We need your help now
Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.
You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.
If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.
Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
By continuing, you are indicating that you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
LAST UPDATE | 30 May 2023
THE SITUATION IN Kosovo remains tense today after last night’s clashes which injured 30 peacekeeping soldiers as the EU’s foreign policy chief calls for calm.
Earlier today EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell urged the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia to immediately de-escalate tensions, after “absolutely unacceptable” clashes in northern Kosovo.
He said he had spoken to Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti and Serbian President Alexander Vucic to tell them to avoid any “further unilateral action”.
“I asked both parties to urgently take measures to de-escalate tensions immediately and unconditionally,” he said.
Violence sparked by disputed municipal elections left 30 soldiers from a NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force injured on Monday after clashes with ethnic Serbs protesters.
NATO has announced that it is to move extra troops into the area.
There are 13 Irish troops based in Kosovo and are working in the mission’s headquarters – the Irish Defence Forces said they were safe.
Borrell said he had spoken to Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti and Serbian President Alexander Vucic to tell them to avoid any “further unilateral action”.
“I asked both parties to urgently take measures to de-escalate tensions immediately and unconditionally,” he said.
Borrell said Kosovo’s authorities needed to suspend police operations focused on municipal buildings in north Kosovo and ethnic Serb protesters should stand down.
He warned that the EU was “discussing possible measures to be taken if the parties continue to resist proposed steps towards de-escalation.”
Serbs, who account for about six percent of Kosovo’s population, boycotted last month’s elections in northern towns where they are in a majority, allowing ethnic Albanians to take control of local councils despite a minuscule turnout of under 3.5 percent of voters.
Many Serbs are demanding the withdrawal of Kosovo police forces, as well as the ethnic Albanian mayors they do not consider their representatives.
Tensions flared after Serbs tried to force their way into the Zvecan town hall yesterday, but were repelled as Kosovo police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd.
NATO peacekeepers tried to separate protesters from the police, but later started to disperse the crowd using shields and batons. Protesters responded by hurling rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails at the soldiers.
The protesters dispersed during the afternoon but vowed to rally again early tomorrow morning.
“We, as citizens of municipalities with a Serb majority, do not want tensions, but peace. It clearly suits someone else to create chaos and bring unrest to our area,” local Serb official Srdjan Milosavljevic told reporters.
NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg while in Oslo today said he “strongly condemned” the attacks on peacekeepers, adding, “such attacks are unacceptable and must stop”.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, but Belgrade and its allies Beijing and Moscow have refused to recognise it, effectively preventing Kosovo from having a seat at the United Nations.
Serbs in Kosovo remain largely loyal to Belgrade, especially in the north, where they make up a majority and reject every move by Pristina to consolidate its control over the region.
Reports on the ground said that the situation in northern Kosovo remained tense today as ethnic Serbs continued to gather in front of a town hall in Zvecan after violent clashes with NATO-led peacekeepers left 30 soldiers injured.
The NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) soldiers wearing full riot gear have put a metal barrier around the municipal building in Zvecan and are stopping several hundred Serbs from entering, an AFP journalist at the scene said.
Three armoured vehicles of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo police remained parked in front of the town hall.
KFOR had said the 30 hurt peacekeepers – from Hungary and Italy, according to their governments – had injuries including “fractures and burns from improvised explosive incendiary devices”.
Serbs are demanding the withdrawal of Kosovo police forces, as well as the ethnic Albanian mayors they do not consider their true representatives.
Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic said 52 demonstrators were hurt, three of them “seriously”. Five Serbs were arrested for taking part in the clashes, according to Kosovo police.
KFOR said the soldiers responded “to the unprovoked attacks of a violent and dangerous crowd” whilst carrying out its mandate in an impartial manner.
“To avoid the clashes between the parties and to minimise the risk of the escalation, KFOR peacekeepers prevented threats to the lives of Kosovo Serbs and Kosovo Albanians,” KFOR said.
“Both parties need to take full responsibility for what happened and prevent any further escalation, rather than hide behind false narratives.”
Kosovo police have described the situation in the north as “fragile but calm”, and called citizens “not to fall prey to calls for violent protests and provocations.
“The security situation in the north of the country has escalated and degraded to the point of endangering people’s lives,” police said.
Russia, Serbia’s traditional ally, accused the West of “deceitful propaganda”, saying the Serbs had been “trying to defend their legitimate rights and freedom peacefully”.
