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Prishtine, 28 October 2005 (KosovoNews) - Serbia's government is failing to curb a surging tide of violence against ethnic and religious minorities, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a 52-page report released earlier this month. Titled "Dangerous Indifference: Violence Against Minorities in Serbia," the report documents a broad range of crimes against minorities since 2003, including physical assaults, attacks on religious and cultural buildings, and cemetery desecration." "The government's response to these attacks has been inadequate," HRW found. "Officials have been quick to minimize incidents, police have sometimes failed to protect mosques and minority-owned businesses from attack, prosecutors have been slow to prosecute attacks, and those who are brought to justice are often punished with suspended jail terms or small fines." "Violence against minorities has increasingly become a problem in Serbia today," said Holly Cartner, HRW's director of European and Central Asian affairs. "Serbia cannot hope to move closer towards the European Union unless it starts taking these attacks a lot more seriously." The European Union's (EU) commissioner in charge of enlargement, Olli Rehn, visited Belgrade earlier this month to open negotiations with the Serbian government on a Stabilization and Association Agreement. The protection of minorities is a benchmark for upgraded EU ties. HRW found that the Serbian government"s weak reaction to ethnic and religious violence has encouraged Serb extremists over the past year and a half.
In March 2004, Serb ultranationalists in Belgrade and elsewhere in the country reacted angrily to news of anti-Serb violence in the predominantly ethnic Albanian province of Kosovo by attacking ethnic Albanians, Muslims, and Roma. Attacks on ethnic Hungarians and Croats in Vojvodina province have been widely reported, HRW noted. In 2004, ethnic Slovaks and Ruthenians were the targets of intimidation and violence for the first time in many years. This year, ethnically motivated incidents have decreased in Vojvodina, but have intensified in other parts of Serbia, often taking the form of antisemitic and anti-Muslim graffiti, as well as physical assaults on Roma. Members of the minorities, who were victims and witnesses of attacks in Vojvodina and other parts of Serbia told HRW that, in some cases of ethnically motivated violence, the police were slow to intervene, allowed the assailants to leave, or even expressed approval of the attack. In March 2004, for example, demonstrators broke through an undermanned police cordon and set fire to Belgrade’s only mosque. Serbia has no hate crime law that would allow ethnically motivated violence to be subject to more serious punishment than ordinary crimes. "Offenses against minorities are often dealt with through administrative proceedings rather than the criminal courts," according to the report. “Where wrongdoing is established, the punishment is usually light. Fines in misdemeanor proceedings rarely exceed the equivalent of $20 and jail terms are limited to 10 days. The government's implicit message to Serbian society is that it does not take violence against minorities particularly seriously. |
