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Artist Eliza Hoxha unpacking her photos at the Kosovo-Serbia border. Photo courtesy of Kushtrim Koliqi.

Kosovo artist Eliza Hoxha was prevented from bringing several photographs and an exhibition catalogue that show the flags of Kosovo and Albania and symbols of the Kosovo Liberation Army into Serbia on Wednesday.

Hoxha was among several Kosovo artists who were stopped for two hours at the border while travelling to Belgrade for this year’s ‘Miredita, Dobar Dan’ festival, which opens on Wednesday evening and aims to create a cultural exchange between artists from Kosovo and Serbia.

Kushtrim Koliqi, the director of Integra, one of the NGOs organising the festival, said that the incident at the border shows that the ongoing EU-mediated dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia in Brussels is a fiasco.

“Everyone who is sponsoring the dialogue should take this case as an example that nothing has changed, except for the fact that some bureaucratic politicians are meeting in Brussels and signing worthless documents,” Koliqi said.

“For a moment, I remembered the queues of Kosovo civilians during the war being mistreated by those who wear the same uniforms as these people today,” he added.

Hoxha, a well-known multi-media artist who worked as a photojournalist for a Kosovo newspaper in the 1990s, told journalists who were travelling with the artists that “these photographs are not made-up but a reality that we should face 20 years after [the war]”.

Sofija Todorovic from the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, one of the NGOs organising the festival, said that Serbian police “didn’t let three photos go to Belgrade because they show the flag of Kosovo”.

“[The photos] are an artistic exhibit that shows the reality of what goes on in Kosovo, they’re not a political document,” Todorovic told BIRN.

Kosovo political leaders condemning the Serbian authorities’ decision to bar the photographs.

“This behaviour of the Serbian authorities is at odds with the spirit of cooperation that we are building in the region and contrary to the efforts to establish European relations among the countries of the region,” Kosovo President Hashim Thaci wrote on Facebook.

Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj said that Serbian authorities were destroying the few possibilities to establish normal communication with Kosovo.

“By obstructing the free movement of people and ideas, Serbia undermines the normalisation of relations with Kosovo, which is contrary to the European spirit and values,” Haradinaj said.

Deputy premier Enver Hoxhaj called the incident at the border shameful and warned of “reciprocal measures” from Pristina.

“Relations can’t be normal if they ban artists to attend exhibitions,” Hoxhaj wrote on Twitter.

The annual ‘Miredita, Dobar Dan!’ festival presents Kosovo Albanian films, exhibitions and theatre plays in the Serbian capital in a bid to rebuild relations between the two peoples.

The ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party, led by war crimes convict Vojislav Seselj, sought a ban on the festival earlier in May for “treating Kosovo as an independent state”, and has vowed to protest against the event.

On Tuesday, the Serbian Interior Ministry said it had banned the rallies that the Radical Party planned during the festival – but the nationalists have vowed to protest anyway.

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Festival Aims to Bridge Kosovo-Serbia Divide