LOCAL PRESS

Serbian Government session dedicated to EU integration (Novosti)

“The decision of the European Council to have the first inter-governmental conference on 21 January does not represent the end, but rather the beginning of reforming the country on the path to the membership in the EU, and the goal of the negotiations is not just the membership but also the normal life for the citizens,” Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic stated at the thematic session of the Serbian Government, dedicated to the European integrations. Dacic has stated that 28 EU members have adopted the decision to start the formal accession talks, owing to the successful implementation of the Brussels agreement, 20 rounds of the dialogue with Pristina and numerous meetings of the working groups, as well as holding the local elections in Kosovo and Metohija and the initiated forming of the Union of Serb Municipalities. It is also the result of the reforms and readiness to continue the battle against corruption and organized crime, the Prime Minister said. He added that the success was achieved thanking to all government members, as well as to all Serbian citizens. “A year ago, Serbia did not have friends, it was alone, humiliated and disgraced. The first task of this government was to do everything to improve the international status of the country, to eliminate lies from communication, to speak openly the truth about Serbia and the world, regardless of the consequences,” Dacic stated. According to him, the talks on the membership in the EU have already begun with the screening of Chapters 23, 24 and 32. Although Serbia is embarking on the talks from the inferior position, with devastated economy, high unemployment and poverty rate, the Prime Minister has underlined that the national plan is to complete the accession talks faster than any other country that had gone through the process. Dacic has also reiterated the official position of Brussels that the recently adopted negotiating platform of the EU does not demand Serbia to recognize the independence of Kosovo, but to take active part in finding solutions to the problems. He said that after the local elections in Kosovo the Serb municipalities should be constituted, and added that that process must be status neutral.

First Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic has stated that Serbia now celebrates the victory and accomplishment of the citizens, who have understood correctly the political messages and the place of Serbia in the future. He has announced that the investigations of 24 problematic privatizations will be completed by the end of the week, as asked by the EU, and added that the state continues with the battle against corruption. Vucic has said that the next two years will be marked by difficult reforms that must be carried through, but the citizens can expect better life as of 2015.

 

Mrkic: No new conditions from Brussels (TV Pink)

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivan Mrkic has said that there will be no new conditions from Brussels when it comes to Kosovo, and announced strengthening of the activities of the Serbian diplomacy in the coming year during which the accession negotiations with the EU will be launched. “There will be no blackmails in this respect, we are focused on the normalization of the situation in the province, this is our goal that we have promoted on a number of occasions,” Mrkic told TV Pink. Belgrade wants all people, both Serbs and Kosovo Albanians, to live in increasingly normal conditions and to have free traffic of goods and people, while the everyday life in Kosovo and Metohija should be fully normalized, he said. Speaking about the activities of the ministry as part of the accession negotiations with the EU, Mrkic said that there is a continuous activity ahead.

 

Odalovic: Serbia fulfilled all requirements (TV Pink)

The Secretary General of the Serbian Government Veljko Odalovic has stated that Serbia has no reason for concern on the eve of 21 January and the start of the EU negotiations, as it has done everything necessary and fulfilled all requirements. He pointed out that the goal is to form the Union of Serb Municipalities, to be present in the region of Kosovo and Metohija and for the Serbs to remain in the province. Serbia has received the start date without any reserves and question marks and it is preparing for the phases passed by every country that enters the process of European integrations, Odalovic told TV Pink. He pointed out that the judiciary is one of the issues on which there was most dispute in Brussels and that Belgrade offered constructive solutions in this field, but that Pristina “raised the ramp” and left the negotiating table.

 

Vulin: Goal to open 1000 jobs in Kosovo and Metohija (Politika)

Serbian Minister without Portfolio in charge of Kosovo and Metohija Aleksandar Vulin opened in Zitkovac near Zvecan a plant of a factory for the production of textile program “Javor” Ivanjica. Vulin stressed the goal of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija was to open 1,000 new jobs in Kosovo and Metohija by 1 July 2014. By turning out for the elections and preparing to form the Union of Serb Municipalities, the Kosovo Serbs have enabled the state of Serbia to continue helping that part of its territory, said Vulin, adding that the opening of this plan proved that Serbia would not stop extending help to its people in Kosovo and Metohija.

