In an interview for "Vreme" in September last year Ivanovic said that "in the last couple of years in Mitrovica, we have had over fifty cases of burning cars, throwing hand grenades and two unsolved murders. All of this is happening in a territory of two and a half square kilometers, which is completely covered by security cameras. It is obvious that the police are afraid not to hold a grudge against the perpetrators, or the perpetrators are connected with the security structures"
The conversation with Ivanovic was held in Belgrade, where, as he said, he spends at least a few days every month in order to take a short break from the atmosphere of anxiety and fear that has recently enveloped Mitrovica.
TIME: When you were finally released after three and a half years, did you notice that something had changed in the north of Kosovo?
OLIVER IVANOVIĆ: Yes, the situation has changed for the worse. The feeling of threat and fear among the people is incredible. Of the hundred or so people I talked to during the first few weeks of freedom, there is not a single one who did not ask the question of security in the first few sentences. Let's be clear: these people are not afraid of Albanians, but of Serbs, local kabadahs and criminals who drive in jeeps without license plates. Drugs are sold on every street corner, every parent is afraid of it. It happened before, but not to this extent, and those people did not behave as arrogantly as they do now. The police watch all this and do not react, so the citizens feel unprotected, even though the Kosovo police in the north are all our people, Serbs. Some of them are experienced police officers who previously worked for the Ministry of Interior of Serbia, but they don't do anything either.
For the sake of illustration, in the last couple of years in Mitrovica we have had over fifty cases of burning cars, throwing hand grenades and two unsolved murders. All this happens on the territory of two and a half square kilometers, which is completely covered by security cameras. It is obvious that the police are afraid not to hold a grudge against the perpetrators, or the perpetrators are connected with the security structures. Some say the police are just incompetent, but I find that hard to believe. I mean, they are incompetent, but not that much.
Your car was also set on fire recently, and the perpetrators were not found.
Yes, my car was set on fire as soon as I announced that I would run for mayor. First, they set fire to the car of Dragiša Milović, a doctor from Zvečan, with whom I talked about drawing up a joint list for that municipality, and immediately after that to me. It was enough for them to see us together a couple of times talking.
Who are the people who do such things?
These are criminal structures linked to politics in which there is panic fear of our candidacy. For someone who has infrastructure, who disposes of huge money and has the support of the Government of Serbia, our small party should not be a problem. However, they know what the people think about them and they are afraid that they will lose if the citizens have an alternative. In the last local elections, there was no alternative - I was in prison, and Milović did not run. Now they are panicking.
Some of the people on your list suddenly changed their minds...
Yes, the most recent example is Dr. Zoran Spasojević, who was sixth on our list. Seven days before he withdrew from the list, Dr. Spasojević's specialization was revoked. Towards the end of his specialist studies in Belgrade, which he paid for out of his own pocket, he was transferred to Leposavic, allegedly due to an urgent need. It was quite obvious pressure on him to withdraw. He did not give in then, but, after being harassed for two days, he still gave up his candidacy and publicly supported Srpska list. I can only imagine what they threatened him with because a man like that is not easy to break.
MP Slaviša Ristić recently made similar accusations in an interview for "Vreme" and said that these criminal structures are directly connected to the Serbian Progressive Party, but he did not mention anyone by name. You yourself said that the north of Kosovo is a small community, why doesn't anyone dare to publicly say who these people are that everyone is afraid of?
Because in such cases you should not speculate unless you have solid evidence, and if you have, you should present it to the judicial authorities of the pire rather than presenting it to the public. I have the impression that both judges and prosecutors are afraid of them. In my case, obviously there was no such thing, but they immediately put me in custody and kept me there for three years without any evidence. They could freely accuse me of the earthquake in Mexico, because I am just as guilty of that as of what they are accusing me of.
Did they also convince you to withdraw your candidacy?
No, they know very well that it would be pointless. They didn't even set fire to my car to scare me, but to scare the people around me. To a certain extent, they succeeded because four candidates from the SDP list have dropped out so far. I regret that I have to say that some of my former party comrades from SDP, flyovers, played a dishonorable role in this, they transmitted messages and warnings... I filed a criminal complaint against unknown persons for three cases of intimidation, first Serbian and then the Kosovo Prosecutor's Office. I expect someone to react, because if this continues, there will be serious consequences.
It is tragic that after eighteen years of living in fear of extreme Albanians, Serbs are now afraid of extreme Serbs and are moving out because of it. That change happened while I was in prison, and I may notice it better than those who lived through it gradually, but it is obvious: people are scared and silent or are packing to move.
