The Ministry of State Administration and Local Self-Government of Serbia has denied that thousands of Albanians from the Preševo ​​Valley have been deleted from the voter lists and that the police have deactivated their addresses and left the residents without personal documents.

Deactivation means deleting citizens from the addresses where they were registered.

The Minister for State Administration and Local Self-Government and the president of the coordinating body for the municipalities of Preševo, Bujanoc and Medveđa, Aleksandar Martinović, said that these claims are “unacceptable and completely incorrect”, writes REL.

“The so-called deactivated of addresses of Albanians in the south of Serbia is not happening,” he said, emphasizing that Albanians in Serbia “have the right to vote and all other rights, like all other citizens of Serbia. “.

According to him, the passivation of addresses is done “in accordance with the law”.

“The Ministry of Internal Affairs has a unique procedure for verifying addresses, so it cannot be said that it has to do with a specific group or territory,” added Martinović.

The ministry has also said that since the beginning of 2023 “no appeal has been submitted against the decisions to delete persons from the list of voters in the municipalities of Preševo, Bujanoc and Medveđa “.

In addition to the right to documentation and health insurance, they were also denied the right to vote in elections.

The same claims were recently published by the Youth Initiative for Human Rights.

According to the organization’s data, since 2022, the addresses of more than 2,900 citizens have been deactivated in the Preševo Valley.

The report claims that deactivation is not being carried out in accordance with the law.

The problem of the passivation of addresses is also mentioned in the Progress Report of the European Commission, the part for Serbia, when the respect for the rights of minorities is mentioned.

In the report for the year 2022, it is also mentioned that members of the Albanian minority have expressed concern about the way their residential address is controlled.