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- Publicly and unequivocally condemn all instances of inter-ethnic violence and other offenses against minorities;
- Investigate and, where necessary, take appropriate disciplinary or legal action against officials suspected of inciting, encouraging, or supporting ethnically motivated violence against people or property;
- Fulfill the publicly-given promise and legal obligation to compensate victims of violence whose property was destroyed on the occasion of public protests after Kosovo’s declaration of independence;
- Implement programs designed to assist victims of violence, including damage to property. Assistance should include help accessing legal remedies, including financial compensation where eligible and civil claims for damages against perpetrators if they are identified;
- Conduct outreach in the areas affected by violence to inform the victims how to purse compensation for damage;
- Expand the compensation law to allow for compensation in cases of criminal damage not arising from public protests;
- Consider legislation that would allow for the imposition of greater sentences for ethnically aggravated forms of offenses against the person, property, public order, and similar offenses (hate crimes). The ethnically aggravated form of an offense would apply where there is evidence of either a) clear ethnic motivation on the part of the perpetrator in the commission of the offense or b) the demonstration of hostility during the commission of the offense is based on, among other grounds, the victim’s membership (or presumed membership) of an ethnic, religious, or racial group.
- Direct officers to take all appropriate preventive and protective measures to protect individuals belonging to minority communities and their property and businesses from attack especially when political events indicate that they may be at heightened risk;
- Implement procedures designed to minimize opportunities for attacks once the risk is apparent, including timing shift rotations such that properties under protection are not left unprotected during the shift change;
- Thoroughly investigate all violent acts directed against minorities, including destruction of property, in order to identify the perpetrators and where the evidence warrants promptly pass it to district prosecutors to bring criminal charges against them;
- Renew investigations into the 2008 acts of violence against minority-owned businesses which took place after Kosovo’s declaration of independence;
- Communicate with victims and affected local communities as investigations progress in order to assure the victims of their safety and deter further attacks;
- Ensure greater ethnic diversity among the police force to facilitate communication and contacts with all communities in Serbia;
- Closely collaborate with investigative judges, misdemeanor judges and prosecutors to ensure adequate follow up on misdemeanors and criminal cases involving minority victims.
- Closely collaborate with each other and with the police to ensure that misdemeanors and criminal cases involving minorities are adequately followed up on and the perpetrators identified and prosecuted.
- Include the Serbian government’s success in preventing ethnically motivated crimes and, where warranted, prosecuting individuals responsible for them as a benchmark in the Stabilization and Association ratification process and other European Union accession processes;
- Support police reform in Serbia to better enable timely and coordinated responses to violence and public disorder, including by facilitating closer cooperation and the exchange of best practices between EU national police forces and the Serbian police.
- Support efforts to ensure that the police force adequately reflects Serbia’s ethnic diversity;
- Continue to affirm that a multi-ethnic Serbia in which the rights of all inhabitants are respected is one of the principle objectives of the international community.
- The Advisory Committee of the Framework Convention on the Protection of National Minorities should visit the areas of the anti-minority violence during its November 3-7, 2008 visit to Serbia. The Advisory Committee should consider issuing a speedy report and recommendations specifically on the investigation into the violence;
- Continue pressing the government of Serbia to uphold the standards in the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities.
- The OSCE Mission in Serbia should include monitoring trials of ethnically motivated crimes in its portfolio, and publish its findings.
- Monitor incidents of violence against minorities and publish reports documenting them;
- Continue visits to Serbia by the OSCE High Commissioner of National Minorities to assess progress in protecting national minorities.
- The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Human Rights Committee, and the Special Rapporteur on racism should use the next opportunity provided by their respective mandates to take up the issue of ethnically motivated violence in Serbia and make recommendations for steps the authorities should take to effectively address the problem.
- The Human Rights Council should use the opportunity of the forthcoming Universal Periodic Review of Serbia to question the authorities about the problem of ethnically motivated violence and their response to it, and make recommendations for steps taken to effectively address it.
November 2008
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