LOCAL PRESS

 

Vucic: We want to complete everything by end of 2019 (RTS)

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic has stated the opening of chapters in the EU negotiations on 14 December is an important date for Serbia. He thanked EU Commissioner

Johannes Hahn for assisting on this path and said that Serbia wished to complete the job in this future process by the end of 2019. “I wish to thank the EU and Mr. Hahn, whom we consider a great friend of Serbia. We discussed today our obligations in the future, the opening of chapters on 14 December. This is an important day since we are showing in what kind of society we wish to belong and what we want to build in our country,” said Vucic. He said that we had worked a great deal in order to get here, but that much more is still ahead of us, and that he believes we will continue to have Hahn’s support on this difficult and hard job.
Hahn: We are opening chapters on Monday (B92/Beta)

The EU Commissioner for Neighborhood Policy Johannes Hahn said today in the Serbian parliament that the negotiating chapters between Serbia and EU will be opened on Monday. He pointed out that Chapters 32 and 35 will be opened. He says that the opening of first chapters is “the beginning of part of the EU accession process” that is becoming an achievable goal for Serbia. In his address to the Serbian MPs, Hahn said that Serbia had achieved great success on the EU path, especially in implementing reforms, the dialogue with Kosovo and cooperation with neighbors in the region. Han says that “14 December is the beginning of the process” and that “now it is necessary to confirm the assumed obligations and continue the reforms” especially in the field of the judiciary, rule of law, battle against corruption, freedom of expression “that is inviolable from the EU standpoint”. Hahn added that progress in the normalization of relations with Kosovo is essential for Serbia’s further progress in the EU integration process.

 

Gojkovic talks with Hahn (Tanjug)

Serbian parliament Speaker Maja Gojkovic met EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn who underlined the importance of reforms for Serbia’s modernization and citizens’ welfare.

Gojkovic underlined the importance of the timing of Hahn’s visit to Serbia - on the eve of the intergovernmental conference in Brussels on 14 December, where the first negotiation chapters should be opened, based on the European Commission’s positive report, the parliament’s press office said in a release. Opening the first negotiation chapters will send the message that Serbia is on the right track, she noted. Gojkovic and Hahn highlighted the important role of parliaments in regional cooperation, as part of the entire EU integration process. After the meeting with Gojkovic, Hahn addressed Serbia’s law makers in a special session.

 

Djuric: Opening of chapters excellent news for Kosovo Serbs (RTS)

The Head of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija Marko Djuric has told the morning news of Radio and Television of Serbia (RTS) that the opening of chapters is excellent news for entire Serbia and all Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija. He notes that progress of the negotiating process is a result of not only the government policy, but of all reform efforts in Serbia over the past two years. “A strong and reformist Serbia suits the Kosovo Serbs and they are counting on a strong government in Belgrade, and they have such a government at present,” says Djuric, adding that one can count on the support and solidarity from Belgrade. According to him, regardless of the fact that Pristina is obstructing the implementation of the reached agreements, Serbia is receiving support for continuing the EU integration and this goes to say that the entire “effort of the Serbian Prime Minister and government have not been in vain”. “The EU has interest in cooperation with Serbia and enlargment towards Serbia”, says Djuric. Commenting the attack in Gorazdevac, Djuric says that the Pristina press, instead of focusing on the investigation and finding perpetrators of the attack, is writing that the Serbian security structures are behind these incidents. “This shows how bad the political climate is in the southern province,” he notes. According to him, Kosovo politicians cannot seem to learn that not everything that is good for the Serbs is bad for the Albanians and that a joint future cannot be built if we are constantly pointing at each other and if Serbs are constantly blamed. “How can people, whose two-third of the population was expelled in 1999, be blamed for the fact that the authorities have failed to deal with crime for 16 years. We have there a combustible mixture of political extremism and separatist goals,” says Djuric. He recalls that the Serb representatives talked with international representatives, and he expects KFOR and international institutions that are present in Kosovo to provide safety for the Serbs.

