LOCAL PRESS

Nikolic: UN important to preserving peace, stability in region (Tanjug/RTS/Politika)

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic on Wednesday received United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations El Ghassim Wane, noting that Serbia is fully committed to regional peace and stability and that it is cooperating with all despite a rise in ultra-nationalism in some countries. Nikolic highlighted the significance of UN peacekeepers and their role in preserving peace and stability worldwide, in the region in particular. Serbia strongly supports UN activities and contributes to them through peacekeeping operations around the world, he said. At the same time, he stressed Serbia’s commitment to European integration, which he said is not at the expense of recognizing Kosovo and Metohija. “We are in talks with Pristina in Brussels, but all that we cannot agree on due to non-compliance with UNSCR 1244 Pristina is trying to agree bilaterally with other states and achieve it by joining international organizations,” Nikolic said. “I believe that Brussels must react and ensure that the dialogue is conducted in Brussels exclusively,” Nikolic stressed, expressing confidence that the role and scope of the UN mission in Kosovo will remain unchanged. Wane described Serbia’s role in contributing to regional peace and stability as positive, noting the significance of dialogue in facing regional challenges. He also thanked Serbia for its readiness to boost the participation of its armed forces in peacekeeping operations, stressing that the UN will continue its mission in Kosovo and Metohija.

Pastor re-elected as Vojvodina Assembly speaker (Beta)

Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians (SVM) leader Istvan Pastor was re-elected as the speaker of the Vojvodina Assembly. The decision was carried by 91 votes for and 14 against, with 13 abstentions. In addition to the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and the SVM, which put him forward as assembly speaker, Pastor was also supported by the Serbian Radical Party (SRS). The Democratic Party (DS) and two assembly members from the Enough is Enough movement and the Hungarian Movement for Autonomy, respectively, voted against Pastor, while the League of Social Democrats (LSV) and five Enough is Enough assembly members abstained. The constitutive session of the assembly was attended by 119 of the 120 assembly members. The SNS has 63 seats in the provincial assembly, followed by the SPS-led coalition (12 seats) the SRS and the DS-led coalition (10 seats each) and the LSV (9 seats). The Enough is Enough movement has seven seats, followed by the SVM with six, the Hungarian Movement for Autonomy with two and the Green Party with one.

Croatia consents to opening of chapter in Serbia’s EU talks (Tanjug/Beta)

Croatia has officially consented to the opening of Chapter 23 in Serbia’s EU accession talks, ensuring a consensus within the EU on the matter. Ambassadors of EU member states reached on Wednesday afternoon a consensus on the fulfilment of criteria for opening Chapter 23 in the talks with Serbia. Croatia coordinated its position with that of 27 EU member states, removing an obstacle to a continuation of the process of Serbia’s EU accession. Serbia is now expected to be called to submit its negotiating position for chapters 23 and 24, after which the EU member states should once again coordinate a common EU position for the talks with Serbia on the chapters, which relate to the rule of law and human rights. The EU expects the formal opening of the chapters to take place by the end of June.

Croatia’s conditions not included in final text (Novosti)

Belgrade says that the final text of the negotiating framework includes only cosmetic changes of certain formulations. The inclusion of Croat minority representatives in the Serbian parliament is not even mentioned any longer, while the final text includes the formulation that Serbia will respect all international norms when it comes to minority rights. According to Novosti, Serbia is not requested to abolish or amend the law on universal jurisdiction for war crimes, insisted on by Zagreb, but there needs to be coordination of Serbian and Croatian authorized institutions when launching judicial processes. Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Rasim Ljajic says that six more EU member states have the same judicial jurisdiction when it comes to war crimes: “None of the three conditions set by Zagreb are grounded. It is precisely according to this law that Serbia had conducted trials to the accused for war crimes in Ovcara. We also fulfilled all obligations towards the ICTY. Serbia had results in the sphere of respect of minority rights.” Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic tells Novosti that Serbia is completely prepared for opening Chapter 23. He says that the formulations that were included in the negotiating framework are not Croatia’ victory, but only elaborations of what Serbia is already doing: “There are no requests to change or amend the law on universal jurisdiction for war crimes, because it is in line with EU standards. It is good that Brussels is sending a positive signal and that the prevailing stand is that bilateral issues should not be included in the integration process.”

