In the international community, as well as some parts of the domestic public, the recent statement by Minister Snežana Paunović that, had she been in Slobodan Milošević’s position in 1998, she would have ethnically cleansed Kosovo, has caused strong condemnation.
A spokesperson for the European Commission, Anita Hipper, for example, stated that there is no place in Europe for rhetoric that justifies or advocates ethnic cleansing. European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos said she was shocked by a statement for which there can only be zero tolerance. Member of Parliament Shaip Kamberi assessed that the statement spreads fear among Albanians living in Serbia, while several opposition parties, together with the National Convention on the European Union’s Working Group for Chapter 35, called on the Prime Minister to dismiss Minister Paunović.
President Vučić discretely distanced himself from the statement, claiming that it reflected neither his own will nor that of the Serbian government, although, incidentally, the issue is not one of will at all, but of awareness and meaning, because a government does not and cannot possess a psychological function such as will.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Ivica Dačić, however, went to the opposite extreme. Like those who, from the back bench of politics and law, justify every wrongdoing by pointing to the other side’s misconduct, he described the criticism of the statement as shameful and hypocritical, arguing that people have remained silent for years about the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Kosovo and Metohija. And if nobody talks about that, then apparently we are entitled to speak about the fate of others without regard for the law.
This raises the question of whether, in this case, one could speak not only of political responsibility but also of criminal liability.
Attention has already been drawn to the criminal offense of Inciting National, Racial, and Religious Hatred and Intolerance (Article 317 of the Criminal Code). Not without reason. Expressing regret that members of a large ethnic group were not forcibly removed from the territory of the state of which they were citizens leaves open the interpretation that such remarks revive the threat of a criminal enterprise which its proponent considers both desirable and unjustifiably unfinished. Although the example cannot serve as a direct comparison, one must nevertheless ask: is it possible to imagine a state founded on the rule of law that would ignore the criminal consequences of a publicly expressed view that any crime against humanity, including the “Final Solution,” one of the darkest legacies of Nazism, should have been carried through to completion?
However, that is not all.
Particular attention should also be paid to a specific form of the criminal offense of Racial or Other Discrimination (Article 387, paragraph 5 of the Criminal Code), which penalizes the public approval of crimes against humanity committed against a group of persons identified by their national or ethnic affiliation, where such approval is expressed in a manner capable of leading to violence or hatred against that group, provided that those crimes have been established by a final judgment of a court in Serbia or the International Criminal Court.
Are all these rather complex legal requirements satisfied in this case? Let us examine them.
The criminal offense of Crime Against Humanity (Article 371 of the Criminal Code) is committed by anyone who, in violation of the rules of international law and as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population, among other acts, orders the forced displacement of civilians.
The relevant rules of international law allegedly violated in this context are contained primarily in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Articles 12, 20, and 26), the European Convention on Human Rights (Article 14), and Protocol No. 4 of that Convention (Articles 2 and 3). These instruments proclaim freedom of movement and residence, prohibit discrimination, and forbid the expulsion of a state’s own citizens. Article 5 of the Rome Statute, ratified in Serbia in 2001, establishes the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court over crimes against humanity.
By final judgments of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), multiple individuals were convicted of crimes against humanity committed through the forced displacement (deportation or transfer) of civilians in Kosovo and Metohija.
There is certainly also reasonable suspicion that the manner in which the minister made and explained her statement could incite violence or hatred toward the affected ethnic group.
Although she did not explicitly approve the crimes committed by those convicted (Ojdanić, Pavković, Lukić, Šainović, Đorđević, and Lazarević), the minister indirectly approved ethnic cleansing by referring to Milošević, who was indicted but never convicted, and went even further by personalizing the hypothetical scenario, openly acknowledging that, had she possessed the necessary authority, she herself would have carried it out.
It is therefore not difficult to conclude whether, and to what extent, the constituent elements of the aforementioned criminal offense are present.
Views such as the one discussed here are not merely political in origin. As Erich Fromm rightly argued, they are to a large extent a psychological problem. Their danger extends beyond the character structure of any individual and hangs over all of us like a threatening storm, arising both from the complacency and the fanaticism of many others. Although criminal prosecution is not a cure for the phenomenon itself, the silence of state institutions, including those within the judiciary, only serves to give it wings.
Translated by Marijana Simić
Peščanik.net, 22.07.2026.
