The new regulation of the Central Bank of Kosovo (CBK) on the use of only the euro in the Republic of Kosovo for payment transactions is just the latest decision by Kosovo that Serbia is attempting to misuse for propaganda.
Immediately after the publication of the regulation, through which the Serbian dinar was banned for payment transactions in the country, the leaders of Serbian state institutions, as well as the organization Serbian party in Kosovo, were quick to classify this decision as targeted against Kosovo Serbs.
They said that banning the dinar in Kosovo is aimed at expelling Serbs and will result in in the exodus theirs.
On February 8, it was announced that the Serbian List, which is the largest Serbian party in Kosovo, had sent a letter to the Quint countries (the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France and Italy) in Kosovo, asking these countries to "stop the exodus"of Serbs from Kosovo, asking them to influence the Kosovo Government to cancel the CBK decision.
"We are addressing you on behalf of the Serbian people of Kosovo, conveying the prayers and expectations of the people to use your great, personal authority, as well as the authority of the respected states you represent in this region, to urgently stop the exodus of our people from their centuries-old homelands," the Serbian state news agency "Tanjug" quoted the letter in question.
The chairman of this party, Zlatan Ellek, in an earlier statement to the media, had compared the CBK's decision on the dinar to the operation of Croatian forces during the war for independence in 1995, titled "Oluja" (Storm), where many Serbs were killed and over 200 thousand others were expelled to liberate territories controlled by Serbs in a few days. (read more about Operation "Oluja" HERE)
Vukovar destroyed by Serbian forces
of SAME of him Pages were also the reactions of state institutions of Serbia, with the president there, Aleksandar Vučić, who requested a session at the UN Security Council.
At this session, which was held on Thursday, February 8, Vučić made a series of unfounded claims.
He said that the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, leads to "persecutions against Kosovo Serbs"He also accused Kosovo institutions of creating “unbearable conditions for Serbs,” adding that they “have also carried out systematic attacks and persecution” against them.
"The inability to use the dinar in Kosovo is just one of the long-term systematic measures applied to attack the Serbian population," Vučić said in this session.
Further, he claimed that over 14 percent of Serbs have left KosovoAccording to him, they have left due to systematic and widespread violence against them by Kosovo institutions.
Meanwhile, Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti, who represented the country at this extraordinary session of the UN Security Council, has rejected every claim by the Serbian president that Kosovo is carrying out a purge against Kosovo Serbs. He has called all of Vučić's claims lies.
"The idea that Kosovo is carrying out ethnic cleansing or persecution of the Serbian community is simply a lie that has been denied by many international organizations," said Kurti.
Regarding the CBK Regulation on the euro, Kurti said that it does not prevent Serbia from providing financial assistance to Serbs. "Everything else is false propaganda and incitement of tensions. The Regulation brings legality to the import of money into Kosovo in accordance with the constitution and monetary policy of the EU. Belgrade has sounded the alarm not because of the exchange of dinars for euros, but because bags of dinars are being stopped at the borders and they are complaining not because of concern for the Serbian citizens of Kosovo, but because those money pipelines in northern Kosovo are being stopped," he added.
Are Serbia's claims about exodus based on any argument?
This claim by Serbia about an exodus of Serbs from Kosovo is not the first.
Serbia takes care to continuously react to events occurring in Kosovo, which are related to the Serbian community living in Kosovo, mainly through its office called the Office for Kosovo in the Government of Serbia.
Petar Petkovic, who is the head of this office, claimed on January 21st without evidence that the looting of two Serb houses in the village of Brnica i Poshtme, Pristina, took place "with the aim of expelling Serbs from their settlements".
On October 2, 2023, Petkovic, but also the president of Serbia Vucic, claimed without any facts that about 11% of Serbs have fled from northern Kosovo to Serbia, and that Prime Minister Kurti is to blame for this.
And Serbian civil society in Kosovo also reacted to these claims.
Igor Marković, from the Serbian non-governmental organization in Kosovo, "Aktiv", said that this approach of Serbian officials is counterproductive, since, as he put it, there are neither figures nor arguments for Kurti to be the influencing factor.
He also said that the figure mentioned by Vučić and Petković of 11% is not based on any argument. According to him, the figure was mentioned "out of the need to declare some figure that sounds quite terrifying."
Meanwhile, on February 7, the German newspaper "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" (FAZ) published an analysis of German journalist, Michael Martens “The 'Invented' Serbian Exodus from Kosovo”, in which Martens writes that this claim “can be dismissed as false, based on official Serbian state statistics”.
Michael Martens' article in FAZ about the "invented Serbian exodus"
In his article, fragments of which the journalist also posted on the social network X (formerly Twitter), he acknowledges that the number of Serbs in Kosovo has been in steady decline for years, but adds that "the same can be said about the population size in Serbia."
The FAZ correspondent bases this claim on calculations by the “European Stability Initiative” (ESI). ESI has reviewed publicly available government figures that allow for fairly accurate conclusions about the number of Serbs.
ESI, according to Martens, has analyzed the figures of health insurance in Serbia. According to the analysis, in 2017 there were 109.000 Serbs insured in Kosovo, but 6 years later there were less than 107.000. This means that in 2023, there were 2.4% fewer Serbs insured, however, almost the same decrease is reflected in the population of Serbia. In the same period, the decrease there was 2.9%.
"In other words: the demographic development of the Serbian minority in Kosovo corresponds to the general negative trends across Southeast Europe outside the big cities. Claims of a 'specific Serbian exodus' from Kosovo are unfounded propaganda," said journalist Martens.
Despite the fact that claims of an exodus of Kosovo Serbs are not based on measurable data, the Serbian government and the Serbian List party maintain the disinformation narrative that the Serbian community in Kosovo is at risk of expulsion by the Kosovo government. Hibrid.info has consistently denied the Serbian government's claims about the expulsion of Serbs by the Kosovo government. This disinformation narrative is actualized in various situations, such as during political crises in northern Kosovo and in the dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia facilitated by the European Union.
Analytical article by Agon Osmani