 

Vulin: Education and other fields under control of Union if Serb Municipalities (Tanjug)

Serbian Minister without Portfolio in charge of Kosovo and Metohija Aleksandar Vulin said that education in the Serb community in the province will remain under the control of the Union of Serb Municipalities. “The Union is an organization that has executive powers in the fields of education, health care, spatial planning and economic development. That is what has been agreed in Brussels, and there will be no deviation from this. For example, just as Germany has Danish schools with Danish seals, funding and curriculums, there will be a Serb school here that is going to be established by the Republic of Serbia, with a Serbian curriculum and a Serbian seal,” Vulin told students of the school of journalism in Kosovska Mitrovica. Commenting on a statement by the Kosovo minister of education that the University of Pristina, temporarily based in Kosovska Mitrovica, should be reintegrated into Kosovo laws and the constitution, Vulin said that no agreement on this has been reached anywhere. “Pristina often has the need to alter the Brussels agreement, possibly because it is no longer very satisfied with that agreement. Education will remain fully under the control of the Union, and there is no reason for concern in this regard,” Vulin said. He noted that an agreement has not been reached on license plates as this belongs to the agreement on freedom of movement that is still incomplete. Vulin added that the judiciary in Serb regions would also be integrated, but said the manner in which this will be done had not been agreed yet. We insist on the Serbs trying Serbs, i.e. that the Serbs have their own president of the court, their prosecutor and their notary, said Vulin.

Mihajlovic: Implementation of Brussels agreement key in association with EU (RTS)

The Head of the Office of Media Relations Milivoje Mihajlovic has stated he expects the inter-governmental conference to start by 21 January, and the specific feature for Serbia is the relation between Belgrade and Pristina, along with the implementation of the Brussels agreement, as the key in Serbia’s association with the EU. In comment to the postponing of the ceremonial sessions of four municipal assemblies in northern Kosovo, after the request of the Serbian Government and the EU, he said that at issue is a procedural issue and some things need to be arranged better. The Belgrade-Pristina dialogue is one of the most serious post-conflict projects in Europe after WWII, and it may be the reason for some people to think it deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, Mihajlovic told the Radio and Television of Serbia (RTS), on the occasion of Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic, Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaqi and the EU High Representative Catherine Ashton being nominated for that recognition.

 

Ashton:  Dacic and Thaqi reached agreement, EU just helped (Danas)

The EU High Representative Catherine Ashton has stated that the Brussels agreement is not her accomplishment, but the achievement of Belgrade and Pristina, while the EU was just assisting in the process. They have demonstrated political courage, resolve and desire to reach a solution, Ashton said in an interview to Novi Magazin, which selected her as the person of the year. She has added that all members of the EU are in support of opening the accession talks with Serbia, as well as the negotiations on the Stabilization and Association Agreement with Kosovo. One of the reasons for such a stance is the considerable progress that Belgrade and Pristina have made in the normalization of their relations, Ashton concluded.

 

Serbian Church requests guarantees (Novosti)

The issue of the position of the property of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo and Metohija will be probably opened in January during the next Brussels round of negotiations with the Pristina representatives, Prime Minister Dacic announced. The model of the future of the Church in Kosovo and Metohija is an issue to which both the state and the Church are offering several answers; however, not a single one has been adopted. The Serbian Orthodox Church rejected the proposal of the status contained in the parliament resolution for the negotiations that envisages a contract relationship between the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Pristina authorities. Its fundamental attitude is that the state should demand international guarantees, primarily EU, for the Serbian Orthodox Church in the province, its legal status, temples and facilities. Establishing a contract relationship between the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Pristina authorities, after the model of the status of the Roman Catholic Church in Italy, is unacceptable for the church over the non-applicability in Kosovo circumstances. The Patriarchate isn’t satisfied with the stand of the state leadership for its ambiguous attitude in including church bodies in the resolution of the future of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo and Metohija.

