“Večernje Novosti” disinforms about the population census in Kosovo

The “Večernje Novosti” portal recently published an article entitled “They want to fined serbian families with 8000 euros! Pristina plans to sanction all citizens who boycotted the recent census in Kosovo.”

This article contains a number of misinformation and inaccurate claims about the alleged abuse of the census, inserts questions about “casualties” and “war damage” into the questionnaire in order, as they put it, to “provide the Kosovo authorities with material for a lawsuit” against Belgrade, which “persistently threatens”.

Below, we will analyse the disinformation of this portal.

“Večernje Novosti” writes:

“Pristina’s institutions misused the census and included questions about “victims” and “war damage” in the questionnaire in order to provide material for a lawsuit against Belgrade, for which they are persistently threatening. The data were requested up to and including June 1999, which means that Serbian suffering was deliberately ignored, since all the killings of Serbs, kidnappings and property grabbing took place after that period, i.e. after the arrival of the international community in Kosovo.

On the other hand, the series of arrests, the mock trials, the banning of Serbian goods, the expulsion of dinars, the harassment – all of this was calculated to make as few people as possible fill in the questionnaires. Because the plan is to show that there are not enough Serbs, especially in the north of Kosovo, to form a Community of Serb Municipalities, which Pristina has been avoiding for years. In addition, there is a real danger that Kurti’s accountants will penalise the communities with a majority Serb population, i.e. that these municipalities will receive less money from the budget, because the calculations are made primarily on the basis of population numbers.

How much Pristina cares about the registration of Serbs was confirmed by questionnaires full of pointless questions, factual and typographical errors. The so-called Kosovo Agency for Statistics did not make the slightest effort to ensure that our people at least understood the questions, but aimed only at the formal application of the law – that the survey was supposedly also in Serbian”.

Analysis:

According to official data, the 2024 census in Kosovo includes questions on the damage caused during the 1998-1999 war, and these questions were introduced as part of a wider census being conducted with the support of international organisations such as Eurostat, the UN and the World Bank.

The census also includes all citizens of Kosovo and calls for the participation of all communities, including Serbs.

There is no evidence to support the allegations made by Večernje novosti of systematic arrests or trials for obstruction of the census, so once again this portal has attempted to mislead the public.

Officials from the Kosovo Statistical Agency provided training to Serbian census enumerators and supervisors to ensure the inclusion of the Serbian community in the census.

On the other hand, in order to prevent Belgrade from interfering in the census process and from seeing the exact number of the Serbian community that is voting unhindered in the elections in Serbia and bringing victory to Vucic and his party, the leading Serbian political party, Srpska Lista, called for a boycott of the census, which has had the greatest impact on the response of the Serbs in the north of Kosovo.

Nor are the claims that the questions in the survey were unclear to the Serbian community true, as any census taker would have explained a question that was in some way unclear.

The arrests that are taking place in Kosovo, which are mentioned in the article by the aforementioned portal, are mostly related to allegations of espionage and other criminal activities, and not as part of a campaign of intimidation against the Serbian population.

In response to Serbia’s actions against Kosovo, Kosovo has taken measures that include a ban on Serbian goods as part of wider political and economic measures.

Questions on war casualties and damage were included in the census not to discriminate against Serbs but to document war damage.

The Večernje novosti portal is known for writing nationalistic articles with biased content and its claims have often been denied./G. Venhari – The Geopost/