Kosovo-Serbia annual festival opens with exhibition, protest and bomb scare

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The 9th annual Mirëdita, Dobar Dan Serbia-Kosovo Festival opened with an exhibition and a bomb threat that turned out to be false.

The festival merges art, culture, advocacy, and public debate by bringing together artists, human rights and peace activists, and opinion makers from Kosovo and Serbia. It opened with the exhibition All Our Tears at the NGO Hub in central Belgrade. The exhibition features 34 pictures by four photographers from Serbia, Kosovo and North Macedonia of the families of victims of the conflict. A spokeswoman for an association of the families Natasa Scepanovic said that the exhibition helps keep memories alive, adding that there can be no true reconciliation before the fates of the missing are discovered.

As in previous years, the festival drew a protest from the political right, this time by the youth wing of the conservative Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) who staged their protest before the opening of the exhibition. A lone woman stood outside the venue after the opening, shouting Kosovo is the Heart of Serbia repeatedly.

The police evacuated and searched the NGO Hub but found no explosive device following a bomb threat which right extremists announced earlier on social networks.