6,200 ethnic Albanians removed from voting lists in Serbia, study shows

Ethnic Albanians have been systematically erased from voter lists, making them de facto without citizenship and unable to obtain or renew identity documents, benefit from education or health care, or register the birth of their children, Euraciv reports, broadcast Klankosova.tv.

In 2015, I was researching this area and some of the families, activists and politicians I encountered continued to say they were erasing us, erasing us”, Sachsenmaier said, the first to sound the alarm for the situation.

Data collected and processed by Sachsenmaier, based on historical voter lists, suggests 4,200 residents in the Medvedja municipality have been removed and 2,000 others in Bujanovac report that they have been unregistered.

With the triple elections in Serbia under way today, the removal of such a high number of ethnic Albanians from voter lists could change the outcome of the vote.

Further data collected by Sachsenmaier suggests that several Medvedja villages have seen a decline in the Albanian population between 41 per cent and 71 per cent, even though they never left the area. For example, in the village of Sfreece, the number of ethnic Albanian voters has dropped by 71.25 per cent between 2012 and 2019. In Syria, 70.64 percent.

According to Sachsenmeir's research and collected testimony to residents, Serbian authorities, under the coverage of the residence law, claimed they were sending people to verify the settlements.

These envoys would report that residents could not be found at their address and send an announcement to the Electoral Commission. Whole families later hide from election lists. Without written decisions, there is no way to complain.

No, you don't live here, you live in Kosovo, we can't recognize you”, it was their response to mostly Albanians.

It is important to understand that they are abusing the law. Every country in the world has a law on attitude, but there is no country in Europe that abuses the country's law to target a certain group to change ethnic composition”, says the author of the study.

The researcher explained that at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, she conducted a study of 500 Albanians erased in Medvedja, and only 20 were given a written decision, printed in Serbian, even though the law allows it in Albanian.

“They know that what they are doing is not constitutional, so by not producing a written document, they hide traces of”, Sachsenmaier added.

The supposed practice was called “ethnic cleansing by administrative means” by the Helsinki Committee in Belgrade.

Evidence details the denial of the right to work, denial of retirement, rejection of any competition, and the right to participate in democratic processes.