Category Archives: Serbia

Eastern European countries adopting authoritarian measures in face of Covid

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Analysis reveals widespread violations of international democratic freedoms in response to pandemic

Europe’s political approach to the coronavirus pandemic has divided down stark east-west lines, a Guardian analysis has found.

Five of 18 eastern European countries have registered major violations of international democratic freedoms since March 2020, according to research conducted by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute, compared with none of 12 western European countries.

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Revealed: the secret ‘forced labour’ migration route from Vietnam to the UK

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Observer investigation uncovers new trafficking gateway to the west after 500 migrants found in shocking conditions in Serbia

When construction began to great fanfare in 2019, the Linglong car tyre factory outside of Belgrade was heralded as the jewel in the crown of Serbia’s burgeoning strategic partnership with China.

Two years later, 500 Vietnamese construction workers were allegedly found last month working in conditions of forced labour with their passports confiscated and living in cramped and degrading conditions.

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US hopes to walk Bosnia ‘back from the cliff’ as Serbs step up secession threat

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As Bosnian Serb assembly prepares to vote on opting out of Bosnian institutions, US officials plan a diplomatic offensive

The US is determined to walk Bosnia “back from the cliff” amid secessionist threats from Serb nationalists and is exploring sanctions among other options, a senior state department official has said.

Derek Chollet, a senior adviser to secretary of state Antony Blinken, was speaking ahead of a meeting on Friday of the Bosnian Serb assembly, which is expected to vote on whether to begin the process of opting out of the Bosnian army, judiciary and tax system.

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Rio Tinto lithium mine: thousands of protesters block roads across Serbia

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Crowds chanted slogans condemning government of Aleksandar Vučić, which backs planned Anglo-Australian $2.4bn mine

Thousands of demonstrators blocked major roads across Serbia on Saturday as anger swelled over a government-backed plan to allow mining company Rio Tinto to extract lithium.

In the capital, Belgrade, protesters swarmed a major highway and bridge linking the city to outlying suburbs as the crowd chanted anti-government slogans while some held signs criticising the mining project.

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Lives lost at Europe’s borders and Afghan MPs in exile: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to Manila

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Croatia violated rights of Afghan girl who was killed by train, court rules

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Madina Hussiny, 6, died after police refused to let her family apply for asylum and made them walk back to Serbia

After four years of legal struggle, the European court of human rights (ECHR) has ruled that Croatian police were responsible for the death of a six-year-old Afghan girl when they forced her family to return to Serbia via train tracks without giving them the opportunity to seek asylum.

The little girl, named Madina Hussiny, was struck and killed by a train after being pushed back with her family by the Croatian authorities in 2017.

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Rio Tinto’s past casts a shadow over Serbia’s hopes of a lithium revolution

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People in the Jadar valley fear environmental catastrophe as Europe presses for self-sufficiency in battery technology

Photographs by Vladimir Zivojinovic

A battery sign, flashing dangerously low, appears superimposed over a view of the globe as seen from space. “Green technologies, electric cars, clean air – all of these depend on one of the most significant lithium deposits in the world, which is located right here in Jadar, Serbia,” a gravel-voiced narrator announces. “We completely understand your concerns about the environment. Rio Tinto is carrying out detailed analyses, so as to make all of us sure that we develop the Jadar project in line with the highest environmental, security and health standards.”

Beamed into the country’s living rooms on the public service channel RTS, the slick television ad, shown just after the evening news, finishes with images of reassuring scientists and a comforted young couple walking into the sunset: “Rio Tinto: Together we have the chance to save the planet.”

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Bosnia is in danger of breaking up, warns top international official

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Exclusive: high representative says threat by Serb separatists to create their own army risks return of conflict

The international community’s chief representative in Bosnia has warned that the country is in imminent danger of breaking apart, and there is a “very real” prospect of a return to conflict.

In a report to the UN seen by the Guardian, Christian Schmidt, the high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, said that if Serb separatists carry out their threat to recreate their own army, splitting the national armed forces in two, more international peacekeepers would have to be sent back in to stop the slide towards a new war.

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Russians spurn Sputnik jab and head west for vaccines

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EU and UK travel bans fuel boom in travel to Serbia for authorised Covid vaccinations

When Denis Ovchinnikov read the news this summer that his Russian Sputnik V vaccine would not be recognised in Europe, he decided to take matters into his own hands and planned a trip to Belgrade.

“I contacted a travel agency that sorted everything out. It was very easy. I made a little holiday out of it too, in between getting the two Pfizer shots,” Ovchinnikov, who works at a PR agency in St Petersburg, said.

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Tensions rise at Kosovo border as number plate row escalates

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Behind a seemingly minor dispute, the long unresolved enmity with Serbia simmers

At an abandoned petrol station, half a mile from Kosovo’s Jarinje border checkpoint with Serbia, a giant Serbian flag had been laid out on the roof. In the former forecourt, a group of young people sat on upturned beer crates, sharing bottles of water and homemade rakija in small plastic cups. “This is our squad, our special forces,” one joked, as four tall, muscular men walked over to join them.

The mountain road next to them, flanked on either side by groups of protesters around tents and smouldering campfires, had been well and truly blocked by the men’s heavily laden trucks.

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Montenegro police teargas protesters against Serbian Orthodox church

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Clashes during inauguration of Balkan state’s new church leader at historic monastery of Cetinje

Police in Montenegro have fired teargas at protesters as the new head of the Serbian Orthodox church in the country arrived by helicopter for his inauguration.

