Serbia by
Vaso Čubrilović in 1912, thousands of Albanians were captured and sent to prison in Niš and Belgrade. Most of them were killed. The origins of anti-Albanian
propaganda in Serbia started in the 19th century with claims made by Serbian state on territories that were about to be controlled by Albanians after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. By the late nineteenth century, Albanians were being characterized by Serbian government officials as a "wild tribe" with "cruel instincts". Meanwhile, politician
Vladan Đorđević described Albanians as "modern
Troglodytes" and "prehumans who slept in the trees", claiming they still had "tails" in the nineteenth century. Historian
Olivera Milosavljević has written about the historical construction of Albanians as enemies of Serbs in Serbia through Serbian politicians and writers. Beginning in the 19th century, negative stereotypes regarding Albanians were formed by some Serbian authors. Albanians were described as enemies who by the 16th century had been instigated to terrorize Serbs by the Ottomans. According to Milosavljević, part of the modern intellectuals in Serbia wrote about Albanians mainly within the framework of these stereotypes, regarding their "innate" hatred and desire for the destruction of Serbs, which was a product of their dominant characteristic of "primitivism" and "robbery". Beginning in the mid-1980s, words such as "genocide", "oppression", "robbery", and "rape" were used when referring to Albanians in speeches, so that any mention of Albanians as a national minority contained negative connotations. Milosavljević has also noted how earlier authors depicted Albanians as incapable of having an autonomous state due to their "incivility", promoted and manipulated the stereotype of ‘Arbanised’ Serbs, leading to the contemporary claim that
Skanderbeg was a Serb. that included creating a "psychosis" by bribing clergymen to encourage the Albanians to leave the country, enforcing the law to the letter, secretly razing Albanian inhabited villages, ruthless application of all police regulations, ruthless collection of taxes and the payment of all private and public debts, the requisitioning of all public and municipal pasture land, the cancellation of concessions, the withdrawal of permits to exercise an occupation, dismissal from government, the demolition of Albanian cemeteries and many other methods.
Aleksandar Ranković, the Yugoslav security chief, had a strong dislike of Albanians. During the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, activities undertaken by Serbian officials in Kosovo have been described as Albanophobic. The
Serbian media during Milošević's era was known to espouse
Serb nationalism while promoting
xenophobia toward the other ethnicities in
Yugoslavia. Ethnic Albanians were commonly characterized in the media as anti-Yugoslav counter-revolutionaries, rapists, and a threat to the Serb nation. During the
Kosovo War, Serbian forces continually discriminated
Kosovo Albanians: In regards to the Albanian war victims
Obrad Stevanović wrote "No body – no crime” in the diary he kept in 1998 and 1999, when he met, as a high-ranking official Serbian MUP, with Slobodan Milosevic. He admitted at Hague tribunal that these constituted notes from a meeting with the president. A 2011 survey in Serbia showed that 40% of the Serbian population would not like Albanians to live in Serbia, while 70% would not enter into a marriage with an Albanian individual. In 2012,
Vuk Jeremić, the-then Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs, while commenting on
Twitter about the Kosovo dispute, compared Albanians to the "evil
Orcs" from the movie
The Hobbit. In 2016, Minister of Foreign Affairs
Aleksandar Vulin stated that Albania has no history and wants to steal the Serbian one. Before the start and during the
2016 UEFA European qualifier between Serbia and Albania in Belgrade that was abandoned, Serbian fans chanted 'Ubij, ubij Šiptara' (Kill, kill the Albanian). During the game, a drone carrying a banner depicting an image of
Greater Albania was flown into the pitch, leading to on-field violence. After the game in Serbia, mostly in its northern province
Vojvodina, after the match, at least a dozen bakeries and snack bars owned by ethnic
Albanians were set on fire in
Novi Sad,
Sombor and
Stara Pazova, and a bomb was used in one case. During 2017, amidst a background of political tension between Serbia and
Kosovo, Serbian media engaged in warmongering and anti-Albanian sentiment by using ethnic slurs such as "
Šiptar" in their coverage. In 2018, the Belgrade Supreme Court acknowledged that the word "Šiptar" is racist and discriminatory towards Albanians. According to the court, "Šiptar" is a term that defines Albanians as
racially inferior to Serbs. However, some Serbian politicians still claim that the word is just an
Albanian word for Albanians. In 2021, the tabloid
Večernje novosti published an article claiming that in the second half of the 19th century, Albanians did not have any written documents. In 2024, the Serbian tabloid
Informer reportedly published an article claiming that
Gjergj Arianiti was of Serbian origin, referring to him as "Đorđe Arijanit Komninović Golemi." The article alleged that Albanians had "stolen Serbian history" and called for its defense, describing this narrative as part of a "neglected and forgotten" Serbian past appropriated by Albanians.
