Troll of the Month: Snežana Paunović, The Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government in Serbia

The Balkan Troll of the Month is an individual, a group of individuals or a media outlet that spreads hate based on gender, ethnicity, religion, or other diversity categories. The Balkan Troll is selected based on hate speech incidents identified across the Western Balkan region.

The Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, Snežana Paunović from the Socialist Party of Serbia took part in an interview on Kurir TV. On Kurir TV’s program ‘Untold’ [Neispričano] she stated that if she had been in the position of the then-President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milošević, in 1998, she would have ethnically cleansed Kosovo. She claimed that this is the harshest statement she’s ever given andelaborated that she wouldn’t do it the way ‘they’re’ (referring to Albanians) trying to ethnically cleanse Kosovo now, but that she’d urge all who don’t feel like a citizen of FR Yugoslavia to go back to their motherland. She also said that she would have liquidated all terrorist activities, and dealt with terrorist the way one does now, let alone back then. Furthermore, at a later point in the interview, Paunović called Albanian Kosovans termites, saying they took everything from her house and cut her radiators.  

While civil society organisations and political parties condemned Paunović for her statement and demanded her resignation, this was not the consesus amongst all. The Minister of Internal Affairs, Deputy Prime Minister, and President of the Socialist Party of Serbia, Ivica Dačić, jumped to her defence instead saying that the attacks and critiques are shameful and hypocritical. He went on to question: “What kinds of ethnic cleansing is it if there are fewer Serbs living there today than there are Albanians? How would that even work? The Holocaust did not end with there being more Jews than before the Holocaust. So, it is considered legitimate to hunt down Serbs, kill Serbs, say that Serbs must leave, and expel Serbs, but it is not legitimate to say anything in defence of Serbia.”

His statement and comparison are extremely harmful and dangerous. They serve to relativise the Holocaust while simultaneously spreading misinformation by falsely claiming that it was said that it is acceptable to kill Serbs, when no such claim was made.

Snežana Paunović was first elected to the National Assembly in 2013 and served two terms as one of its Deputy Speakers. The public offices she holds lend additional weight to her dehumanising and inflammatory statements, as they relativise war crimes and convey the message that ideas of ethnic cleansing are part of legitimate political discourse.

Additionally, this interview was aired on July 11th, the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica. The fact that Paunović made such comments on this day carries even greater weight bearing in mind that Slobodan Milošević was indicted before the International Criminal Tribunal of the former Yugoslavia in the Hague for events in Kosovo under the 1999 indictment. He was charged with crimes against humanity, including the deportation of approximately 800 thousand to 900 thousand Albanian Kosovans during 1999, as well as murder, persecution of political, racial, and religious grounds, and violations of the laws or customs of war.