Tear gas, water cannon and burning bins returned to the streets of Pristina on Monday as protesters clashed with police outside Kosovo's parliament and government buildings over a bill that would curb the powers of the Hague-based war crimes court — weeks after it sentenced former president Hashim Thaci and three others to a combined 81 years in prison.
What happened on Monday
Several hundred demonstrators spent most of the day outside parliament in central Pristina, vowing to blockade it until lawmakers passed legislation limiting the Kosovo Specialist Chambers — the war crimes court established under Kosovo law but based in The Hague. Earlier in the day, lawmakers had approved the first reading of amendments to the law that created the court, but stopped short of a final vote.
When the session closed in the evening, protesters moved toward police lines in an apparent attempt to stop lawmakers from leaving. Police responded with tear gas and a water cannon; some demonstrators threw firecrackers and stones at officers. At least 17 people were injured, including six police officers, police said, and three protesters were detained. Armoured vehicles were deployed as bins burned near the parliament.
What the bill would change
The amendments would cap prison sentences at 15 years, allow defendants to appeal rulings to Kosovo's Supreme Court, permit sentences to be served in Kosovo, and enable the country's president to grant amnesty to convicted individuals. In effect, they would strip the Specialist Chambers of much of its power to try war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the 1998–99 war between ethnic Albanian guerrillas and Serb forces, limiting its jurisdiction to crimes committed inside Kosovo in the war's immediate aftermath.
Why it is so divisive
The fury traces to the court's sentencing of former president Hashim Thaci and three other senior former Kosovo Liberation Army figures to a combined 81 years — Thaci himself received 25 years after being found criminally responsible for murders, illegal arrests, torture and cruel treatment by KLA fighters. In Kosovo, the four men are widely regarded as heroes of the independence struggle, and the verdicts prompted outrage and rallies across the country.
The court was set up in 2015 under international pressure to prosecute former KLA fighters accused of wartime and post-war crimes, and opposition parties and veterans' organisations have long criticized it as an imposition from outside.
Prime Minister Albin Kurti voiced skepticism about the amendments, calling them "rushed and insufficiently analysed and thought through" in parliament. Kurti and his party backed the first reading but declined to support a second vote on the same day — a second vote demanded by the demonstrators and by the amendments' sponsor, Thaci's former party, the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK).
The episode underscores deep divisions in one of Europe's poorest nations: between those who see the Hague court as delivering long-delayed justice for wartime crimes, and those who see its verdicts as an assault on the heroes of Kosovo's independence.
Sources: Reuters; AFP via Time Bulletin.
Watch: Protesters clash with police in Kosovo over the war crimes court law — Pristina, October 5.
Music in the accompanying news reel: Kevin MacLeod - Hitman (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0