Serbs in Gracanica banned from displaying Serbian flag on Vidovdan, PM Macut makes urgent statement

Photo: Tanjug/STR

Prime Minister of the Republic of Serbia Djuro Macut said today that the decision made by the provisional institutions of Pristina, which prohibits the use of Serbian flags and state symbols during the Vidovdan holiday celebrations in Gracanica, represents a continuation of the policy of systemic intimidation and institutional pressure on the Serb people, who persistently survive in Kosovo and Metohija, in the land that has been theirs for centuries.

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The prime minister stressed that the ban on the use of national symbols on Vidovdan, a day that has deep-rooted historical and spiritual meaning for the Serb people, testifies to a profoundly disturbing reality, where the rights of a community are being systematically extinguished in the heart of Europe.

Macut stated that today it is obvious that, although the European Union condemns Albin Kurti's moves, everything he does has the wholehearted support of Western countries.

Such moves, which are not isolated incidents, but elements of a gradual erasure of the Serb identity from the territory of the southern Serbian province, are unacceptable for the Republic of Serbia, the prime minister said.

Macut recalled that the Serb community in Kosovo and Metohija has been exposed to various forms of oppression for decades, which is increasingly taking on the character of planned exclusion and persecution, the ultimate goal being - demographic and cultural erasure.

Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija, the prime minister underlined, are under both physical and legal threat, while institutional discrimination is carried out with the tacit consent of the international community.

The prime minister added that it must be clearly and unequivocally said that the love for the fatherland, being proud of the Serbian tricolor and the vow that our ancestors left us in 1389, in the Battle of Kosovo, represent the foundations of our identity and our survival.

No decision, no ban, can extinguish that flame, the Serb people, despite any pressure, will continue to bear witness to the truth, protect their values and celebrate their holidays with dignity, as they have been doing for centuries, concluded Prime Minister Macut.

(Telegraf.rs)