Ethnic Cleansing Remark Tests Serbia’s Claim to Have Broken With Milošević
A Serbian minister’s declared willingness to expel Kosovo Albanians has drawn condemnation across the region and Europe. Belgrade’s refusal to remove her has transformed a personal scandal into a test of government policy and Serbia’s European ambitions.
Tirana Times, July 17, 2026 – When a serving Serbian government minister said she would have “ethnically cleansed Kosovo” had she been in Slobodan Milošević’s position in 1998, the words were not merely an offensive reference to a distant war.
They represented an endorsement of removing people from their homes because of their ethnicity and political identity. Coming from the minister responsible for public administration and local government, they also raised a fundamental question: Can a state official charged with protecting equal citizenship remain in office after publicly advocating collective expulsion?
Snežana Paunović, a senior member of the Socialist Party of Serbia, or SPS, made the statement during an interview with Belgrade-based Kurir TV. She later argued that she did not mean killing Kosovo Albanians but forcing those who did not regard themselves as part of Serbia or the former Yugoslavia to leave for what she called their “mother country.”
That explanation did not soften her words. It defined ethnic cleansing more precisely: the coercive removal of a population to create a territory dominated by one national group.
Paunović initially refused to withdraw her position and emphasized her continued loyalty to the SPS, the party founded and led by Milošević during the wars of the 1990s. After international pressure mounted, she apologized to President Aleksandar Vučić, Prime Minister Đuro Macut and the Serbian government for the political difficulties her statement had caused. She did not offer a comparable apology to Kosovo Albanians, the families of war victims or Serbian citizens alarmed by her remarks.
That distinction matters. Her apology was directed upward, toward political authority, rather than outward, toward those targeted by the rhetoric. It suggested concern over disloyalty to the government, not recognition that advocating the removal of an ethnic population is morally and politically indefensible.
The historical record leaves little room for rhetorical ambiguity. In 1999, nearly 860,000 Kosovo Albanians fled or were expelled to neighboring countries within nine weeks, according to the U.N. refugee agency. International tribunal judgments later upheld the convictions of senior Serbian and Yugoslav officials involved in the forcible displacement of Kosovo Albanian civilians.
Milošević died in detention in The Hague in 2006 before his trial could produce a verdict. But the cases against other senior officials established that deportation and forced displacement were not simply accidental consequences of fighting. They were part of an organized campaign aimed at changing Kosovo’s ethnic balance.
Kosovo responds with legal and political measures.
Kosovo reacted by declaring Paunović persona non grata and permanently banning her from entering or transiting through the country.
Acting Interior Minister Xhelal Sveçla said the statement showed the survival of a Serbian political project based on the removal of Albanians. He said any attempt to revive such an ideology would face a legal and institutional response.
Kosovo authorities also requested prosecutorial action. Acting Justice Minister Donika Gërvalla called for an investigation into whether Paunović’s statements constituted incitement to ethnic hatred and division. She argued that glorifying ethnic cleansing could not be dismissed as ordinary political rhetoric.
Kosovo official Andin Hoti said the declaration showed that parts of Serbia’s political establishment had not freed themselves from Milošević’s ideology.
Those reactions were forceful, although Kosovo’s travel ban is primarily symbolic. The more consequential question is whether Serbia, the state whose government Paunović serves, will impose any political responsibility of its own.
Vučić distances himself, but does not act.
Vučić said Paunović’s statement did not represent his position or the policy of the Serbian government. He described it as careless and insisted that Serbia’s official approach was based on dialogue, compromise, peace and stability, “never ethnic cleansing.”
But the president’s distancing was weakened by what followed. Rather than ending with an unequivocal rejection of collective expulsion, he shifted the discussion toward Serbian suffering in Kosovo and repeated allegations that Kosovo’s authorities were carrying out ethnic cleansing against Serbs.
The rights and security of Kosovo Serbs are legitimate and serious concerns. Attacks, intimidation, property disputes, restrictions on return and pressure on minority communities must be investigated and condemned. After the war, violence and reprisals drove large numbers of Serbs, Roma and other non-Albanians from Kosovo. UNHCR reported that more than 200,000 non-Albanians were displaced.
But one community’s suffering cannot be used to excuse or relativize the proposed expulsion of another. Acknowledging crimes against Albanians does not diminish Serbian victims. Defending the rights of Kosovo Serbs does not require defending a minister who imagines Kosovo without Albanians.
Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and SPS leader Ivica Dačić went further than Vučić. He openly defended Paunović, called criticism of her “shameful and hypocritical” and accused her opponents of ignoring the displacement of Serbs. His defense was significant because it elevated her remarks from an individual scandal to a position protected by one of the most senior figures in Serbia’s governing coalition.
Another senior SPS figure, Branko Ružić, took a different position, saying ethnic cleansing had never been party policy and warning that such statements damage both Serbia and the interests of Serbs in Kosovo. His intervention exposed divisions within the party over how far it should distance itself from its Milošević-era legacy.
By publication time, no dismissal had been announced. Prime Minister Macut’s failure to act has therefore become part of the controversy. A government cannot credibly insist that a minister does not speak for it while continuing to grant her the authority of ministerial office.
Serbian voices reject the rhetoric
Some of the most substantial criticism came from within Serbia.
Nataša Kandić, the founder of the Humanitarian Law Center and one of Serbia’s best-known human rights campaigners, noted that Paunović was born in Peja and could not plausibly claim ignorance of what happened there.
Kandić recalled that Serbian police expelled almost the entire Albanian population of Peja in March 1999 and referred to crimes committed in Qyshk, Pavlan, Zahaq and Lubeniq. She said Paunović’s words did not merely reinterpret the past but indicated that the ideology of ethnic cleansing had never been abandoned.
