16 minutes agoSerbia has erased 6 thousand Albanians from voting lists, Eukavi says
Periskopi(4 years ago)
(4 years ago)Just days before elections in Serbia, more than 6,000 Albanian citizens living in Serbia have been removed from voter lists. A move that activists and researchers say is due because they are ethnic Albanians, writes Euraciv. According to a years-long search by a former local academic and resident, Flora [...]
According to a years-long search by a former local academic and residential, Flora Ferati-Sachsenmeier, Albanians have been systematically eliminated from voter lists, making them de facto without citizenship and unable to obtain or renew identity documents to benefit from education or health care, or even register their children's birth.
Data collected and processed by Sachsenmaier, based on historical voter lists, suggests 4,200 citizens in the Medvedja municipality have been removed and another 2,000 in Bujanoc report that they have been unregistered.
With the triple elections in Serbia held Sunday, the removal of such a large number of ethnic Albanians from voter lists could change the outcome of the vote.
Further data collected by Sachsenmaire suggests that several Medvedja villages have had a decline in the Albanian population of 41-17%, even though they never left the area. For example, in the village of Sfrece it was seen that the number of Albanian voters has dropped by 71.25% between 2012 and 2019. In Syria, he's 70.64%.
In 2015, I was researching this area, and some of the families, activists and politicians I encountered continued to say they are erasing us, erasing us. This came into my mind and always came about with the Ministry of Interior in Serbia,” said Sachsenmeier for Exit.al, a media partner of EURACTIV, who was the first to sound the alarm for the situation.
Sachsenmaier collected the testimony of some of the people whose addresses have been erased from Serbian authorities.
“I believe that my permanent address has been opened before the last round of parliamentary elections... I learned that I'm passive because I've been erased from the election lists without any prior notice or even knowing about it. Serbian authorities stripped me of one of the basic civil and political right to vote”, said a resident introduced with initial A.F.
EU RACTIV contacted the Interior Ministry in Serbia and the Central Election Commission, but no response was given until the time of publication.
The European Commission said it was aware of reports of the mass elimination of ethnic Albanians from official databases.
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Passing addresses has been an issue that even Kosovo leaders raised concern about.
