Albanian MP in the Serbian parliament, Shaip Kamberi, condemned hate speech and discriminatory terms used by politicians. Speaking in Albanian for the first time since the Kosovo war, he addressed his colleagues in the Assembly.
Although interrupted several times by President Ivica Dačić, Kamberi criticized the decision of the Belgrade Supreme Court that refused to find Minister Aleksandër Vulin guilty for using the offensive term “Šiptari”.
“Now, by decision of the court of this state, from today I am an “Ashtar” and not an “Albanian”. So, one day Aleksandër Vulin woke up and decided who I am and how my nationality is defined, and this was legalized by the state court! Like in Germany in the late 1930s, when Minister Hermann Goering decided who the Jews were and how they were defined, and then the Gestapo courts legalized it.
“By deeming the Albanian National Council’s lawsuit unfounded, the Court has now also given legal force to the institutionalization of hate speech, intolerance and xenophobia against Albanians in general, and those in Serbia in particular,” said Kamberi.
Immediately, there was a call for the international community to react. “Ms. Merkel, Mr. Macron, Mr. Borrell, Mr. Lajcak, Mrs. Vonder Leyen, is this your pro-European Serbia? This did not happen even during the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, who killed, raped and expelled Albanians, calling them Albanians.
But, under the silence of the democratic world, Aleksandar Vučić’s Serbia is returning to the time of Aleksandar Ranković, which is known as the last period of official and public use of the term “Siptar”.
Kamberi further brought a comparative example, to convince Serbian MPs that this was a dangerous precedent not only in that country, but also in the entire Western Balkans.
“How would Serbian society react if Aleksandar Vulin’s Kosovar counterpart woke up one day and decided that from today on Serbs would be called by the pejorative term “Shkije” and the court in Pristina legalized this? Is this what Vulin and Vučić want for Kosovo Serbs?”
In the end, Kamberi expressed his conviction that the Serbia of hatred will not win, in the face of the Balkans of peace, coexistence and mutual respect.
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