Ahead of this year’s Miredita, Dobar Dan! festival, the organisers told BIRN that they are ready for attempts at disruption after receiving threats on social networks and have asked the police to ensure the security of the event.

The annual festival, which presents Kosovo Albanian films, exhibitions and theatre plays in the Serbian capital in an attempt to help rebuild relations between the two peoples, will be held between May 29 and June 1 at several locations in Belgrade.

The four-day arts festival, whose name means Good Day in Serbian and Albanian, has been running each year since 2014, has been targeted by Serbian right-wingers in previous years.

This year, threats began to arrive on the festival’s Twitter account.

“I would like that angry mob to lynch you. I would dance on your graves,” said one message on Twitter. “Go away from our Serbia. You are not invited or welcome,” said another. “Why are you calling on people [to attend] when tear gas will be released?” asked a third.

Other messages accused the organisers of being anti-Serb, while extremists even targeted people who shared the festival’s posts.

“We saw you have been liking these terrorist activities. You are all registered. We will not forget you when the time for a clear-up comes,” one warning said.

Ahead of the start of the festival, the youth wing of the right-wing Democratic Party of Serbia, DSS, staged a protest outside one of the festival sites in Belgrade on Wednesday.

The party urged the Serbian authorities to ban the Youth Initiative for Human Rights for promoting Kosovo’s independence.

“We believe the festival is a provocation. We have set up a placard here to illustrate how Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija are treating culture and everything that is Serbian,” said Zdravko Veselinov from the DSS, although he insisted that his party doesn’t want to protest alongside “extremist groups that want to violently disrupt the event”.

