Regarding the claims made in the video published by “Peščanik” that thousands of Albanians from the so-called Preševo Valley were deleted from the Single Electoral Roll, and that the police passivized their addresses and left them without personal documents, the Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government and the President of the Coordination Body of the Government of the Republic of Serbia for the Municipalities of Preševo, Bujanovac and Medveđa, Aleksandar Martinović, PhD, has given an official statement:
“Claims that thousands of Albanians from the so-called Preševo Valley were deleted from the Single Electoral Roll, and that the police passivized their addresses and left them without personal documents, are unacceptable and we reject them as absolutely incorrect.
The issue of residence is regulated by the Law on Permanent and Temporary Residence of Citizens from 2011, the implementation and supervision of which is the responsibility of the Ministry of the Interior. This law regulates, among other things, the procedure and method of passivization of permanent residence.
The Ministry of the Interior, in accordance with the Law on Residence and Residence of Citizens, as the competent authority for keeping records on the permanent and temporary residence of citizens throughout the territory of the Republic of Serbia, submits daily reports on the change of residence addresses of citizens, i.e. reports on citizens in respect of which it was determined that they do not have a residence.
Bearing in mind that the passivation procedure is within the competence of the Ministry of the Interior, in order to act legally, the Ministry of the Interior has given an explanation that, through its services, it delivers information on the finality of the decision on the passivation of residence on a daily basis, with the clarification that the citizen whose residence has been passivated is obliged to report the place of residence and address to the competent authority considering that he does not have a registered place of residence, or that he had a registered place of residence at that address until the date of finality of the decision.
The Ministry of the Interior has a single procedure for verifying residence, so it cannot be said that it refers to a specific group of people and territory. Likewise, the Ministry of the Interior conducts on-the-spot check-ups in the situation of verifying the fact of residence of citizens at the registered residence.
Therefore, the Law is the same for everyone, is valid and applies to all citizens.
The Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government receives data on a daily basis through the service for the entire territory of the Republic of Serbia. Upon receipt of this information, the competent Local Self-Government Unit makes an adequate decision to delete the voter from the Single electoral Roll, given that he/she does not have a registered residence in their territory. The decision is, of course, also served to the party to whom it relates, in accordance with the provisions of the Law on General Administrative Procedure.
The party has the right to file an appeal within 24 hours of receiving the decision, and the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, as a second-instance authority, decides on the appeal within 48 hours. We emphasize that a citizen who has been deleted from the Single electoral Roll does not lose his/her right to vote and can exercise it by re-enrolling based on the registration of residence, about which the Ministry of the Interior will send information via the web service, while the competent Local Self-Government Unit re-enrolls the voter on the basis of it.
We would also like to point out that since the beginning of 2023, not a single appeal has been filed to the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government in respect of the decisions on deletion from the Single Electoral Roll, which were made by the municipal administrations of the Municipalities of Medveđa, Preševo and Bujanovac.
Therefore, the so-called passivation of residence of the citizens of Albanian nationality in the southern part of Serbia is not carried out, and in this sense, citizens of the Republic of Serbia of Albanian nationality have their voting rights as well as all other rights, as do all full-fledged citizens of the Republic of Serbia,” the announcement reads.