Kosovo PM says Serbian elections resulted in ethnic cleansing

The Albanian municipal and party officials from Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac met with Kurti in Pristina at his invitation. The meeting said that the alleged ethnic cleansing took the form of what Serbian law calls passivization of addresses for more than 6,000 ethnic Albanians in those three municipalities. Passivization of address means that people registered as living but not actually resident at an address do not have the right to vote in that municipality. A lot of Albanians from southern Serbia live abroad but remain registered as resident in their original municipality.

None of Albanian parties won seats in the Serbian parliament at the April 3 elections. National minority parties have a lower vote threshold to win seats. According to the Serbian Republic Election Commission (RIK), the Coalition of Presevo Valley Albanians won just 0.26 percent of the vote which was not enough to win a single seat.

Kurti warned that the “silent ethnic cleansing” brings “huge consequences”. “That method by Serbia, which takes away the basic democratic right to vote has brought unsatisfactory results. These elections were neither free nor democratic,” Kurti said, adding that the Albanians in southern Serbia were facing Serbia’s discriminatory and oppressive policies.