ESI: No international observer has seen "ethnic cleansing" of Serbs in Kosovo

2024-02-20 13:14:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

ESI: No international observer has seen "ethnic cleansing" of Serbs in

The European Initiative for Stability said that no international organization, including those of security, has seen evidence for Belgrade's claims that there is "ethnic cleansing of Serbs" in Kosovo, but the lack of evidence has not put an end to the inciting claims.

In a report entitled "Fake Pogroms - Statistics, Lies and Confusion in Kosovo", the organization recalls that in July 2023, Serbian President Aleksander Vu?i? declared that NATO and the UN had fourteen days to disarm Kosovo's police forces and to protect Kosovo Serbs from the ongoing "pogroms and ethnic cleansing" of Albanians. Otherwise, "someone else" would have to do it.

The report notes that warnings that Serbia may need to send troops to Kosovo to protect Serbs are not new, citing an August 2018 statement by Serbian President Vucic in which he described Kosovo as a "barrel" gunpowder

"Everybody will be waiting for an opportunity to hit the other to get an advantage on the field. And every day we will worry if they will attack us in the north, where they will attack us, with whose support...", said the Serbian president.

However, in the 2018 statements, it was argued that if Serbs are attacked in Kosovo, Serbia will protect them. Since 2023, the statements argue that the Serbs are now under attack and must be defended, said the report of the initiative, which in late July 2023 had said that this is a serious threat to peace in the Balkans.

A few months later, Serbian paramilitaries attacked the Kosovo police in the north, the report recalls, the September 24, 2023 attack by a group of armed Serbs who killed a member of the Kosovo police.

"It is time to take seriously what is currently being said by politicians in Belgrade. If pogroms are invented, then violence follows. If these false claims are not challenged, the situation will escalate further," the report states, underlining that "it should not be difficult for international organizations to refute false, misleading and dangerous claims of imaginary massacres as whenever they are made. None of the many international observers with personnel on the ground in Kosovo, from KFOR to EULEX, from UNMIK to the OSCE, have seen or described the 'ethnic cleansing of the Serbs' or the Albanian 'terror' in the years last. But the lack of evidence has not stopped the inciting claims."

Nisma emphasizes that one of the tools in this battle of narratives has been statistics. On October 5, 2023, President Vucic said that as a result of "Albanian terror", 11 percent of Kosovo Serbs have left Kosovo since the beginning of 2021. On February 8, 2024, speaking at the UN Security Council , Vucic increased to "14 percent" the number of Kosovo Serbs who had left in just one year.

No evidence has been provided for the alleged pogroms, systematic violence or alleged "ethnic cleansing" in recent years, says the 18-page report, which compares statements and statistics presented by the Serbian authorities themselves./ VOA