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KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Kosovo—A fight over license plates in the Balkans has gotten the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) involved.

Posters and graffiti can be seen throughout the Serbian-dominated part of the town of Kosovska Mitrovica in northern Kosovo that say, “No surrender—Serbian license plates and ID remain.”

Despite the European Union moderating bilateral talks, ethnically Albanian-dominated authorities in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, plan on September 1 to re-register vehicles featuring Serbian plates. However, recent protests jammed up border crossings between Kosovo and Serbia. Plus, a poll shows the majority of Kosovo-based Serbs plan to continue using Serbian-issued license plates.

“They will certainly provide resistance if Pristina attempts to ‘nationalize’ thousands of cars if their owners refuse to replace Serbian-issued license plates with Kosovan ones,” said Milica Andric Rakic. The project manager of Kosovska Mitrovica-based non-governmental organization New Social Initiative told Toward Freedom that Serbs may bow to a certain degree to pressure from Belgrade, but will not accept ultimatums from Pristina.

This dispute comes amid Serbia’s resistance to the European Union’s and the United States’ pressure to recognize the 2008 secession of Kosovo. But, as Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic recently pointed out, both entities refuse to acknowledge breakaway republics in Ukraine’s Donbass region.

Serbia-Kosovo Relations

Following the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia, the Serbian police and army were forced to withdraw from the country’s southern province, Kosovo. Then NATO troops entered Kosovo in June 1999, having remained since. Nine years later, Pristina declared independence, a move recognized by most Western countries. In southern Kosovo, ethnic Albanians make up over 90 percent of the population.

Serbia’s defeat, however, did not mark the end of the presence of Serbian institutions in Kosovo. In the north, as well as in certain places in the south, Serbs make up the majority of the population. Despite the secession, Serbia has continued issuing license plates and identification cards (IDs) to Serbs living in northern Kosovo.

“For Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti, those car plates are illegal,” Rakic said. “But for the local Serbs, they are the only ones they have.”

She said Serbs do not want to integrate into Kosovo’s legal and political system, despite occasional pressure that comes from Belgrade. For them, Kosovo is part of Serbia. That is Belgrade’s official position, too.

However, amid Western pressure over the years, Serbia has had to make concessions to Kosovo. For example, in 2011, Serbia agreed to create de facto border crossings with Kosovo, while Serbian police officers were integrated into the Kosovo police force. In 2013, Belgrade called on Serbs living in northern Kosovo to take part in Pristina-run local elections. Two years later, Serbia’s judicial authorities in northern Kosovo were integrated into the Kosovo legal framework.

“The Serbs in northern Kosovo never supported such actions. That is why Belgrade was always either ‘bribing’ them or pressuring them to integrate into Kosovo’s institutions,” Rakic said, referring to various deals Belgrade has offered Serbs over the years to de-escalate the situation.

‘New Generation Will Not Put Up with Terror’

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic expressed solidarity with ordinary Serbians at an August 17 joint press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

“A new generation of young men in northern Kosovo will not put up with the terror that comes from Pristina,” Vucic said.

But, Sinisa Radovic, who owns a small souvenir shop in Kosovska Mitrovica, said he has no choice but to re-register his vehicle.

“Otherwise, they will confiscate it. Right now, if I drive a car with Serbian-issued plates south of Kosovska Mitrovica, the police can fine me and I would have to pay 250 euros,” Radovic explained.

In northern Kosovo, drivers have used stickers to cover Serbian state symbols on license plates. It is a temporary solution to the dispute.

On August 18 in Brussels, Vucic and Kurti failed to reach a deal, although EU High Representative for Foreign Policy and Security Josep Borrell claimed they have until September 1 to resolve the burning issue.

Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti has stated Serbian license plates are considered illegal. Rakic said it’s possible Kosovo’s authorities will force Serbs into Kosovo’s legal system without an agreement with Serbia.

“Such an attempt will undoubtedly lead to an escalation,” she pointed out.

‘Pristina Will Have a Big Problem’

Moreover, Pristina now requires Serbs living in northern Kosovo to replace their Serbian-issued identification cards with Kosovo documents.

Some challenges Serbians in Kosovo face are that Pristina neither recognizes Serbian-issued driver’s licenses nor Serbian-issued IDs.

Some Serbians hold Kosovo’s IDs, while others cannot get them for technical reasons. In order to apply for a Kosovo ID, one would have to attach a birth certificate. Serbians living in Kosovo would want a Kosovo-issued ID to be able to get Kosovo-issued driver’s licenses and plates to be allowed to drive south of the Serbian-dominated areas. Plus, to get paid by a Kosovo-based employer, they would need a Kosovo ID to be able to open bank accounts to receive direct paycheck deposits.