 

Dikovic asks KFOR to engage more in non-Albanian areas (Novosti)

Chief of the General Staff of the Serbian Army Ljubisa Dikovic asked KFOR Commander, Major General Guglielmo Luigi Miglietta, for KFOR to devote more attention to Gorazdevac and other villages and towns in which non-Albanians constitute a majority, for the sake of security of citizens in Kosovo and Metohija. In a phone conversation with the KFOR Commander, Dikovic voiced concern over the possibility that recent armed attacks on Serbs in Gorazdevac had been organized, the Serbian Defense Ministry said in a release. Dikovic said that the attacks had given rise to insecurity and unease among Serbs and other citizens in Kosovo and Metohija. KFOR is the only guarantor of security in Kosovo and Metohija under UNSCR 1244, he repeated. Miglietta said that the investigation into the Gorazdevac incident was ongoing, and that KFOR had stepped up its presence in the area.

 

Court for KLA crimes in Pristina (Blic)

Representatives of the Dutch and Kosovo judiciaries have reached agreement on the headquarters of the Special Court that will process war crimes committed by leaders and members of the KLA, Pristina daily Koha Ditore writes. It further states that the headquarters of the court will be in Pristina, while protected witnesses will be examined in The Hague. The agreement had allegedly been defined during the visit of Kosovo officials to the Netherlands last week. However, the Chairman of the Serbian parliamentary Committee for Kosovo and Metohija Milovan Drecun denies these allegations. “When one looks at the law that was adopted, it is clear that the main headquarters of the court will not be in Kosovo. All important and big trials will be outside Kosovo, all evidence will be outside Kosovo. The Pristina authorities are releasing such information to calm their public, but are in fact misleading people,” Drecun told Blic, adding that two or three smaller trials will be conducted in Pristina.

 

REGIONAL PRESS

 

Government and all institutions of RS terminated all cooperation with the B&H Court, Prosecutor’s Office and State Investigation and Protection Agency (Nezavisne)

Members of State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA), by the order of the B&H Prosecutor’s Office, have arrested five persons for war crimes in Bosanski Novi. SIPA carried out searches at four locations. Buildings of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Municipality building are among those locations. The activities are being carried out within an investigation of war crimes committed in this area against Bosniaks in 1992. SIPA arrested Bosnian Serbs Ljuban Babic, Ranko Balaban, Rajko Karlica, Mirko Odzic and Milenko Brcin. They are under investigation and are suspected of having committed the criminal offense of crimes against humanity. As a result of the raids on the buildings of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the City Municipality building, Republika Srpska (RS) Government held an extraordinary session and concluded that the search of the building of the municipality, the police and municipal enterprises in Novi Grad, which was done by SIPA agency, casts doubt on the confidence in the RS Ministry of Interior, which has so far always cooperated with the security agencies in B&H, Court and Prosecution. Government and all institutions of the RS therefore terminate all cooperation with the B&H Court, SIPA, stated the RS Minister of Interior Dragan Lukac. This decision was made after today’s “unconstitutional actions of the SIPA agency”, said Lukac. The RS government said that this operation represents “a gross violation of cooperation between police agencies.”

 

B&H Court rejects the prosecution’s motion for custody of Sakib Mahmuljin (Srna)

