The year behind us was characterised by a broad spectrum of violence and the further decline of democratic values and freedoms. Serbia was not heading in the right direction when it comes to respect for human rights, while violence in the public sphere, especially by government officials, was omnipresent, said the presenters of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights (BCHR) annual report “Human Rights in Serbia 2023” in the Media Center in Belgrade on 9 April.
“We are not heading in the right direction at all. But nothing else could have been expected given the political and social reality we are living in,” said BCHR Executive Director Sonja Tošković at the beginning of the conference.
2023 was primarily marked by the two mass killings, the first in the primary school Vladislav Ribnikar on 3 May and the second in the villages of Malo Orašje and Dubona near Mladenovac on 4 May. These tragedies tectonically affected Serbia’s society, while violence pervaded public discourse.
“Violence in society is a logical consequence of the narrative of violence, which has flooded the public sphere and serves to maintain constant tensions and conflicts. Violence manifested itself in the form of hate speech, even by senior public officials,” she said. “The year behind us was marked by violence that resulted in protests. It occurred in parliament, in public discourse. Everyone – politicians and journalists alike – who disagreed with the state officials was a target, was exposed to violence,” said Tošković.
Many international organisations, including Freedom House, have also reported on Serbia’s declining respect for human rights.
BCHR Programme Director and co-editor of the Report Dušan Pokuševski said that the authorities did not interpret dissatisfaction as an invitation to dialogue; rather, they perceived everyone critical of them as political opponents.
“The demands the citizens made during the protests that ensued after the mass killings in Ribnikar and near Mladenovac were geared at defusing tensions and putting an end to promotion of violence. Barring the Education Minister’s resignation, none of these demands have been fulfilled yet,” said Pokuševski.
He added that Serbia’s society was extremely polarised and that the permanent lack of dialogue and consequent tensions were accompanied by the serious dismantling of the principle of separation of powers.
“The executive has practically taken primacy over the other two branches, while the head of state exercised powers exceeding his constitutionally defined remit, rendering the institutions totally senseless and non-functional and ultimately precluding the citizens from enjoying and protecting their human rights,” he said, adding that “incidents, scandals, hate speech, verbal and physical abuse,” have become commonplace in the lives of Serbia’s citizens.
The work of the National Assembly was characterised by “intensive abuse of parliamentary rules” in 2023, he noted.
“The National Assembly was not the highest representative body of Serbia in the true sense of the word, a place where the people’s deputies debate laws to improve the lives of the population. Rather, it became a polygon for political sparring, fuelling tensions, targeting political opponents,” said Pokuševski, adding that most sessions were called urgently and included agenda with numerous items, to prevent meaningful debates on them.
“The last session called in late October was scheduled just a day in advance and had 60 items on the agenda, including the budget law and the media laws that truly polarised Serbia. The session ended after three days, which is how much time was allocated for the debate, and the voting ensued on the fourth day,” he mentioned in illustration.
Irregularities were identified in all stages of the December election process – from drumming up support for the candidates, their media coverage and election register management, to election day and the publishing the results, as both ODIHR and other international organisations concluded.
“The courts and prosecutors failed to exercise their election-related powers and investigate the irregularities, thus rendering the court protection of election rights totally ineffective,” Pokuševski said, remarking that this assessment applied also to the Constitutional Court, which has not yet ruled on the appeals and requests to annul the elections.
One of the Report’s authors, Ivan Protić, said that the situation on the Serbian media stage was even worse than in 2022 and that the number of incidents involving journalists has been steadily increasing since 2012.
“The number of incidents involving journalists continued growing. BCHR’s associates registered 186 such incidents in 2023, i.e. one every other day or 20% more than in 2022,” he emphasised.
Protić said that journalists were targeted left, right and centre, “from President Aleksandar Vučić and the then Prime Minister, Ana Brnabić, to the Serbian Orthodox Church and some non-government organisations.”
“Our records show that journalists were victims of 16 physical attacks and that six of them were arrested on questionable charges. For the first time in 2023, two journalists were relocated to safe locations after their security was jeopardised. Ćuruvija’s killers have been acquitted, while none of the other murders of journalists have been solved. The authorities, flanked by tabloid media, are obviously behind the intimidation of journalists. The number of SLAPPs filed against journalists by politicians increased as well,” Protić added.
He fears that 2024 will be “even worse” when it comes to media freedoms.
Report author Nevena Vučković Šahović of the Child Rights Centre said that the May tragedies laid bare the weaknesses of the system and that the Report focused also on education, protection from violence in general and from violence in schools.
She said that girls in Serbia were more afraid of violence than the boys and that the greatest number of complaints of violence concerned violence in schools. She said that the parliamentary Committee on Child Rights held two sessions after the May tragedies, at which it discussed the Family Minister’s 2022 report, but not the events.
As she noted, the government’s initial response to the May tragedy was repressive, e.g. it wanted to lower the minimum age of criminal responsibility, rather than pre-empt such situations.
“It all culminated with the demand to amend the Act on the Protection of Persons with Mental Health Problems to allow the placement of children in psychiatric institutions, where they would not have even the rights institutionalised adults have,” said Nevena Vučković Šahović, adding that these children “could be held there endlessly”.
“The events laid bare the numerous weaknesses of the system, in which other actors, not children, are at the centre of political attention. We do not have the infrastructure for child rights at all. We need an umbrella law on the rights of the child,” she concluded.
The 2023 Human Rights in Serbia report also showed that gender equality has retrograded “in nearly all spheres”, as have the rights of persons with disabilities and the LGBTI+ population. Sonja Tošković stressed that official data showed that 28 women were killed in Serbia last year.
“Research and statistics show that women account for 92% of domestic violence victims. The existence of discourse that femicide should not be characterised as a separate crime has been identified. All these data demonstrate that Serbia is a deeply patriarchal and traditional country, which does not recognise gender equality at all. This is an issue we must talk about because we may live to see the new parliament abolishing a very important law – the Gender Equality Act,” Tošković added.
She alerted to the risk posed by pro-right and influential parts of society, who wanted to see this law abolished, and qualified as particularly scandalous the fact that the Serbian Protector of Citizens was publicly taking an active part in that campaign.
“This may be the last wake-up call for all of us,” she concluded.
Red the Human Rights in Serbia 2023 report here.
Watch the conference at which the 2023 Report was presented (in serbian)
