UNS: It is unacceptable that Pristina media are repeating falsehoods from 2004 that triggered the pogrom

The Journalists’ Association of Serbia (UNS), together with its branch in Kosovo, has expressed protest over the way leading Pristina-based media outlets reported this March 17 on the events of 2004, UNS announced.

According to the statement, news reports recalling the events of March 17 and 18, published on the portals Koha, Gazeta Express, Ekonomia Online, Albanian Post, and several others, appear uniform and all refer to the drowning of boys in Chabra, for which Serbs are blamed—without any reference to reports by international missions and organizations (UNMIK, OSCE, Human Rights Watch), which unanimously confirm that this very false report, initially circulated in Albanian media, triggered the wave of violence in which 23 people were killed.

“Furthermore, when reporting on the damage caused, these media state that ‘several Serbian houses and churches’ were burned and destroyed, noting that the same happened to Albanian houses in Serb-majority areas. On top of that, some report that the protests, which quickly escalated into violence, were ‘directed against UNMIK.’ The expulsion of more than 4,000 Serbs from Kosovo is not mentioned anywhere. Even in a column published by Koha on the occasion of March 17, the author refers to a Human Rights Watch report on the March unrest, highlighting ‘concerns of the Albanian side over the rise of parallel institutions by Belgrade,’ but fails to include the parts of the report that call precisely those same media outlets to account for spreading unverified—and ultimately false—information that initiated the events,” the statement reads.

UNS called on editorial boards and journalists in Albanian-language newsrooms to carry out their work conscientiously and professionally, adhering to officially verified facts and refraining from biased, pamphlet-style reporting that overlooks the truth and entirely denies or minimizes the losses of one side.