BELGRADE, March 17. /TASS/. The self-proclaimed authorities in Pristina are guilty of institutional persecution of ethnic Serbs, using law enforcement agencies to push them out of the country, a high-ranking Serbian government official said.
"Extremists in Pristina no longer hide behind angry mobs. Now, it is not rioters but people in police uniforms, as well as political and judicial structures, backed by the Albanian elite, who are carrying it out. The mob rule we saw in March 2004 is now Pristina’s official policy and it seems that no one in the international community who sees [Kosovo Prime Minister] Albin Kurti as a legitimate partner is much concerned about this," Petar Petkovic, the director of the Serbian government’s Office for Kosovo and Metohija, said in an article for the Politika daily on the 21st anniversary of the massacre of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija.
According to Petkovic, Belgrade sees what is going on and will spare no effort to prevent violence against Orthodox Serbs in Kosovo. He warned Pristina’s self-proclaimed authorities against "dreaming of seeing Serbs fleeing their homes again."
After 2024, the Kosovo authorities have shut down practically all Serbian government institutions in Kosovo’s northern areas, where ethnic Serbs make up the majority of the population. Pristina-controlled police forces regularly conduct raids against local Serbs, detaining them under various pretexts.
Riots erupted in Kosovo on March 17, 2004 after the murder of a Serb teenager. The Serb population subsequently rallied against the incident. Several days later, two Albanian teens drowned in the Ibar River allegedly trying to run away from Serbs. Albanians accused Serbs of committing a willful murder out of revenge. During a rally in memory of the drowned boys in the city of Mitrovica, tensions flared, with clashes taking place on the bridge across the Ibar, which divided the city’s Serbian and Albanian parts. Eight people (six Albanian and two Serbs) died, around 300 people, including 11 peacekeepers, were hurt.
This incident sparked violence against the Serbian population across all of Kosovo. Around 900 people, including about 100 peacekeepers, were injured in the unrest, which involved nearly 50,000 Albanians. More than 4,000 ethnic Serbs had to flee their homes, 35 Orthodox churches and monasteries, with a number of Medieval monuments among them, were destroyed.