The Belgrade Centre for Human Rights shares the public concern aroused by the verdict handed down to NiN weekly chief editor Stevan Nikšić by the Belgrade Municipal Court. This verdict testifies of the crisis in the Serbian judiciary, the lack of culture of political discourse and the failure to recognise the true opponents of human rights and democracy. While prosecutors are refusing to launch proceedings against perpetrators of blatant hate speech, racism, anti-Semitism and instigators of inter-ethnic and religious clashes, while Serbia is victim of everyday onslaughts of the most vulgar primitivism, state authorities do not react and courts adjudicate immaterial issues. Even most of those who have reacted to the private lawsuit against this journalist, who is threatened by deprivation of liberty, have missed the plot: they call on the government to exert influence on the courts, not on the courts to do their job. The legislators must no longer put off the adoption of the laws on information and broadcasting; the judges, for their part, ought to monitor the practice of international judicial bodies, which have for years now addressed issues related to the rights and obligations of journalists in a modern manner and in the interest of human dignity and the free development of democratic society.
