Dozens of Serbian public figures from the fields of media, art, culture, architecture, and justice addressed high-ranking EU officials, urging them to unequivocally decide and resolutely support the processes of democratic changes embodied in student protests and a broader civil movement that insists on the proper work of judicial bodies and eradication of deep corruption at all levels in the state.
We quote the letter in its entirety:
We are addressing you as officials of the European Union, elected representatives of European policies and values, that of Europe which is both our cultural space and politically the only acceptable community of citizens and peoples, to express deep concern about the current political situation in Serbia.
At the moment in which we are writing this, the current regime in Serbia is deeply shaken by the student and civil protests caused by the death of fifteen people, during the fall of the canopy at the Railway Station in Novi Sad, which is the result of obvious corrupt actions.
All insights into the causes of that crime lead directly to the top of the state. The student rebellion, blockades of faculties throughout Serbia, work stoppages, and mass demonstrations by citizens send a clear message that the reign of corruption must come to an end once and for all.
However, as citizens of Serbia, we are even more uneasy, and this is one of the reasons for this letter. Unfortunately, the rule of such a regime all these years would not have been possible without the very ambivalent and inconsistent policy of the European Union towards Serbia, which in recent years often came down to the open support of the government of Aleksandar Vučić.
Namely, Europe, on whose funds and markets a good part of Serbia’s economy has been dependent for more than twenty years, seems to be systematically turning its gaze away from the unpleasant and essentially anti-European features of the current Serbian government.
In Serbia under Vučić’s rule, individuals from state structures who dare to oppose crime openly are persecuted.
Hiding evidence of murders involving public officials.
Members of the police who expose state crimes are threatened with murder, and the policemen who beat a man to death in the police station while being detained for questioning remain at large.
Workers are threatened with dismissal if they refuse to submit to party directors and participate in rallies supporting the regime.
Activists, students, professors, journalists, and members of opposition parties are detained, arrested, monitored, and eavesdropped, and the regime beaters and party activists of the Serbian Progressive Party organized to attack citizens are acquitted.
Nevertheless, the government of Aleksandar Vučić, by the key actors of European politics, is publicly supported, or at best tolerated, in actions that are in complete contradiction to elementary European values.
The European Union sees the complete regime control of the media with a national frequency, the paralyzed judicial system, the falsified voter lists, and even the terrorist attacks in Kosovo carried out by persons who have the protection of the state in Serbia and make millions of profits, as an ephemeral, secondary problem.
Short-sightedly, to distance Serbia from Russian influence, it offers a geopolitical embrace to a treacherous and dangerous regime and its criminal leader, who publicly threatens its own citizens with paramilitary formations of pro-Russian extremists sworn in blood to defend his rule.
In the circumstances of great world turmoil, Europe, all its political actors, including the European public, should bear in mind, with indisputable clarity, that Serbia under the rule of Aleksandar Vučić is a security-unstable and dangerous territory, where, unfortunately, the current European indifference, permanent Russian influence and the activities of organized crime meet in the maintenance of an openly criminal regime, which, according to everything available in the analysis of the political moment, represents a serious threat, not only to the realization of the elementary rights of citizens of Serbia, but also for regional, and even European, security and stability.
The many threats addressed to the citizens of the European Union on the territory of Serbia, including the recent use of the Serbian police against the citizens of Croatia, Slovenia, Romania, as well as North Macedonia and Albania, and their deportation from Serbia without any legal basis, speak of this.
The regime, which is falling into a serious crisis, is now working intensively to create the potential for conflicts in the region, while artificially inciting nationalist-based hostilities and paranoid constructions about “foreign agencies”.
In this hour, the citizens of Serbia are fighting for identical values that are at the very foundations of the European Union, for the values of an anti-fascist Europe, a Europe that very well remembers the regimes of black shirts, propaganda party media, all-pervasive corruption, regimes that threaten, rob and extort, regimes for which ruins and the dead remain.
We invite you, as respected representatives of the European Union, to personally take an active role in supporting free, democratic, and European Serbia, by presenting to the European public and institutions the necessity of a clear and responsible policy of the European Union towards our country, with an unequivocal emphasis on support for democratic processes, the fight against corruption, the fight for media freedom, and the fight for rebuilding an independent, and already a whole decade of a completely collapsed judicial system.
Hoping that you will appreciate and consider our letter with due care and that the content and message of this letter will also reach the citizens of the European Union, who have the right and obligation to know what is happening in their immediate neighborhood, we send you our warm regards.
Sincerely,
Dejan Atanacković, writer and activist
Ivan Lalić, playwright
Aida Ćorović, art historian and activist
Goran Marković, director
Milica Čubrilo Filipović, journalist
Dušan Petričić, artist
Rade Radovanovič, journalist and writer
Irina Subotić, art historian
Mirjana Đurđević, writer
Dušan Teodorović, academician
Marko Šelić Marcelo, musician and writer
Dubravka Stojanović, professor at the University of Belgrade
Biljana Stojković, professor at the University of Belgrade
Bane Trifunovic, actor
Vesna Rakić Vodinelić, professor at the University of Belgrade
Prof. Dr. Vladimir V. Vodinelić, professor at the University of Belgrade
Ljubodrag Stojadinović, journalist and writer
Petar Peca Popović, journalist
Biljana Vilimon, painter
Nenad Kulačin, journalist and columnist
Marko Vidojković, writer
Kokan Mladenović, director
Dr. Tatjana Verbić, associate professor at the University of Belgrade
Stevan Filipović, director
Novi Nebojsa Milenković, art historian and writer
Marija Srdić, activist
Nenad Kostić, academician
Zoran Radovanović, Ph.D., retired full professor at the University of Belgrade
Nebojsa Romčević, playwright
Vesna Pešić, sociologist and politician
Ana Kotevska, musicologist
Biljana Stepanović, economist
Dubravka Marković, journalist
Tamara Dzamonja Ignjatović,
Jelisaveta Tatić Čuturilo, scenographer
Tamara Tripić, DD Mreža
Ana Hegediš Lalić, journalist
Dinko Gruhonjić, professor and journalist
Maja Lalić, architect
Marko Lađušić, artist and professor
Ljubiša Jovanović, professor
Jelica Minic, President of the European Movement
Jelka Jovanović, journalist
Aleksandar Baucal, professor at the University of Belgrade