CoE report highlights problems facing Croatia’s Serbs (Tanjug)

Croatia lacks respect for its existing minority legislation, a Council of Europe (CoE) report says, highlighting the problems facing the Serb minority there at national and local level. The rights of ethnic Serbs in terms of the use of their language and script, economic integration of returnees and access to the Croatian labor market is marked by a discriminatory approach, the CoE Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM) said in its latest report. The existing legislative framework concerning minority rights in Croatia is mostly not implemented in practice, it said. “Too few representatives of national minorities are employed in public services, and the right to use minority languages and scripts is not implemented in some localities,” the report said. The report also warns of “increased incidents of hate speech that has become more acceptable in the media and in political discourse.” “Anti-minority rhetoric and prejudice dominates much of the public debate on national minorities, resulting in many individuals refraining from accessing their rights for fear of negative repercussions,” the report also said.

Djuric to remain in charge of Kosovo for some time (Danas)

The Head of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija Marko Djuric will spend some more time on that position after the last-week’s election as one of the SNS vice presidents, Danas writes. The SNS proclaimed that in the future high party officials of the Progressives would not be able to occupy positions in the executive branch. Sources of Danas, however, told the daily that in the Office they don’t expect Djuric’s imminent replacement. “The assessment of our interlocutors was that Vucic was very pleased with Djuric’s work in the Office, especially with him leading the team for negotiations with Pristina on an expert-technical level. This is one of the reasons why Vucic trusted him to become one of the SNS vice presidents,” the text reads.

Brussels ready for continuation of EULEX mission (Tanjug)

The EU is ready for a continuation of the EULEX Mission in Kosovo under a new mandate that would imply a smaller presence and reduced executive powers, Tanjug has learned in Brussels.
Negotiations about a continuation of the EU rule of law mission in Kosovo are underway – diplomatic sources in Brussels have told Tanjug that the EU is ready for the EULEX Mission to continue and that it is in contact with the Kosovo authorities. All steps are ready on our part, and what we are expecting now is the exchange of letters with the Kosovo authorities and the adoption of the decision, diplomatic sources in the EU have told Tanjug. With the current EULEX mandate set to expire on 14 June, an agreement with the Kosovo authorities should be reached very soon, following months of efforts, the sources said. The diplomatic sources say that the EU member states have reached an agreement in principle to extend the mandate of the EULEX Mission until 14 June 2018 and approve a 34.5 million Euro budget.

REGIONAL PRESS

Ivanic, Dodik: Decision on census borught under pressure of B&H Prosecution (Nezavisne)
The Serb member of the B&H Presidency Mladen Ivanic and Republika Srpska (RS) President Milorad Dodik discussed the population census in Banja Luka. Ivanic says that his stand regarding the census is that it needs to return to institutions. “I will request that it be checked whether it is correct that the B&H Prosecution had exerted pressure. If the outvoting continues, the results will be invalid,” said Ivanic. He says there is information that Director of the B&H Statistic Agency Velimir Jukic brought the decision on the census following talks in the B&H Prosecution. Dodik says that the decision on the census is unacceptable. “No judicial institutions can be involved in this. I am prepared to order the RS to withdraw and not to participate in the work, as well RS representatives in the B&H Statistics Agency,” said Dodik. “Clear information states that the Director was at a meeting in the Prosecution an hour before that and published results out of fear. You can check that a large number of listed are registered in places where it is impossible to have so many people,” Dodik said. Ivanic says that he is least responsible for the situation regarding the census. He says that at issue is a general scam and that he will never accept a scam as a decision-making mechanism.
List of 810 Serbs published (Patria/Srna)

Miroslav Baljak, son of Branko, DOB 6 November 1970, from Travnik. He is dean of the Faculty of Political Sciences at European University Kallos in Tuzla. He teaches legal ethics and human rights. The same person is registered on the list of Srebrenica genocide perpetrators. His name can be found under number 31.The list of 810 names, of which more than 400 are employed by B&H police and military structures, was first published by Patria back in 2014. It has been already revealed in public which persons from the list participated in mass executions of Srebrenica citizens in 1995, who presently work at state institutions. One of them is Baljak. He is a major by rank in B&H Armed Forces, employed by the 5th infantry brigade in Dubrave near Tuzla. From 10 – 19 July he participated in mass execution of Bosniaks from Srebrenica and deportation of some 30.000 Srebrenica citizens from UN protected enclave Srebrenica.

The list of 810 Serbs with personal identification numbers who took part in an alleged genocide in Srebrenica, which was published by Patria, is total nonsense which should be severely punished, said Milomir Savcic, head of the Veterans Association of RS. Publishing the list of 810 Serbs with personal identification numbers who took part in an alleged genocide in Srebrenica is an attempt at intimidating those people and classic spreading of hatred, Nenad Stevandic, the RS Assembly Deputy Speaker, told Srna on Wednesday.