After last month’s election boycott, the EU and United States urged Kosovo’s prime minister not to install the newly elected ethnic Albanian mayors, but he went ahead.
Vucic met earlier today in Belgrade with ambassadors of the so-called Quint, five powerful NATO members that focus on the Western Balkans, but also announced meetings with representatives of Russia and China.
“One-sided moves from Pristina bring violence against Serb community, which distances us from lasting peace and stability in the region,” Vucic wrote on Instagram after the meeting with Western diplomats.
“Swift withdrawal of false mayors and members of Pristina’s so-called special forces is a condition of preserving peace in Kosovo.”
NATO strongly condemned the attacks against KFOR troops, adding that such actions were “totally unacceptable”.
A total of 19 wounded soldiers belonged to a Hungarian KFOR contingent. Four of them needed hospital treatment “due to shrapnel injuries” and one soldier needed to be operated on, but “none of them is in a life-threatening condition,” Hungarian ambassador to Pristina Jozsef Bencze said.
Belgrade placed its army on high alert last week when tensions flared, and ordered forces towards the frontier with Kosovo.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, and Belgrade and its allies Beijing and Moscow have refused to recognise it, effectively preventing Kosovo from having a seat at the United Nations.
Serbs in Kosovo remained largely loyal to Belgrade, especially in the north, where they make up a majority and reject every move by Pristina to consolidate its control over the region.
The dispute between Serbia and Kosovo go back centuries with Serbian nationals believing the region is the heart of its statehood and religion.
Serb view a 1389 battle against Ottoman Turks as key step in their national identity.
The flashpoint originates from Kosovo’s majority ethnic Albanians believing Kosovo as their country and accuse Serbia of occupation and repression. Ethnic Albanian groups launched an uprising in 1998 to remove Serbian rule.
The Serbian Government’s violent response prompted a NATO intervention in 1999 with a bombing raid and ground troops. This forced Serbia to pull out and cede control to international peacekeepers.
With reporting from Niall O’Connor and Lauren Boland in Brussels
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
’15,000 people were known to police in France as having been radicalised’
Islam….the religion of peace…………………………not!
Exactly my point. I’m french. Let me tell you that the police in France are verrrryy incompetent
@oliver I believe they are not so incompetent when it’s about harassing refugees…
@al ca The number of Muslims in France is estimated to exceed 4 million. But it’s ok to just ignore a fact that make your comment sound just irrelevant.
Ok so not incompetent? Explain to me what happend in the case of Jacqueline sauvage? If she went to show them her bruises they would have laughed at her. Tu est francais? Ce problem avec les Arab cest merci Sarkozy!
@oliverjunelle
The problem with the ‘Arabs’ in France is a problem for a very long time now and has more to do with your colonial history and a failed immigration and integration policy going back decades!
Sarkozy was still a little school boy when the problem started!
In all fairness the French treat the Muslims in their Country as second class citizens. They do not help themselves.
Are you really blaming the innocent French citizens for the savagery by Islamic terrorists!! Unbelievable
Rebecca, in fairness the French treat all foreigner’s in their country, as second class citizens.
No wrong. They isolate themselves into there own communities and seldom go beyond that. Just like parts of England like bradford
Yes I’m aware of that. I was talking about the social tension! That’s the fault of Sarkozy
@ Oliver it’s a social issue. .. Foreigners, with low incomes, were parked in the same areas by local administration. It’s well known. Also it started long time before that thing called Sarkozy showed up.
Yes I agree. But are those area’s walled off from society? No. They chose to isolate themselves of there own free will
You don’t see a contradiction there… people were kept away from city centres and miles away from where the jobs were. Besides there were no transport for years until people protested.
I spend a lot of time in France. You ask a French person what they think of Muslims and they call them every name under the sun.
I know plenty of French Algerians as I have Algerian connections and they integrate and behave like French but get treated like sh**. Give out all you want but I have first hand experience of this.
Cholly. This has been going on since the 19th century. Look up the French Algerian war. Educate yourself and then argue with me.
So you are blaming the French citizens? Are you a Muslim Rebecca?are you sympathising with the terrorists?
The problem with Islam in France is two things…one is that the French have bent over backwards in accommodating Islam without any demands..failure in integration is not talked about due to the thin line between racism and the truth, the ‘us and them’. The other is that many Muslims don’t speak out against so called extremists because they see themselves as the victims. They’re Muslim before their French.
