Document for a Petition for the Dismissal of Mayors & more –8th Aug 2023

Dobar dan from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 8th of August twenty twenty-three A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

Elbert Krasniqi, Kosovo’s Minister of the Local Self-Government, said on Wednesday the 2nd that he has launched a group that will work on creating a draft document related to the dismissal of mayors in four Kosovo municipalities. The document will serve as a guideline for citizens who aim to organize a petition for the dismissal of mayors that were elected in May. The chair of the group is the local government ministry and the group will consist of representatives from other central and local institutions, as well as the Central Election Commission and civil society.

The decision to create such a group came as Kosovo started considering holding extraordinary elections in the predominantly Serbian north of Kosovo. Recall that in May, Serbs in the north of Kosovo protested against the elected Albanian mayors and caused violent clashes with the police.

Speaking of Serbia-Kosovo relations…

On Wednesday the 2nd, the Independent Association of Serbian Journalists, or NUNS, condemned an online campaign that was targeting Serbian-language media in Kosovo. Anonymous profiles posted videos on a Telegram channel in which they said that the Serbian-language news websites Kossev and Kosovo Online and other media outlets who labeled themselves as objective, were actually pro-NATO. The profiles questioned the credibility of these sources. They described Kossev as a media body that defends Albanians, accusing them of working for Pristina and NATO.

NUNS called for authorities to investigate the circumstances in which these videos were posted, saying that they “threaten the safety of all journalists in Kosovo”.

Kosovo judicial authorities decided to release two Serbs that were arrested in Kosovo in May for the possession of weapons and narcotics. Despite sentencing the two men to half a year in jail, the authorities reduced their sentences to only a fine and deportation from Kosovo for a period of three years. As several news portals reported, both men pleaded guilty in court and expressed regret over their actions.

Back in May, the Kosovo Police arrested two Serbs at the Jarinje border between Serbia and Kosovo and accused them of “jeopardizing the constitutional order and security of Kosovo”. After some time, however, the authorities changed the charges and accused the Serbs of hooliganism and illegal possession of weapons.

In other news..

President Aleksandar Vucic announced on Friday the 4th that Serbia will ignore the sanctions that the US recently imposed on top Bosnian Serb officials. The US accused the officials of undermining a nineteen ninety-five peace agreement that ended the war between Serbia and Bosnia, which left more than 100,000 dead and millions homeless. President Vucic said that the sanctioned officials, who are ethnic Serbs, will still be welcome in Serbia, adding that Serbia will treat them as if the sanctions on them did not exist. The nineteen ninety-five peace agreement ended the war in Bosnia by declaring a single sovereign state of Bosnia split into two parts, the Serb-populated Republic of Srpska and the Croat-Bosniak-populated Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The US and other international officials accused Bosnian Serb officials of having a part in drafting a law “that U.S. and other international officials say undermines the unity of Bosnia by ignoring the decisions of the country’s constitutional court.” Recall that the Bosnian Serb parliament passed a law not to implement any decisions by Bosnia’s multi-ethnic Constitutional Court.

On that note about war…

On Friday the 4th, Serbia commemorated Operation Storm, the last major battle of the Croatian War of Independence which resulted in the death of more than 200,000 Serbs. During the ceremony, which took place in the city of Prijedor in Bosnia and Herzegovina, president Vucic said that the exodus of the Serbs from Croatia was “the biggest ethnic cleansing on European soil since nineteen forty-five”. After that, Vucic spoke about current relations between Serbia and Bosnia and the recent sanctioning of Bosnian Serb officials.

However, the Youth Initiative for Human Rights NGO condemned Serbia’s decision to hold the commemoration ceremony in Prijedor, as it is the city where Bosnian Serb forces carried out ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian war in nineteen ninety-five. The NGO accused Vucic and Republic of Srpska leader Milorad Dodik of using the victims’ suffering for political gain.

While on the topic of bilateral relations…

Serbian police organized a large-scale operation in which they targeted smuggling and irregular migration in the area near the Serbia-Hungary border. The police deployed around 800 officers who arrested thirteen people suspected of criminal activity and charged another twenty-seven with misdemeanors. The interior ministry reported that police officers found weapons, such as rifles and pistols, along with ammunition.

The fourteenth Serbia Against Violence protest took place on Saturday the 5th in Belgrade. The protesters gathered in front of the National Assembly and marched all the way to the Gazelle Bridge on the highway. The participants chanted “Vucic, out!” while holding signs and banners that accused the regime of committing “legal violence” by silencing the citizens and promoting hatred and violence on TV. They also said that the protests will not stop until the government ousts several officials and dismisses the Council of the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media since they condone the broadcasting of violent content on TV.

On Friday the 4th, Belgrade government officials announced that the works on construction of the Belgrade subway are on the way. They added that the first line of the subway will be operational in about five years. The officials also said that they will sign a contract with Power China, a Chinese construction company, that will build the Belgrade subway depot. Andreja Mladenovic, the director of the Public Utility Company Belgrade Metro and Train, said that the constructors will free up the land for the future metro stations by the end of the year.

In some economic news…

The opposition parties have been criticizing the government for the increase of Serbia’s public debt since it took eleven new loans, making the overall state debt almost forty billion dollars. Sinisa Mali, the finance minister, assured the citizens that Serbia's public finances are stable and that the public debt is under control. However, Radomir Lazovic, from the Green Front party, said that Serbia has never been in more debt than now. Sharing Lazovic’s opinion, the former governor of the National Bank, said that the increase in public debt is already high compared to the real growth rates of Serbia's economy. Some economists also noted that if the economy slows down and the government continues to borrow money, Serbia will be on the way to becoming over-indebted.

Since we mentioned the finance minister…

He announced that the Serbian Government and the Minister of Tourism of Saudi Arabia signed a Memorandum of Understanding. The Fund for the Development of Saudi Arabia will finance specific projects in Serbia worth approximately 200 million dollars. Mali said that Serbia will continue investing in capital projects in order to boost economic relations with Saudi Arabia. Among other things, the memorandum expects investments in the irrigation infrastructure program and the BIO-four campus in Belgrade which will focus on the fields of biomedicine, bioinformatics, and biotechnology.

On a more positive note…

Coal miners in Serbia uncovered an ancient Roman ship on Wednesday the 2nd near the ancient city of Viminacium, now the town of Kostolac. The archeologists started preserving the ship right after the excavators from the Drmno mine uncovered some timber wood in an opencast coal quarry. Miomir Korac, the lead archeologist, said that previous findings suggest the ship may date back as far as the 3rd century AD when Viminacium was the capital of the Roman province of Moesia Superior. He said that he and his team plan to put the ship on display at the national park Viminacium, where the ancient city once was.

Aaaaand that’s it for this week! Thanks for joining us!

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Do daljnjeg, zbogom!