Passing addresses, form of legalisation of ethnic cleansing in the Valley

Speaking of Radio Free Europe, the Union whose true identity is known for editing says local authorities have been unable to do so.

He fears these actions will lead to his mailing address and the loss of property in the Medvedja municipality.

Medvedja, along with Presevo and Bujancin, constitute what is known as the Presevo Valley inhabited by Albanians in southern Serbia.

The Union has been living with his family in Pristina since the end of the Kosovo war in 1999. He says he goes to his homeland three or four times over a year, but only to see the house where he grew up and cleaned around.

“They don't even let us pay taxes. We've gone to pay him a couple of times, but since 2006, we've been cut off from the ground and nothing else. It means only the cemetery of the first one left. They [the authorities of Serbia] have that strategy to take our land this way, as if legally, but that's not fair”.

When we go, they say it's not [home] habitable to pay. They see that we haven't made any renovations and, according to them, it's not habitable”, the Union says.

Mustaf: Retination Failed

What is happening to the Union and its family, from the Albanian National Council ʹ institution that deals with the rights of the Albanian community in Serbia, is seen as a road leading to the launching of this family's address in Syria.

Under the Law for Dwelling and Positioning in Serbia, the “extension of the address is an indication in the evidence of the competent body, that the citizen does not live at the address of the registered permanent or temporary residence”.

Official Belgrade, in general, has not commented on the question of passive display of addresses. But, in an interview for Radio Free Europe in February, Minister of State Administration and Local Self-Government in Serbia Government Marija Obradovic has spoken of the failure to determine the right to vote, saying this happens when, by the inspections on the ground of Serbian Interior Ministry officials, it is found that the residence of persons is not in the address they have announced.

Albanian National Council Chairman Ragmi Mustafi tells Radio Free Europe that no institutions in Serbia legally have the right not to allow the owner to pay taxes on his property.

There's no law prohibiting it, no law regulation, which does that. The second, if this is happening, this is a direct and flagrant violation of the citizen's right to commit obligations to the state”.

“Is this a uverture for avoidning [the address]? I believe it will, because the process that is taking place is under way with a political dictatorship from Belgrade to Presevo, Bujanoc and Medvedja”, Mustafi says.

Kamberi: Uninhibitable Property Site

Shaip Kamberi, Albanian MP in Serbia's Parliament, tells Radio Free Europe that the equipment of citizens' addresses in Serbia is developing selectively towards Albanians alone.

This, according to him, shows that this process is state organisation under Serbia's Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Kamberi adds that the state cannot take over anyone's property even if the case is like the Union. But, according to him, state mechanisms create absurd situations that deter Albanian citizens from realising their rights.

They can't get their property. But if they let him pay the tax, then they have to return his residence because he pays [the fee] according to his residence. However, property rights are inevitable and citizenship and property cannot afford to receive”.

But if there's a settlement and it can't go and take advantage of that property, then it shows that it forces people either to distance themselves and give up that property, or sell it”, Kamberi says.

“Serbs don't buy the property because they count themselves”

The Union says that now, for two decades, it is in a situation where even if it wants to, it cannot go to its homeland. He says even the eventual sale of property can't do it.

That means, to get back there, for at least six months, to call an address... But they won't let you. In short, they won't leave you alone. For example, if you want to go shopping for something, they [local Serbs] have their provocations”.

The “have neglected those houses. Do we sell them? No, because there has never been a right to buy Serbs from the Albanian. They don't buy it because they count it as their own land. Neither locals buy it, but neither does the state allow”, the Union says.

Loss of Rights

The head of the Albanian National Council, Mustafi, says there are mechanisms that annul a set of citizens' rights and, subsequently, create all the preconditions of the post-enforcement addresses.

“In the absence of your address, in the absence of your residence, you cannot issue any identification documents, such as ID or passport. With this, citizens lose their political-juridical, civil rights, with which neither inheritance nor possession, cannot get into business relations, cannot fulfil other commitments”.

“You can't currently be part of the election process, choose and have the right to be elected”, says Mustafi.

It shows that so far, at the council he heads, the cases of about 6,000 citizens of three municipalities -- Presevo, Bujanoc and Medvedja -- whose addresses have been opened.

But, as he claims, the real figure is much greater because most citizens whose addresses have been followed have not been presented on this council.

“Legalisation of ethnic cleansing”

Shaip Kamberi also says that there is no official figure indicating the total number of passive addresses in the three municipalities in the Presevo Valley.

But, according to him, in the official response he received from Serbia's Ministry of Internal Affairs, following a parliamentary question he asked about the Medvedja Community, it was told that in this municipality alone, in 2017-2019, there were 1,750 persons with unvised addresses.

Now, in most cases, that's for those who have a vote. In Bujanoc and Presevo, we don't have exact statistics, but it's a process, which, despite developing, doesn't have the dynamic it had in Medvedja. Medvedja is dangerous. It is actually legalized ethnic cleansing, which occurred in 1999 [during the war in Kosovo]. Now, even with the equipment of addresses, the Albanian element in this municipality is being cleared, Kamberi says.

On December 16th of this year, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Diaspora in the Government of Kosovo Donica Grovala has visited the Presevo municipality, where with leaders there they have discussed, as it has been said, the need for the international community's <x0-sensibisation concerning the lack of residence and Albanian addresses in Serbia”.

In November last year, former Kosovo and Albanian top diplomats Melza Haradinaj- Stublla and Gent Cakaj have been calling for Serbia to stop, as it were, the removal of Albanian addresses living in three municipalities in the Presevo Valley.

Through a joint statement, they have said that this action, in their view, is aimed at creating “not only of a completely incorrect mirror of the demographic composition of those spaces and the number of Albanians in Serbia, but is radically violating their fundamental rights and freedoms, including the right to vote”.