@prouesse/prossie….more mumbo jumbo nonsense from you….if you’re going to draw attention to yourself with your apologist rubbish, at least form coherent sentences…lol
Oliverjumelle, would you say that the ordinary French citizen is unaware of France’s colonial history? I was surprised to discover that a large percentage of English citizens knew nothing of their own army’s history of operations around the world, and especially in Ireland. Is it a colonial thing, drawn from fear, similar to the WW2 German citizens isolating themselves from their army’s attrocities? I’m just wondering what the reasons are for citizens isolating themselves.
@mistart Not my fault if you can’t read… I won’t apologize for that either.
These are the people and the ideology LÊ James Joyce are ferrying into Europe by the boatload.
How do you know?
No they’re not its all home grown , very little of the terrorist or the one who plotted terrorist attack came with the refugees, not making apologies for their actions but it’s a fact . France isolated Muslim population from ww2 onwards in suburbs you wouldn’t house your dog in . They have no feelings of belonging into neither France nor the country where there grand parents came from and therefore are very easily indoctrinated.
So France deserves whatever it gets…?
What the current wave of migrants and the French and European jihadists have in common to some extent is their religion (those arriving now from Libya are a far more mixed group). And a fundamentalist version of Islam is the ideology that supports violent jihad against unbelievers. Some of the migrants will already be extremists since there are active jihadist groups in most if not all parts of the muslim world. A proportion of the others will adopt that ideology over time – it’s statistically inevitable. So yes, migration is connected to home-grown terrorism.
No one deserves to have innocent civilians butchered not even Iraq Syria or Libya… My point was it is not refugees perpetrating those atrocities its homegrown been in France Belgium or Germany and I was just explaining why it’s so east to recruit jihadists in those countries
That explanation holds no water whatsoever. There are millions if not billions of people around the world who experience discrimination, prejudice, racism, persecution etc. The overwhelming majority produce nothing comparable to violent jihadist movements. And violent jihadist movement exist in places where muslims are the majority population and are in no way oppressed (try Bangladesh for starters). It is a global phenomenon which has existed for 1400 years in a multitude of conditions and cultures. The single connecting thread is fundamentalist Islam.
If you understand that ideology you will understand why one of its expressions is a sense of victimhood and persecution where no such conditions objectively exist and even where your group is in fact the persecuting group. It’s a victimhood internal to the belief system and independent of objective conditions. Thwarted supremacism looks and sounds exactly like genuine victimhood.
‘victimhood’ three times in the last paragraph: you need a thesaurus
William bayle- at the end of the day france was still helping these people by housing them and so on,why didnt they educate themselves or their children and move on if they dont like it so much,make something of themselves for their younger generations, useless pieces of shit. Too used to taking for free,they have a totally different look at human life rared to be like that. I dread to see europe in 20 years
Sean…i have to agree with you there.
@sean France was helping those people by housing them ? What ? France went recruiting in its colonies to get cheap labour to rebuild the country after ww2. They housed them as cheap as possible in 30 storey high towers away from everything, those buildings were not even maintained properly. Would have been very hard to integrate. You say they should have educate themselves, fine true what medium ? Very little service was provided to them to help integration not even buses to go to the nearest town . I agree with you on one point I would hate to see France and Europe in 10 years never mind 20
Yes i do believe that william. They where given the option of going to france to seek refuge from their worthorne country’s they wer not forced to slavery yes it did help france in rebuilding itself economicly. Ok maybe housing and loacating them had a different standard compared to todays world but i can garuntee u that there where french citizens familys in thoses area’s too who have evolved much differently. Same goes for syria today, europe taking in the refugee’s is good from an economical view, it will boost the economy in the long run it wil provide cheaper labour to area’s that need it eventually when they start working… Look at Our children these days all want to go to college be educated and get brilliant jobs for themselves and so on compared to 100 years ago. who picks up the small jobs that are left vacant? Refugees mostly! It happens everywhere where the economy and the standard of life is growing faster than the population turn over
“15 year old boy”….or in Ireland – A vulnerable young person.
you don’t find 15 year olds vulnerable? thats worrying
15,000 + 1,000,000+ migrants.
God help Europe. Lots of terror to come
God is the problem, she’s not going to help…
A Mormon id say
A fifteen year old with mental health issues, prozac will cure him.
Damning video of Clinton fainting at 9/11 ceremony today she had to leave early and lost a shoe.
She’s a liar and now she’s been caught again.
I’m sure the journal will get around to covering it in a day or two once they’ve picked up the correct spin from the Clinton campaign.
