Incidents Scare Serb Villagers in Western Kosovo

A spate of recent incidents in Kosovo Serb villages in the western Kosovo Peja area have left locals feeling nervous, although it remains unclear what provoked them.

Since last week, the village of Gorazdevac saw two shooting incidents, one at the police and one at a car with Belgrade license plates.

There have been attempts to desecrate local monuments, one dedicated to teenage Serbian boys killed while swimming in the Bistrica river and one to NATO bombing victims.

Graffiti reading "Revenge" was also daubed in Albanian on the wall of a building close to the local church and cemetery.

"In these parts, we don't need much pushing for things to escalate. Especially when you [Kosovo Serbs] are found in small numbers," the head of the Office for Communities for the Peja Region, Slobodan Petrovic, told BIRN.

"These incidents might or might not be politicized but the media has rushed to politicize them - both those in Belgrade and those in Pristina, each in their own way, as if we were going back to the old days. This scares local people," continued Petrovic.

He said that the police has been alerted, and it has since been confirmed that the individual who shot at the police on Tuesday was a "known criminal" from Albania, not a local.

"This comes at a bad time because I was optimistic that things were getting better. People have started coming back, rebuilding their homes, or finding places to live. This has made some of them regret their decision," Petrovic noted.

Most ethnic Serbs fled the Peja region during and after the conflict in Kosovo and have permanently relocated to Serbia. But some have moved back or at least come to visit often.

As a result of the latest incidents, some member of the ethnic Serbian...