Kosovo Artists Use Culture to Promote Justice and Peace

'Miredita, Dobar Dan' - the festival's name means 'good day' in Albanian and Serbian - is intended to showcase Kosovo culture to a Belgrade audience.

But it has been repeatedly targeted by demonstrations - such as when Rona Nishliu, a famous singer from Kosovo, held a concert during the first festival in 2014, and when former Kosovo President Atifete Jahjaga said she intended to make a speech at the event.

Before the 2018 festival, Serbian police confiscated three photographs by the Kosovo Albanian artist Eliza Hoxha, which were due to be exhibited at the festival, as she was crossing the border into Serbia.

The photographs included images of symbols of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which is considered a terrorist organisation by the Serbian government. Serbia's Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic stated that by confiscating the photographs, he had prevented "the promotion of a terrorist organisation in the name of culture".

Despite such reactions, art and culture are increasingly being used as a tool for understanding and coping with the past in both Kosovo and Serbia, as an adjunct to other methods of promoting post-conflict justice and seeking reconciliation.

Artistic interventions can provide "informal counterparts for the most significant mechanisms of transitional justice: truth and reconciliation process, public lustration, public apology, psychological reparation, demand for public access to governmental records, and others", suggested Sanja Bahun in her chapter on the subject in a 2015 book entitled 'Theorising Transitional Justice'.

Orli Fridman, an associate professor at Singidunum University in Belgrade, where she heads the Centre for Comparative Conflict Studies, suggests that the 'Miredita, Dobar Dan' festival is an...