“But Pristina does not recognize birth certificates issued by Serbia’s authorities after June 1999, which means that someone who was born in Kosovska Mitrovica in 2000 does not legally exist for Pristina and cannot even apply for an ID,” Rakic explained.

Yet, some holdouts remain. One of them is local pensioner Mirko Trajkovic.

“This is Serbia. Why should I have any documents issued by illegal institutions in Pristina?” Trajkovic said, adding Belgrade will not betray Serbs in northern Kosovo.

This reporter found it difficult to find many Serbs who would comment. Many fear both the Serbian and Kosovo governments would retaliate.

Neither Belgrade nor Pristina effectively control northern Kosovo. The territory is a “gray zone,” where NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR) mission is expected to intervene in case of potential clashes between Serbs and the Albanian-dominated Kosovo Security Forces.

Meanwhile, panic has spread on social media and in Western media. Plus, the Kosovo prime minister speculated about an escalation leading to a new war in the Balkans.

Rakic thinks that’s unlikely, though. But she did suggest one possibility: Because Kosovo has rejected all Serbian proposals for a resolution, what could happen if no deal is reached by September 1 is Belgrade may call on the Serbian community in the north to boycott Kosovo-issued documents and license plates.

“Then Pristina will have a big problem, since it is logistically very difficult to confiscate thousands of vehicles.”

Nikola Mikovic is a Serbia-based contributor to CGTN, Global Comment, Byline Times, Informed Comment, and World Geostrategic Insights, among other publications. He is a geopolitical analyst for KJ Reports and Enquire.

Correction: The definition of Haitians of Dominican descent has been clarified. The length of the constructed portion of the border fence has been corrected. The name that Dominican officials had given for a victim has been updated, based on newly obtained information.

Whenever Malena goes to work or heads out to study, she tries to leave her home very early and return after dark. The 33-year-old mother of five does so for fear of being detained by the Dominican Republic’s immigration agents, even though she is Dominican.

Born and raised in a batey, a settlement around a sugar mill in the San Pedro de Macorís province, Malena is the daughter of Haitian sugar cane workers who arrived in the Dominican Republic in the 1970s, during the U.S.-backed Dominican dictatorship of Joaquin Balaguer.

Malena now lives in La Romana, also in the eastern part of the country. She has three sisters, two of whom have an identification card, acquired through a regularization plan for foreigners. Meanwhile, she and her other sister don’t have any documents. Close encounters with immigration authorities are normal.

“On a trip to the capital, Migration [officers] stopped the bus,” Malena recounted. “They said to a young man: ‘Papers, moreno!’ And since he only had a Haitian ID card, they took him off the bus. They only look for Black people. Luckily, they didn’t look at me. Sometimes by WhatsApp, I’m warned not to pass through some place because Migration is there. It’s always a danger.”

Malena and her sisters are some of the more than 200,000 people affected in the last 10 years by Constitutional Court ruling 168-13, according to estimates of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. This ruling deprived Dominicans of Haitian descent who had been born after 1929 of their citizenship. As such, the impacts of statelessness are rampant.

“My children have no papers,” Malena said. “Without papers, you can’t have health insurance. You can’t have a good job. I had to repeat 8th grade because I couldn’t take the national test. The same thing happened to my son.”

Mass Deportations

Since 2021, the government of Luis Abinader has been promoting a campaign of mass deportations of the Haitian immigrant community. This also affects Dominicans of Haitian descent. Those are people who were born in the Dominican Republic, have Haitian parents or grandparents, and often are stateless, as in Malena’s case. The head of the General Directorate of Migration, Venancio Alcántara, declared recently that between August and April, more than 200,000 Haitians had been deported. “A record in the history of this institution.”

This statistic shows its true dimensions when contrasted with the size of the Haitian migrant community and the population of Dominicans of Haitian descent. Although no recent official figures exist, Dominican Ambassador to Spain Juan Bolívar wrote an opinion piece in June that estimated both populations, when counted together, at less than 900,000 people, or about 8 percent of the country’s population of 10.6 million. Bolívar’s estimation is based on the 2017 National Immigrant Survey, conducted by the National Statistics Office.

That means 22 percent of Haitians had been deported between August and April.

This is why Dominican and Haitian organizations have warned of the danger that the mass deportation campaign could turn into a process of open ethnic cleansing and consolidate an apartheid regime, as previously reported in Toward Freedom.

