False reports are being created stating that no one resides in the homes of Albanians. These reports are crafted by so-called “competent authorities,” functioning as “regional organizational units,” which are directly controlled by the Serbian government through the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The determination of a permanent residence has been deliberately complicated for Albanians. It includes checking whether a citizen can prove their “professional, economic, social, and other connections” to the registered residential address. This is where false reports come into play, which nullify these indicators.
“The institution that stamps the administrative act is the Ministry of Internal Affairs, starting from the local police station in the Municipality of Medvegjë, supposedly upon requests from local government bodies. In practice, a simple police officer can issue a report stating that the citizen does not live at their registered address, and that report is used as a legal basis to erase the address and unregister the person from the system,” said Arben Ferati, a representative of the National Council for Medvegjë.
Serbia’s law allows authorities to interpret and verify the facts about the validity of a permanent residence. It gives them the power to judge the validity of a current address and the likelihood that an individual will reside there in the future.
This has been used to carry out ethnic cleansing in the Preševo Valley. The most severe consequences have been in Medvegjë, where figures show that Albanians have been erased from every registry and left without any documents. They live in their own lands, but for the Serbian state, it is as though they do not exist.
“Unfortunately, for the past 14 years, this discriminatory practice has been happening in the municipality of Medvegjë by the competent authorities of the Serbian state, as a result of which 90% of Albanians in Medvegjë have lost all their rights as citizens due to an administrative act like the ‘passivation.’ We’re talking about 4,200 residents who have been deregistered just in the municipality of Medvegjë,” said Arben Ferati, a representative of the National Council for Medvegjë.
“Serbia, with these moderated methods, is gradually not only deregistering the population but also appropriating their properties,” stated Ragmi Mustafa, Deputy Mayor of the Municipality of Presheva.
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