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PEOPLE & ARTS Wednesday 11 december 2019

Kosovo, Albania to boycott Nobel Literature award ceremony

By FLORENT BAJRAMI Kosovo, and the United in Hoce e Madhe, close
LLAZAR SEMINI Nations governed the to Hoce e Vogel. “Those
Associated Press province until 2008 when who gave it to him are not
PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — Kosovo declared indepen- senseless.”
Kosovo and Albania say dence from Serbia, which Posters were plastered
they will boycott the Nobel Belgrade hasn’t recog- around Hoce e Madhe
Literature Prize ceremony nized yet. that said “Congratulations
Tuesday to protest the “It is intolerable, unaccept- to our Nobel!”
award being given to Aus- able to promote notorious Tensions between Kosovo
trian writer Peter Handke writers with such a prize, and Serbia have been
who both countries link to writers who make reason- worsening in recent times.
the war in the former Yugo- ing of the crimes in the re- The European Union-facil-
slavia. gion,” said Shkelzen Maliqi, itated dialogue that start-
Handke was an opponent a Pristina-based analyst. ed in 2011 has been stalled
of NATO’s airstrikes against The frontpage of Koha since last year after Kosovo
Serbia in the Kosovo War of Ditore daily newspaper set a 100% import duty on
the late 1990s and spoke in showed Milosevic ap- all Serbian and Bosnian
2006 at the funeral of auto- plauding Handke with the goods, despite internation-
cratic Serbian leader Slo- Nobel Prize. al calls to lift or suspend the
bodan Milosevic. That was, nevertheless, not measure.
Kosovo was part of Serbia the opinion of the ethnic Kosovo insists on full rec-
until 1999 when NATO inter- Serb minority in Kosovo. ognition of its statehood
vened to stop Milosevic. “Whatever he wrote about 2019 Nobel Prize laureate in literature Peter Handke speaks at as the end result of the
Kosovo’s outgoing foreign the Serbs, he wrote it good a press conference at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, talks, something which for
minister, Behgjet Pacolli and frightfully,” said Dimit- Sweden, Monday Dec. 6, 2019. now isn’t acceptable to
has instructed the am- rie Dimitric, an ethnic Serb Associated Press Serbia.q
bassador in Sweden “to
boycott the ceremony,”
adding that “a writer who
supported Milosevic and
his genocide in Bosnia and
Kosovo does not deserve
the Nobel Prize.”
In solidarity with Kosovo Al-
banians, Albania’s ambas-
sador to Sweden won’t at-
tend Tuesday’s Nobel cer-
emony, the Foreign Ministry
said Monday.
The country is boycotting
the ceremony because
of Handke’s support for
“Slobodan Milosevic,
the ‘butcher of the Bal-
kans,’ who led so many
mass atrocities during the
bloody collapse of the for-
mer Yugoslavia.”
Albanian acting foreign
minister, Gent Cakaj, who
was born in Kosovo, tweet-
ed that the “justification of
war atrocities during the
Yugoslavia break-up must
not be rewarded.”
For Milazim Krasniqi, a resi-
dent of Hoce e Vogel, a
small village 80 kilometres
(50 miles) southwest of the
capital Pristina, he can’t
believe “that Milosevic’s
friend and supporter gets
the prize in the 21st cen-
tury.”
There were more than 40
people killed in the village
during the war.
More than 10,000 were
killed or died in total in the
1998-99 war.
A 78-day NATO air cam-
paign ended Serb rule in