The European Union will investigate claims that the Serbian government is turning residential addresses of Albanians in its southern region into an “inactive” mode, effectively meaning depopulating the area from the ethnic group.
European Parliament adopted a resolution on Thursday to include in the EU report on Serbia the necessity for such an investigation.
Rapporteurs on Kosovo and Serbia at the European Parliament, Viola von Cramon-Taubadel and Vladimir Bilcik said in a press conference today that the “EU will look much deeper and deal with this” but did not clarify on the exact procedure to be started.
“It is something we should deal with at the European Commission and Council,” von Cramon said, adding that international treaties could be bright in action to stop Serbia from continuing the process.
“In the last four years alone, Serbian authorities have purged more than 4,000 Albanians from the Civil Registry in the municipality of Medvegja in southern Serbia. Planned by the highest political circles and executed by the Serbian Ministry of Interior, the removal of Albanians from the Civil Registry is precipitating a major humanitarian and political crisis in the Presevo Valley, a predominantly Albanian region along the border with Kosovo,” researcher Flora Ferati-Sachsenmaier warned in an article on Exit News last year.
The Albanians whose addresses are claimed to be “inactivated” usually spend part of the year working in the EU countries.
The Serbian government’s project could eventually turn the thousands of ethnic Albanians into stateless people after having been purged from Serbia’s civil registry, and being unable to renew identity documents.
Ethnic Albanians live in three southern municipalities in the Presevo Valley.
Read more: Serbia is Depopulating Presevo Valley from Albanians at Alarming Levels
