Organisers of a festival designed to promote cultural exchange between Kosovo and Serbia say Belgrade authorities have caved in to pressure from hooligan groups by banning this year’s event.
In a statement released on Thursday afternoon, Belgrade police cited security concerns as the reason to cancel the event Mirëdita Dobar Dan (meaning “Good day” in Albanian and Serbian), which was due to start in the Serbian capital yesterday.
However, youth groups from Serbia and Kosovo who organise the festival accuse Serbia’s interior ministry of having failed to protect them from nationalist hooligan groups who picketed the festival and intimidated its participants.
“During our presence in the area where the festival was supposed to happen under police supervision, hooligans managed to place a padlock on the back entrance, effectively creating a situation where people are being held hostage in full view of MUP [Serbia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs] members who claim they cannot intervene,” the organisers said in a statement.
Days before the start of the festival, messages such as “Get out!” and “You are not welcome!” were painted on the outside of the venue where the festival was meant to take place, they added.
Initiated in 2014 to bridge ethnic divisions intensified by the 1998-99 war between Kosovo and Serbia, Mirëdita Dobar Dan was due to celebrate its 10th anniversary this year.
Its cancellation comes amid signs of growing nationalism and a crackdown on liberal voices in the region. Last month, tensions were intensified by a resolution for the United Nations to mark 11 July as an international day of commemoration for the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, which Serbian leaders have painted as an unprecedented assault on the Serb people.
Belgrade does not recognise the 2008 declaration of independence by its former province Kosovo, which is overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian.
“Unfortunately the banning of the festival was all too predictable”, said playwright Jeton Neziraj, whose play Father and Father was due to open the event on Thursday.
“For the last six years Serbian politics has invested a lot of effort in presenting any cultural cooperation between Kosovo and Serbia as a Trojan horse, stigmatising it for internal populist purposes,” Neziraj told the Guardian.
Belgrade’s mayor, Aleksandar Šapić, said earlier this month he was “expressly” against the festival being held in his city, claiming that its organisers were falsifying history by denying that Kosovo was Serbian. “Under the cover of cultural activities, they always directly question the cultural and historical heritage of Serbia and our people,” he said.
Serbian politicians have criticised the festival, which was due to take place from 27 to 29 June, for coinciding with Vidovdan, a national and religious holiday on 28 June that commemorates Serbian holy martyrs who fell during the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. In response, the festival’s organisers had scheduled no public events for that day.