 

Serbian cultural heritage in Kosovo and Metohija (Radio Serbia, by Snezana Milosevic)

A collection of works on the Serbian cultural heritage in Kosovo and Metohija has been presented in the Belgrade History Museum. It was emphasized at the gathering that the state and all the scholarly institutions and individuals must do much more in order to record, present to the world and protect the Serbian cultural heritage in the province. The participants in the discussion, organized by the Office for Kosovo and Metohija, agreed that any verbal testimony to the Serbian cultural and spiritual heritage in the Province was not enough to have it truly protected. This was said by Ivan Raskovic, a professor of the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade.
Kosovo and Metohija abounds in Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries – architectural edifices of zero categories, which means they are invaluable. Such facts should be recorded and clearly presented and one must insist on the protection of those monuments, said Raskovic.
The director of the Museum in Pristina, historian Branko Jokic, assesses all the works in this book as important, but said that all of them put together did not suffice to show the true depth of the crisis of the Serbian cultural identity in Kosovo and Metohija. He believes that Serbian intellectuals in Kosovo and Metohija do not realize enough the threats caused by a conformist attitude and calls on them to become more active and help.
According to a professor of the Faculty of Law in Pristina, Dusan Cedic, the events in Kosovo and Metohija were no credit to the legal trade. Of the two and a half million cadastral lots, as many as one million have been usurped, he emphasized. For instance, the estate of the Serbian Orthodox monastery of Visoki Decani, which monastery has been included in the UNESCO World Heritage List was usurped and has not been returned to this very day.
Mirjana Milenkovic of the Ethnographic Museum believes that the key question is why Serbia did not say that it would not allow any compromise in the field of cultural heritage and why it has not compiled a list which state representatives and diplomats would bring all over the world and insist on it.
The collection was published in two volumes in October 2013 and includes nine fields of cultural heritage in Kosovo and Meohija. It contains the works of ten distinguished experts from Serbia and abroad, which relate both to tangible and intangible heritage. In their papers, the authors dealt with topics such as national identity, patriotism, ethnological issues, and attitude to sanctities and Serbian cemeteries since 1999.

 

REGIONAL PRESS

Sorensen: B&H punishing itself (Onasa)

The EU Special Representative in B&H Peter Sorensen says that B&H is punishing itself by lagging behind neighbors in EU integration for not implementing the Sejdic-Finci ruling that should abolish national discrimination from the election process. “We are encouraging all sides towards finding solutions for implementing the ruling that concerns the abolishment of discrimination during the election of members of the B&H Presidency and House of Peoples, because this is the remaining condition so B&H could head forward in the process of EU integration,” Sorensen told Onasa. He recalled that the EU Council expressed “certain fears” in view of the possible implications of non-implementing that ruling on the elections that should be held in 2014 and appealed that B&H urgently harmonizes its Constitution with the European Human Rights Convention. Sorensen said that elections must be held in Mostar in 2014, adding that the Statute of the city should be amended so to ensure a unique area of the city with a good and efficient administration. “The EU is here with the goal of supporting B&H in its efforts towards possible EU membership, but the final responsibility lies on the political leaders and institutions and we can’t take their place,” he said.

 

INTERNATIONAL PRESS

Croatia: Serbian Language Dispute Creates Discord (BIRN, by Boris Pavelic, Josip Ivanovic, 26 December 2013)

Croatia joined the European Union in 2013, but the country was dogged by its wartime past throughout the year as angry protests erupted over language rights for the Serb minority.

The year started with a government announcement that would cast a shadow over the rest of 2013: the authorities said that they intended to introduce the official use of the Serbian language and Cyrillic script into areas where Serbs made up more than a third of the population, in line with the country’s minority rights legislation.

One of those places was the town of Vukovar, a symbol of resistance during what Croats call the ‘homeland war’, after it was besieged and destroyed by Serb forces in 1991.

War veterans who fought to defend the town were furious about the plan to put up bilingual signs in Croatian Latin and Serbian Cyrillic script on administration buildings in the town.

Protests against the initiative began in February, when around 20,000 people joined a rally in Vukovar, where veterans said they would take direct action and even use force to stop the initiative.

“Prime minister, don’t provoke the defenders of Vukovar,” one of their leaders warned.