If the state does not do something to stop this trend, there is a serious danger that the north of Kosovo will collapse and that everything we have protected all these years will disappear. We used to know where the front was, but now we don't know because the front is between us.
It is obvious that the intention is to establish the monopoly of the Serbian List on the political representation of Serbs in the north, and this is a party whose leaders proudly declare that they are "the voice and hand of Aleksandar Vučić in Kosovo"...
Unlike Belgrade, where political conflicts mostly take place on a verbal level, we in Kosovo are quick-witted, tend to plan and react violently... Maybe that's why we survived. These are very dangerous things, especially when conflicts are fueled from Belgrade. No one should put the party's interest above the national interest, and the national interest is for the Serbs to remain in Kosovo and for Serbia to treat them equally with its other citizens.
In the last parliamentary elections, the Serbian List took nine out of ten parliamentary seats reserved for Serbs, and they expect a similar result in the local elections.
They can only achieve this by stealing votes. They are not actually campaigning at all, they are just preparing to steal. They keep repeating that they are a state project, but so far I haven't heard a single new idea from them. If the elections are fair, they cannot win.
How was the support of the Serbian List for the formation of Ramush Haradinaj's government, in which the former commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army lead the main speech, received among Kosovo Serbs?
It was poorly received. First, I must point out that it was clear from the beginning that this "war coalition" would most likely form a government, so there was enough time for citizens and the public to prepare for such a thing. Instead, rumors started that Haradinaj was a butcher and a monster, and we even imposed diplomatic sanctions on France because of him. And then, all of a sudden, we go into a coalition with Ramuš as prime minister. What is worse, they did not even participate in the negotiations on the formation of the government, as if the support of the Serbs was taken for granted, instead of pursuing a proactive policy. Instead of waiting for the negotiations to end and for Bedzet Pacoli to change sides, they should have stated their demands immediately. Our people say that the agreement is made at the bottom of the field, not at the top when everything is finished.
Serbs in Kosovo should be represented by capable, serious politicians, not party activists. It's not that there are no capable people, but when you look at the Serbian list, there is not a single university professor, lawyer, engineer, doctor... People who are not respected in their environment cannot count on being respected by Albanians and foreign diplomats. They simply ignore them, because why would they talk to them when everything is decided in Belgrade? Remember how the previous Kosovo government dismissed Minister Jablanović less than a month after he was appointed, because of a clumsy statement, and Srpska lista did nothing to protect him. Why didn't they leave the coalition then? What they are doing is not politics, but pure improvisation.
President Vučić justified his support for Haradinaj with practical reasons, because without entering the government, the Serbs would not have received the Association of Serbian Municipalities...
Haradinaj has just announced that the formation of the ZSO is being postponed until 2021. I talked about this back when the Brussels Agreement was signed: they simply won't implement it. If Isa Mustafa, who had a significant parliamentary majority, was not allowed to do that, how do you expect Haradinaj, who has a majority of only a few deputies, to implement it? You don't think he's going to risk the fall of his government because of some ZSO, do you?
On the Albanian political scene, there is an attitude that Serbs should no longer be given any concessions and that any such act is tantamount to treason. This attitude is also very pronounced in public opinion: they simply will not allow the Serbs to get some structure that would stand between the central government and the municipalities.
That's why, back in 2014, I appealed from prison to start forming the ZSO body immediately, and not to wait for permission from Pristina. It is about something that was signed in Brussels and that we should have applied unilaterally, just as we unilaterally applied some other items. They can be temporary organs, call them what you want, but they should be functional. This had to be done for two reasons: to show that we will not give up and to save time, because it is a new institution that still needs to be worked out. Even if ZSO were to be formed tomorrow, it will be years before it will work at full capacity because all those municipal services need to be institutionally connected.
Was it even wise to join a coalition that is unpopular even among the Albanians themselves due to corruption and nepotism and which, due to a thin majority and internal conflicts, can fall apart in a few months?
It was not wise to enter into any coalition without some guarantees. Not only did they not participate in the negotiations, but they also did not receive guarantees from a foreign factor that the ZSO would be formed. If the coalition falls apart, none of the promises made by Haradinaj will be valid anymore, because a new government will come. If they had asked for guarantees from the ambassadors of the most important countries, members of the Quinte in which the representative of Russia also sits, that would mean something. They could not even ask for such a guarantee because no one takes them seriously.