Greece In Greece, the sentiment has existed since the Greek national movement for independence against
Ottoman Empire and continued throughout post-1990s, when many immigrants escaped from Albania to
Greece. When the priests from
Orthodox Albanian community, namely,
Kristo Negovani introduced Albanian liturgy for Orthodox worship in his native
Negovan for the first time in 1905, he was murdered by Greek
andartes on behalf of Bishop
Karavangelis of
Kastoria.
Stath Melani was another Albanian priest killed by a group of Greek bands near
Përmet for insisting on the use of the Albanian language in the local Orthodox liturgy. In 1929, the
League of Nations asked Greece to open Albanian-language schools, since
Cham Albanians had been officially recognized as an Albanian minority. The official position however of the then Greek prime minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, was that since the region had never had Albanian schools, even under the Ottoman Empire, this issue could not be compared with the rights demanded by the Greek minority in Albania. The stereotype by some in Greece of Albanians as criminal and poor has been subject of a 2001 study by the
International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHFHR) and by the
European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC). As of 2003, it was considered that prejudices and mistreatment of Albanians are still present in Greece, According to a 2002 statement of the IHFUR, the Albanians are more likely to be killed by law enforcement officials than
Romani people. Albanians in Greece are also classified in terms as "savage", while the Greeks view themselves as "civilized". Prejudicial representations of Albanians and Albanian criminality by the Greek media is largely responsible for the social construction of negative stereotypes, in contrast to the commonly held belief that Greek society is neither
xenophobic nor racist. Anti-Albanian sentiment in Greece is more of a Greek media product, rather than a reflection of social and political attitudes. Although the Greek media have largely abandoned their negative stereotyping of Albanian immigrants (since c. 2000), public perception had already been negatively influenced. In March 2010, during an official military parade in
Athens,
Greek soldiers chanted "They are
Skopians, they are Albanians, they are Turks we will make new clothes out of their skins". The Civil Protection Ministry of Greece reacted to this by suspending the coast guard officer who was in charge of the parade unit, and pledged to take tough action against the unit's members. Albanophobia in Greece is primarily due to post-communist migration as well as the fact that until the mid 2000s, Albanians formed the primary immigrant population.
Italy Albanophobia in
Italy is primarily related to the Albanian immigrants mainly young adults who are stereotypically seen as criminals, drug dealers and rapists. Italian media provide a lot of space and attention to crimes committed by ethnic Albanians, even those just presumed. After the
Albanian crisis and subsequent Albanian
mass migration to Italy, it was observed that Italian public opinion was "solidly and remarkably" anti-Albanian. In the 21st century, anti-Albanian sentiment remains widespread and prevalent in Italian society. Wherever, today the anti-Albanian sentiment is almost nonexistent in Italian media and among the general population, as the two countries enjoy excellent relations and Albanians are considered among the most well-integrated communities. In Italy, there are nearly 45,000 businesses owned or run by people of Albanian origin.