A second anti-Cyrillic rally in Zagreb’s main square in April again attracted around 20,000 demonstrators led by veterans in their military uniforms. But the authorities insisted that they would still enforce the minority rights legislation because Croatia’s future was as a tolerant European country.

Vukovar’s mayor Zeljko Sabo, himself a Croatian war veteran who spent nine months imprisoned in Serbia in 1992, called for reconciliation after he was re-elected in June.

“The citizens of Vukovar decided by a majority that they want city of peace and tolerance, not a city of divisions,” said Sabo after the local polls.

But the Headquarters for the Defence of Croatian Vukovar, the war veterans’ group which has led opposition to the official introduction of bilingualism, refused to end its campaign.

Smashing the signs

When the authorities finally began to install bilingual signs on public administration buildings in Vukovar in September, tensions boiled over.

Hundreds of angry veterans and survivors of the wartime siege took to the streets, crowding around the buildings and smashing the newly-installed signs with hammers.

The authorities deployed police in riot gear after scuffles with officers led to several arrests, but the protests continued for several days. In the months that followed, as soon as renewed attempts were made to install the bilingual signs, they were vandalised again.

“Cyrillic once came to Vukovar on tanks, and now it is coming [protected by] powerful police forces,” veterans’ leader Tomislav Josic complained.

The right-wing opposition Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, criticised the government’s actions even though it voted for bilingualism in 2010, while the centre-left government accused the HDZ of stirring up ethnic unrest for political gain.

“There’s no way of giving up the introduction of bilingualism to Vukovar,” Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic insisted, calling on protesters to “understand that the war is over”.

Serbia’s ruling party meanwhile demanded that the Croatian authorities “urgently take every measure to secure peace, safety and respect for the human rights of all Serbs”. Belgrade would go on to warn its international allies that the Serb minority in Croatia was being “endangered”.

Milanovic met representatives of the Headquarters for the Defence of Croatian Vukovar in October in an attempt to calm the dispute, but despite this, veterans continued to tear down the bilingual signs whenever they were reinstalled.

In November, the Headquarters launched a campaign to gather enough signatures to force a referendum on the issue, demanding that minority language rights should apply only in places where at least half of the population was from an ethnic minority, instead of a third, as under the current legislation – effectively banishing Cyrillic altogether.

By the middle of December, the campaigners managed to gather more than 680,000 signatures, theoretically enough to trigger a vote, and marched from Zagreb’s main square to parliament to deliver the hefty petition, singing and chanting: “God save Croatia!”The government continued to insist that it would not give in, with foreign minister Vesna Pusic even suggesting: “We should leave the EU if we want to reduce minority rights.”

But the veterans vowed to keep up their anti-Cyrillic campaign even if the constitutional court ruled that a vote could not be held.

“We won’t surrender. We will fight by any democratic means to reach our goal,” said one of the campaign leaders, Josip Cosic – setting the stage for a continuation of the dispute in 2014.

 

Bosnia: Protests delay destruction of crime scene (AP, 24 December 2013)

VISEGRAD, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Bosnian Serb authorities postponed the planned destruction of a house where Serb soldiers burnt alive 53 Bosniak civilians at the start of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.

Workers sent by the municipality turned around and left Tuesday when they saw victims’ families gathered outside the house in the eastern town of Visegrad.

Bosniaks claim that the plan developed by the Serb authorities to destroy the house in order to make space for the widening of a nearby road was just an excuse to destroy a crime scene and erase a memory of it. Families of the burned victims have reconstructed the house in Pionirska Street and visit it often to lay flowers, cry and pray.

“This house is sacred to us,” said Bakira Hasecic, a victim of the Serb assault on Visegrad, who now heads Bosnia’s association of women raped during the war. “We will not allow it to be demolished.”

The crime in Visegrad was among the first carried out by Serb forces on the local Muslim Bosniak population during the war.

The U.N. war crimes court in The Hague, Netherlands, sentenced several Bosnian Serbs to decades in prison for the Visegrad killing spree that saw scores of Bosniaks burnt alive in two houses.

When sentencing ringleader Milan Lukic to life imprisonment in 2009, judge Patrick Robinson said the burning of at least 119 civilians to death “exemplified the worst acts of inhumanity that one person may inflict on others.”