Her response is important because it rejects the attempt to present criticism as hostility toward Serbia. Kandić’s argument is that confronting crimes committed in Serbia’s name is necessary to defend Serbia from the political culture that brought war, isolation and devastation.
Dr. Orhan Dragaš, director of the International Security Institute in Belgrade, said Paunović had done more than insult Albanians. She had humiliated Serbia, damaged its national interests and demonstrated how quickly nostalgia for the 1990s could return to the highest levels of the state.
Dragaš also challenged Paunović’s claim that she opposed killing but supported expulsion. Murder is not the only instrument of ethnic cleansing, he noted. Deportation, intimidation, seizure of property and the creation of conditions that force a population to flee are its defining elements.
Political analyst Dragan Popović said Paunović had publicly expressed what many people inside Serbia’s governing establishment privately believe. Analyst Ognjen Gogić warned that her words would make it more difficult for Belgrade to advocate credibly for the rights of Kosovo Serbs because Pristina could now point to a serving Serbian minister openly contemplating the removal of Albanians.
Serbian politician Rada Trajković similarly said Paunović had legitimized ethnic cleansing as an acceptable political method and should resign. Serbian civil society groups working in Kosovo warned that inflammatory statements made in Belgrade are often paid for by ordinary Kosovo Serbs, who must live with the resulting insecurity and mistrust.
Student groups and the liberal Free Citizens Movement also demanded her removal. The opposition movement said a person who supports expelling citizens because of their nationality cannot serve in a government, particularly as the minister whose portfolio includes equal access to state institutions.
Shaip Kamberi, the only ethnic Albanian member of Serbia’s parliament, submitted a formal request for Paunović’s dismissal backed by 53 opposition lawmakers. He said that if Macut refused to propose her removal, the prime minister would assume responsibility for normalizing such views within the government.
Kamberi also expressed disappointment that several parties representing national minorities but participating in the governing coalition did not support the initiative.
Europe condemns, but the test is action
The European Union said there was no place in Europe for rhetoric advocating or justifying ethnic cleansing.
European Commission spokesperson Anitta Hipper said Paunović’s words contradicted human dignity, reconciliation, accountability and good-neighborly relations. She also said they were inconsistent with Serbia’s commitments under the EU-facilitated dialogue with Kosovo.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos was more direct. She described the statement as shocking, called for zero tolerance and later said she could not imagine how a minister who had made such remarks could continue exercising public office.
European Parliament member Sandro Gozi called the statement support for forced displacement and persecution and demanded Paunović’s immediate dismissal. He questioned how Serbia could present itself as committed to EU membership while a government minister revived the political language of the Milošević era.
The European response was clear rhetorically. Its credibility, however, will depend on whether “zero tolerance” produces consequences. Serbia is an EU candidate country. If a minister can advocate ethnic cleansing, remain in office and be defended by a deputy prime minister without affecting Belgrade’s political relationship with Brussels, then zero tolerance risks becoming zero cost.
Britain issued the strongest formal reaction among the Western governments included in the material reviewed. The British Foreign Office called Paunović’s remarks “completely abhorrent,” saying they threatened to reopen old divisions and inflame regional tensions. It welcomed Vučić’s distancing but called on political leaders to reject such language unequivocally.
British lawmaker Alicia Kearns described Paunović’s position as a stain on the Serbian government. She said people now in their 30s still remember abuses committed against their families and warned that attempts to justify or glorify those crimes would not erase the historical record.
The reviewed material does not contain comparably specific official statements from Washington, Berlin or Paris by the time of publication. The relative silence of other major Western capitals contrasts with the unusually direct language used by London and EU officials.
Albania’s divided response
In Albania, Foreign Minister Ferit Hoxha called Paunović’s declaration unacceptable, shocking and insulting to the victims of the Kosovo war.
Prime Minister Edi Rama later said the government had responded through its foreign minister and rejected demands that Albania join what he described as a “hysterical chorus” whenever “some crank in Belgrade” speaks irresponsibly.
Rama was correct that state diplomacy does not require every official to repeat the same condemnation. But his dismissive language risked minimizing the seriousness of the incident. A call for ethnic cleansing by a serving minister is not simply another eccentric statement from the margins of Serbian politics.
Opposition lawmaker Redi Muçi accused Albania’s government of reacting too weakly and called on Rama to describe ethnic cleansing explicitly as a crime against humanity. Sveçla also urged Tirana to take a more active position, arguing that Paunović’s words should be understood as a warning directed not only against Kosovo but against Albanians more broadly.
A test for Serbia, not merely a controversy over words
Paunović’s statement has been widely described as fascist because it treats ethnicity and political loyalty as tests determining who has the right to remain in a territory. It imagines the state not as a community of equal citizens but as an instrument for removing those considered nationally undesirable.
Yet the central issue is no longer only what Paunović said.
It is what Serbia’s institutions do after she said it.
Vučić has rejected her language but has not removed her. Dačić has defended her. Macut has not demonstrated that public advocacy of ethnic expulsion is incompatible with government service. Paunović herself apologized to those in power but not to those whom her proposed policy would expel.
Serbia’s civil society, opposition groups, students and some figures within the governing coalition have shown that Paunović does not speak for the entire country. Their criticism also demonstrates that rejecting the rhetoric is not anti-Serbian. It is a demand for a Serbia that has genuinely left the politics of the 1990s behind.
Removing Paunović would not, by itself, resolve Serbia’s unresolved relationship with its past. Keeping her in office, however, would send a clear message: that advocacy of ethnic cleansing may be embarrassing to the government, but it is not disqualifying.
At that point, the controversy would cease to be about one minister’s words. It would become a judgment on the government that chose to tolerate them.
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