Extortions, Theft and Violence at the Border

One of the flagship projects of the Dominican government is the expansion of a border fence. Previous governments built the first 23 kilometers (14 miles). Now, fence construction is continuing, so it can cover 164 kilometers (101 miles).  The Abinader government insists in forums, such as the United Nations, on the need for the “international community” to militarily occupy and “pacify” Haiti, complaining about the “burden” the neighboring country represents for the Dominican Republic.

However, the violence of the Dominican state has crossed the border into Haiti.

On March 19, members of the Dominican military attacked the Haitian border village of Tilory in the north, killing two people—Guerrier Kiki and Joseph Irano—and wounding others in their attempt to suppress a protest. According to a statement signed by Dominican and Haitian organizations, the Dominican military regularly engages in extortion and theft, including the seizure of motorcycles and other property, which led to the protest.

This is not the only recent cross-border incident. On August 5, an agent of the Dominican Directorate General of Customs (DGA) shot and killed 23-year-old Haitian, Irmmcher Cherenfant, at the border crossing between Pedernales and Anse-A-Pitres, in the southern end of the north-to-south Dominican-Haitian border. Dominican officials identified Cherenfant as Georges Clairinoir. The DGA and the Dominican Ministry of Defense justified Cherenfant’s killing as an instance of self-defense. Dominican social organizations questioned this version, pointing out contradictions in the official communiqués.

A human rights defender from Anse-A-Pitres who spoke with witnesses said the conflict began when the victim refused to pay a customs guard to be allowed to transport a power generator purchased in the Dominican Republic. After Cherenfant was killed, a struggle ensued, in which the guard was disarmed by Haitians. Subsequently, the Dominican military fired weapons of war indiscriminately into Haitian territory, injuring two people. The human rights defender, who works for a local organization, asked not to be identified for security reasons.

The Dominican government paid a compensation of 400,000 pesos (approximately $7,200) to Cherenfant’s wife the following week. But when the community mobilized on August 12 against military violence and in memory of the victim, the Dominican military threatened some of the protest organizers that they would be prohibited from entering Dominican territory.

‘A Vibrant Democracy’

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman visited Santo Domingo on April 12 and met with Abinader. According to State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel, they discussed their “deep ties” and “shared democratic values,” as well as regional security issues, including the “urgent situation in Haiti.”

During her visit, Sherman recorded a video message in the colonial zone of Santo Domingo, extolling the country as a tourist attraction and calling the political regime a “vibrant and energetic democracy… a strong and exceptional partner with the United States of America.”

In her tour of the colonial zone, Sherman can be seen escorted by the mayor of the National District, Carolina Mejia, a member of the ruling Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM), and by Kin Sánchez, a guide of the Tourism Cluster. Significantly, Sánchez was part of a mob led by the neo-fascist organization, Antigua Orden Dominicana, which attacked and shouted racist slogans against a cultural activity held on October 12 that was intended to commemorate Indigenous resistance. The complicity of the National Police caused nationwide repercussions.

After Sherman’s visit, Republican U.S. Congressmember Maria Elvira Salazar and Democratic U.S. Congressmember Adriano Espaillat, announced the U.S. State Department would withdraw a November 19 travel alert warning Black tourists of racial profiling by Dominican immigration authorities. The April 17 travel advisory only mentions risks related to criminality. Dominican Tourism Minister David Collado welcomed the move as a “very positive and appropriate” measure, describing the U.S. as a “strategic partner.”

Meanwhile, two days after Sherman’s visit, Haitian driver Louis Charleson was shot and killed by a military officer in the Dominican border town of Jimaní following a traffic altercation. A young Haitian man was wounded, too. The Haitian Support Group for Returnees and Refugees (GARR) denounced the impunity that covers the Dominican military and police in the border area. The agent who murdered Irmmcher Cherenfant last year in Pedernales continues to hold the same position at the Directorate General of Customs. He has not been dismissed or prosecuted.

“As always, Dominican officials present the simplistic argument of self-defense to comfort the offending soldiers with impunity,” GARR stated.

Vladimir Fuentes is the pen name of a freelance journalist based in the Dominican Republic.

EAST JERUSALEM—Last month, a Jewish tourist toppled a wooden statue of Jesus in a church in the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem. This was the fifth attack against Christians in five weeks.

Following the act of vandalism at the Church of Flagellation, Father Nikodemus Schnabel of the Dormition Abbey, just outside the walls of the Old City in Jerusalem, tweeted, “Welcome to the new Christian-hating Israel, encouraged and supported by the current government!”

Violence against Christians isn’t a new phenomenon in Jerusalem. But since Israel’s most far-right government in its history has taken over, the problem has significantly swelled.

