In a move that predictably led to increased tensions between Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority and its ethnic Serbian minority, Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti recently installed ethnic Albanian mayors in four Serbian-majority towns in northern Kosovo after the ethnic Serbians boycotted the elections.
Violence and road blockages ensued, starting at the end of May that to date have led to injuries in dozens of United Nations peacekeeping members and even more locals. As a result, NATO has increased the number of peacekeeping forces in Kosovo in an attempt to prevent further violence.
Kurti’s actions brought quick condemnation from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and French President Emmanuel Macron that he had fomented an unnecessary crisis. And in the latest attempt to calm the stormy waters, former President Bill Clinton, largely credited for ending the Kosovo war nearly 25 years ago, has traveled to the Balkans once again in the hopes of restoring order.
Their shared concerns, and the ethnic Serbian resistance, has thus far not dissuaded the prime minister. Instead, Kurti has used state agencies to attempt to target media outlets reporting on the crisis.
In a surprise hearing in mid-June, the Kosovo Ministry of Industry, Entrepreneurship and Trade suspended the business certificate of television station Klan Kosova and its parent company, and the ministry filed charges against company executives for the alleged crime of naming Kosovar cities as Serbian cities in what would otherwise amount to a clerical error. Days later, ministry officials also revoked outright the business certificate of cable provider Artmotion LLC, citing it as a serious threat to public security.
Artmotion since 2018 has provided subscription cable TV services to a million Kosovar homes via a 14-channel lineup in cooperation with such companies as Sony, Paramount and NBCUniversal. As Klan Kosova transmits on the Artmotion cable network, this move virtually shut down the TV station.
The action prompted the International Press Institute to join other media freedom and journalism organizations in expressing alarm, calling the actions of the Kosovar government “extremely serious” and saying it poses a “threat to the exercise of media freedom in Kosovo.”
The very act of informing Klan Kosova of the charges was an act of intimidation, pure and simple — a lone company representative was hauled before Minister Rozeta Hajdari and six or seven bureaucrats without any foreknowledge of the purpose of the meeting. The representative was told that one of Klan Kosova’s business documents included the names “Peje-Serbia” and “Gjakove-Serbia” — again, a clerical error at most.
Various legal scholars and human rights advocates, including the Kosovo Journalists Association and former Kosovo Chief of Protocol Adnan Merovci, argued that suspending Klan Kosova’s license was more political than legal. Embarrassed by legal analysis showing it lacked authority to suspend the license, the Ministry of Industry’s Kosovo Business Registration Agency revoked the suspension and instead filed the criminal charges.
Kosovar journalist Adriatik Kelmendi expressed shock that this kind of censorship against the nation’s leading media outlet could occur in a democracy, done to intimidate “a people whose ideal to live freely has never been suppressed,” he stated on Klan Kosova’s website, in remarks translated from Albanian. The station, he said, “maintains a critical and watchdog approach toward various phenomena within the institutions of the government and society.”
This government move is a stain on Kosovo’s claim to be a democratic state. “There are powers that intend to close the media. As in places like Russia and Belarus, as in Serbia and North Korea,” Kelmendi said.
Despite the potential for a quick resolution of this clerical error, tensions between ethnic Serb and ethnic Albanian Kosovars — and between Serbia and Kosovo — remain high.
Kurti’s hard-line stance has only heightened the resistance of his ethnic Serbian population and enraged the Serbian government. Kosovo’s leading daily newspaper, Koha Ditore, reported on June 19 that Serbian protesters had again blocked roads to prevent buses and trucks from Kosovo from entering Serbian territory. Meanwhile, the European Union has placed sanctions on Kosovo, including halting a large portion of economic aid, and has threatened more measures if Kurti does not back down.
Speaking in the capital of Albania over the Fourth of July weekend, Clinton urged the Kosovo government to stop its divisive actions in the Serb majority north. In a speech, he said, “What major political issue can possibly be advanced by how those four little towns are run?”
“It’s easy for the Albanians now in the majority (in Kosovo) to try to use the moment to make a point. But the real thing we need to do is to stop this foolishness,” Clinton added.
That “foolishness” surely must include the hostile actions taken against the nation’s most popular cable TV network and TV station.
Only when Kurti backs down from this clearly political assault on Klan Kosova and Artmotion — on stifling the freedom of speech in his own country — and allows the ethnic Serbians in the north to run their own local affairs will this crisis be ended.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Duggan Flanakin is a director of policy research at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a nonprofit that supports free-market solutions to environmental issues.
