Serbia Dispopulating Albanians in Presevo Valley at Alarm Levels

Over the past four years, Serbian authorities have erased over 4 thousand Albanians from the civil registry in the Medvedja municipality. Planned by the highest political circles in Serbia and executed by Serbia's Ministry of Interior Affairs ( MUP), erasing Albanians from the civil registry is causing a deep humanitarian and political crisis in the Presevo Valley. Also known as the destination of the settlement address, this disproportional practice towards the Albanian community in Serbia represents a form of discrimination unprecedented in Europe today. This is due to the fact that at the moment an Albanian citizen is unvisited and later hidden from the civil registry in Serbia, that person cannot get new ID or passport; he does not enjoy access to medical services or social assistance; he cannot take a car registration, he cannot buy or sell property, and he cannot vote in local or general elections in Serbia. What is Serbia aiming at through the massovik equipment of Albanian addresses in the Presevo Valley? And why are Tirana and the official Pristina silenting on these developments?

Says: Dr. Flora Ferati-Sachsenmaier*

Scientific collaborator Max Plank Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity

Laying down only 65 kilomters in northeast Pristina, Medvedja is not one of those municipalities with the Albanian population you often hear about. In fact, if it were not for the idea of a loss of territories and the warning of painful compromises that broke out in 2018, you would hardly have heard much about Albanians in Serbia over the past 20 years, which referred to you as pre-eminently the “Albanian Valley”. But if you want to know how little Belgrade's political approach to the Albanian community has changed, whether Serbia differs from Vucicit's Serbia and the years dealt with Vuciccic in the year KH2020. You just have to look at the case of the Medvedja municipality.

After the war ended in Kosovo over 100,000 Albanians remain living in Serbia. As one of the largest minorities in Serbia, an autokton minority, the shippers of Medvedja, Bujanoc and Presevo experienced serious violations of human rights and their fundamental civic and political rights in the years that followed. In 1999, he resented Kosovo's loss in Serbia, and the object of revenge was often Albanian citizens of the Presevo Valley.

As some independent human rights organisations in Serbia have documented, most of these Albanian citizens never failed to testify to the political depression exercised against them in the years following the end of the war in Kosovo. Courts in Serbia were closing these cases before opening them, many media were promoting anti-Albanian institutions, and the Albanian community was put under tremendous pressure. But neither Pristina nor official Tirana condemned the systemic discrimination being committed to Albanians in Serbia. If the first decade after the end of the war in Kosovo, it has really been difficult for Albanians in three municipalities in the Presevo Valley, life has become almost impossible in recent years. The reason for this is a discriminatory practice called “the extension of the <x1nd> permanent residence addresses, which has become one for the population of Albanians in Presevo Valley.

In 2011, Serbia adopts Law pWLocality and Location. Officially, Serbian authorities reason on the adoption of this law as necessary to clean up voter lists in Serbia. At that time, the enthusiasts of this law in Serbian political circles, as well as international diplomats in Belgrade, hailed the adoption of this law, stressing among other things that cleaning up voter lists would prevent vote manipulation and thereby strengthen Serbian democracy. But within a short time, as the law will then be revealed, will be instrumentalised primarily to discriminate against the Albanian minority in the Presevo Valley. The Medvedja municipality, which has always had considerable Albanian popularity but no absolute majority like Presevo and Bujanoci ʹ will be especially targeted. In the Medvedja municipality, just in 2015 period 2019, Serbia's Ministry of Internal Affairs has erased over 4 thousand Albanians from the civil registry. The consequences have been fatal to the Albanian community of this municipality.

How Instrumentized Locality and Location Law For Albanian population in Serbia?

Locality and Location Law, Article 18 of this law, respectively, gives the Serbian state bodies the competency of permanent housing addresses. Calling to this law, Serbia's Ministry of Internal Affairs personnel have the right to verify whether an Albanian resident lives at the address given as a permanent home address.

According to the law in question if the citizen's address is not found at home, that person is unvisited to the permanent address of the settlement. A decision is issued and given a time period of only eight days to file complaints at the local MUP office. As an Albanian citizen, you may be in medical treatment somewhere in Serbia's hospitals, or visiting family members abroad, or at that moment simply may not shoot at home, but these facts do not bring weight to Serbia's MUP personnel.

