Content has been published with the caption claiming that 5 citizens of the Serbian community receive Kosovo citizenship every day.
allegation It was presented through a video material, where an opinion leader is seen and heard making this statement in an interview published on July 20 on the Albanian-language "A2 CNN" television.
What's wrong with the content?
Opinionist Lulzim Veliu has not presented any data or evidence that confirms this claim, while the publisher of the content has not clarified that it is a statement by the opinionist, presenting it as a confirmed fact.
The same statement, taken from this interview and with the same claim, was also published on Facebook (July 23) by a page called “InfoPost” (see here).
The video in question contains a 28-minute interview with columnist Lulzim Veliu. Veliu answered questions about several developments in Kosovo, which were raised as issues by moderator Pandi Gjata.
In the video published on the YouTube channel, neither the title nor the descriptive spaces clarify the identity of the person who was giving the interview.
Hibrid.info found the full video of the show, broadcast on July 20, from which the interview was cut. It was found that the person who made the claim in question is Lulzim Veliu (see here).
The content was then checked to confirm the claim presented in the caption of the video clip of the interview. After checking, it was confirmed that the claim presented in the title came from the statement of the opinionist Veliu (see here).
Transcripted statement from the interview:
"Lulzim Veliu: So, I think that those citizens of Kosovo, who are pushed in many cases by various factors, it would be better to gather and protest in the streets of Pristina against the law on the citizenship of Serbs, who, according to some information we have, register and receive Kosovo citizenship within a day, approximately 5 thousand Serbs. A change is being made to the national structure in Kosovo, precisely with the law that was approved shortly before the Kosovo Assembly was dissolved.
Question: Are you telling me that 5 Serbian citizens a day receive Kosovo citizenship?
Lulzim Veliu: Yes, yes, that's exactly right, 5 thousand Serbian citizens are receiving Kosovo citizenship, not only in the northern municipalities, which have been going on continuously, but this is also happening in the headquarters of Kosovo embassies and consulates throughout Europe."
Since Lulzim Veliu did not present any concrete source for the information on which he based this claim, further verification was directed towards the relevant institutions, to check whether there is official data that supports such a figure.
Since the commentator referred to law new Citizenship, which has entered into FORCE On May 22 of this year, Hibrid.info checked official data on the number of people who acquired Kosovo citizenship during the period April–July, in website of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
While data for July has not been published, available statistics show an increase in the number of ethnic Serb citizens who have acquired Kosovo citizenship following the entry into force of the new Law on Citizenship. In April, before the law entered into force, 40 Serbian citizens had acquired Kosovo citizenship, while 51 applications had been rejected. In May, the number of approved cases had increased to 55, while 41 applications had been rejected. In June, 78 Serbian citizens had acquired Kosovo citizenship, while 59 applications had been rejected (see here, here and here).
This data shows an increase in the number of approved cases, but does not support the claim that thousands of Serbian citizens are receiving Kosovo citizenship every day.
To find more information, Hibrid.info also researched using the search engine "Google", with the words "number of Serbs who have obtained citizenship" (see here). The search results did not show any articles that could confirm the number of Serbian citizens who received Kosovo citizenship in July.
However, during the search, I came across content claiming that the number of applications from Serbian citizens in Kosovo who wanted to obtain Kosovo citizenship had increased (see here).
A video with the same but unconfirmed claim was published on Wednesday (July 29) on the Facebook account of Qendrim Kryeziu, a candidate for deputy from the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) (see here).
This repeated claim led the research focus to finding data on the number of applications (see here). Apart from a statement by Xhelal Sveçla, the acting Minister of Internal Affairs, who said that hundreds of people have declared their citizenship after the law came into force, there are no sources that would provide official and confirmed figures on this issue (see here).
Analyze:
A media outlet published a video excerpt from an interview, with the caption claiming that 5 citizens of the Serbian community receive Kosovo citizenship every day.
The claim stemmed from a statement by columnist Lulzim Veliu, given during an interview for this medium.
At the time of making the statement, Veliu did not support it with concrete sources or official data.
Meanwhile, the media outlet did not clarify in the caption that it was a statement by the columnist, but presented the claim as a confirmed fact.
Therefore, based on its working methodology, hibrid.info assesses the content as "unverified".
rationale
The "Unverified" rating is given to those informative contents that do not provide sufficient information to confirm the claims made in the report, and which could not be verified due to certain circumstances (speed, lack of sources) during the publication of the content.