Summary
In the mid-1990s and late-1990s during the Serbian oppression against Albanians, Serbian nationalist rhetoric and irredentism increasingly targeted Albanians through political repression, propaganda, and dehumanizing narratives. Vojislav Šešelj advocated strategies to undermine Albanian political leadership through fabricated scandals, staged violence, and even biological harm, framing Albanians as a threat to justify isolation and repression. At the same time, Slobodan Milošević consolidated power by aligning with extremist chauvinist figures.
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“Albanians should be created through specific legislation and at the same time scandals should be created to discredit them. This could discredit their leaders in eyes of the domestic and foreign public opinion, a particularly sensitive consideration for Albanians.
“While the Western politicians debated these measures, Milošević was strengthening his own political position inside Yugoslavia. In March he invited the radical nationalist politician Vojislav Šešelj to join his government; Šešelj was known for his extreme views on the Kosovo question, having publicly advocated a policy of infecting Kosovo Alban-ians with the AIDS virus.
Most of the political spectrum in Serbia (with the exception of the tiny ‘Civic Alliance’ party) was in any case hostile to the Albanians: a typical example was the commentator Aleksa Djilas (someone regarded in the West as a liberal intellectual), whose main contribution to the debate on Kosovo in April 1998, published in the Belgrade nationalist magazine Argument, was entitled ‘Whatever Israel Does To The Palestinians, We Serbs Can Do To The Albanians”.
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“…. Distinguished individuals who play important roles in their political life should be eliminated through scandals or by staging traffic accidents, jealousy killings or infecting them with the AIDS virus when they travel abroad. Their infection would be discovered when crossing borders thus they could be quarantined.
Through adequate propaganda in their mass media such events can create such an artificial picture of an intolerable percentage of infected people, which would be used as an excuse to isolate large groups of people. This would help in promoting a picture of Albanians as an infected people.”
Source
A statement by Serb Deputy Prime Minister Voislav Seselj in Velika. The Greater Serbia Journal, Belgrade, Oct. 14, 1995. Document compiled by Dr. S D Stein. Last update 13/04/99. Stuart.Stein@uwe.ac.uk. OS D Stein Web Genocide Documentation Centre. https://phdn.org/archives/www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/Kosovo/Kosovo-Background5.htm?utm_source