The next cardinal problem with the unvisiting of Albanian addresses in Serbia is that no written decision is issued at all, proving that you have been unvisited. In most cases, especially in recent years, this information is only given orally to Albanian citizens in Medvedja. In fact, most Albanian citizens have realized that they were spontaneously repeated: usually when they went to the doctor or when they went to pay their taxes on property. The standard answer they get in these entities is go get them at the police station.

Failure to issue decisions for not highlighting Albanian addresses in Serbia is no coincidence. It aims to prevent Albanians with unscheduled addresses from launching legal processes against Serbia for serious violations of their rights and systemic discrimination being done on ethnic grounds. It is known that the courts in Serbia have a consistent record in their judgments on cases where minority communities sue the Serbian state. They almost always decide in favour of the official Serbian state policy. While the most frequent reason they give why they have decided against the claimer from the minority ranks is the insufficient lack of evidence.

The process of unvisiting Albanian addresses in the Valley is a Kafkaesk process. It aims to plunge Albanian citizens into legal processes which neither dares to pass the highest judicial incidents in Serbia, because this paves the way for them to sue Serbia at the European Court for Human dream in Strasbourg. And at the same time, it is intended that within Serbia itself this process will become as arbitrary, as unpredictable as making the lives of Albanians impossible and unwanted in the Presevo Valley.

Medvedja Albanians in Masovic Address Passoisation Shenjester: Why exactly Medveja?

In 2016, the Fund for Humanitarian Law in Belgrade, one of the most prestigious human rights organisations, conducted a study on the avoidance of addresses in Serbia. The Medvedja municipality turns out to be a municipality with the largest number of unbounded addresses in Serbia's Republic, and this report stresses that the people whose addresses have been followed were mostly Albanian citizens.

According to this report, only in 2016, in the municipality of Medvedja has 539 addresses been disabled. Discrimination through the implementation of residence addresses has been fatal for the Albanian community in Medvedja, and this legal discrimination practice is causing deep humanitarian and political crisis. For example, people with unvisited and chronically ill addresses are denied treatment in health entities even though they possess currency identification and health insurance. Also, citizens to whom ID is due are not allowed to receive new IDs or passports. This desperate situation has prompted Albanians in the Presevo Valley to take temporary residence in Belgrade or Novi Sad, only to be able to register their car or get a new passport. Unlike the municipality where they were born and were unable to obtain documents, in Novi Sad and Belgrade gets them without a problem.

Consequences of Postisquisition of Albanians in Presevo Valley

As a result of the failure of Albanian addresses, for the first time since the Medvedja municipality was founded, by September 2019 the Medvedja Albanians are no longer part of local government. In recent local elections, they won only 3 assemblies in the municipal assembly. All of this is the result of having Albanian addresses checked. So of the atonement that 4 thousand Medvedja Albanians from the Civil Register in Serbia only for 2015 to 2019.

Following the election results in 2015, Serbia's interior minister and deputy chairman of Aleksandar Vucicici's party, Nebojsa Stefanovic, declared with triumphal and clear tones: “this election result proves that Medvedja is Serb municipality” and “attempts to bring Albanians with buses and no currency documents from Kosovo to vote in Medvedja were halted”.

Despite this systemic discrimination of Albanians in Medvedja and Valley, neither Pristina nor official Tirana have ever been declared for those events. The demands and testimony of Albanian citizens from these municipalities to them have not been missed.

International diplomats in Belgrade have repeatedly stressed in condition of anonymity that the systemic discrimination of Albanians in Serbia has enabled Pristina and Tirana as well. But according to all odds, they will not be able to keep quiet for long: the equipment of addresses has apparently intensified in Bujanoc and Presevo. Likewise, the months and years to come will prove that the depopulation of Albanians in the Valley has been a mechanism to fight Kosovo's citizenship as well. All of this will become clear when Pristina and Belgrade sit down to talk about the contents of property under chapter 35.