SERBIA: Monastery Land & more – 19th Mar 2024

Dobar dan from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 19th of March twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

Last week we mentioned the lack of progress Kosovo had made in returning the land to Visoki Decani, a Serbian Orthodox monastery, which was taken away during the communist era. However, on Wednesday the 13th, Kosovo’s government urged the Cadastral Agency to implement the court ruling from twenty sixteen, which said that twenty-four hectares of land belong to the monastery and need to be returned.

Their PM Kurti said that despite his disproval of the court ruling, he decided to grant the land because one of the conditions to be a member of the Council of Europe was implementing the court’s verdict.

On the same day, the heads of the US, France, Germany, UK and Italy, welcomed Kurti’s decision to address the eight-year-old court ruling regarding the monastery land, adding that it is enforcing the rule of law.

Speaking of Kurti, many civil society groups, activists and diplomats have condemned an online smear campaign targeting the critics of his ruling Vetevendosje party. Many people came out with stories describing how several accounts, mainly on Twitter, targeted them, making false accusations. Djordje Bojovic, a Serbian former activist of the regional network Youth Initiative for Human Rights, said that many bot accounts started a coordinated online campaign against him. They accused him of denying war crimes committed in Kosovo during the nineties, and said that he was unfit for his current role as the advisor to Viola von Cramon, the European Parliament rapporteur for Kosovo.

Many politicians said that these accounts are organized bots which the Vetevendosje party commands.

Last week, Serbia’s Post Office Bank opened four makeshift bank branches near the four administrative border crossings with Kosovo. The Serbian Government Office for Kosovo stated that each facility is equipped with a Post Savings Bank ATM that will be accessible at all times. Serbia initiated the setup of these branches to support Serbians in Kosovo who continue to use dinars despite the ban.

Recall that on the 1st of February, Kosovo’s Central Bank adopted a regulation on cash transactions that banned the Serbian dinar and chose the Euro as the sole currency on its territory.

Moving on, a network of NGOs promoting freedom of speech and human rights called the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, or BIRN, reported that Serbia has made at least two shipments of arms to Israel since it attacked Palestine in twenty twenty-three. Serbia’s Ministry for Trade had previously denied BIRN access to the data on arms exports, adding that it is strictly confidential. However, BIRN reported that Yugoimport-SDPR, Serbia’s main state-owned arms trader, exported goods worth more than one million dollars to Israel from October twenty twenty-three to February twenty twenty-four.

Serbia has kept its good relations with Israel despite the attack on Palestine, with president Vucic having telephone conversations with the Israeli Prime Minister about strengthening the ties between the two countries.

Serbia also has good relations with Russia, whose citizens staged a protest called Noon against Putin. The protest was held on the last day of Russia’s presidential elections, which the opposition described as a peaceful but symbolic action against the re-election of Vladimir Putin. Those who moved from Russia to Serbia also organized a protest, only in Belgrade. On Sunday the 17th, they went to their polling places and voted either for the opposition, or casted blank ballots. The group of Russian anti-war activists in Belgrade said in a statement that Putin could falsify the number of votes he receives but that he could not get rid of Russians who are fed up with war and his dictatorship.

Speaking of foreigners living in Serbia, the National Employment Service reported that in twenty twenty-three, they issued around 50,000 work permits to foreigners, which is an increase of nearly seventy percent compared to twenty twenty-two. They sent the majority of the permits to Belgrade, with nearly 30,000 foreigners choosing the capital as their residence. Most of the workers are from China, followed by Russia and Turkey.

More about the economy, the Republic Statistical Office announced on Thursday the 14th that Serbia had a year-on-year inflation rate of around six percent in January twenty twenty-four, making it the highest in the Balkan region. Montenegro was in second place, followed by Croatia and Slovenia, ranging from four to five percent. Bosnia and Herzegovina had the lowest annual inflation rate in the region, which stood at around two percent.

Despite the record numbers in the region, the Republic Statistical Office said that the year-on-year inflation rate in Serbia has dropped since January, to around five percent in February.

In some news on energy, on Tuesday the 12th, the Serbian Mining and Energy minister met with Hungary’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, to discuss the construction of a Serbia-Hungary oil pipeline. Both countries set the oil pipeline project as their priority in the energy sector, and the ministers said that they expect the construction to begin as early as next year because Serbia aims to gain more independence in the energy sector, ensuring the lowest prices for citizens and businesses. The project, which is worth more than 160 million dollars, envisions an oil pipeline that will transport around five million tonnes of oil between Serbia and Hungary a year.

Next up, on Thursday the 14th, Patriarch Porfirije, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, attended a Legal Aspects and Consequences of the Law on Gender Equality conference held at the National Library. There, he spoke about his disapproval of the gender-sensitive language, adding that the church refuses to use it. He underlined that the church does not support the recent popularity of gender or, more specifically, LGBT+ policy and practices. Porfirije also called other conference participants to propose legal measures to abolish the law of gender-sensitive language, which aims to address genders as persons of equal value through language.

On a related note, on the same day, the commissioner for the Council of Europe’s Human Rights spoke about the progress in gender identity recognition in the Balkans. In their newest report called Human Rights and gender identity and Expression, the Council spoke about the discrimination and violence against transgender people in Europe. Focusing on Serbia, the commissioner said that there was progress in gender recognition. However, they said that the mandatory invasive physical interventions, such as sterilization, needed to get Legal Gender Recognition violate the right to physical integrity.

On Wednesday the 13th, the UN Development Program published its annual Human Development Report for twenty twenty-three, in which they ranked countries in the world by the Human Development Index, or HDI. This parameter measures one country's average life expectancy, education and gross national income per capita. Out of 193 countries, Serbia ranked 65th, with an HDI of 0.8 out of 1, which puts it in the Very High Human Development group. Switzerland topped the list with an HDI of 0.9, and in the last place was Somalia, with a score of 0.3.

And to close this edition, on Tuesday the 12th, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Gallery launched an art exhibition titled The Noble Essence of Everyday Life, which displayed art pieces from Uros Predic, one of the most eminent Serbian painters. Aside from several institutions providing Predic’s paintings, some of the artwork will be from private collections, most of which have never been exhibited before. The exhibition, which will be open until the 26th of May, will feature some of Predic’s most famous paintings, such as Kosovo Maiden, Jolly Brothers, and Herzegovinian Fugitives.

And that’s it for this week!

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