Tensions Rise Ahead of Serbia-Kosovo Handball Match

Serbia and Kosovo women's handball teams are due to play against each other in Serbia on Friday, prompting a familiar mix of ethnic and political tensions.

A Serbian far-right movement, Zavetnici, called on the Serbian authorities to cancel the game, calling it an "unconstitutional game, which insults the dignity of the Serbian people".

"It is unacceptable for our national team not to sing the national anthem and show Serbian state symbols in order not to offend Pristina's separatist creation," Zavetnici said on March 18.

Serbian nationalists fiercely oppose any recognition of the former province as an independent country.

"Mixing politics and sports always has bad consequences for such competitions," a Serbian journalist who has covered Serbia-Kosovo issue for years, Rade Maroevic, told BIRN.

He explained that in this case, "several clumsy moves" preceded the controversy that has surrounded this match.

He said the European Handball Federation should have put the two teams in different groups, "as UEFA did after the games between Serbia and Albania in the qualifications for the European Championship in France".

He added that when they found themselves in the same group, "they should also have taken into account the fact that players are practically children and that such pressure, which has nothing to do with sports, will be unnecessarily burdensome.

"Kosovo is still a burning issue in the Balkans, so the spillover of this crisis into sport, unfortunately, is inevitable," he said.

Serbia's Handball Federation announced on March 21 that the match will be played in Serbia without fans or media present, and without national anthems or the display of national symbols.

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