But Vučić is taken seriously in Brussels, in Moscow and in Berlin, and now, here, he has shaken hands with American President Donald Trump four times in New York. Doesn't that mean anything?
Not in this case, because it is a matter of local importance, in which the central governments will not interfere, but leave it to their ambassadors. The ambassadors of the countries that recognized Kosovo are here to develop better relations with the authorities in Pristina, and they will not spoil them because of the ZSO. The only way to put that issue on the agenda is to change the situation on the ground, that is, to form the ZSO yourself.
We had news that Russian President Vladimir Putin, through his party (United Russia), supported the entry of the Serbian List into the Kosovo government.
It was a scam. In fact, they included a man from the Serbian List in the SNS delegation that traveled to Moscow, and then presented it as Putin's support for joining a coalition with Haradinaj and, what's worse, Putin's support for the Serbian List in the local Kosovo elections. Russia immediately denied this "news" through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
It is such a shame that words cannot describe it. The other day I was passing by the monument to Shchedrin (the Russian consul who was killed in Kosovo at the beginning of the twentieth century) in Mitrovica and it seemed to me that he too turned red with shame. No one has the right to play with Russia or any country whose support we need for the sake of cheap political points.
What do you think of Vučić's call for an internal dialogue on Kosovo?
I think it's a good idea, although it could have been done earlier. I have no reason to doubt that the dialogue will be as open and comprehensive as announced, but I do not think it is good for it to be time-bound. Kosovo is too sensitive a topic to be resolved hastily. In addition, it is important to include all parties, large and small, non-governmental organizations, the Church... This is necessary in order to prevent the current government, and tomorrow's opposition, from making a decision that the new government will cancel, and then everything from beginning. A complete consensus will never be achieved, but it is important that as many political entities as possible agree. It is precisely the frequent changes in policy towards Kosovo that have brought us to where we have stopped.
I repeat that there is no need to rush, because at the moment we do not have a serious negotiating partner in Pristina anyway, since the government there is unstable, and it will take at least a year or two until things are cleared up. If we hurry, the only thing we can hope for is the recognition of Kosovo's independence.
Brussels, however, is in a hurry, and the pace of normalization of relations with Kosovo is a decisive factor in Serbia's European integration...
Yes, but in the process of European integration, we should first of all focus on internal reforms, to arrange the country so that it resembles the members of the EU. After all, even if we were to recognize Kosovo tomorrow, we would certainly not enter the EU before 2025. Therefore, why immediately sacrifice something that is so important to our identity only to sit on the EU donkey bench for years?
You recently expressed the view that it would be best if Kosovo were resolved according to the Cypriot model. Why do you think that would be acceptable to Brussels, when they keep repeating that they don't want a new Cyprus in the EU?
The Cyprus model is not a solution, but it is a good way to approach a delicate issue. Hasty moves could easily lead to an uncontrolled conflict, which is in nobody's interest.
I know that they see Kosovo as a time bomb and would like to remove the detonator as soon as possible through the normalization process, but it could happen that instead of the detonator they remove the fuse, so that detonation occurs. You shouldn't pick on such a sensitive matter. And besides, as long as KFOR is present, there is no danger of a serious Serbian-Albanian conflict
I see no serious reason why the current situation, which is not ideal but is stable, should not be maintained until a permanent solution is found, so let it last another ten years if necessary. In fact, only individual members and some bureaucrats in Brussels are in a hurry, and the EU does not have a harmonized position and will not have one until all members recognize Kosovo.
You yourself pointed out at the beginning of this conversation that there is a reason for the north of Kosovo to collapse on its own, due to bad politics and a difficult economic situation that encourages emigration. Are you sure that in ten years there will be enough Serbs in the north to maintain themselves as a community?
It is a real danger, and I am giving this interview in the hope that someone will read it and that the state will start treating Kosovo as a strategic, not a party issue. The municipalities in the north should be an example of legal work and good administration. Instead, the Government of Serbia dismisses the rector of the University by decree, which is not allowed anywhere in the world. Intellectuals, doctors, engineers are leaving, because they don't see the perspective, and neither do many others.
In Belgrade, they don't seem to understand that the Serbs in Kosovo, regardless of internal differences, are not and can never be opposition to the government in Serbia. If they continue to treat us as before, it may happen that we leak out, so we will all be in Serbia, and Serbia will have a much more serious problem with Kosovo. It's high time we stopped playing with serious things.
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