” campaign on thousands of Albanians in Serbia (Exit News)

“There has been no organized effort to erase the addresses of Albanians in Serbia,” declared not too long ago Gordana Comic, the Minister of Human and Minority Rights of the Republic of Serbia. We have heard all Serbian ministers and high officials make similar declarations.

The insistence that in regions of Serbia with an Albanian-majority population, residential addresses are being verified in a bona fide manner, i.e., impartially and with full transparency, comes as no surprise. Nor does the denial by Albanian National Council in Serbia (KKSH) of Serbian authorities’ claim that they had reached a prior agreement on this point.

But why did Ms. Comic now feel the need to make a statement on the issue of the passivization of addresses, even though this topic was not at all included in the agenda set between KKSH and Belgrade in order to resume the dialogue? What can the Albanian minority in Serbia expect from the dialogue with a government led by Vucic’s party, which is also the main political force responsible for the mass deregistration of Albanians in Medvegja, Bujanoc, and Presevo?

In fact, now that we are at the end of 2021, it can be proven indisputably that Serbian authorities are deactivating residential addresses in Albanian-majority regions in the three southernmost municipalities in Serbia for political reasons. It can also be proven that a number of state institutions of the Republic of Serbia were involved in this campaign.

The Massive Passivization of Albanians in Serbia — what the Serbian authorities are hiding

Since it became known that Serbian authorities had started a campaign to deactivate residential addresses mainly in the three Albanian-populated municipalities in southern Serbia, along the border with Kosovo, Serbian ministers have reiterated that they are implementing the Law on Residence of the Citizens the same way across all of Serbia.

The facts prove otherwise.

Read more at: https://bit.ly/3Gx1g6p

The anger you’re entitled to (Kosovo 2.0)

By Arnina Beciri

It is time for women to embrace their anger

Two years ago, I wrote down my story. My story of sexual abuse at the hands of two family members. I wrote it down, with no plan, no expectations, no thoughts of how it would affect me and my future. I simply wrote because it was about time. Thursday, August 15, 2019 was the day it was published. I’m not quite sure where I was exactly at the moment it was posted — perhaps at home or on my way to central Prishtina.

For the first time, I felt visible. I walked into Dit’ e Nat’, ordered some tea, looked around and I thought to myself, “They know now. They know.” Ridiculous obviously, as if everyone had read it. But that’s how I felt. I felt seen, heard and understood. I wanted recognition. If not from my family then from strangers. I needed people to recognize that the sexual abuse that I had to endure happened.

What took place after was a complete disaster. It was a story that you’d think would only happen in the most patriarchal, the most backwards societies — or so I thought. I was shamed, threatened, called names and disowned by my family. I had people invent terrible stories about me that I never could have imagined myself.

I was accused of taking revenge for what happened to me​​.

Revenge is a strong word. I didn’t like it at first. I thought it sounded a bit too violent, a bit too angry. But then it grew on me, and I thought, “Why not?” At the end of the day, I have a right to take it. Who says I don’t? Who decided that my 11-year-old abused self would have to live her life without avenging herself? And so, I became angrier, I owned my emotions, I became proud of them. And now you might think these emotions overtook me but, as Mona Eltahawy likes to say, anger sets you free.

And so it has. Anger has enabled me to embrace my emotions with confidence as they have a right to exist. I’m a 26-year-old woman and I have experienced a lot of bullshit since my birth but all that anger is only 2 years old. Perhaps I’ve been preparing it for the first 24 years as my anger came out boiling hot.

I now walk the streets with so much confidence, you’d think I was the mayor. I yell at men when they catcall me. I stand up for myself when I’m harassed. I fight for my rights, my rights as a human being to exist without people taking advantage of me every single day. It gets exhausting, I don’t refute that. It gets so exhausting.

After every fight I take up, I cry. I become my smallest self, shocked at the idea that life is always going to be like this as a woman. Simple things will never be enjoyable to us. Going to the grocery store, means having a 60-year-old man stare lustfully at your chest. Going to the club means having your body being groped by men you’ve never laid eyes on. Taking a taxi back home means being stressed about the idea that at any moment the driver might lock the car up and rape you. Life sucks as a woman. But you know how we can make it more bearable?

With anger.

I wish I could show you the faces of all the men who harassed me, their reactions when I yelled back, when I fought back. It’s amusing in fact. They never see it coming. It takes a second for them to realize what just happened. People forgot that we have voices, men forgot how strong we are, how competent we are to fight back. Now imagine your least favorite person. Imagine screaming at them when they least expect it — it’s enjoyable, no?

After every angry outburst of mine, I realize that things could have ended differently. He could have hit back, he could have killed me for all I know. Sometimes, showing your anger has to be done differently to stay safe, which should not have to be the case. That doesn’t mean we have to stay silent. Write down your anger. Send your friend an angry voice message. Say the F word on repeat. Scream into your pillow. Cry at the idiocy of it all.

COVID-19: 19 new cases, one death (media)

19 new cases with COVID-19 and one death from the virus were confirmed in the last 24 hours in Kosovo. Six persons recovered from the virus during this time. There are 331 active cases with COVID-19 in Kosovo.