The Court’s decision to reject the prosecution’s motion for custody of Sakib Mahmuljin, who is suspected of war crimes against Serbs in Zavidovici, indicates there are no serious intentions to bring the proceedings to an end, says Milomir Savcic, the head of the RS Veterans Association. Savcic said he had suspected this would happen at the moment of Mahmuljin’s arrest. “This is proof that there are no serious intentions to investigate all that happened in central Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H), to investigate all the crimes that were committed, particularly on Mt Ozren and in Vozuca in 1995. This proves that we are not equal before the Court of B&H,” Savcic told Srna. The case of Mahmuljin shows that this society is ruled by discrimination and injustice, which is absurd when it comes to the survival of just judiciary, he added. Savcic noted that he had expressed fear when Mahmuljin was arrested that a number of Serbs would be arrested within hours or days, which proved true, he said, with the arrest of five Serbs in Novi Grad for alleged war crimes. The B&H Court rejected the Prosecutor’s Office motion on Wednesday to remand the former commander of the 3rd Corps of the Army of B&H in custody on suspicion that he was responsible for war crimes against the Serbs in Zavidovici. Mahmuljin is charged with crimes committed between July and October of 1995 during combat action in the wider Vozuca area, in which the notorious El Mujahidin unit also took part.

 

Legal aggression on B&H is taking place via intelligence-security agencies of Serbia (Klix.ba)

The President of the Coordination of veterans’ associations of the Army of B&H Serif Patkovic said he will invite all B&H patriots to the boycott of state institutions. Patkovic highlighted that the veterans do not care if the political masterminds of the “so-called bodies of B&H” are in Belgrade or Brussels. Minister for Issues of Veterans and Disabled Veterans of the Defensive-Liberation War Salko Bukvarevic and Serif Patkovic held a press conference following the arrest of the former commandant of the Third corps of ARB&H Sakib Mahmuljin, accused of war crimes against Serbs near the municipality of Vozuca. Minister Bukvarevic said he respects the work of the judicial bodies in B&H in all activities being conducted in terms of legal and fair processing of those responsible. Bukvarevic highlighted he is concerned with attempts of equalizing the victims and the aggressor, and the creation of an artificial balance in processing of war crimes. Serif Patkovic said that, following all occurrences in continuity, the veterans got used to situations that arise and that they are not surprised with the actions. “We have a definition for current activities, and the definition is that a legal aggression is taking place against B&H via intelligence and security agencies of primarily Serbia, via certain traitors of this country at the time of the war and through inability of institutions of B&H to separate justice from injustice and truth from lies,” Patkovic said. Patkovic added that they will defend B&H with all available means and that all current happenings are not good for the country.

 

Why have U.S. agents arrived in B&H? (Nezavisne)

Special agents from the U.S. have already started arriving in B&H to help the domestic authorities in fight against terrorism. The US Embassy in B&H did not confirm or deny these allegations. “The U.S. Embassy does not comment on security issues,” stated the PR Office of the U.S. Embassy in B&H. The U.S. team should operate within the Task Force for fight against terrorism, and it should be completed by the end of 2016. Task Force for fight against terrorism was established in 2013 based on the decision by the former Minister of Security of B&H Fahrudin Radoncic, and it consists of representatives of judicial institutions and police and security agencies in B&H. The Task force represents continuation of activities done by B&H on strengthening capacities for fight against terrorism, which are being conducted since September 11, 2001 after the attack on the U.S., when a Committee for fight against terrorism was founded in B&H, and the later activities of establishing task and operational forces for fight against terrorism which have been launched after 2004. According to the data from the research project by the professor Vlado Azinovic and the Islamic theologian and publicist Muhamed Jusic, at least 210 people went from B&H to the battlefields in Syria and Iraq between 2014 and the end of 2014. Compared to a population of nearly 3.8 million, B&H has one the highest European averages of foreign fighters, i.e. more than 41 per a million of residents, if only men are count.

 

Izetbegovic in Brussels: We will resolve Croatian question in the first half of 2016 (Klix.ba)

