BIA’s Head Sanctioned By the US over Alleged Corruption & more –18th July 2023

Dobar dan from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 18th of July twenty twenty-three A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

On Tuesday the 11th, The US Treasury Department sanctioned Aleksandar Vulin, the hardline head of Serbia’s Security Information Agency, best known as BIA. They said that Vulin participated in transnational organized crime, illegal narcotics operations, and misuse of public office. They added that he used his public position to support Russia and its activities which the US said “degraded the security and stability of the Western Balkans”. Since the US sanctioned Vulin, the country will freeze any assets Vulin has under US jurisdiction, and all US businesses are banned from having financial dealings with him.

President Vucic commented on the situation and said that the US is sanctioning Vulin not because of illegal activities, but for his close ties with Russia. Vucic then took the blame, saying that If he had sanctioned Russia, Vulin would not have been sanctioned at all.

Speaking of the BIA…

On Thursday the 13th, they requested that Piotr Nikitin, a Russian anti-war activist living in Serbia, be prevented from entering Serbia at Belgrade's Nikola Tesla airport. Nikitin explained that he was returning to Serbia from vacation, but the authorities at the airport took away his passport. Nikitin, who is the head of a Russian dissident association in Serbia, has permanent residency in Serbia and has been actively organizing anti-war events in the country. He said that the BIA should not prevent him from going home to Serbia just because he actively opposes Vladimir Putin’s policy.

On Friday the 14th, after a whole day of waiting at the Airport, Nikitin passed passport control and entered Serbia. Apart from it being unexplained, Nikitin’s detainment at the airport is illegal, since he owns a permanent residency in Serbia which gives him the right to enter the country, like any other Serbian citizen.

Breaking away from the pro-Russian narrative…

The government announced on Saturday the 15th that Serbia will provide humanitarian aid to Ukraine, after the explosion at the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant which caused a disaster in the Kherson region. The government added that they are in the process of organizing a sports and rehabilitation camp for junior and children's teams of the Dynamo Football Academy in Kyiv.

The eleventh Serbia Against Violence protest took place in Belgrade on Saturday the 15th. The crowd gathered in front of the country’s Assembly building and marched toward the Palace of Justice. This time, the protesters focused on the state of the judiciary. They printed out a number of screenshots of posts made on social media that referenced the recently disclosed information about a network of people who the government recruited to attack the opposition and praise the ruling party online. One of the protesters said that these profiles are mainly bots, however, they added that there are real people whose only jobs are to pretend to be bots defending the ruling party online. Recall that the cause for the series of protests was two mass shootings in May which left nineteen people dead, ten of which were children.

On that note about mass shootings in May…

The President of the Serbian Parliament scheduled the first session of the Inquiry Committee for Tuesday the 18th. The Inquiry Committee was established by the National Assembly and will determine the circumstances that led to the mass murders. It consists of MPs who will be requesting data, documents, and information from institutions and taking statements from individuals. After they finish all their sessions, they will propose measures to prevent similar tragedies to the National Assembly. The whole process is expected to last until the end of August.

Moving on…

Zeljko Bodrozic, the president of the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia, condemned the verdict which sentenced one anti-government journalist to fourteen months in jail.

On Tuesday the 11th, The Belgrade Higher Court sentenced Milovan Brkic, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Tabloid, for calling for the overthrow of the state authorities and their representatives. Bodrozic said that Brkic’s sentencing shows that the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, or SNS, controls the Serbian judiciary. He added that the authorities are trying to paint the picture that Brkic threatened President Vucic because they said he “called for a violent change in the country’s constitutional order”. Brkic’s lawyer said that the court had a chance to show that there is still some independence of the judiciary in Serbia, however, he said that they proved that Serbia has put an end to freedom of speech.

Speaking of online bots and trolls, journalists and analysts have recently been reporting online threats, abuse, and harassment that garners in the comments of their reports of the Serbia-Kosovo relations.

A document leaked in July exposed the names of nearly 15,000 trolls and their Twitter handles.

More than half of the people listed in the document reported they worked for the government on their Twitter and other social media accounts. They are the ones who threaten journalists.

The comments these trolls leave often accuse the writers of being biased and anti-Serbian, and they almost always take the writers’ stories out of context. One writer said that he feels intimidated by these comments and that as a result, he began to hold back from writing or speaking about Kosovo-Serbia relations.

While on the topic of violence…

After a three-day-long public debate in the Kosovo parliament over an audio recording between a ruling party member and an official from the Serb majority north, a physical fight erupted on Thursday the 13th between opposition MPs and government ministers. The audio recording reveals a meeting between Mimoza Kusari-Lila, Kosovo's ruling party parliamentary group chief, and the former MP from the Belgrade-backed Serbian List party. In the recording, they mention Kusari-Lila's involvement with Milan Radojcic, a Serbian List’s deputy leader who is wanted in Kosovo on suspicion of corruption.

During Thursday's session in the Kosovo parliament, an MP from the opposition Democratic Party of Kosovo physically attacked Kosovo's PM Kurti, after first throwing water on him and his deputy. The MP said that the attack ensued because Kurti and his party are actively working with individuals who are wanted for illegal activities.

On that note about political parties, on Friday the 14th, the Don’t Let Belgrade Drown movement became a political party named Green-Left Front. Their MP said that the party has adopted a statute, program, and other strategic documents at its founding assembly. He added that the party will be electing the co-chairs in the fall of twenty twenty-four. He said that the Don’t Let Belgrade Drown members formed the Green-Left Front party with local partner organizations across Serbia. He hoped the party would let people propose their ideas to improve the country, as he wanted citizens to be heard.

On Thursday the 13th, Ana Grozdanovic, a socialist politician, announced that she will establish a Forum for the Protection of Men. She said that society constantly judges men’s actions against women, but that it often disregards what they go through because of women.

Grozdanovic’s statements caused a lot of controversy, mainly in the circles of feminist groups. Biljana Maletin, an activist of the Women’s Platform for the Development of Serbia, labeled Grozdanovic's statement as both unfounded and cynical. She noted that since the beginning of twenty twenty-three the country has seen more than twenty femicides. Maletin added that instead of pushing the gender-war idea, Serbia must build a real public speech of equality, in which women and men change society together.

In some environmental news,

Several parts of the Balkans have been experiencing a severe heatwave, with temperatures rising above forty degrees Celsius, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Meteorologists and doctors in Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Croatia have warned people to stay indoors while the Sun is out. The city of Belgrade has deployed around thirty water tankers with drinking water to bus and train stations and major squares, urging citizens to drink and wet their heads to avoid a heat stroke.

While on the topic of health,

About 160 COVID-19 cases were confirmed this week, with zero deaths. Compared to last week, the number of confirmed cases has decreased by sixty.

That’s it for this week! Thanks for joining us!

Remember you can always financially support us using the link in the show notes. Can’t do that but still wanna support us? Tell your friends about us and hit the subscribe button!

Do daljnjeg, zbogom!