EU-Serbia: Croatia incorporates its benchmarks for chapter 23 (Hina)

Ambassadors of EU member states on Wednesday adopted a report on the fulfillment of criteria for Chapter 23 in Serbia’s EU entry talks, which opens the path to start defining an EU common negotiating position on that chapter, the Council of the European Union has reported. The report was adopted after Croatia today gave the green light to begin defining a common negotiating position for Chapter 23 – Judiciary and Fundamental Rights. That still does not mean that a decision has been made to open that chapter nor Chapter 24, Justice, Freedom and Security.

Croatia read the report and withdrew its reservations on the condition that in its negotiating position on Chapter 23 the EU resolves the issues that Croatia had objected to, the EU Council told Hina. The procedure now is that the Council will ask Serbia to submit its negotiating position for that chapter and the Commission to begin preparing a draft common negotiating position of all EU member states. Only when member states agree to the text and unanimously adopt the common negotiating position can the chapter be opened. The Croatian Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs reported that Croatia approved the report on benchmarks after it had ensured that its demands would be incorporated in Serbia’s negotiation process. Croatia’s conditions are: Serbia’s full cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague; its full compliance with all national and international obligations regarding the protection of minority rights; and avoidance of judicial conflicts in war crimes prosecution.

Ivanov says he’ll act in line with laws, Constitution as regards pardons (MIA)

I will respect solely the law and the Constitution, Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov stated when asked what he would do unless the people whose pardons hadn’t been annulled failed to submit requests within the deadline defined under recent amendments to the Law on Pardoning.

Ivanov, who is taking part at a SEECP summit in Sofia, reiterated his decision had not been reached to breach the law and the Constitution and had been made in order to provide a way out of the political crisis in the country, MIA reports from the Bulgarian capital. “I have offered the leaders a solution to the crisis, pardons to be granted, all criminal proceedings implicating both ruling and opposition officials to be suspended as it is made possible by the Constitution and the laws. The move was not against the law and the Constitution. They had refused the crisis to be settled in this manner and created legal conditions in order (the pardons) to be annulled. I have waited for them to file requests according to the law. Because not a single request was submitted, my decision covered all those who stirred public anger that the politicians are above the law and are not held accountable. Therefore, my move at rescinding the pardons referred to all the politicians. The law allows all the others who said they were prepared to submit requests to do so,” said the Macedonian President adding he was still waiting for them to ask their pardons to be annulled.

New Parliament Speaker Darko Pajovic: It’s time to unblock the parliament now (CDM)

As it was expected, the leader of the Positive Montenegro (PCG) Darko Pajovic has been elected a new Parliament Speaker. After the discussion in the parliament that lasted almost until midnight, Pajovic was supported by his party colleagues and the coalition gathered around the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS). At the secret ballot, 42 MPs voted for them. On the other hand, the opposition MPs neither took part in the voting nor attended taking the oath. Pajovic said it was time to unblock the parliament.“Now it’s time to unblock the Assembly. We have to solve things and adopt the laws quickly and efficiently,” Pajovic said. He said he would not allow two things as the Parliament Speaker. “I will not allow insults and personal attacks against colleagues. Those are not attacks against MPs, but against the citizens of Montenegro. Also, I will not allow the violation of the Constitution, the laws or other regulations,” he said. Pajovic also said he would prevent tarnishing parliament’s image. “Those who want it must be sure that I will suppress such behavior. I am not saying this to threaten, but to preserve the dignity of the colleagues and this institution,” Pajovic said. He added that the discussion on his appointment showed that there were very different opinions about who we are and what direction we should chose. “We have little understanding for others people, different from us,” said Pajovic. “All of us have to learn to listen to each other, instead of convincing each other in the correctness of our own position. As the Parliament Speaker, I will do anything to improve the dialogue. We are all elected to represent the citizens,” he said. He pointed out that our country was at an early stage of democracy development. “Our society is authoritarian and that is a kind of obstacle to democracy development. The Parliament is the main place where discussions happen. As we all strive to changing society, we need to understand that we ourselves have to change,” he said.

INTERNATIONAL PRESS

Serbia, Vučić against RTV (Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso, by Antonela Riha, 1 June 2016)

Thousands of citizens protested in Novi Sad for the dismissal of some managing editors of Radio Television Vojvodina, one of the last media that resisted government control

Since the political majority switch in Vojvodina after the elections of April 24th, a change was expected also in the managing editors of Radio Television Vojvodina (RTV). This is standard practice in Serbia, especially in the two public service media and in the media co-owned by the state. However, the manner in which the winners of Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party replaced RTV’s editors overnight led to protests by over 100 employees, demonstrations of support from colleagues throughout the region, and protests by several thousand citizens of Novi Sad. On Monday, May 23rd, people gathered in front of the television building to sign a request of television journalists to immediately remove the newly appointed Board of Directors and the new editors. Unlike the Radio Television of Serbia (RTS), based in Belgrade and controlled by the government both financially and politically, the RTV of Novi Sad, capital of Vojvodina, has resisted this influence due to the fact that the government of this province of Serbia, since the fall of Slobodan Milošević’s regime in October 2000, had always been in the hands of the coalition led by the Democratic Party, at the opposition after the last administrative elections.

