<<previous  |  index  |  next>>

Background

Acts of violence against ethnic Albanian and other minority-owned businesses in February 2008 were not the first incidents of this kind in Serbia. Serbia saw a wave of attacks against minorities between late 2003 and 2005, including arson attacks on mosques that peaked in reaction to the anti-minority (primarily anti-Serbian and anti-Roma) riots in Kosovo in March 2004.

Some ethnic Albanians were also targeted in the spring of 1999, during the NATO bombing of Serbia, with homes and businesses subject to arson and Molotov cocktail attacks.²

A Human Rights Watch report into the 2003-2005 attacks in 2005, concluding that the Serbian government, police and courts failed to respond adequately to the violence.³ The report documented attacks on mosques and minority cultural centers, as well as attacks on individuals belonging to minority communities and their property. The authorities responded too late to violence and downplayed the ethnic motivations behind the attacks. The criminal justice system dealt with the attacks as misdemeanors rather than ethnically-motivated crimes, resulting in lenient sentences.

The 2005 Human Rights Watch report was widely covered by the Serbian media. The Serbian government minister described the report in media interviews in October 2005 as “simplified” but did not dispute its findings in a subsequent meeting with Human Rights Watch and other NGOs later the same month. Nevertheless, the Serbian authorities failed to implement the recommendations contained in the report.

The European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee (AFET) sent several ad hoc delegations of committee members in 2005. The European Parliament subsequently adopted a resolution in March 2005 (prior to the publication of the Human Rights Watch report) calling on Serbia to increase protection of minority communities and ensure the police played a more active role in that protection.

After the release of the “Dangerous Indifference” report, the European Parliament discussed the situation in Vojvodina during the Brussels visit of the Minister of Human and Minority Rights Rasim Ljajic on October 13, 2005, pressing for the Serbian government to tackle inter-ethnic crime more efficiently. The EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn stated on October 10, 2005 that Serbia’s progress towards Europe would depend on the degree in which it respects the rights of the minorities.

Kosovo’s declaration of independence on February 17, 2008, immediately provoked renewed mass protests and patriotic rallies across Serbia. Although most protests were peaceful, a few spiraled out of control, resulting in vandalism and, in Belgrade, widespread rioting. Groups attacked the embassies of Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Turkey, UK and US and a number of McDonald’s and other foreign-owned commercial premises, some of which were looted.⁴

During further mass protests in Belgrade on February 21, some groups among the crowds chanted “Kill, kill the Shiptars (a derogatory term for Albanians),” while others chanted “Knife, wire, Srebrenica,” a reference to the mass killing of Muslims by Serbs in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995.⁵ Several hundred broke loose from the otherwise peaceful crowd and attacked police and TV crews covering the protests.⁶ Besides embassies and foreign-owned commercial premises, rioters also damaged cars, as well as public property such as benches and street lamps.⁷

The Belgrade independent news organization B92 was the target of attempted arson during the mass protests in Belgrade on February 21; the attempt was thwarted by a police cordon around the building. B92 continued to receive threats in the following days. A well-known human rights activist was also targeted. The Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) started to collect signatures to lodge a criminal complaint against Natasa Kandic, the Executive Director of the Humanitarian Law Center, accusing her of acting against the constitutional order and threatening the state’s independence and integrity by attending the Kosovo Assembly’s session at which independence was proclaimed. Some media outlets supported the action against Kandic.⁸

There was a mixed response from the Serbian government to the rapidly unfolding events. President Boris Tadic, on state visit to Romania, called for calm and an immediate end to the violence.⁹ However, some members of the Serbian government condoned the violence in response to Kosovo’s declaration of independence. The minister for infrastructure, Velimir Ilic, initially described violence in the immediate aftermath of the protest in Belgrade as “democratic.”¹⁰ After the riots spread, with foreign embassies attacked and widespread damage of publicly and privately owned property, he called for an investigation on what happened and who is responsible for the acts of violence.

In the weeks that followed, a wave of attacks on Albanian-owned property and businesses swept through Vojvodina and various other locations throughout Serbia. According to the information from major general Mladen Kuribak,  the head of the Uniformed Police Directorate¹¹, the police across Serbia registered 221 incidents connected to Kosovo’s declaration of independence during the period of February 17-March 20, 2008, most of them involving attacks on property.¹² The figures do not differentiate between incidents with an ethnic motivation and ordinary crimes.

However, the attacks do not appear to be representative of the attitudes of the local population in the areas visited by Human Rights Watch. According to Albanian-business owners whose shops were attacked, the majority of citizens continued to frequent their shops after Kosovo’s declaration of independence. Although the state media was silent about the attacks on the minority-owned businesses, some independent journalists and civil society activists were proactive in investigating and condemning the attacks, writing articles and publishing press releases about them. Human rights activists, accompanied by the national and regional ombudsmen and the mayor of Sombor organized a solidarity visit to the boycotted bakery there.