Xhorxhina BamiPristinaBIRNJanuary 22, 202616:02Campaigners welcome US Congress bill that would mandate the State Department to assess discrimination against ethnic Albanians in Serbia’s Presevo Valley area – where they say thousands have been stripped of their civil rights.
Medvedja municipality in southern Serbia. Photo courtesy of Nevzad Lutfiu.
Ethnic Albanians in the US and Serbia have hailed as a bill introduced into the US Congress on Wednesday, which if it becomes law will mean the State Department must assess discrimination against ethnic Albanians in the Presevo Valley area of southern Serbia.
“The Presheva Valley Discrimination Assessment Act, championed by Keith Self … mandates a State Department assessment of discrimination faced by ethnic Albanians, including political disenfranchisement, language restrictions, educational barriers, economic neglect, and institutional intimidation,” the lobbying group Albanians for America wrote on X.
The bill was introduced in response to claims that thousands of ethnic Albanians from three municipalities in southern Serbia, Medvedja, Bujanovac, and Presevo, have had their addresses marked “inactive” by the Serbian authorities.
This so-called “address passivisation” means they cannot renew their Serbian identification documents, or exercise basic human rights that require IDs, such as voting.
The bill requires an “assessment whether or not such mistreatments are in fact happening and the scope”.
Self explained that the passivisation of addresses strips ethnic Albanians of civil rights. He alleged that other examples of discrimination include “Belgrade’s refusal to recognize diplomas and degrees earned in Kosovo, the prevention or hinderance of school textbooks for Albanian language speakers and the use of law enforcement to interrogate, threaten, and intimidate local ethnic Albanians without due course or process”.
Ardita Sinani, mayor of Presevo, praised the bill’s introduction, writing on Facebook: “Today, the US is demanding legal and political accountability for the systematic discrimination against Albanians in the Presevo Valley … Our voice was heard. Our work is being seen.”
According to Saip Kamberi, an ethnic Albanian MP in Serbia, the practice dates from November 2011 and the adoption of the Law on Residence of Citizens, under which, if authorities determine a person is not living at their registered address, that address can be classified as inactive. That person is then obliged to register their true address within eight days of receiving confirmation of the decision.
According to Serbia’s public broadcaster, there were 10,465 registered voters in Medvedja in 2015. Four years later, according to regional N1 television, there were just 6,602. In the 2022 Serbian census, only around 6,360 people were registered in Medvedja, reflecting extensive “passivisation”.
Izabela Kisic, director of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, told BIRN in 2022 that the practice of passivisation “applies exclusively to citizens of Albanian nationality”. She added that “there is no evidence of ethnic Serbs being targeted. The state is aware of this.”
Kisic said the Committee had informed the Serbian authorities of its findings when compiling a report in 2021, “but they are ignoring it”.
Since 2022, the EU has adopted resolutions about the passivisation of addresses of ethnic Albanians in the Presevo Valley. However, the situation has not changed. Serbia denies human rights violations and discrimination against Albanians.
In November 2024, ethnic Albanians organised several protests in Medvedja in southern Serbia against the way the authorities routinely mark their addresses inactive.
Source link: balkaninsight.com
