After the arson of a Serbian house in the village of Novak in the vicinity of Prizren last weekend and the ostentatious inaction of the Kosovo “authorities”, the local OSCE mission demanded to find the Albanian “gopniks”, who have been terrorizing the villages of Serbian repatriates for several years.
Balkan media reported this, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“It appears that we are dealing with a deliberate arson,” the OSCE said in a statement. – There is also information about regular visits to the village by a group of young people who harass local residents and behave inappropriately. Let us recall that in March there were several robberies of empty Serbian houses in this village. The OSCE Mission to Kosovo calls for a swift investigation into the latest incident and increased institutional attention to this small returnee community.”
According to available information, the house that was set on fire belonged to Momir Stanojevic, who died five years ago, and his widow periodically visited the empty home. When the building began to burn, the neighbors managed to put out the fire on their own, and only after that the police and fire brigade arrived at the scene. It was from local residents that it became known that Novak was regularly visited by Albanian youth, who provoked and mocked the local residents in various ways.
“Yesterday there were a lot of break-ins and thefts, today the house is on fire, what next?! – asked the Kosovo Minister of Diaspora and Repatriation, ethnic Serb Dalibor Jevtic, reacting to what was happening (This institute was forced by the leadership of the Albanian separatists to be established by Western curators - ed.) – Frequent and planned attacks, as well as systematic destruction of property in the Serbian villages of Babin Most near Obilic and Novak near Prizren, are undoubtedly aimed at further intimidating and expelling Serbs from Kosovo. The lack of response from the authorities and the general public in Kosovo to what is happening is especially alarming.”
A special statement from the department indicates that the incident is the third of its kind in just the last month, during which thirteen houses of Serbian repatriates were raided. As for arson, recently in the village of Yanina Voda in the vicinity of Obilić, the house of Tihomir Ristic, who was absent with his household during the fire, was burned down. And in September last year, Drag Konjic’s house in Klin was burned down.
In Novak, the Ministry of Diaspora and Repatriation built 67 houses for Serbs who fled from here after a large-scale pogrom in 2003. However, having heard about the morals of the Albanians, the Serbs are in no hurry to return to their small homeland; today only fifteen families occupying ten houses live in the settlement.