Ethnic Cleansing Statements Revive Milosevic-Era Rhetoric

A Serbian minister’s statement regarding the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo has revived Belgrade’s earlier rhetoric. According to experts, this shows that Serbian policy has not abandoned its hegemonic ambitions toward Kosovo.

More than 30 years after Serbia’s attempts to exterminate and expel Albanians from Kosovo, the mindset of the regime from that period is, according to assessments, still present.

Three decades later, the ideology and narrative associated with Slobodan Milosevic continue to be voiced publicly.

In an interview with a Serbian television station, Snezhana Paunovic, Serbia’s Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, said: “If it had been Slobodan Milosevic, I would have ethnically cleansed Kosovo in 1998.” With this statement, she openly articulated what Milosevic attempted to carry out in 1999.

Acting Minister for Labour, Family and the Values of the Liberation War Andin Hoti reacted by saying that calls for ethnic cleansing show that Serbia has still not broken away from Milosevic’s ideology. He stressed that Kosovo’s and the democratic world’s response to such attempts is already known: Kosovo remained free, while Milosevic ended up as a war criminal and, according to him, Paunovic would face the same fate.

Professors and geopolitical experts consider Paunovic’s statement an expression of Serbia’s official thinking and position.

Arben Fetoshi, director of the Octopus Institute, described it as a continuation of the criminal logic of Serbian policy, which, according to him, is still based on hegemonic ambitions not only toward Kosovo. Referring to the Serbian World project, he said the statement should prompt clear and strong condemnatory reactions from the EU, the United States and all those actors who put Milosevic in his place in 1998-1999.

Geopolitics professor Dorajet Imeri assessed that the fact that a Serbian minister, 25 years after Milosevic and the period of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, expresses such a position shows that it represents Serbia’s official stance toward Kosovo. According to him, Paunovic was appointed to the Government of Serbia and represents the Serbian state, therefore her statement is the position of the Serbian state.

While Serbian officials continue to publicly express claims over Kosovo, President Aleksandar Vucic has supported Porfirije, the patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The latter was sentenced to four months in prison, suspended, by a court in Slovenia on charges of mistreating a priest in the workplace.

Imeri said that Serbian policy uses structures and groups similar to those of Radoicic and Veselinovic, while the patriarch is also involved on the other side. According to him, this clearly reveals the face of Serbia and its ambitions.

Fetoshi said that this very institution blessed internationally known criminals Karadzic and Mladic for the war in Bosnia, and today continues the narrative of sacralising Serbia’s hegemonic policy toward Kosovo.

In Pristina, it is assessed that the articulation by senior officials of ideas about ethnic cleansing and territorial claims against Kosovo, together with the support that the Serbian leadership gives to religious and political institutions, constitutes a continuation of an old hegemonic policy.