Lukic’s group barricaded the victims — including a two days-old baby — in one room of the house and set it on fire. Then they fired automatic weapons at those who tried to escape through the windows.

A few days later they repeated the crime in another house, killing nearly 70.

By the end of the war, after 3,000 were killed and others expelled, no residents of Visegrad were Muslim Bosniaks. Before, they accounted for two-thirds of the 25,000 population.

A small number have since returned to the town which is now in territory administered by Bosnian Serb authorities. Following the war, the country was divided into a Bosnian Serb republic and a Bosniak-Croat federation.

The house under threat is surrounded by other private homes along a new, narrow road. According to Bosniak returnee Suljo Fejzic, Serb authorities singled it out for a road.

“So, it is obvious what the intention is here,” Fejzic said.

International officials in Bosnia issued a statement urging the Visegrad mayor to give up on the destruction of the house.

“If the planned enforcement and demolition on 24 December goes ahead, it could be seen as a very negative step recalling some of the most difficult days of this country’s history,” according to a joint statement by Bosnia’s international administrator Valentin Inzko and the head of the OSCE Mission to Bosnia, Nina Suomalainen.

 

Macedonia Adopts Part of Disputed Media Law (BIRN, by Sinisa Jakov Marusic, 26 December 2013)

Macedonia's parliament has adopted the Law on Audiovisual Media Services, part of controversial government-backed legislation that journalists say could curb freedom of speech.

Sixty-two legislators in the 123-seat parliament voted late on Wednesday for the law that has sparked protests from journalists who fear that it could extend government control over the sector which has seen widespread closures of critical outlets in recent years.

The voting was preceded by a protest by journalists inside parliament.

At the start of the debate, during the introductory speech by the law’s proposer, information society minister Ivo Ivanovski, journalists displayed a banner with the slogan “Not in Our Name” to express their discontent to MPs about the government’s attempt to sneak the media legislation through the assembly before the new year.

“We want to show that we are still here and that we do not grant legitimacy to the law on media and to the consent that somebody else gave in our name. The law does not solve the key problems, but opens up new ones,” said Tamara Causidis, the head of the Independent Trade Union of Macedonian Journalists, SSNM.

“The very manner in which the quasi debate about this law was managed… is telling about the attitude that the proposers of the law have towards media organisations and journalists in Macedonia,” Causidis said.

Ivanovski has insisted that it is not intended to curb media freedom but to establish order in the sector.

The newly-adopted law is just one part of wider-ranging legislation pushed by the centre-right government of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski despite opposition from the country’s leading media organisations.

Instead of a single draft media law, which was initially envisaged, the government in mid-July submitted to parliament two separate pieces of draft legislation, a Media Law and a separate Audiovisual Media Services law, which was voted through on Wednesday.

The Media Law is next in line for adoption.

Wednesday’s vote came after minister Ivanovski claimed this weekend that he had received consent from the country’s biggest media union, the Journalist’s Association of Macedonia, ZNM, to put the bill to a vote in parliament “immediately”.

But the head of the ZNM, Naser Selmani, whose presence at the government press conference with Ivanovski confused many of his colleagues, later denied he gave consent, saying he was there only to welcome the government’s latest concessions to his union’s demands regarding the law.

However, the news of an alleged agreement between the ZNM and the government raised eyebrows among other media organisations in the country which said they had not been notified and were still against the bill.

After suggestions from the OSCE and other media watchdogs, debate in parliament on the proposed law was frozen until its recent reactivation.

Journalists as well as OSCE have suggested that the Macedonian media should strive towards greater self-regulation instead of the government imposing regulation.

The turmoil about the legislation comes against a background of widespread closures of media outlets that were critical of the government over the past few years, which prompted many media watchdogs to downgrade Macedonia’s rating on the issue of freedom of speech.

The World Media Freedom Index 2013, published in January by Reporters Without Borders, ranked Macedonia in 116th place out of 179 countries.

This represented a sharp drop of 22 places from the previous year and a drop of 82 places compared to 2009. Four years ago, the country was ranked in 34th place in the same media freedom index.

The government of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski has denied masterminding a deliberate crackdown on critical media outlets.