The Kosovo Ministry of Infrastructure started installing new road signs in the north yesterday. „We have undertaken to remove all Serbian traffic signs written in Cyrillic in the north and the entire territory of Kosovo, replacing them with official signs of settlements as per the laws of Kosovo,“ said the Kosovo Minister of Infrastructure, Liburn Aliu.
Yesterday, the KoSSev team filmed the workers who, with the assistance of the Kosovo Police, on the road Mitrovica – Lesak – Jarinje, took down the existing monolingual signs in two alphabets, replacing them with bilingual ones – first in Albanian, then in Latin Serbian.
Aliu pointed out last night that this action will continue in the following days until all the signs are replaced.
Not only signs displaying the names of towns will be replaced, but also those showing the names of certain settlements.
An avalanche of mutually opposing reactions, with a focus on the Cyrillic alphabet by both sides
After we recorded and shared the video showing the removal of the old signs and the installation of the new ones yesterday, an avalanche of reactions arrived from both sides.
Despite the mutually opposing reactions of the Serbian and Albanian sides, both have placed a focus on the Cyrillic alphabet.
While Albanian users of social networks approved the move to remove the Cyrillic alphabet, many did so while using insulting terms and language, and Serbian officials who reacted interpreted it as a further form of majoritarianism.
„Serbian Cyrillic has survived for centuries, it will also survive a small tyrant“ – reads the reaction of the head of the Kosovo Office, Petar Petković. Srpska Lista says that those who thought that after the decision to return the land to the Visoki Dečani monastery, something in Kurti’s approach to the Serbs had changed, received an answer now – before the decision was officially registered in the cadastre.
While accusing the Kosovo government of continuing its fight against Serbian identity in Kosovo, the Serbian Democracy party states:
„Today, it is the turn of the Cyrillic alphabet and Cyrillic signs, and the imposition of the Albanian language as the primary language in Serb-majority municipalities, even though according to the constitution and the law, Albanian and Serbian are completely equal, and the constitution and laws oblige institutions to promote the right of the people to nurture and strengthen essential elements of their identity, i.e. their religion, language, tradition and cultural heritage.“
Aggressive attempts at assimilation are at hand and an attempt to subjugate the Serbian identity, by the institutions that should be fighting against it, they added.
Slaviša Mladenović, the Commissioner for Languages at the Cabinet of the Prime Minister of Kosovo, also reacted. In his words, the organization of topographic markings on the signs in the majority Serbian areas should have been placed in the reverse order.
„The Law on the Use of Languages provides for the equality of official languages, but topographic signs should also take into account the ethnic composition of the inhabited areas. The sequence of the language on these signs had to be reversed,“ Mladenović wrote on Facebook.
Previously, Deputy Kosovo Ombudsman Srdjan Sentić shared a similar reaction in a statement for KoSSev.
Signs at the local level should reflect its population, Sentić pointed out.
With the new Albanian leadership in the North, the language also changed
The change in the use of language in the north, however, is not a new occurrence.
With the change in the ethnic structure of the municipal leaderships in the North, at the very beginning of the mandate of the new mayors, the boards displayed in the municipalities themselves were changed – the inscriptions are now written first in the Albanian language and in a bolded font, followed by the Serbian inscription in Latin, as well as English, in regular font.
Also, in Serbian, Kosovo is written as „Kosova“ – „Republic of Kosova“, which is a term often used at the central level.
“The letters and the font must be the same size in accordance with the principle and logic of equality,“ said Sentić, stressing that the Albanian and Serbian languages are equal as the official languages in Kosovo.
Observance of the Constitution of Kosovo and the Law on the Use of Languages and the use of the Serbian language in institutions are a paradigm of the position of the Serbian community and other non-majority communities in Kosovo, says Kosovo Deputy Ombudsman.
„There are few institutions that consistently and fully implement Article 5 of the Constitution of Kosovo and the Law on the Use of Languages, and, unfortunately, those institutions where language rights are violated on a daily basis are in the vast majority,“ he points out.
On the other hand, Self-Determination boasted about the news by downloading KoSSev’s video, without our consent, from our YouTube channel, cropping it to remove our logo, and publishing the video as their own, with a musical background and a similar message on the removal of Serbian signs, as the one shared by the Minister Liburn Aliu.
Below we share some of the comments the video received on social media.
What does the Kosovo law say?
According to the Law on the Use of Languages, communities and their members have the right to „freely maintain, express and develop their culture and identity, as well as to preserve and strengthen the essential elements of their identity, i.e. their religion, language, tradition and cultural heritage“.
„Official signs indicating or including the names of municipalities, villages, roads, streets and other public places shall be displayed in the official languages and in the languages that have the status of official language in the municipality.“
It also states that „measures aimed at changing the structure of the population in areas inhabited by members of communities to their detriment are prohibited. Kosovo will protect community members from policies and practices that aim at, or have the effect of, assimilation against their will.“
The issue of language and alphabet should not be politicized
In the last two years, there has been a noticeable removal of the Cyrillic alphabet, and the emphasis on the Latin alphabet when it comes to the names of certain central institutions in Pristina. So far, neither the Kosovo authorities nor Srpska Lista have announced themselves regarding this issue.
The ministry that still retains its Cyrillic inscription is the Ministry for Communities and Return, which until now was headed by ministers from the Serbian community. Also, personal Kosovo documents (passports and identity cards) still have Cyrillic markings.
The Serbian people use both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabet, and the Serbs in Kosovo, according to both the Law and the Constitution, have the right to their own alphabet, and this should not be politicized, even in Serb-majority areas, Sentić said in a statement for KoSSev.
„The issue of language is a human right and one of the main postulates of identity,“ he emphasized.
Preuzimanje i objavljivanje tekstova sa portala KoSSev nije dozvoljeno bez navođenja izvora. Hvala na poštovanju etike novinarske profesije.
