Bekim Bislimi is a correspondent with RFE/RL's Kosovo Service.
The wearing of the traditional Muslim head scarf has divided Europe for years. The latest battleground is Kosovo, where a female student has been suspended from her high school for refusing to remove her hijab.
Ethnic Serbs quit their government jobs in Kosovo en masse in 2022 at the behest of the Belgrade-backed Serbian List party. Two years later, some ethnic Serbs want their jobs back and feel betrayed by the party and Serbia.
Ergjan Mehmeti says he's the first actor from Kosovo's small Ashkali community. Ashkalis are an ethnic minority who have struggled with discrimination, poor access to education, and unemployment. Mehmeti has now returned to his hometown with a project that he hopes can help overcome prejudice.
Most of the players in Kosovo's amputee soccer team lost limbs to land mines during or after their country's 1990s conflict. They've had to overcome prejudice but are now competing in international competitions.
One of the founders of a group challenging the overwhelmingly Muslim country to reject Islam insists that the budding movement is seeking to oppose religious extremism in all its forms. Prosecutors aren't so sure, though, and the local Islamic community surely isn't buying it.
Kosovar authorities poring over weapons and other evidence say a deadly attack outside a monastery in the predominantly Serb north bears the fingerprints of the fugitive head of a Serb party who's also on a U.S. sanctions list for alleged ties to organized crime.
Xhafer Deva's role in a Nazi-backed government prompted UN and EU officials to retreat from a Kosovar heritage project to restore his former home in one of the Balkans' most bitterly divided cities.
Dragica Gasic said her dream had come true after Kosovar authorities allowed her to return to her apartment in a western city whose mostly Muslim residents suffered hugely during ethnic fighting in the late 1990s. The elation didn't last long.
As obstacles pile up in Kosovo for snap elections in less than three weeks, Kosovars abroad are miffed at the election commission's decision to exclude them from voting if they miss a phone call.
Kosovo tries to get to the bottom of a "clandestine" COVID-19 vaccination campaign in its mostly ethnic Serbian regions -- seemingly launched by Belgrade -- that it says threatens national security.
Two of Belgrade's most powerful ministers have poured gasoline on smoldering ethnic tensions by repeatedly hurling epithets at ethnic Albanians and disrespecting war victims.
Pending legislation seeking to bring Kosovo's “noise pollution” standards in line with EU norms has come under criticism from Kosovo’s Muslim community, which fears it would inhibit traditional calls to prayers.
In May, the International Olympic Committee rejected Kosovo's bid to send a team to the London 2012 Summer Games. That decision has left the country's young Olympic hopefuls bitter and disappointed -- but looking ahead with determination to 2016.
Voters in Kosovo are at the polls for the first elections since the region declared independence from Serbia in February 2008. The municipal elections are seen as a critical opportunity to engage Kosovo's minority Serbs in the political process, despite objections from Belgrade.
![Serbian Defense Minister Aleksandar Vulin: "You cannot forbid Serbs to do the things that you allow Shiptars [to do]."](https://gdb.rferl.org/af77e31c-b10a-4729-b742-5a1147f3c117_cx0_cy11_cw0_w100_r1.jpg)
![Serbian Defense Minister Aleksandar Vulin: "You cannot forbid Serbs to do the things that you allow Shiptars [to do]."](https://gdb.rferl.org/af77e31c-b10a-4729-b742-5a1147f3c117_cx0_cy11_cw0_w66_r1.jpg)
