A video circulating on social media shows Serbia’s Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, Snežana Paunović, stating during an interview on Kurir Television: “I would have ethnically cleansed Kosovo in 1989.”
During the interview, Paunović repeatedly referred to the Republic of Kosovo as “Kosovo and Metohija,” the constitutional term used by Serbian state institutions, reflecting Serbia’s official position of not recognizing Kosovo’s independence.
Her statement refers to 1989, when the regime of Slobodan Milošević revoked Kosovo’s autonomy and imposed direct rule over the territory, ushering in a decade of systematic repression against Kosovo Albanians.
Nearly a decade later, during the 1998–1999 Kosovo war, Serbian military, police, and paramilitary forces carried out a widespread campaign against Kosovo Albanian civilians. International courts, including the ICTY, established that Serbian forces committed murders, massacres, forced expulsions, persecution, and other crimes during the conflict.
According to post-war documentation, more than 13,000 people were killed, including over 1,000 children, while over one million Kosovo Albanians were forcibly displaced from their homes. Thousands of women and girls were subjected to conflict-related sexual violence.
Paunović’s statement explicitly advocates ethnic cleansing, a term associated with the deliberate removal of an ethnic population through violence, intimidation, and forced displacement. Her remarks revive rhetoric associated with the nationalist policies that led to some of the gravest atrocities committed in Kosovo during the 1990s.
The interview was broadcast on Kurir Television, and the video was later shared on social media by Radomir Martin.
