Leading Kosovo Serb Party Calls For Census Boycott

Pristina, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 5th Apr, 2024) The leading Kosovo Serb party called Friday for a boycott of the first Kosovo census in over a decade, hours after the Pristina government launched the controversial population count.

"The Serb people will not participate in the upcoming fake census," Kosovo's leading Serb party, Srpska Lista, said in a statement on social media.

Census counts are delicate matters in many Balkan countries, where plunging birth rates, mass migration and ethnic tensions undercut efforts to provide accurate population figures.

Kosovo officials have repeatedly delayed earlier counts.

The Kosovo Statistics Agency (ASK) has conducted just one other count, in 2011, which was boycotted by the Serbs.

That census put Kosovo's population at 1.8 million people.

ASK officials said this week that they hoped to complete the census in six weeks and expected Kosovo's Serbs to participate.

The census comes as relations between the Pristina government and Kosovo's ethnic Serbs remain tense following the ban of the Serbian Dinar Currency earlier this year.

Frustrations have been simmering since the implementation of the new rule, which made the euro the only legal currency in Kosovo and effectively outlawed use of the dinar.

The move sparked anger in Belgrade, which does not recognise Kosovo's independence and continues to finance a parallel health, education and social security system for Serbs there.