Two teenage boys, aged 15 and 16, from Zubin Potok were taken to the police station in North Mitrovica today, where they were fined for wearing T-shirts bearing what police described as “shameful or offensive content.”
The Kosovo Police, North Region, told KoSSev that officers spotted the boys at the bus station in North Mitrovica.
The officers objected to the slogans on their shirts: “Četnici sever” (“Chetniks North”) and “Ti se bori, sever će da gori” (“You fight, the North will burn”) – both associated with the Red Star football fan culture.
The teenagers were escorted to the station and fined under provisions prohibiting the “exposure of shameful or offensive content.”
They were questioned in the presence of a social worker and later released. Police said that the boys’ parents were notified, but since they could not arrive promptly, the questioning was carried out in the presence of a social worker and the uncle of one of the minors.
According to police, in cases involving minors, a social worker holds the same authority as a parent.
Srpska demokratija: Fan symbols cannot be grounds for arrests
Meanwhile, the Srpska demokratija party condemned what it described as “the latest rampage of the monoethnic Albanian police against children in the North of Kosovo.”
“After the choking of a high school graduate on the promenade, the cocking of weapons near Tsar Lazar, and other incidents in which the main perpetrators were precisely Albanian police officers, we have now witnessed a new form of abuse,” the party said in a statement.
They argued that the minors were simply wearing shirts with fan symbols.
“Wearing fan symbols that neither insult anyone nor break the law cannot be grounds for the arrest and traumatization of children,” the party underlined.
Srpska demokratija also called on the international community to react:
“To intervene, to deploy KFOR soldiers and EULEX police on every corner, and for embassies to urgently install their outposts in the North of Kosovo so that their very presence could prevent future assaults on young people and other citizens.”
The party concluded by pledging that it would “stand with the people on the ground, as always.”
Preuzimanje i objavljivanje tekstova sa portala KoSSev nije dozvoljeno bez navođenja izvora. Hvala na poštovanju etike novinarske profesije.