The facts

Ten days after the elections, on May 4th, RTV editorial director Slobodan Arežina had been replaced by a Board of Directors ad-interim, appointed a few days before the elections, on April 19th, by decision of the Organ of regulation of electronic media (REM), which is under direct influence of the Belgrade government. That occasion had already hinted that the Prime Minister was laying the ground for taking control of the umpteenth Serbian media. This was already clear, however, for those who worked at RTV. At the beginning of April, General Director Srđan Mihajlović had sanctioned journalist Svetlana Božić Krainčanić with a reduction in salary because, at a press conference, she had asked the Prime Minister a question formulated by an NGO that was protesting outside the government headquarters. The journalist had asked Vučić what few of her colleagues in Serbia would dare ask – what he thought of the project of “Greater Serbia” that he supported during the wars of the nineties, when he was general secretary of the Serbian Radical Party of Vojislav Šešelj, and whether today he distanced himself from that political vision.

ECPMF Resource Centre

More on media freedom in Serbia is available at the Resource Centre on Freedom of the Media, a project promoted by OBC together with the ECPMF centre in Leipzig. Materials include an analysis of the forms of indirect censorship that affect the media in the country and the report of the South-East European Media Observatory on the abuse of public funding as a control tool over editorial policies. The removal of Slobodan Arežina was followed, day after day, by the dismissal of journalists and editors of news programmes. Eventually, 18 prominent RTV employees will not be doing what they did until last month. Some of them said they were contacted by telephone to be informed that from the next day they would no longer lead or write their programmes. For the new administration, these people have worked “in a non-professional, unbalanced, biased manner”, leading to a drop in viewing figures.

A successful TV channel

However, the facts beg to differ. In recent years, it was this very group of editors and directors, together with a team of young journalists, that successfully transformed a local public service into a widely followed outlet. According to Arežina, over the past four years, ratings have grown by as much as 45% compared to 2010. This has also been due to most media becoming the speaker of Aleksandar Vučić since he came to power four years ago. This situation was also highlighted by an investigation of the BIRN website, which showed how, during the election campaign, the most popular channels (RTS, Pink, and B92), aired mainly statements by Vučić for two weeks. It is estimated that, only in the news, 121 statements by the Prime Minister were broadcast, for a total of 67 minutes. Vučić was followed by leader of the Socialist Party of Serbia and Foreign Minister Ivica Dačić, who only got around 7.3 minutes and 19 statements. But it is not just about the election campaign. Over the last four years, the Serbian government and Prime Minister have dominated the most popular media and every “dissonant” voice is deemed by Vučić as an attack against the state. Every person who criticises him is, sooner or later, targeted by the pro-government media. RTV, instead, had managed to keep programmes with debates and different opinions, but also with reports that spoke openly of the problems not only of Vojvodina, but of the entire country, and with interviews – all journalistic practices that have disappeared from national TV stations. What they failed to do, as stated by Slobodan Arežina when he was replaced, was to interview the Prime Minister. Even when he came to Novi Sad, he ignored the invitation to answer the questions of journalists of Vojvodina’s public service. In this, they were not alone, as Vučić introduced the media practice of going to studios where journalists chosen by him would ask questions that, in most cases, were prepared beforehand.

Legality

“It seems to me that for the first time things are done according to the law”, briefly replied Vučić when asked about the dismissals. Yet, this is not true either. The new board was not chosen by an open competition as required by law, but “enjoys ad interim status, which is a transitional solution, and had no right to do what it did”, said a press release by over a hundred RTV employees who protested against the replacements. Despite the support of Serbian and international journalists’ associations and the solidarity of citizens and the public, rebelling RTV journalists are not confident in the success of their actions. Aleksandar Vučić recently obtained by the citizens another mandate to form a new government, and enjoys international support for his pro-European policy, despite the fact that his decisions and actions often violate the European rights of freedom of expression and information. The programming of RTV has already been adapted to fit the government, and the authors of the programmes only await the moment when those who used to run these very programmes find another job – or end up on the street, like many colleagues who did not agree to submit their profession to the interests of a party and its great leader.

This publication has been produced within the project European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, co-funded by the European Commission. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso and its partners and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union.