Eviction from the apartments in the North, or the ‘sticker’ policy towards Kosovo

This happened back in early 2000s, say, 2010. I was on the bus from Leposavić to Raška, with a college colleague. We briefly stopped at the Jarinje Crossing Point, for the Kosovo Police to check IDs, and again in Rudnica, a kilometer or so further, for the Serbian Police to check identity of passengers.

There enters a police officer, and routinely inspects IDs provided by passengers. Suddenly, there is a commotion. A middle-aged man begins yelling at an elderly gentleman, obviously a pensioner. “Boo, boo, shame on you”, comes from a few rows of seats away. Outraged jeering and shouts keep going: “You betrayed Kosovo for 40 Euros! Shame, shame on you! You betrayed Kosovo for 40 Euros!”

The irate gentleman repeated those shouts several times, so for a moment we thought he was going to demand the pensioner be kicked out of the bus. It was so sad to see this old man silently taking it all on, looking at his fellow traveler with fear and confusion.

My colleague and I looked at each other, breaking in a terse laughter of sorrow and disbelief. We instantly understood this situation, and how it was wrong, on so many levels, to blame this senior citizen for anything going on in Kosovo just because, judging by the conclusion inferred by the shouting man, the pensioner had a Kosovo-issued identity card that entitled him to the Kosovo pension set for 65-plus old ones.

It is unfortunate that even today one could easily find individuals ready to place the burden of responsibility for the situation in Kosovo and the current position the Serbs find themselves in, onto that same elderly gentleman, or, for that matter, onto any other citizen just trying to find their way in the complex political circumstances. The decades-long narratives dictated by state officials often generate an environment in which the responsibility is transferred onto citizens instead of the politicians who had put the former into an unenviable position.

Such lightly produced verdicts that the Kosovo Serbs were the ones who ‘betrayed’ something can be found in presently notorious sentences: “They sold all they had in Kosovo, came here to Belgrade, took jobs, bought apartments”. I better do not get started on how no one bans the authors of such verdicts to come to Kosovo and live here. There is a long list of sentences that stigmatize people from Kosovo. Perhaps we could name this a point of contact between Serbs and Albanians who are, continuously and in a number of ways, being stigmatized in a segment of the Serbian public space.

The sporadic transfers of hot potatoes into the hands of citizens, here, the Kosovo Serbs, have been going on for decades. The senior citizen from the beginning of our story is left with a sore memory of that episode, but probably without any major consequence.

Back to present day, some other people are left without their homes because the State of Serbia convinced them that everything was all right. Namely, at the end of this May, the Kosovo Property Comparison and Verification Agency dispatched several dozens notices to the owners of apartments in northern Kosovo, notifying them of duty to vacate those apartments. Citizens are left shocked since, according to them, they have duly paid up those apartments to respective socially owned enterprises that had owned the apartments prior to this purchase.

This concerns residential units in which during 1980s and 1990s lived Albanians whose tenancy rights were taken away once they yielded to the pressure of Milošević regime and either left, or were expelled from, that-time (Yugoslav) institutions. The Serbs who were later on given those apartments to use, in subsequent years were offered to buy them out, which they did – and paid, confident that the purchase made them real estate owners. The Kosovo Property Comparison and Verification Agency deems that-time decisions to be discriminatory against Albanians and does not recognize their validity, hence it ordered the current tenants to vacate those apartments. However, although presently topical, this matter is not a new one, given that it had already been addressed by previous directorates and agencies functioning in Kosovo. As soon as in early 2000s, the UNMIK administration issued Regulation stipulating, among other things:

“Any person whose property right was lost between 23 March 1989 and 24 March 1999 as a result of discrimination has a right to restitution in accordance with the present regulation. Restitution may take the form of restoration of the property right (hereafter ‘restitution in kind’) or compensation. Any person with a property right on 24 March 1999, who has lost possession of that property and has not voluntarily disposed of the property right, is entitled to an order from the Commission for repossession of the property. The Commission shall not receive claims for compensation for damage to or destruction of property.”

Subsequently, UNMIK transferred responsibilities to Kosovo institutions, and presently the Kosovo Property Comparison and Verification Agency deals with this matter. The decisions that the Agency served to citizens cannot be appealed, which means they are left with no recourse and have to move out.

Indeed, the timing and the way of implementing this decision are tendentious, in particular given that the actions of Kosovo institutions over the past two years have especially been focused on the North of Kosovo. Also questionable is the level of this Agency’s activism in vacating the apartments owned by Serbs across the South of Kosovo, with tens of thousands of property disputes lasting for as long as two decades. But the decision is by no means an unexpected one.

Anyhow, with the policy of the Serbian authorities embodied in stickers formerly affixed on the plates but in fact glued over the eyes of citizens, none of the above did happen. The bill for years of irresponsible and populist policy vis-à-vis Kosovo is coming due, only not to be paid up by those who had led the people into this defenseless position.

Even though there was enough time to properly and completely resolve their residential status, the burden is now shifted onto the people left homeless even though they had paid the dues.

The irony is that, if some of the affected families decide to leave Kosovo, they can easily meet the gentleman from the beginning of this story only to be told “you betrayed Kosovo”.

The irony is that, if some of the affected families decide to leave Kosovo, they can easily meet the gentleman from the beginning of this story only to be told “you betrayed Kosovo”.

This content was funded by a grant from the U.S. Embassy in Pristina. The opinions, findings, and conclusions stated herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the State Department.

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