Kosovo declares Serbian government minister persona non grata

The Minister of State Administration and Local Self-Government of Serbia, Snežane Paunović, has been declared persona non grata (undesirable person), with a permanent ban on entry or transit through Kosovo, announced the acting Minister of Internal Affairs in the Government of Kosovo, Dželjalj Svečlja.

Paunović told Kurir television on Saturday that "in order to ethnically cleanse Kosovo in 1998" she would have been in the place of Slobodan Milošević, a Hague indictee and former president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

She specified that she would not "liquidate the Albanians in the way they are trying to ethnically cleanse Kosovo to this day, but in such a way that anyone who feels less like a resident of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia leaves it and goes to their home country."

Svečlja assessed that with this statement, Paunović confirmed "what Serbia has never given up on - the project of ethnic cleansing of Albanians."

"Such speech and such distorted aspirations are nothing new. They represent a continuation of state policy that has produced violence, crimes and attempts to exterminate Albanians from their homelands for decades," he wrote in a Facebook post.

He added that "continued hatred, expressed in a threatening tone" towards Kosovo is unacceptable, and must be "severely sanctioned by democratic states and societies that protect peace, human rights and do not tolerate rhetoric and behavior that incites hatred, destabilization and the repetition of criminal policies from the past."

Paunović's statement was condemned by European Union spokesperson Anita Hiper, stating that it is "contrary to the values ​​of human dignity, reconciliation, responsibility and good neighborly relations on which the EU is founded."

Paunović subsequently stated in a statement on July 14 that she was not abandoning the policies of the Socialist Party of Serbia, a party of which she has been a member since 1992.

Students in Blockade, the Movement of Free Citizens, and the Serbia Center Party (SRCE) condemned Paunović's statement and called for political responsibility.