After human rights activist Sofija Todorovic was held up for hours at Belgrade airport at the weekend, an umbrella organisation for Serbian NGOs warned that such harassment has been happening repeatedly.
By Milica Stojanovic - Balkaninsight
September 3, 2024
Credits @FFHR.CZ
Serbia’s National Convention on the European Union, NKEU, an umbrella organisation for NGOs dealing with EU integration, on Monday condemned the detention of two civil rights activists, Jovana Radosavljevic and Sofija Torodovic, who it said have been repeatedly, “illegally” held at border crossings for periods of several hours.
Radosavljevic, director of the North Mitrovica-based NGO New Social Initiative, and Todorovic, head of the Belgrade-based Youth Initiative for Human Rights, are both members of the NKEU’s ‘Working Group for Chapter 35’, which deals with Serbia-Kosovo relations.
“Bearing in mind that top representatives of the government informed the Serbian public in previous days about the existence of wider lists on the basis of which detentions are carried out at border crossings, we have a reasonable suspicion that Jovana and Sofija found themselves on [the lists] because of activities that contribute to the reconciliation and normalisation of relations between Serbs and Albanians,” NKEU said in a press release.
The Youth Initiative for Human Rights said on Saturday that Todorovic was temporarily held back by border officers at Belgrade airport – the eighth time this has happened, accoring to the NGO – while travelling to Germany for an award ceremony. Soon after the statement was issued, Todorovic was allowed to continue her journey.
Radosavljevic has been repeatedly held back at the Kosovo border crossing, before being allowed to continue, according to the NKEU.
Maja Bjelos, a researcher at the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy, told BIRN that “limiting Sofija Todorovic’s freedom of movement is a tactic of the ruling regime in order to harass and intimidate peace activists and human rights defenders, since [she] is a prominent peace activist… who has been working for years to reconcile Serbs and Albanians and at the same time advocates for justice and responsibility for war crimes on the territory of the former Yugoslavia”.
Bjelos argued that this is “part of an organised state attack on civil society in Serbia and activists [because] they fundamentally question and criticise the policies and decisions of the government of Serbia, and point to phenomena such as the party capture of the state and society and inform the domestic and international public about it”.
The Youth Initiative for Human Rights in a press release on Saturday said that, when stopping Todorovic, “border police officials indicated that the detentions were due to a detailed border inspection, which includes a thorough search of luggage”.
“They explained that a specific designation appears when scanning Sofija Todorovic’s passport, which mandates this procedure for every entry and exit from the country,” it added.
Prior to Saturday, these holdbacks have “typically lasted between 90 minutes and 4 hours”, it said.
Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic admitted on August 28, after Croatian pop star Severina Vuckovic was stopped and questioned about her political views when trying to enter Serbia, that there are ‘watch lists’ of people Belgrade considers problematic due to their public stances.
However, after a public outcry, Dacic promised that Severina and other celebrities would be “taken off” the confidential lists.
Source: balkaninsight.com
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