By: Tatjana Lazarević
(Brief summary, for full version, click here)
Hate speech in contemporary media and political discourse does not exhaust itself in explicit insults or overtly inflammatory expressions. Much more often, it functions as a structure — through the way events are presented, through the selection and interpretation of facts, the distribution of responsibility, and the selective highlighting of victims.
In that sense, hate speech is not only what is said, but also what is implied, emphasized, or omitted. It is precisely in this way that a discursive pattern is formed — a stabilized mode of interpreting events through the repetition of the same interpretations and messages.
The March 2004 events in Kosovo represent one of the clearest examples of how media, political discourse, and institutions can construct and sustain a narrative that, even in the absence of explicit insult, retains elements of implicit collective accusation.
This raises the question of how Serbs — whose homes were burned, churches destroyed, and thousands displaced — continue, even two decades later, to be presented as perpetrators of that same violence.
TRIGGER: The Drowning of Albanian Children and the Construction of the Initial Narrative
On March 16, 2004, three Albanian boys drowned in the Ibar River in the village of Çabër/Čabra, in the municipality of Zubin Potok.
Immediately after the incident, media reporting framed the event as ethnically motivated, claiming that the boys had jumped into the river while being chased by a group of Serbs with a dog.
This interpretation was primarily based on statements attributed to the surviving boy — the only eyewitness to the event.
However, as later established, the content of those statements was significantly more ambiguous.
As noted in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe report:
“Different statements by the surviving child, aired on 16 March, referred to a distant Serb house, to Serbs who had sworn at them from the house, to a dog, and to the fact that they were afraid. At no point in the interviews aired did the child use the words, ‘We were chased by a group of Serbs with a dog.’”
Subsequent investigations failed to confirm the involvement of Serbs in the drowning.
The Human Rights Watch report “Failure to Protect: Anti-Minority Violence in Kosovo, March 2004” states:
„The sensational reporting on the Serb „bandits“ drowning young Albanian children set off a firestorm of protests and violence across Kosovo.“
However, while the drowning of the three children was a tragedy, a thorough investigation by the United Nations and a respected ethnic Albanian judge from Kosovo casts serious doubt on the allegations of Serb complicity in the drownings, citing inconsistencies in the accounts given by the surviving boy, and a lack of corroboration of the boy’s account by the two other surviving children and an elderly Serb who was working in the area.
The U.N. investigative team did a thorough search of the area where the drownings took place, and could not find any Serbs who fitted the description given by the surviving boy.
CONSEQUENCES: Scale of Violence and Diverging Data
According to the Humanitarian Law Center, in the wave of violence that followed:
around 800 Serbian, 90 Ashkali, and two Albanian homes were completely destroyed or seriously damaged, 36 Serbian Orthodox religious sites were destroyed or damaged, including two UNESCO-protected sites, more than 4,000 Serbs were displaced
According to the same source, 12 Serbs and 15 Albanians were killed.
However, figures differ depending on the source, particularly regarding casualties.
The United Nations Secretary-General’s report states: “19 people were killed, 11 Albanians and 8 Serbs.”
The same report notes: “A total of 730 houses were damaged or destroyed,” while the number of destroyed religious sites corresponds with other sources.
Human Rights Watch reports:
MEDIA TRIGGER: The Role of Media in Escalation
The role of Kosovo media during these events was strongly criticized by the OSCE.
The report states:
„It should also be noted that the media, specifically the broadcasting sector, displayed unacceptable levels of emotion, bias, carelessness, and falsely applied “patriotic” zeal. In particular, the reporting on the evening of 16 March by the three main Kosovar TV channels deserves the strongest possible criticism. The performance of RTK (Radio and Television of Kosovo) during the riots, as well as on the evening before, should be viewed with special concern, since this is the only public broadcaster.“
Human Rights Watch further noted:
„The March 15 shooting of Jovica Ivic in Caglavica and the Serb road blockade that followed, combined with the pro-KLA protests on March 16, significantly raised tensions in Kosovo. As the pro-KLA protests were winding down, the ethnic Albanian media began broadcasting inflammatory reports that three young Albanian children had been chased into the IbarRiver by Serbs on the afternoon of March 16, and had drowned. As a detailed report by the OSCE’s Representative on Freedom of the Media later showed, the ethnic Albanian media played an irresponsible, inflammatory role, broadcasting information that was still unconfirmed: the surviving ethnic Albanian boy never publicly stated that the group were chased into the river by Serbs, only that the young Albanian boys had been sworn at by Serbs from a distant house. The interpretation that the boys were chased in the river by Serbs came from other sources, such as Halit Berani, a Mitrovica-based ethnic Albanian human rights activist (see below). Such subtleties didn’t matter to the private and public state-funded media, who began broadcasting and printing unequivocal reports that the ethnic Albanian boys had been chased into the river by Serbs.“
Moderate voices, including UNMIK representatives who warned that ethnic motivation had not been established, received minimal airtime.
