by N. ZEJAK
Just about all Serb leaders in Kosovo and Metohija agree with this statement.
"In the first wave after the arrival of KFOR, Albanians frightened Serbs with a series of murders, and many tend to forget that former president Milosevic called on the Serbs to withdraw from Kosovo with the army and police, and abandon their houses and apartments. During the second period, since 2000, with the help of so-called humanitarian organizations, urban centers have been cleansed of Serbs and their property sold. In the third phase we have the beginning of the sale of land and the completion of the sale of apartments and houses. In the more than three years since KFOR deployment, according to official statistics, there is hardly a square foot of Serb-owned land left along the Pristina-Pec, Pristina-Podujevo and Pristina-Kosovska Mitrovica roads, with the exception of some 20 land plots in Babin Most near Vucitrn and four meadows in the village of Bresje near Kosovo Polje. Everything else has been sold," says Svetislav Grujic, a Serb representative in Kosovo Polje.
"State-owned land has also been usurped, and in most cases private farms have changed ownership without the knowledge of the owner. UNMIK has issued a decree on sales under pressure and blackmail but that's only on paper. It is obvious that in Kosovo there is not a single apartment, house or farm that was not sold under threat, out of dire necessity or blackmail. Upon assuming office in the Kosovo Provisional Government, I made an official request that UN police conduct an investigation of abuses in the Pristina land registry office, and it was subsequently determined that the head of that office, Shar Plana, had illegally appropriated 45 hectares [approximately 115 acres] of state-owned land in downtown Pristina. In the basement of the same building, which houses the headquarters of Ramush Haradinaj's political party, several thousand blank, notarized deeds of title, excerpts from the urban plan and records of entry in the land register were found. This says enough about the manner in which Serb property is being usurped. The Serbian Government must form a task group to compare the land register prior to and after the arrival of UNMIK in Kosovo," says Goran Bogdanovic, minister of agriculture in the Kosovo government. The Coordinating Center and displaced Serb municipalities have no information regarding property sales.
"I don't know the exact number of Serb properties sold in the last four years because until recently there was no tracking mechanism in place. The transactions would be concluded on the basis of an agreement because there was no approval by the Serbian finance ministry," says Branko Radujko, advisor for Kosovo and Metohija to Serbian premier Zoran Djindjic. Instead of concrete steps by the government to prevent further sales, Radujko cites developments such as "the battle for the position of the state in Kosovo".
"It's a sad story, unfortunately. The Coordinating Center has no precise data on the property that has been sold and it's questionable whether anyone can reproduce such records, representatives told us; unofficially, the Coordinating Center also has no plan to prevent sales. They do not exclude the possibility that the number of Serb-owned houses, businesses and farms will be an important factor in reaching a decision on the final status of Kosovo, however, there are other issues decided on by the Government. According to data from the Committee for the Protection and Return of Property, a non-government organization, more than 60 percent of Serb-owned property in Kosovo has been usurped.
"In order to protect property, especially state- and church-owned property, the state must launch an initiative for return to the status prior to 1999, and subsequently for restitution to the status prior to the decree of 1963 confiscating and nationalizing property. 'Habitat' had the task of returning usurped apartments and houses to their Serb owners. At the end of last year they promised that from January onward they would vacate 1,000 apartments per month; however, to this day nothing has been done," says Vladimir Cucic, the director of the Committee for the Protection and Return of Property.
Member of the Kosovo parliament presidency and vice-chairman of the Coordinating Committee for Kosovo and Metohija Oliver Ivanovic says that this problem is "a purely moral issue".
"If Serbs do not wish to remain or return, no government can keep them here. However, in my opinion, the state can encourage people to stay and prevent sales through various forms of assistance because tomorrow it will be too late to point to owner's titles from some earlier age," believes Ivanovic.
BLIC: Will the percentage of Serb-owned property influence the final status of Kosovo?
"The participation of the Serbs is far greater in terms of real estate than in terms of demographics. I would not speculate but they say that more than 50 percent of real property is still Serb-owned. This is a very important fact but no one is taking it into account. The state is only saying: 'Don't sell your property.' And no one is prepared to sacrifice their family for the sake of state and national interests."
What is to be done?
"I have proposed the formation of a fund which would provide a Kosovo benefit which the state would pay to all families that chose to stay and thus provide them will a means of basic sustenance. Then the state could ask the people to stay and protect its territory. It would have the moral right to say: 'Don't sell your property.'"
Are the Albanian offers more and more attractive?
"The Albanians are not very interested right now and are buying only strategic locations in central Kosovo and Kosovsko Pomoravlje, in Brezovica. If these locations were to become theirs, the status of Kosovo would be redefined in a way far more favorable to them. There would be so few of us left that there would be nothing to talk about.
The Serbian and the Albanian attorneys share the proceeds equally. The most frequent buyers of real property are Albanians who have already illegally appropriated it.