Dr. Amnon Ramon, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research and an expert on Christians in Jerusalem, explained how Jewish extremists attacking Christians run in the same circles as members of the Israeli government’s coalition. That’s the case with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who’s a disciple of Meir Kahane, a Jewish supremacist rabbi who was assassinated in 1990.

“[The perpetrators] feel quite safe because they think that, in a way, the state is with them,” Ramon told Toward Freedom.

According to Protecting Holy Land Christians, a campaign Christian leaders in Jerusalem have organized to raise awareness about the plight of the religious community, hate crimes against Christians vary. They include spitting on clergy and on religious items, as well as verbal abuse, seizure of properties and vandalism of holy sites.

In December, the campaign emphasized that 2022 was “one of the worst years for Christians in Jerusalem to date.”

Attacks Against ‘Non-Jews’

Miran Krikorian experienced this anti-Christian violence first-hand in January when his restaurant, Taboon & Wine, located in the Old City’s Christian Quarter, was attacked by people wearing clothes indicating Jewish identity. The group of about 30 ransacked the bar, breaking chairs, tables and glasses, as well as pepper-spraying employees and terrifying customers.

“There’s a systematic rise against non-Jewish institutions, people and places,” Krikorian said, noting the harassment isn’t directed toward Christians specifically, but rather against all non-Jews.

Krikorian said he wasn’t surprised by the attack, having grown up in the Armenian Quarter, where violence against Christians is a common occurrence.

“After that we saw these kinds of incidents started [to happen] twice a day, even in the Armenian Quarter,” said Father Aghan Gogchyan, chancellor of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

Gogchyan said he didn’t want to blame Israel’s new government for the stark rise in violence against Christians, but rather suggested the culture of impunity is responsible.

“We are complaining about anarchy,” Gogchyan said. “That everybody can and does whatever [they] want and nobody will be punished.

Lack of Protection from Police

Krikorian called the police during the assault on his business, but said law enforcement didn’t arrive immediately.

“Once the police came, they didn’t do anything,” Krikorian said. “They just pushed back the settlers and that’s it.”

After the attack, Krikorian filed an official report at the police station. He added that three suspects were arrested, but no charges have been filed. Israel Police would not comment to Toward Freedom, citing the pending investigation.

The police station is located next to the Armenian Quarter, yet Christians in Jerusalem have often accused law enforcement of inaction when dealing with anti-Christian violence.

“The biggest problem is no one is feeling safe by the police or by the authorities,” Krikorian said.

From Gogchyan’s perspective, the police are easily deceived by Jewish assailants.

“These extremists know how to behave during the attacks in order to make the police back them and support them,” Gogchyan said. “And the police, without realizing, are tricked.”

Gogchyan described how, in one example, after Jewish radicals spat on the Armenian convent and tried to tear down the Armenian flag there, they ran to the nearby police station and began shouting “violence.

By doing so, the police thought the Armenians were attacking the perpetrators.

The Armenian Patriarchate met with police in February to address heightened tensions, especially considering the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the Jewish feast of Passover and the Christian holiday of Easter will occur in April.

Gogchyan said police told the patriarchate that law enforcement will try to prevent atrocities from happening. But Gogchyan remains concerned, as police have implied they don’t have full control.

“In a way, they said ‘such crimes will happen, and we cannot prevent them because we don’t know if [Jewish fanatics] are going to do it or not. But when something happens, we will try to protect you,’” Gogchyan said.

Christian Presence in Decline

Palestine, the birthplace of Christianity, is rapidly seeing the population’s erasure from its land.

According to Protecting Holy Land Christians, Christians are estimated as making up less than 1 percent of Jerusalem’s population.

Not only does the community feel it doesn’t have police protection, but Christians have also lost representation in the government, as well.

“There is no address in the high level of the Israeli establishment for the Christian factions of Jerusalem,” said researcher Ramon, explaining how the Christian affairs department in Israel’s now-defunct Religious Affairs Ministry was once a powerful unit.

But, in 2003, when the Religious Affairs Ministry was dissolved and its duties absorbed by the Interior Ministry, Christian representation dwindled. Today, the department is run by one person.

Amid a loss of power against intensifying Jewish hegemony, Christians—and other minorities—see the state as working for only one people.

Krikorian feels this discrimination—and hatred of non-Jews—is legitimized through Israel’s current leadership.

“The extremists got the backing of the government and now they’re attacking all the time.”

Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based freelance journalist reporting on Palestine and the Israeli occupation. You can follow her on Twitter at @jess_buxbaum.