The United Nations Secretary-General concluded:
„The cumulative effect of those incidents, made worse by inflammatory and biased media reporting, were demonstrations, which, although apparently spontaneous at the outset, were quickly taken over by organized elements with an interest in driving the remaining Kosovo Serbs from Kosovo and threatening the international presence there.“
In this case, media reporting did not merely transmit information — it actively shaped perception and contributed to escalation.
DOMINO EFFECT: Spread of Violence Beyond Kosovo
Violence did not remain confined to Kosovo.
During and immediately after the events of March 2004, several mosques were set on fire in Serbia, including in Belgrade and Niš, while Albanian and Gorani-owned shops and businesses were targeted in Novi Sad and other cities. These incidents occurred as a direct reaction to the violence in Kosovo, demonstrating how narratives and interpretations of events can trigger retaliatory actions beyond their original context.
The United Nations Secretary-General noted in his report:
“During and immediately after the violent events in mid-March, the authorities in Belgrade played a constructive role in collective efforts to stem the violence and prevent extremist reaction. Belgrade has publicly regretted that mosques were burned in Belgrade and Niš and has pledged to rebuild them.”
This demonstrates that narratives can extend beyond their original context, producing a broader domino effect.
CONTINUITY: Reproduction of the Narrative
More than two decades later, similar narratives continue to appear in media and political discourse.
Common patterns include:
- attribution of blame to Serbs for the drowning of Albanian children
- framing of protests as spontaneous
- presentation of protests as directed against UNMIK
- emphasis on Albanian victims and suffering
- omission or minimization of Serbian civilian suffering
This continuity reflects not new interpretations, but the reproduction of an established discursive pattern.
POLITICAL DISCOURSE: Narrative Inversion
Within political discourse, particularly in more recent years, a pattern emerges in which:
Albanians are foregrounded as victims
Serbs are framed as initiators or perpetrators
This represents a form of narrative inversion in which causal responsibility is reassigned, and the primary victims are gradually reframed as perpetrators.
The community that was the primary target of violence — as evidenced by destruction, displacement, and casualties — is gradually repositioned as responsible for the events.
At the same time, Albanian victims, many of whom died in clashes with international forces during violent protests, are presented as the central victim perspective, often without sufficient contextualization.
This process does not deny facts outright — it reorders and reframes them.
As such, it represents one of the most subtle forms of implicit hate speech.
REDIRECTION: From Civilian Targets to Political Framing
Another observable pattern is the redirection of responsibility.
In dominant narratives, the March 2004 protests are often framed as directed against UNMIK.
However, this framing overlooks the fact that violence was overwhelmingly directed at Serbian civilians — including a small, dispersed, and vulnerable community south of the Ibar River.
This shift in focus does not deny violence, but reframes it in a way that disperses responsibility and renders specific victims less visible.
In this transformation — where violence against civilians is reframed as political protest — another form of implicit hate speech emerges.
CONCLUSION: Hate Speech as Structure
When such narratives are repeated across media, political statements, and institutional discourse, they cease to be contested interpretations and become part of accepted knowledge.
At that point, facts no longer determine understanding — narrative does.
Hate speech, therefore, does not operate only through explicit language, but through interpretative structures that define:
who is perceived as a victim
who is seen as responsible
how events are remembered
In this case, hate speech is embedded not in words, but in the architecture of interpretation itself.
And it is precisely in this transformation — from a contested claim to an unquestioned assumption — that its greatest power lies.
Preuzimanje i objavljivanje tekstova sa portala KoSSev nije dozvoljeno bez navođenja izvora. Hvala na poštovanju etike novinarske profesije.
