The Albanian minority in southern Serbia is under pressure. The country’s authorities are removing Albanians living abroad from the population registers, leaving thousands stateless.
In August 2019, when Safet Demiri wanted to renew the registration of his business vehicles, he was told: “You are no longer in the address register.” Demiri was born in Medvegjë (Serbia), where his family has lived for 200 years. He owns several properties in his hometown, including a tourist hotel and a telecommunications company. However, he also lives in Vienna, Austria, where he runs a construction company. Since 2019, he has been denied the right to an address in Medvegjë. “How can I take care of my businesses without an address?” he asked the official. The response was a shrug.
The 46-year-old had to find a temporary solution and registered in his father’s name. He tried to claim his right by contesting the decision in the Administrative Court of Nis, but without success. “Your residence is abroad, so the removal from the register was justified,” was the official reasoning. “There’s nothing we can do,” they told him in court, “it’s a decision from above.”
Deregistration Almost Exclusively Affects Albanians
The reason for Demiri’s deregistration is that he is Albanian, says researcher Flora Ferati-Sachsenmaier from the University of Göttingen. She herself is originally from Medvegjë and published a study for the Max-Planck Institute in 2023. She discovered the topic by chance in 2016 while in Medvegjë for another project. “Every second Albanian I spoke to told me ‘we are being deregistered’,” Ferati recalls for DW. Her study would reveal that the deregistration was systematic.
Serbian authorities call this deregistration “passivation.” “If they find that someone no longer lives at the registered address, the person is removed from the address register,” explains Ferati. But this also affects people who are on vacation or short trips abroad. Re-registration is usually not possible. The removal has serious consequences for those affected. They do not have access to public services, cannot obtain a passport, or access healthcare.
Reducing the Number of Albanians as a Goal
The goal is to reduce the number of Albanians in southern Serbia. The figures from the Max-Planck study speak for themselves: “While in the Preshevë Valley the number of passive addresses includes nearly 10 percent of the population, in other parts of Serbia the number of passivations affects much less than one percent of the municipalities’ inhabitants,” says Ferati-Sachsenmaier.
Deregistration is particularly problematic for Albanians living in Kosovo, says Enver Haziri, who runs an office in Gjilan specifically dealing with the needs of Albanians from the Preshevë Valley. Most of them were expelled from their villages in June 1999 when Serbian forces, driven out by NATO forces, vented their anger on the Albanian minority in southern Serbia.
In Kosovo, these expelled individuals are welcomed morally but lack any official documents, Haziri says. Due to passivation, they effectively become stateless and cannot participate in the social life of either Serbia or Kosovo. Only the current government of Kurti has started to take the minority’s fate seriously and has decided to issue them residence permits.
Albanians in Serbia – A Marginalized Minority
The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights has called the passivation of addresses “ethnic cleansing by administrative methods.” In the Preshevë Valley, which includes the municipalities of Medvegjë, Preshevë