What’s damning about the video?
prats
Said it before. And will say it again. Devils Island. Perfect for a European Gitmo. Round every single Islamist on every European Security Service watch list and ship them out.
there’s no need to repeat yourself
If I was an Islamic terrorist organiser and had control over these 15,000, I’d tell them to act chill and continue waiting for the number grow.
“if”? sure….
Fook Pisslam.
Here we go again with the same non-sense some commenters love serving here: migrants – though the article has nothing to do with them – mean terrorist; Muslims are bad bad people; the situation is not complicated at all, it’s just a matter of political willingness to jail anyone in sight or not… And so on!
Where in my comments did I say muslims were bad people?
who says its you?
Here we go again with the same apologists sticking their heads in the sand, unable to recognise that Islam is causing more horror among its believers and to others around the world.
Tourettes Tariq should be along shortly to offer moral support to Prouesse the fucķtard
It’s a French thing. I said that the problem with Arabs in France is the fault of Sarkozy and she implied that by saying the word Arab I ment all muslims were bad. Typical French thing to do. She used a snippet of the point I was making which got a lot of thumbs up. And used it against me. Using it to mean something opposite of what I ment. I know she is French too. I looked at her profile
Brain Damage is a little angry animal that keeps on pushing little grunts.
@ al .ca You seem to have a very selective way of looking at things. Read the previous comments, and the non-sense you can find actually contains some variations.
2017. Pour Hollande? Macron? Sarkozy? Ou le Penn? Given your comments I’d say your a supporter of the latter!
Oliver, it’s not solely a French thing. It’s a standard response across Europe to those who point out integration problems. They deliberately misrepresent what you said and assume things you haven’t said or implied. It’s also used by the Islamist propagandists and those are what you’re dealing with here. Judge for yourself but I’d advise against treating them as if they were genuine.
Yes but the French are notorious for doing it constantly
I believe you. That would explain a lot about the state of the country. What’s the cause do you think?
Angry animal? You must have me confused with your child rapist prophet, fůcktard
Brain damage, you may call yourself anything you want.
Oliver I doubt a FN voter would follow the FOG. Look at my profile again… “the French” do this and that. .. just speak for yourself for a start.
@Marlow “they deliberately misrepresent what you said”… then you add “it’s also used by Islamists propagandists and those are what you’re dealing with here”. Great demonstration of contradicting what you say by your own actions.
Fdg* not the FOG …
Le Penn is compleatly against any kind of immigration to France. Same as her father was. Forgive me for making a judgement based on your comments. Le Penn wasn’t against the German occupation of France and beleaved in the one race policy his daughter marine is preaching today. The current problems regarding the anti Muslim views in France stem from the 13th November attacks. Which were committed by Belgian born jihadists! So that puts the current views of racists in France to bed
Le pen I should say
I see what you mean. The attacks in Charlie hebdo and the Hyper Casher obviously traumatised people. Some actually argue the problem regarding terrorism in France v started way before. Don’t forget what happened in 1995. This started vigipirate.
Your verbal diahorrea is getting worse, fůcktard.
I’m not forgetting 95 or af 8969! Af 8969 was hijacked because France imprisoned algierian government opponents during the civil war in 1994
These communities refused to integrate with the outside world
I’m not saying that. The Charlie hebdo attacks were terrible yes. But it that could have been avoided and so could the hyper cashier if the police had acted on the radicalization of coulibaly.
@Dain….thats exactly what it is, incoherent rubbish. That vile thing never makes any sense
@mistart and brain damage you surely fit together.
@oliver
The problem with the attack on Charlie Hebdo is that Charlie Hebdo had received several threats. That wasn’t the case for the Hyper Casher. So saying the police could have done this and that, might be valid in the case of Charlie Hebdo only.
And no, “these communities” did not refuse to integrate at all! They had to fight to get some attention and a few infrastructures. But it’s not over yet. For example, it could be nice to see experienced teachers in schools in difficult areas instead of sending those who just finished their training. “Those communities” don’t decide which teachers they can find in schools. Get it?
Look I’m from Bordeaux. I have a friend of mine who is a secondary school teacher in Marseille. In one of those schools. She got punched in the face by a group of Moroccan thugs from one of the cites. Luckily the police did something as the attack was caught on cctv .and your saying they want to integrate? I’m not saying that the hyper casher had got threats. The radicalization of coulibaly should have been flagged by the police when he left prison. And plus 2 hours after the bataclan attack abdelsalam got passed a police checkpoint in northern France on his way back to Belgium!
have your say