Phones still cut in Serb enclave

5 January 2011 | 09:52 | Source: Tanjug

GRAČANICA -- Tuesday marked 100 days since the Kosovo Albanian authorities cut off telephone lines to a number of Serb communities south of the Ibar River. A performance was staged in front of the ambulance station in the village of Laplje Selo, central Kosovo, to mark the occasion of 100 days since phone lines to the emergency service of the health-care center in Gračanica were severed, the health institution said. A total of 100 letters were written with a same text in Serbian and English and were addressed to the World Health Organization, EULEX, the Serbian Medical Society, KFOR, OSCE Mission, the Serbian Ministry of Telecommunications, Telekom Srbija, UNMIK, UNICEF, a number of foreign embassies in Serbia and a number of organizations dealing with the issue of human rights. In the letters, which had the word 'SOS' inscribed on them, it was noted that on September 26, 2010, the Kosovo Regulatory Agency for Telecommunications forcibly turned off the landlines and mobile phone transmitters to the Gračanica health-care center's emergency service. For the one hundred days since the severance of the lines, one human life has been lost while dozens have been rescued at the last minute, which is why the emergency service in Gračanica "needs emergency service itself", it was stated, in the letter. Last year, the government in Priština was destroying the transmitters of Serbian mobile operators on several occasions, saying that they "did not have a license to operate", something that was rejected as false by the companies in question.