Area with an Albanian majority/ What Serbia warns about the Presheva Valley

2023-11-30 13:17:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Area with an Albanian majority/ What Serbia warns about the Presheva Valley

Minister of Internal Affairs of Serbia, Bratislav Gasi?

The Minister of Internal Affairs of Serbia, Bratislav Gasic, announced that in the coming days a police headquarters will be opened in Presevo, in the south of Serbia, and that actions will be intensified in the border area with North Macedonia and Bulgaria.

Presheva is a municipality inhabited by an Albanian majority and together with Bujanoci and Medvegja, where Albanians also live, they are known as the Presheva Valley.

Gashiq stated that the police "is doing everything to curb irregular migration and to discourage and arrest all human traffickers," the Serbian Interior Ministry announced on November 30.

"Members of the Ministry of Internal Affairs will take all measures to prevent the irregular crossing of immigrants into our country. We will stay in this area, but also in the north of the country, until we completely solve this problem," Gashiq said in the regional center of the border police in the direction of Bulgaria.

The Serbian police at the end of October 2023 intensified their actions after the shooting in the town of Horgosh on the border with Hungary, where three immigrants were killed and another was injured.

This event took place after almost daily police announcements of conducting checks at various locations, of seizing weapons and ammunition and of "relocating" hundreds of people from unofficial camps to the Reception Centers of the Serbian Commissariat for Refugees.

Reports of violence and armed conflicts between trafficking groups in northern Serbia have become more frequent since the summer of 2022, and activists have warned that refugees are victims of both smugglers and police raids and far-right organizations. .

Serbia is located on the so-called "Balkan Route", which, despite fences, surveillance cameras and joint border patrols, is the second most active refugee route, according to reports from the European Border Guard Agency (FRONTEX).

According to the estimates of the non-governmental Center for the Assistance of Immigrants and Asylum Seekers, there are currently around 5,000 refugees in Serbia.

According to the report of the State Commissariat for Refugees from September, about 2,300 people have been sheltered in 16 state camps, mainly from Afghanistan, Syria, Morocco and Pakistan./REL