Kosovo Serb MP’s Jail Sentence for ‘Ethnic Hatred’ Upheld

the confirmation of the two-year sentence handed down to Kosovo MP and former minister Ivan Todosijevic produced great disappointment to the head of Serbia’s government’s office for Kosovo, Petar Petkovic.  Kosovo’s Court of Appeal upheld the verdict from 2019 that convicted Todosijevic of ethnic, racial or religious intolerance for his comments about the January 1999 massacre of 45 Kosovo Albanians in the village of Racak/Recak, which he claimed was staged. The Court said that Todosijevic’s comments “could incite hatred, division, intolerance between ethnic groups in Kosovo” and went too far to be acceptable under laws guaranteeing freedom of expression. Todosijevic made his statement about the Racak/Recak massacre at a ceremony to mark the 20th anniversary of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, which was aimed at making Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic end his military campaign against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. The Racak/Recak massacre, in which 45 Kosovo Albanians were killed by Serbian forces, was one of the incidents that helped to spark NATO’s intervention.