Human rights protection organizations are calling on state organs to be aware of their requirement to guarantee, by all lawful national means, the full enjoyment of rights and freedoms to every individual and group which considers their individual rights to be endangered. In addition to guaranteeing freedom with inviolable authority, state security has the further obligation of creating a social atmosphere in which citizens can realize all of their rights without fear of violence.In the case of the announced Pride Parade, state organs adopted an uncertain and undefined position from the start, allowing tyranny to organize and threaten the public for weeks, openly displaying their intention to bring a heavy violence to the streets of Belgrade. The state never properly prepared for this event, leaving the police to treat the risks of the announced gathering on a merely technical level. Those violating human rights were allowed to feel powerful, giving them reason to believe that they will again be able to take the law into their own hands. They are further inflated by last year’s situation, where they stormed and ruined through Belgrade and broader Serbia in an unpunished patriotic frenzy.
Unfortunately, violence has been the prevailing social model around us for the past two decades, and the state has in particular moments treated that model of resolution as something it allows or even desires. Those who take upon themselves the role of patriot police, typical of authoritarian and undemocratic systems, are again today made to feel strong and protected. This is why they resort to violence towads all who fight for the realization of human rights.
This is a question of the existance and capability of the protection of constitutional order. For this reason, the following days must be used towards a legal and operative settlement with every group which acts unconstitutionally. Only in this manner can can the social atmosphere begin to reach the level of an exemplary free state, and can those who use unlawful conduct and criminal acts be excluded from the public sphere, because these acts endanger each individual and group, whether ordinary citizens or members of a minority group.
Belgrade Centre for Human Rights
Civic Initiatives
Youth Initiative for Human Rights
European Movement in Serbia
Humanitarian Law Centre
Women in Black
The Centre for the Advanced Legal Studies
Civil Rights Defenders
YUCOM Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights
