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European Western Balkans
Politics

Foreign civic activists interrogated and banned from Serbia for representing a “security risk”

National Assembly of Serbia; Photo: Wikimedia Commons

BELGRADE – Several civic activists from EU member states and the Western Balkans who were participants of an international civil society conference were asked to leave Serbia after being interrogated by the police. They were subsequently banned from entering the country due to being designated as a “security risk”.

During the night of 21-22 January, a group of participants of a civil society conference organized in Belgrade by NGO Academy and supported by Austrian ERSTE Stiftung and the Vienna University for Economics and Business, were unexpectedly questioned by the police and then asked to leave Serbia within 24 hours. They were banned from entering Serbia for a period of one year and were not given any specific explanation for this decision, made by the Ministry of Interior.

At least 14 participants of the conference were asked to leave Serbia, European Western Balkans has learned. They come from Croatia, Albania, Austria, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Romania, Moldova and North Macedonia.

One of the participants from Croatia told Jutarnji.hr that she and her colleagues were met by the Serbian police in their hotel late on Tuesday and were then taken to the police station for questioning, which lasted several hours. According to the participant, they were largely kept in the dark about their status and the process they were subjected to.

Following the questioning, the participants were given the Decisions of the Ministry of Interior designating them as a security risk for the Republic of Serbia and asked to leave the country within 24 hours. They were also banned from entering Serbia for a year.

Serbia is currently experiencing large-scale protests in the wake of the tragic collapse of a part of the Novi Sad railway station in November. The ruling party and the pro-government media have claimed on multiple occasions that the protests were supported from abroad, without providing any particular evidence. However, the officials reportedly made no reference to the protests in the decisions concerning the activists.

The conference was titled “Earned Income Strategies for Purpose-driven Organisations: How to Leverage Your Strengths and Navigate the Technical and Moral Limits of Markets” and was organized by NGO Academy, which is a joint initiative of the ERSTE Foundation and the Competence Center for Nonprofit Organizations and Social Entrepreneurship of Vienna University for Economics and Business.

In recent years, Serbia has banned several individuals from entering the country or ordered their hearings at the border, as they were designated as security risk by the state institutions. In most of these cases, the persons subjected to this treatment were openly critical of the current Serbian government. These steps were widely criticized as authoritarian.

This is the first time, however, that a group of people without any apparent involvement in Serbian domestic politics, was designated as a security threat and banned from entering the country.

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