Switzerland Not infrequently, the
Albanian diaspora in
Switzerland is affected by
xenophobia and
racism. Integration difficulties and some criminal offences of some Albanians caused many
Swiss to be prejudiced against Albanians, which has led to fear, hatred and insecurity. Political parties that publicly oppose excessive immigration and the conservatism of traditional Swiss culture - in particular the
Swiss People's Party (SVP) - strengthen this negative attitude among many party supporters. These parties have already launched a number of popular initiatives, which were referred to by the
Albanians as discriminatory. A large number of these migrants tend to originate from Albania’s impoverished north, with Kukës, Dibër, and Shkodër counties in particular being areas of origin for these migrants. The trend raised concerns among some politicians and the public, with Albanian migrants being scrutinized. Since September 2022, British media has focused on Albanian migrants, portraying them negatively using xenophobic terms. Right-wing politicians have capitalized on public fears regarding immigration, often using inflammatory language that paints migrants as criminals or "invaders." Home Secretary
Suella Braverman has been a prominent figure in this discourse. Albanians are significantly overrepresented in the
UK prison population. In 2020, Albanians made up over 1,500 inmates, representing roughly 10% of the foreign prison population, rising from 2% in 2013. By June 2022, the number of Albanian inmates had fallen to 1,336, but their proportion rose to 14%, maintaining the highest percentage of the foreign prison population in the UK. On a proportional basis, Albanians are 10 times more likely than the general public to be incarcerated. Albanians make up 1.6% of all prisoners despite representing fewer than 0.05% of the UK population. Convictions range from serious offenses such as
murder,
manslaughter,
rape, and firearms offenses to drug-related crimes like producing cannabis in gang-run farms. This overrepresentation has contributed to negative perceptions and stereotypes about Albanians and their involvement in criminal activities.
Montenegro By 1942, the city of
Bar became a home to many Serbians. Many of these joined the Partisan forces and participated in their activities at Bar. The
Bar massacre () was the killings of an unknown number of mostly
ethnic Albanians from
Kosovo Yugoslav Partisans in late March or early April 1945 in
Bar, a municipality in Montenegro, at the end of
World War II. The victims were
Albanian recruits from Kosovo, who had been pressed by the Yugoslav Partisans into service. These men were then assembled in Prizren and marched on foot in three columns to Bar where they were supposed to receive short training and then sent off to the front. Yugoslav sources put the number of victims at 400 According to Croatian historian
Ljubica Štefan, the Partisans killed 1,600 Albanians in Bar on 1 April after an incident at a fountain. There are also accounts claiming that the victims included young boys. Other sources cited that the killing started en route for no apparent reason and this was supported by the testimony of
Zoi Themeli in his 1949 trial. Themeli was a collaborator who worked as an important official of the
Sigurimi, the Communist Albanian secret police. After the massacre, the site was immediately covered in concrete by the Yugoslav communist regime and built an airport on top of the mass grave. Distribution of the encyclopedia was ceased after a series of public protests. In a terrorist act known as the
Smilkovci lake killings, on 12 April 2012, five young
ethnic Macedonian teenagers were shot dead by persons of
ethnic Albanian origin. They were later found guilty and sentenced to life. This provoked anti-Albanian sentiment. On 16 April 2012, a protest against these attacks and demanding justice was held in Skopje. Some of the participants in the protests were chanting anti-Albanian slogans. On 1 March 2013 in
Skopje, a mob of ethnic Macedonians protested against the decision to appoint
Talat Xhaferi, an ethnic Albanian politician, as
Minister of Defence. The protest turned violent when the mob started hurling stones and also attacking Albanian bystanders and police officers alike. The police reported 3 injured civilians, five injured police officers and much damage to private property. Although the city hospital reported treating five heavily injured Albanian men, two of which are on
Intensive-care unit. During this protest part of the mob burned the Albanian flag. A mob of
Macedonian nationalists also
stormed the
Macedonian Parliament on 27 April 2017 in reaction to the election of Talat Xhaferi as Speaker of the Assembly, numerous were injured during the riot. On the 108th anniversary of the
Congress of Manastir the museum of the Albanian alphabet in
Bitola was vandalized, and the windows and doors were broken. A poster with the words "Death to Albanians" and with the drawing of a lion cutting the heads of the Albanian double-headed eagle was placed on the front doors of the museum. One week after this incident, on the day of the
Albanian Declaration of Independence graffiti with the same messages, as those of the previous week, were placed on the directorate of
Pelister National Park. Amongst the unemployed, Albanians are overrepresented. In public institutions as well as many private sectors they are underrepresented. They also face hidden discrimination by public officials. According to the
United States' Country Report on Human Rights 2012 for Macedonia "certain ministries declined to share information about ethnic makeup of employees". The same report also added: ==Derogatory terms==