More than 150,000 Serbs massed on Thursday evening at a state protest against Kosovo’s declaration of independence, showing
their anger at the loss of their religious heartland.
“As long as we live, Kosovo is Serbia,” Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told the crowd from a stage in front of the old Yugoslav parliament building in Belgrade, to cheers and applause. “Kosovo belongs to the Serbian
people.”
“We’ll never give up Kosovo, never!”
protesters chanted back, as they waved national flags. A huge banner reading “Kosovo is Serbia” draped the front of the old parliament.
Police estimated 150,000 people packed the square, with columns of at least 10,000 more demonstrators filling up nearby boulevards as night fell.
The “people’s rally” was Serbia’s biggest demonstration since protesters filled the streets in 1999 to protest at Nato bombing and then in 2000 to oust nationalist autocrat Slobodan Milosevic.
The atmosphere was calm as Serbs of all ages listened to melancholic patriotic songs and poems and joined in songs about Kosovo, seen as the birthplace of a glorious medieval kingdom. Before the rally Belgrader Milan Vukosavljevic said it was important to show the strength of Serbian felling against Kosovo’s independence, which most see as an illegal move despite Western backing.
“It’s an invented state, shame on Europe and on the whole world,” he said. Serbs from across the republic and from Kosovo had poured into Belgrade on hundreds of free buses and trains.
Schoolchildren were given the day off. Far to the south, at a border post between Kosovo and Serbia, several hundred Serb army veterans stoned Kosovo riot police who, backed by Czech troops in riot gear, stood their ground until the protesters dispersed. No one was hurt.
Nato peacekeepers said they were determined to stop a repeat of Tuesday’s destruction of two other border posts by Serbs.
In Banja Luka in the Bosnian Serb Republic, several people were injured when protesters holding aloft portraits of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Serbia’s chief ally in its opposition to Kosovo, clashed with police in front of the US consulate.
Analysts said the motivation for the mass march in Belgrade was more bitterness and frustration than the virulent nationalism harnessed by Milosevic to lead Serbia into disastrous wars with its fellow Yugoslav republics in the 1990s.
The government has condemned hooded rioters who stoned the US and EU embassies right after Kosovo said it was seceding on Sunday, but is firmly behind Thursday’s march.
The rally was later to march to the city’s biggest Orthodox cathedral for prayers for the salvation of Serbs in Kosovo.
Some 120,000 Serbs live there among 2 million Albanians, half in the north next to Serbia, the rest in southern enclaves. Belgrade wants them to stay, to keep alive its claim on the region. “We must have a rally, but I don’t think it will change anything,” passer-by Vera Popovic told Reuters television.
Serbia has protested in world forums and recalled envoys from Washington and European states recognising Kosovo, most recently from Italy on Thursday. There is little else it can really do, but Russia will ensure Kosovo never gets a UN seat.
The government has said it will not resort to violence to try to regain the province it lost to UN control when a Nato air war forced its troops out in 1999.
A tenth of Serbia’s territory, its Albanian majority rejects Serbian rule, pointing to its crackdown on a 1998-99 insurgency that killed some 10,000 people and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes, prompting Nato to act.
“The anger Serbs feel right now is understandable, it’s part of the process that comes before acceptance,” said a Belgrade-based Western analyst.