Speaking at the conference in Brussels, which is devoted to the 20th anniversary of the Dayton Agreement, Bakir Izetbegovic, member of the B&H Presidency, said that the Croatian issue should be resolved in the first half of 2016. “The European future of B&H – 20 years after the Dayton-Paris Peace Agreement” is the title of the conference which was held today in Brussels, in the organization of members of the European Parliament from Croatia. Member of the Presidency of B&H Bakir Izetbegovic and the Chairman of the Presidency of B&H Dragan Covic are attending the conference, as well as the High Representative of B&H Valentin Inzko, EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn, Federica Mogherini and other high officials. One of the issues that should be solved as soon as possible is the protection of the Croats, since there are three times less Croats than Bosniaks in the Federation of B&H, said Izetbegovic. “Croats should be equally represented, to have parities, not only in the Armed Forces of B&H and the Council of Ministers of B&H, but also within the structure of the 73 agencies. At the moment, the Chairman of the Presidency of B&H is a Croat and he was also the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of B&H, the Minister of Defense is Croat and the Commander of the Joint Staff of Armed Forces of B&H is also Croat. Situation is similar when it comes to banking. I want to say that there are things that need to be resolved, but there are also things that we have already solved and where Croats are in even better position, in relation to their number,” said Izetbegovic. Izetbegovic stated that it is also very important to recognize the real interests and to separate them from the national delusions.

 

Attaché for Security of the U.S. Embassy visited Ministry of Interior of CS (Novo vrijeme)

Minister of the Interior of the Canton Sarajevo (CS) Ismir Jusko and Police Commissioner Vahid Cosic received Nathan Al-Khazraji, attaché for the security of the US Embassy in B&H, in a working visit. They discussed the current great cooperation and support that the U.S. government is giving to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of CS, as well as future aspects of this cooperation, aiming the operational strengthening and training of the police in the CS, thus creating preconditions for more efficient fight against all forms of crime, which would result in much better security environment in CS. On this occasion, valuable IT equipment was handed to the Ministry of Interior of CS which was donated by the US Embassy, within the framework of the Project for provision of the help in the fight against terrorism, as announced from the Department of Public Relations of the Ministry of Interior of CS.

 

INTERNATIONAL PRESS

 

Thousands removed from Macedonia border camps after being rumbled for NOT being refugees (Daily Express, by Zoie O'Brien, 10 December 2015)

THOUSANDS of stranded migrants have been kicked out of Macedonia border camps after Greek police discovered they were not from war-torn countries.

About 2,300 people branded economic migrants from Pakistan, Somalia, Morocco, Algeria and Bangladesh were loaded onto 45 buses and moved through Greece to the capital. They have been stranded at the border since Macedonia began filtering thousands of arrivals, allowing those from war zones through. About 350 officers were deployed to the border town of Idomeni yesterday where violence has broken out over the last three weeks. Tents and temporary homes were destroyed as only refugees from Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan were allowed through. Scuffles broke out and 30 were arrested, before being sent on to Athens. The migrants will now be sheltered in an indoor sports stadium and disused premises at the former airbase of Hellinikon in Athens.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told state television: “We are forced to take initiatives, in contact with international organisations and European peers, to return those who are proven not to qualify for asylum.” According to the Greek legislation migrants and refugees can stay in Greece for a month during which they must either leave the country or seek asylum. If failed they can be arrested and forcefully deported. The number of migrants and refugees reaching Germany has now tipped the 1million mark after they travel through borders starting at the Greek coast. On Wednesday, 12 migrants drowned and 12 more were reported missing after a boat carrying about 50 people sank off the small Greek island of Farmakonisi in the early hours.

Six of these are reported to be children. Around 3,500 are believed to have died making the perilous crossing this year.

 

Bosnian Serbs say to halt cooperation with state police, court (Reuters, 10 December 2015)

Bosnia's autonomous Serb region said on Thursday it would halt cooperation with the national court, prosecutor and police in objection to a war crimes raid, further threatening the integrity of the country 20 years after it emerged from war. The step was announced by the Serb Republic government but requires the approval of the local parliament, which called an emergency session for later on Thursday. Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik is already threatening to hold a referendum on the jurisdiction of Bosnia's national court, deepening concern in the West that the highly-decentralized country risks unraveling. The government acted after a raid by the SIPA state police on a local police station and municipal buildings in the Serb Republic as part of an investigation into war crimes committed during Bosnia's 1992-95 war. Decrying the raid as "inappropriate and provocative," the Banja Luka government said it and all institutions of the Serb Republic "are breaking off cooperation with the Bosnian court, Bosnian prosecution and SIPA." It ordered the interior ministry "to prevent any entry or search of Republic and local government premises." An estimated 100,000 people died in Bosnia's 1992-95 war as federal Yugoslavia unraveled. A peace accord split the country into two autonomous regions joined by a weak central government in an unwieldy system of ethnic quotas that critics say has stunted development and further entrenched ethnic nationalism.

