Albanians should be accepted as equal human beings to Serbs, has stated Srđan Mazalica, MP of Republic of Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
MP Mazalica responded to a tweet showing an alleged photo of Prince Paul of Yugoslavia in Albanian national costume, which also noted that one theory maintains that the royal family’s origin was Albanian.
Following backlash from Twitter users for mentioning the prince’s possible Albanian origin, the author of the original tweet wrote “Is it so hard to accept Albanians as equal human beings?”
My tweet’s intention was to show how similar we are, in the Balkans we have much more in common than we usually think. What I got instead was a chauvinist attack and insults by people like Serbian MP Konstantin Samofalov. Is it so hard to accept Albanians as equal human beings? https://t.co/7WXqigHAlY
— Ljubomir Filipović (@ljubofil) July 18, 2020
MP Mazalica replied that “Albanians should be accepted as equal human beings, but they differ very much from us [Serbs]”. He attached a pic of his alleged DNA test, claiming that it showed the genetic distance from several ethnic groups, including Albanians.
Albanians should be accepted as equal human beings, but they differ very much from us. Here are a few calculations of my autosomal DNA -> genetic distance to different ethnic groups. Albanians were very isolated population which had great demographic expansion in a short period. pic.twitter.com/IqfvDSUjVf
— Срђан Мазалица (@SrdjanMazalica) July 18, 2020
Many users, including Balkan expert Florian Bieber, called him out, noting that the tweet amounted to a racist dog-whistle.
Racism and the dangers of linking ethnicity and DNA in 1 tweet, courtesy of MP from Dodik party. pic.twitter.com/RN3NwDAPlU
— Florian Bieber (@fbieber) July 18, 2020
MP Mazalica is also a member of the Parliamentary Committee on European Integration and Regional Cooperation of the Republic of Srpska.
