Members of the Kosovo movement Self-Determination and Kosovo police clashed on Saturday near Podujevo in northeast Kosovo when the police prevented the passage of the movement's activists who were on their way to the border crossing Merdare on the border with Serbia, the Serbian and Kosovo media reported, saying that a police officer was injured and a dozen demonstrators were arrested in the clashes, including the leader of the Self-Determination movement, Albin Kurti.
The protesters threw stones at the police, who responded by firing tear gas and using water cannons to disperse the protesters.
The protesters were ordered to unblock the Podujevo-Merdare road for traffic as soon as possible.
Before his arrest Kurti said the police should not be blocking the passage of protesters, but rather the import of Serbian goods as a way of securing trade reciprocity. He stressed that Serbia was an enemy and that its policy towards Kosovo was hostile.
Kosovo Interior Minister Bajram Rexhepi called on the protesters to disperse and unblock roads. Special police units were deployed to stop protesters from moving along the road from Podujevo to Merdare, some five kilometres from the border crossing. According to media estimates, between several hundred and several thousand protesters took part in the demonstrations.
Police in full riot gear were deployed along roads leading to the Merdare border crossing and the border crossing Bijela Zemlja in east Kosovo, which is on a road leading to the southern Serbian municipality of Bujanovac, the media said.
The Self-Determination movement previously announced that it would stage on Saturday a peaceful blockade of the Merdare and Bijela Zemlja border crossings in order to make the Kosovo government implement a resolution adopted by the parliament last December envisaging full reciprocity in trade with Serbia.
Announcing the border blockade, Kurti said that reciprocity was an EU value and that EU countries mutually recognised one another and developed relations on the basis of reciprocity. There is no example in the world of free trade between two countries which do not have a peace agreement and do not recognise one another, Kurti said, adding the blockade was directed politically against Serbia and not against the Serbs in general, or against the Kosovo Serbs.