 

MEPs to Tell Montenegro to Protect Journalists (BIRN, by Dusica Tomovic, 10 December 2015)

A European Parliament draft resolution, to be debated on Thursday, highlights the need for improvements to media freedom in Montenegro

The European Parliament is to debate freedom of the media in Montenegro on Thursday amid concern that the media community is highly divided and that attacks on journalists remain unsolved. Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee will debate a draft resolution on Montenegro, which also notes that journalists are poorly paid and that jobs are insecure. MEPs are concerned that incidences of intimidation of journalists is encouraging self-censorship and limiting the scope for investigative journalism. The resolution, drafted by the European Parliament’s rapporteur for Montenegro, Charles Tannock, condemns ongoing smear campaigns "mostly by one tabloid newspaper", targeting prominent civil society activists and some politicians on a personal basis. That is the first time that a resolution by the parliament has directly referred to media attacks on human rights activists and opponents of the ruling elite in Montenegro.

The resolution urges continued OSCE-facilitated dialogue on improving ethical and professional standards in the media. It also urges the authorities to resolve the pending cases of violence against journalists, including the murder of editor Dusko Jovanovic in 2004. Montenegro must address these problems by "identifying not only the perpetrators but also those behind the attacks and by implementing recommendations issued by the ad hoc media commission set up to monitor the attacks," the document reads. The only tabloid operating in Montenegro is a local edition of the Belgrade-base newspaper Informer, which, together with the Montenegrin branch of Serbian TV Pink, is widely considered to be close to Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic.

The opposition, local watchdogs and some independent media claim that Informer and Pink Montenegro also operate under the control of a former Serbian government official, Vladimir Beba Popovic. They say he acts as an informal media adviser to Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic and to Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic - and has been behind media attacks on opponents of both leaders. The Belgrade-based media often offer "evidence" of alleged crimes by the opposition and prominent NGOs, without giving the other side an opportunity to responds to the claims. Popovic, the former propaganda chief to Serbia's late Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, admitted on a Belgrade TV show in June 2014 that Djukanovic influenced the work of Informer in Montenegro. Asked whether Djukanovic also controlled TV Pink’s output in Montenegro, Popovic responded that this had been the case. “It is theirs, the government's," Popovic told TV B92's show "Impression of the Week." International and local watchdogs criticised Popovic's own role in the media in Montenegro after the Montenegrin edition of Informer last year published articles accusing the human rights activist, Vanja Calovic, of bestiality. Calovic, a prominent critic of the Djukanovic government, said Popovic was responsible for posting a video on the internet, which led to the accusations printed in Informer.

Daniela Brkic, an analyst, said the strengthened presence of the Serbian media in Montenegro had coincided with a strengthening of political ties between the two governments. This rapprochement was crowned by the Djukanovic's “historic visit” to Belgrade in 2013, after a ten-year long break from visiting the Serbian capital. At the same time, Brkic said, the Montenegrin branch of TV Pink started using more inflammatory news contents, used primarily to smear opponents of the Djukanovic government in the media. Simultaneously, the Serbian tabloid Informer entered the Montenegrin media market with a similar editorial agenda. "In this scenario, media that base their loyalties on business opportunities are ready to put ethical rules behind them, providing content that does not serve the public interest but political agendas," Brkic wrote in a report on media integrity in Montenegro, released last week.

