Stores in Northern Kosovo Reopen

Shop in Kosovska Mitrovica

As of the morning on July 3, all stores, restaurants, pharmacies and gas stations in the four Serb-majority municipalities in northern Kosovo are open again and the taxi service is also back to normal. In the past two days all the facilities where citizens are purchasing basic goods were closed in protest against the 100-percent tax imposed by the Kosovo authorities on goods coming from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The decision to end the protest was reached at a meeting of businesspeople from the north who had organized it, as “the warning protest has demonstrated the strength, solidarity and readiness of the Serbs in northern Kosovo and Metohija to fight.” In the past two days Belgrade and the Kosovo Serb authorities had been warning of a pending humanitarian catastrophe, claiming that the vehicles trying to deliver basic necessities from Serbia to the area via alternative routes were shot at.

The stores in the north “will be closed for much longer every time we are shot at because we transport milk, flour, cooking oil, or newspapers in Serbian for the Serb people in the north of Kosovo and Metohija… We call on the international community to finally understand how dramatic the situation here in the north is and react to pacify Pristina before an incident that could lead to a point of no return occurs,” the conclusions announced from the meeting of the businesspeople says.

The Kosovo authorities do not allow the arrival of untaxed goods and refuse to lift the tariff, while Belgrade refuses to continue negotiations with Pristina unless the tariff is lifted or suspended. The Kosovo authorities claim there is no humanitarian catastrophe in the four municipalities and that the crisis was staged and orchestrated by Belgrade. The Serbs in the north can purchase goods in other parts of Kosovo but they refuse to do so, demanding that the tariff be lifted.