Kosovo Police detained last night a young man from Leposavic, Lazar Milosavljević, because of a T-shirt bearing the image of Prince Lazar on a map of Kosovo, accompanied by verses from a Serbian church hymn: “On three holy and three integral, we go to Kosovo plain.”
According to Milosavljević, the officers entered his apartment without a warrant, seized the shirt, and issued him a fine. Kosovo Police confirmed to KoSSev that a fine was imposed and denied that the apartment was searched.
Milosavljević told the Srpska Demokratija party, which also published a video of the incident, that around 10 p.m. he was stopped by four plainclothes policemen as he was returning from taking out the trash.
“At first I didn’t react when they called me to stop, thinking it was some kind of prank. Then one officer, an Albanian, jumped in front of me and asked what was on my shirt. The text was in Cyrillic. I told him – you can read it yourself. He managed to read it, then patrol cars with flashing lights arrived,” he said.
He claims he was not allowed to take his ID documents with him when he was brought to the police station. Later, officers accompanied him back to his home to collect them.
“They didn’t have a warrant, but they entered, looked around, noticed the Serbian flag, and asked me whose it was. They didn’t search, just looked. When they found nothing, they brought me back to the station, where I spent about an hour,” Milosavljević recounted.
According to him, police said that wearing the shirt amounted to a violation of public order and peace. The shirt was confiscated, and a monetary fine imposed.
Police: We escorted him for documents and to change his shirt
In additional comments to KoSSev, Petrit Fejza of the North Regional Police confirmed that officers accompanied Milosavljević to his apartment but insisted no search took place.
They were entitled to do so, Fejza said, because the man was in custody and had no documents with him. Officers went with him “so as not to lose sight of him” and also so that “he could change into another shirt.”
Asked which part of the hymn’s verses constituted an offense, Fejza responded that competent authorities had made that determination, without further explanation.
The Srpska Demokratija party described the case as “an attack on basic human rights, freedom of expression, and an attempt at intimidation.”
A growing number of detentions over symbols and inscriptions
This is not an isolated case. Over the past four years, detentions and fines against Serbs in northern Kosovo for T-shirts, murals, and inscriptions have become increasingly frequent.
This week in Leposavic police seized shirts reading “Kosovo is Serbia” and “No Surrender.” The day before, in North Mitrovica, two minors were detained for wearing shirts that read “Četnici North” and “You fight, the North will burn.”
In late August, another Leposavic resident was briefly detained because of a shirt, though police did not specify what was on it. Also at the end of August, Kosovo police confiscated and allegedly tore up a flag belonging to a women’s association and the “Kosovke” singing group from Batusa at the Brnjak crossing.
Just a week earlier, Kosovo authorities had painted over murals and graffiti in the north, including inscriptions such as “When the army returns to Kosovo,” as well as murals dedicated to Ratko Mladić, Patriarch Pavle, Metropolitan Amfilohije, and even young people who died tragically.
Other recent cases include the detention of a minor girl in Socanica for graffiti, a man in Leposavic at a gas station for “offensive or provocative” shirt inscriptions, and one of the most high-profile cases in Zubin Potok, where a man was sentenced to six months in prison – later commuted to a €3,000 fine – for wearing a shirt reading “We will not give you away, land of Dušan” and “Ravna Gora Movement – Ibarski Kolašin.” Prosecutors described the content as nationalist.
Preuzimanje i objavljivanje tekstova sa portala KoSSev nije dozvoljeno bez navođenja izvora. Hvala na poštovanju etike novinarske profesije.