 

Belgrade Waterfront: an unlikely place for Gulf petrodollars to settle (The Guardian, by Herbert Wright, 10 December 2015)

A plan to pour £2.5bn into an exclusive waterside development has some locals praising the modernization of their long-troubled city, while others cry foul

The hundreds of Syrians camped out on the green beside Belgrade’s bus station had moved on, headed for the European Union. The only traces of their presence were a row of portable toilets, Arabic notices on a help kiosk and a cordon around some tired-looking grass. But just nearby, a very different Arab arrival is emerging in the Serbian capital. Belgrade Waterfront is a €3.5bn (£2.5bn) project of condominiums, hotels, offices, retail, parks and paths dominated by a glass skyscraper that will be the tallest between Vienna and Istanbul. Its developer is Abu Dhabi-based Eagle Hills, chaired by Mohamed Alabbar, who previously founded Emaar, builders of the world’s largest shopping mall and tallest building, both in Dubai. Their project manager in Belgrade, Nikola Nedeljkovic, says that “we envisage Belgrade Waterfront to be a game-changing hub for Serbia”, and that it “takes into consideration the balanced sensitivity to nature, culture and modernity”. Belgrade is painfully divided about the development. Some see a prosperous future in it, others are aghast at the project’s hitherto-alien cityscape, unconvinced of its economic or social benefits and suspicious of Serbia’s relationship with Eagle Hills. There is a dedicated protest movement, whose mascot is an oversized yellow duck. (In Serbian, duck also means dick.) Belgrade seems an unlikely place for Gulf petrodollars to settle, or for glitzy towers to rise. The Balkan city, where the great Sava and Danube rivers meet, was fought over by Slavs, Greeks, Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was Tito’s capital of post-war Yugoslavia, then Slobodan Milošević’s Serbian capital, bombed by Nato in 1999. Recently, the gritty city has emerged as an outpost of creative activity and urban cool on the cheap, against the lingering backdrop of socialism. Decaying but defiantly alive, Belgrade is often compared to Berlin after the fall of the Wall. The ground zero of Belgrade cool is Savamala, a district which slopes down to the river Sava and into Belgrade Waterfront’s site. As well as its hip bars and all-night partying, it became known for its street art, especially along a sidestreet called Mostarska. A block away on busy Karadjordjeva Street, next to the Hotel Bristol – where royalty and Rockefellers once stayed – is one of Serbia’s architectural masterpieces, a heavy 1907 art nouveau block designed by Nikola Nestorović and Andra Stevanović, known as Geozavod because it once housed the Institute of Geophysics. Not so long ago, it was so blackened by pollution that it was hardly visible. But in summer 2014 it re-emerged, impeccably restored and surrounded by blue Belgrade Waterfront banners. Now it is the BW Gallery, and houses the mother of marketing suites. Climbing its monumental staircase, you enter a baroque hall with marble columns and gold ornamentation, full of light from great windows. The centrepiece, half-filling the room: a vast model of Belgrade Waterfront. The model shows the entire 1.77 sq km district – a core of dense high-rise buildings, dominated by a glass tower that is twisted in the middle. Called the Kula Beograd, the tower has been designed by the Chicago office of skyscraper architecture titans SOM, and would overlook the River Sava and the new 1.8km Sava Promenade. Also part of the masterplan is the Balkans’ largest shopping mall, a soap-bubble dome on disused railway land further away from the river. Its 140,000 sq m would make it almost as big as London’s Westfield Stratford. Surrounding the mall would be upwards of 6,000 flats. “We’re trying to focus on the affordable as well as the high-end segments,” Nedeljkovic says. “We’re trying to have a diverse mix of product.” The mix is not obvious in the model. There are offices, of course, and hotels, including a including a swanky W Hotel to open in 2019. Parkland and tree-lined boulevards are spread liberally. Belgrade’s 1884 railway station will become a museum. This would not be the first time Belgrade has had a vast upgrade in the prevailing urban fashion of the time. From the 1950s, Tito extended Belgrade across the river Sava by creating Novi Beograd, a vast centrally planned grid of brutalist blocks. It includes Genex Tower, currently Serbia’s highest skyscraper. What’s changed since then, worldwide, is a gradual surrender of urban planning to the private sector. Civic masterplans threaded with social ideals have given way to developers’ mixed-use visions promising sustainability and lifestyle – with a waterside dimension if at all possible. Belgrade Waterfront ticks all those boxes. In fact, the city has actually been wanting to do something like this for a long time. In 2009, architect Daniel Libeskind worked up a plan with Jan Gehl, pioneer of “human-centred urbanism”, for Luka Beograd, a similar project to develop the Danube port area. So when the prime minister, Aleksandar Vučić, unveiled the Belgrade Waterfront scheme in June 2014, it didn’t come as a huge surprise – and the prospect of investment and 20,000 jobs in a country where unemployment hovers at 25% must have seemed like a lottery win. What’s not to like? The movement Ne da(vi)mo Beograd (a pun that loosely translates as “We won’t let Belgrade d(r)own”) organises street protests against Belgrade Waterfront. They carry yellow ducks and rally behind a gigantic oversized duck the size of a car. Dobrica Veselinović, one of the movement’s activists, alleges that the agreement to build Belgrade Waterfront is contrary to Serbian law and procedures because he claims that the promenade construction