Several Serbian-language media outlets published articles on November 27 regarding the placement of Albanian national flags in the municipality of Kllokot, a settlement with a Serb majority.
The article is based on a response from the Office for Kosovo in the Government of Serbia, which makes an unfounded interpretation of the reason for the placement of these flags. In this response, the placement of the flags is called another attempt to intimidate the Serbian people in that part of Kosovo.
The articles are illustrated with photographs from the scene, and this Serbian institution claims without evidence that this action cannot be interpreted otherwise than as a provocation and another step towards the creation of "Greater Albania".
Links to articles published in Serbian-language media:
Link to the Office for Kosovo statement:
Excerpts from the article published on the Office for Kosovo website:
The display of red and black flags in Kllokot, on the eve of the Albanian flag holiday, is another attempt to intimidate the Serbian people in that part of our southern province.
Albanian flags have no place next to Serbian houses in Pomoravlje, Kosovo, and the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, so this inappropriate "decoration" cannot be interpreted otherwise than as a provocation and another step towards the creation of "Greater Albania."
Regarding the case that occurred in Kllokot, the Office for Kosovo does not provide concrete facts about the event and the claim made as another attempt to intimidate the Serbian people in that part of Kosovo.
Furthermore, the office's interpretation that this is being done as a provocation and another step towards the creation of "Greater Albania" is a tendentious claim and unfounded in concrete facts.
In this reaction, no facts are provided about who placed these flags.
The municipality of Kllokot has not published any reaction (here). Also, the relevant ministries such as Infrastructure or Local Government, which are other central institutions whose activities include the supervision of highways, respectively local government (see here and here), have not made any publication about the organization of such an activity (placing flags).
So, there is no evidence that such an activity was organized by Kosovo institutions; on the contrary, in the absence of evidence about the party that took this initiative, the claim that the placement of these flags is an organized action to intimidate Serbs or to create a "Greater Albania", as claimed in the reaction of the Office for Kosovo in the Government of Serbia, does not stand.
Analyze:
Serbian-language media have published the statement of the Office for Kosovo in the Government of Serbia, regarding the placement of red and black flags in Kllokot, a settlement with a Serb majority.
The office tends to claim that this action is another attempt to intimidate the Serbian people, as well as another step towards the creation of "Greater Albania."
Based on the methodology of the work, hibrid.info assesses that this article does not provide concrete facts for the claims offered and is classified as "manipulation of facts" and "conspiracy theory".
ASSESSMENT
"Conspiracy theories" are media reports that disseminate a false or unverifiable description of a phenomenon, event, or person, presenting it as part of or the result of a secret plan ("conspiracy"). A characteristic of these reports is that they present a series of claims, presented as facts, between which cause-effect relationships are established, without providing any credible evidence.
The evaluation as "Manipulation of facts" is given to those media reports that use facts known to be correct, but interpret them in a distorted way. These reports typically use inaccurate information to draw inaccurate conclusions or claims, thereby misdirecting consumers' conclusions of media content in relation to the actual meaning of the facts presented.