Passing out addresses in the Valley to Strasbourg Court

He claims that the authorities in this country have wrongly checked the address in this Medvedja village since 2019.

For all five years, he addressed various judicial institutions in Serbia until the country's Constitutional Court rejected the complaint in mid-month.

His case prompted the authorities' response in Kosovo, but also in the European Union.

Safet Demiri case

I'm a resident. I didn't come as a tourist”, Demiri tells Radio Free Europe.

It shows that, for years, it has been living and working between Austria and Serbia.

In Medvedja, where his parents live, he says there are registered a telecommunications company, while in Vienna he works in construction.

His home address has been unscheduled since 2019.

They [authorities] just said I don't live there. They haven't verified my records, which I have property, I have land there, I was born at”, says 46-year-old.

He says there is evidence showing that on the day Serbian authorities claim to have visited his address and not found it, he has been at the police station to get a document.

It shows confident that Serbian authorities have not visited his address, as envisioned in the law.

I have the entire camera-covered building. My mother and father are there. They live there 24 hours. No one's ever been”, Demiri says.

He addressed several courts in Serbia, which rejected the complaint with the reasoning that he lives abroad.

On November 14th, Serbia's Constitutional Court -- the latest institution in which he complained -- also rejected his request to prove the facts.

Demiri's fate is believed to be shared by thousands of people living in majority Albanian municipalities in Serbia.

Several times this year, they protested the failure of addresses to recognise Kosovo diplomas, integrate into Serbia's state institutions and others.

Asked by journalists how they comment on these frustrations, Serbia's president, Aleksandar Vuciq, said that “nobody is beating them, not picking on them, or anything else. Serbia is a democratic state and we will continue to behave this way”.

Demiri says the next address will now have the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg.

This confirms for Radio Free Europe and its lawyer, Aleksandar Olenik.

We'll send [the complaint] in the next two months. My office will be preparing it as long as I can. How long it will last there [in the Strasbourg Court] and when the [trial] procedure will be launched, I don't know”, Olenik says, adding that this will be the first case for this issue to appear before the European court.

What are Demiri's chances at the Strasbourg Court?

Dukagjin Leka, professor of International Law for Human Rights at <x0 University “Haxhi Zeka” in Gjilan, says that following Demiri's rejection of the Constitutional Court of Serbia, he has six months to present the case at the Strasbourg Court.

“I think the side in this, Albanian, case in Serbia, is deprived of an elementary right. The [European human rights] Convention has been violated in this case. I think the outcome of the trial process at the European Court for Human Rights will be positive for the person who will submit the case there”, Leka tells Radio Free Europe.

Demiri's favourable decision would reflect, according to him, even in the cases of other persons, who, like them, have been followed out on addresses in Serbia.

The Olenik lawyer also hopes for a verdict in favour of Demiri by the Strasbourg Court. But he does not believe that his case would serve as a judicial precedent for other similar cases.

According to our law [in Serbia], but even according to your laws in Kosovo, we do not have the judicial system of precedents, which an act of judgment imposes other courts on similar or similar procedures. However, judicial practice has a kind of impact”, Olenik says.

For him, the question of passiveizing addresses in Serbia is not legal, but political, and only targeting the Albanian community.

The passage of addresses exists only in southern Serbia and only for Albanians. In the north, in Vojvodina, where Hungarians, Croats -- in Sandzak, where Bosniaks live -- do not have access to” addresses, according to the Olenik Avoakt.

Why the addresses are checked?

Interior Ministry authorities in Serbia did not respond to the successive requests of Radio Europe Free for comments.

In the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights report in Serbia, 2021, Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac are described as hostages of relations between Kosovo and Serbia.

According to the report, the question of defaulting address “is essentially the form of ethnic cleansing through administrative method”.

Speaking to Radio Free Europe, the only Albanian MP in Serbia's Parliament, Shaip Kamberi, says the equipment of addresses is done at the order of Serbian authorities.

He estimates that, so far, there is no serious initiative by international institutions to let Serbia know that it will discontinue the practice of applying Albanian addresses in the Valley.

According to him, there are many families whose addresses have been checked and they have no financial opportunity to file lawsuits at the Strasbourg Court.

But, he adds, at this point it can help the political factor representing Albanians of this region, creating a special fund to help those who want to realise their right to the Strasbourg Court.

Not only do we lobby, but we also help, whether with finding lawyers or with financial assistance for this process to go ahead of”, Kamberi says.

There's no data on how many addresses exactly checked out.

According to the latest census in 2022, more than 60,000 Albanians live in Serbia, representing the fourth largest minority there.

Albanians boycotted the preliminary census in 2011, because, as they were then told, the Serbian state's unfulfilled obligations to them and discriminatory conditions.

Belgzim Kamberi, from the Council for the Protection of Human Rights in Presevo, says the presentation of “addresses has also hurt the Albanian integration process, which started in 2001, with the support of the international community”.

After re-completed the case with Demiri last week, Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani asked the international community to pressure Serbia to respect the rights of Albanians in the south.

In the European Union, they said they are aware of the concerns of Albanians in southern Serbia and are closely following these developments. /RadioEurope Free