works started without a building permit. He adds: “It does not take into account the needs of society or economic and urban reality in Belgrade.” The group argues that local people were not consulted, that the deal does not provide adequate affordable housing and that it was done in secret. They also say that families in the area were summarily evicted with mere days’ warning, and their houses demolished. Radio Television of Vojvodina (RTV), a public broadcaster in neighbouring Vojvodina province, ran a report in April interviewing some of the families who said their houses were destroyed without permission. The apartments in which they were resettled were only for limited periods or to buy, according to Veselinović, and “no social service or legal assistance was offered to them”. A Serbian news reporter interviews families who say they were evicted from the port area. Eagle Hills did not respond to queries about the evictions. A public relations spokesperson forwarded a statement that the Belgrade Waterfront agreement is transparent and publicly available, and complied with all applicable laws and regulations. It stated that it received a building permit for Hercegovacka Street leading to the Promenade; as for the embankment reconstruction, it said it had applied for a permit, declaring that the law allowed construction to proceed in the meantime. The UAE has a strong foothold in Serbia: under an investment deal signed by Vučić when he was minister of defence, the UAE have made agreements with the Serbian defence industry and to secure food supplies, as well buying into Air Serbia. The perceived backroom nature of the Belgrade Waterfront deal has caused real anger. Balša Božović, the opposition leader in Belgrade’s city assembly, has gone on record calling Belgrade Waterfront the “scam of the century”. He says that Eagle Hills’ total investment will actually be more like €300m, not €3.5bn, and argues that the contract shows that Serbian taxpayers will end up picking up much of the rest of the bill. But support for his DS party has slumped since the post-Milošević times, when the DS ruled a system of crony capitalism; there is a perception that DS represents the “bad old days”, undermining Božović’s complaints. The company did not comment. On the frontlines in Savamala itself sits Mikser House, a cultural centre with a bar and shop. “We came first as an event [the Mikser festival],” says founder Maja Lalic. “We were parasites.” But as time passed, the Mikser became prime exponents of community participation and projects, and a vital local hub. When the municipality cut down trees nearby, Mikser House organised the response on Facebook and took the protest to city officials; while the annual Mikser Festival solicits citizen engagement in civic issues. Lalic calls Belgrade Waterfront “a marketing project – actually a PDF brochure of the new city with residences. It all relies on pre-sales.” In London and elsewhere, hardly a week goes by without the “launch” of another unbuilt luxury residential scheme – but residential pre-sales are a model that is relatively new to Serbia. Lalic’s colleague at Mikser, Ivan Kucina, an architecture professor at Belgrade University and the Dessau Institute, says that the pre-sales model has “been appropriated by Arab investors and it’s coming back to Europe ... at the weakest point of Europe”. Belgrade Waterfront’s first major block, a double 20-storey tower called BW Residences, has broken ground. According to Nedeljkovic, 75% of the units have already been sold, to locals, Serbian diaspora and overseas buyers. “Certainly, the international ones are buying for the investment market,” he says. Milutin Folic, the official city architect, says flatly there will be “no racketeering” involved in Belgrade Waterfront. “All [planning] laws are 100% in line with the EU, and all plans must undergo public display and consultation.” He talks generally about ideas the city has for engaging citizens – neighbourhood workshops, an app for people to report broken pipes and the like, and a plan to give people credits for civic participation that would be redeemable for museum admission, transit tickets or parking tokens. Some of them sound in spirit much like the Mikser’s community initiatives. Folic is an appointee of mayor Siniša Mali, who was elected in 2014 as an independent. Mali and Folic have reformed the planning committee to build confidence with big investors, who they want to fund ambitious infrastructure projects. The new Chinese-built Pupin bridge has already diverted lorries that thundered through Savamala (though construction traffic is replacing them), as part of long-planned ring-roads, which Folic wants to see happen. His vision is a city-wide jigsaw in which Belgrade Waterfront is just one piece. By converting Prokop station in the south into the city’s new main station, he says that everything “from Belgrade Waterfront to the Pancevo bridge is going to be a green area”. The disused tracks will become “a new park, something like the High Line”. His IME (identity, mobility, environment) blueprint encourages “little projects that make change” and “changes the hierarchy of the traffic”, prioritising pedestrians, then bicycles, public transport, and “at the bottom, the private car”. Meanwhile, Savamala is changing fast. The cultural venue KC Grad – which opened in 2009 in an abandoned warehouse on Braće Krsmanović, the street running parallel to the river – was the germ of the new Savamala. With all the clubs that sprung up around it, art director Ljudmila Stratimirovic says: “I sometimes feel sorry for what we started – it’s too loud.” But she fears that Belgrade Waterfront will leave her cultural centre with “no meaning”. Nobody from the development has contacted her – and she isn’t even sure if KC Grad lies in the proposed demolition area.