The decision to anoint Bishop Joanikije as the new metropolitan of Montenegro at the historic monastery of Cetinje has aggravated ethnic tension in the tiny Balkan state.

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Ratko Mladić: life in prison is as close to justice as his victims will get

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Analysis: upholding of genocide conviction for 1995 atrocities is a victorious end to a process few thought would succeed

When Ratko Mladić’s life sentence for genocide and crimes against humanity was confirmed, marking the end of the road for the Bosnian Serb general 10 years after his capture, Munira Subašić was in The Hague courtroom to watch.

In July 1995, Subašić was outside a UN compound, a disused battery factory near Srebrenica, appealing for protection from Dutch peacekeepers along with thousands of other terrified Bosnian Muslims.

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Ratko Mladić, ‘butcher of Bosnia’, loses appeal against genocide conviction

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Judgment means 78-year-old former Bosnian Serb military chief will spend the rest of his life in prison

Ratko Mladić, the former Bosnian Serb commander nicknamed the “butcher of Bosnia”, will spend the rest of his life in prison after a UN court dismissed his final appeal against convictions for genocide and crimes against humanity, in a judgment hailed as “historic” by the White House.

Unlike previous appearances at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, the 78-year-old showed little emotion as an hour-long reading of the judgment finally put an end to attempts to quash the charges against him.

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Radovan Karadžić to serve rest of sentence in British prison

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UK agrees to transfer of ex-Bosnian Serb leader convicted of genocide over 1995 massacre in Srebrenica

Radovan Karadžić, the former Bosnian Serb leader convicted of genocide over the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica, is to be transferred to a UK prison to serve the rest of his life sentence.

The 75-year-old was found guilty in 2016 of 10 of the 11 charges he faced at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia over his role in the mass killings of civilians in the conflict that tore Bosnia apart more than a quarter of a century ago. In 2019, judges at The Hague in the Netherlands increased his sentence from 40 years to life following a failed appeal attempt.

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‘They can see us in the dark’: migrants grapple with hi-tech fortress EU

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A powerful battery of drones, thermal cameras and heartbeat detectors are being deployed to exclude asylum seekers

Khaled has been playing “the game” for a year now. A former law student, he left Afghanistan in 2018, driven by precarious economic circumstances and fear for his security, as the Taliban were increasingly targeting Kabul.

But when he reached Europe, he realised the chances at winning the game were stacked against him. Getting to Europe’s borders was easy compared with actually crossing into the EU, he says, and there were more than physical obstacles preventing him from getting to Germany, where his uncle and girlfriend live.

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Vaccine diplomacy: west falling behind in race for influence

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While the UK and US strive for herd immunity, Russia and China are leveraging their Covid jabs

“Today it is easier to get a nuclear weapon than to get a vaccine,” the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, declared in January. He was bragging. The Balkans country had just received its first shipment of almost 1m Covid-19 vaccine doses from Sinopharm, a state-owned Chinese pharmaceutical company.

Since then, Serbia has augmented its stockpile with tens of thousands of shots of Russia’s Sputnik V, signed an agreement to build a bottling plant for the Russian vaccine and now boasts the fastest vaccination rate in continental Europe.

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Kosovo and Serbia give Israel diplomatic boon after US-brokered deal

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Majority-Muslim Kosovo will recognise Jewish state, while Serbia promises to relocate embassy to Jerusalem

Israel scored two diplomatic gains on Friday when majority-Muslim Kosovo agreed to recognise the Jewish state and Serbia said it would move its embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

The decisions came after a White House-brokered agreement between the two Balkan arch-rivals to normalise economic relations two decades after they fought a bitter war.

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Donald Trump hopes for election boost from Kosovo-Serbia talks

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White House summit irritates EU diplomats, who say deal brokered by them is near

The leaders of Kosovo and Serbia will meet at the White House on Thursday and Friday, in an encounter that some see as a push for a diplomatic win for Donald Trump to brandish during his re-election campaign.

Kosovo’s prime minister, Avdullah Hoti, will meet with the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, in talks that Trump aides say will be primarily about economic issues between the two countries, but may pave the way to a broader deal.

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‘You simply die all over again’: the agony of Srebrenica, 25 years on

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The women who lost loved ones in the massacre of Bosnian Muslims are still burying bodies – and still seeking justice as the guilty walk free

In 2012, Munira Subašić identified the man who had transported her son to his death; a high-level official in Srebrenica’s police department.

Subašić vividly recalls their previous fateful encounter: it was July 1995, and tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims fled Srebrenica as it fell to Bosnian Serb forces led by General Ratko Mladić. Subašić, along with dozens of her family members, sought protection at a battery factory in nearby Potočari, where a Dutch battalion of UN peacekeepers was stationed.

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The Guardian view on Covid-19 worldwide: on the march

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Infections are accelerating in largely untouched countries and those which hoped they had come through the worst. But there is hope

“Most of the world sort of sat by and watched with almost a sense of detachment and bemusement,” said Helen Clark, appointed to investigate the World Health Organization’s handling of the pandemic. The former New Zealand prime minister was describing the early weeks of the outbreak, and the sense that coronavirus was a problem “over there”. The failure to recognise our interconnection created complacency even as the death toll rose.

It took three months for the first million people to fall sick – but only a week to record the last million of the nearly 13 million cases now reported worldwide. As England emerges from lockdown at an unwary pace, Covid-19 is accelerating globally. The WHO has reported a record surge of a quarter of a million cases in a single day. The death toll is over half a million people and rising fast.

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