Analysts in Kosovo and Serbia describe the statement of a Serbian minister, who said she would have carried out “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo if she had been leading the state in 1998, as part of a continuous political pattern of Belgrade towards Pristina.
Observers stress that mere reactions are not enough, calling on the international community to take tangible steps towards Serbia.
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According to Bekim Blakaj, head of the Humanitarian Law Center in Kosovo, changing Serbia’s stance and language towards Kosovo cannot come through civil society or media.
Nevertheless, he underlines that the European Union has mechanisms within Serbia’s European integration process to curb this kind of rhetoric.
“It can impose some sanctions, I would say, in order to reduce this kind of official stance of Serbia when it comes to Kosovo, to the stigmatization of Albanians and the prevention of normalizing relations between the two countries and two societies,” explains Blakaj.
He adds that such tools already exist in the negotiating chapters for EU membership, but could be even more specific, including direct international pressure whenever Serbian officials make such statements.
The European Union itself, which has linked progress towards membership with the normalization of relations between the two countries, condemned the statement of Serbian Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, Snezhana Paunović, made on July 11 on Kurir television. According to Brussels, it contradicts the principles of human dignity, reconciliation, accountability and good neighborliness.
Paunović’s statement is not an isolated case. In 2019, while serving as prime minister, Ana Brnabić described Kosovo’s leaders as people “who came down from the mountains” who entered the political elite. Later, as speaker of parliament, she also used the offensive term “shiptari” for the media in Kosovo.
Although Albanians themselves use the word “shqiptarë” for themselves, in the Serbian language the term “shiptar” carries a derogatory charge. The official and neutral variant remains “Albanci”. A court ruling in Serbia in 2018 classified the use of the word “shiptar” as hate speech.
Nevertheless, other high-ranking figures have also used this term, including Aleksandar Vulin, who has held key government positions over the years, and the former director of the Office for Kosovo and now Foreign Minister, Marko Đurić.
Even the highest officials of Kosovo have been the target of verbal attacks. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić recently called caretaker Prime Minister Albin Kurti “terrorist scum”, while Petar Petković, director of the Office for Kosovo in the Serbian Government, referred to him as “little Hitler”.
Serbian historian Srđan Milošević notes that for decades the authorities’ approach towards Albanians has been characterized by a “degrading, dehumanizing and openly chauvinistic” rhetoric, which presents them as a “demographic and civilizational threat”.
He sees Paunović’s case as part of a longstanding political pattern, where Albanians are reduced to numbers, birth rates and a danger to Serbs, without being treated as equal citizens.
“After the crimes committed during the ’90s, such language represents the continuation of a kind of ‘voluntary contribution’ of official Serbia to Kosovo’s independence, because it precisely confirms the policy of humiliation and exclusion, which continues to destroy the possibility of living together,” says Milošević.
Blakaj assesses that the Serbian political elite has never distanced itself from the orientation of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević, indicted for war crimes in The Hague. “We have never heard any high Serbian official express regret for the crimes committed against Albanians, acknowledge the victims, speak about the mass graves found in Serbia,” he says.
Such inflammatory statements as Paunović’s, Blakaj warns, could push individuals or groups under favorable conditions to turn prejudice and stigmatization into violent acts, citing as an example the armed attack in Banjska against the Kosovo Police in 2023.
Kosovo Serbs themselves consider these statements as “problematic and provocative,” which ultimately harm precisely the Serb community there.
The caretaker government of Kosovo declared Paunović persona non grata and stated that Serbia has never severed itself from Milošević’s legacy, viewing these not as mere statements, but as unfulfilled aspirations of the official Serbian state.
While President Vučić distanced himself by saying that Paunović’s views do not reflect official policy, the minister herself, deputy chairwoman of the Socialist Party of Serbia, did not retract her words. She claimed they were taken out of context and apologized to Vučić and the Government for the reactions caused.
During the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo, over 13,000 civilians lost their lives, while more than 1,500 people, mostly Albanians, remain missing. The Hague Tribunal found that the leaders of the then Yugoslavia were part of a “joint criminal enterprise” to forcibly expel hundreds of thousands of Albanians from Kosovo, for which several senior Serbian political, police and military officials were convicted.