Belgrade's 'top-down' gentrification is far worse than any cereal cafe

Nearby, little of the street art remains on Mostarka, which is now almost obliterated by demolition, on the very edge of the Belgrade Waterfront site. Businesses like Flash Clean’s carwash look like goners, to be replaced by a seven-storey block. A still-active single rail track separates this cluster from the river and the Sava Promenade. Its wide cycle path – still a novelty in Serbia – features bicycle racks crafted from old rails. There are two wide boardwalks over the river, a colourful new playground and a locally designed Strawberry Smart bench which can charge mobile phones. A new restaurant, Savanova, sits in a smart black block that looks quite Mies van der Rohe, near a cluster of food trucks. Not all of it is so slick yet. A little further south, pedestrians and cycles share the riverside path with lorries rumbling out of the Belgrade Waterfront site in clouds of dust. Construction is under way for BW Residences. Beyond, a landscape of desolation opens out – broken concrete and rubble, freight wagons, containers being shifted and stacked. Jovan Jelovac, founder of Belgrade Design Week and the man responsible for bringing Libeskind and Gehl together on the shelved Danube plan, describes this area as “a narco-traffic shit-hole [where] you walk down the street and inhale 55 lorries going by”. He says Belgrade Waterfront “is what Belgrade deserves after 20 years of corruption”. Perhaps he is right. Perhaps the completed Belgrade Waterfront will reflect Jan Gehl’s human-centred ideas, with its promises of pedestrian priority and parks. Perhaps power may shift from developers to grass-roots organisations. In the meantime, Veselinović promises more action and protest from Ne da(vi)mo Beograd: “The big yellow duck is here, getting stronger and bigger!”

 

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