Vucic before U.N.: Pristina Is Creating Intolerable Conditions for Serbs, Other Non-Albanians

Aleksandar Vucic, U.N. Security Council, New York , April 22 2024 (Photo: PrintScreen rts.rs)

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said before the U.N. Security Council in New York that the authorities in Pristina were creating intolerable living conditions for Serbs and other non-Albanians, concluding that the pogrom against Serbs in Kosovo that began in 1999 was going on to this day.

Speaking at a U.N. Security Council session reviewing a new six-month report by U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres on the work of the U.N. Mission in Kosovo, Vucic said on April 22 that "brutal repression" against Serbs and non-Albanians had intensified after a Feb. 8 urgent session of the Security Council convened at Belgrade's request.

Listing specific actions Pristina was taking to create unlivable conditions for Serbs, Vucic spoke of illegal land expropriation, "pointless halts and humiliation" to hinder freedom of movement, arbitrary arrests of dozens of prominent Serbs, extended detention for the arrestees, prohibition of the use of the dinar as currency in Kosovo, precluding Serbs from receiving pensions, salaries, child's benefits and welfare payments in dinars, and 16 ethnically motivated attacks on Serbs within a period of two and a half months.

Serbia presented to the Security Council all the steps Pristina was taking to execute "planned, widespread and systematic attacks against Serb civilians," Vucic said, recalling that the 11th anniversary of the signing of the Brussels Agreement had been last week, but that Pristina was yet to form the Community of Serb Municipalities.

"Those 11 years of unkept promises, daily excuses and untruths, and the inadvertent or intentional inability of the European Union to move things past deadlock have resulted in ongoing legal violence against and the physical mistreatment of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija," Vucic said.

Vucic said Guterres's report on the work of UNMIK from Sept. 19, 2023 to March 15, 2024 "does not reflect the seriousness of the situation on the ground, though factually it documents almost all significant events in this period."