A group of 14 foreign activists attending a civil society conference in Belgrade were detained and then expelled by Serbian authorities with no reason.
The activists, from EU member states and countries of the Western Balkans were taken by police in the middle of the night, questioned, deported, and then banned for being a “security risk”.
The individuals were participating at an NGO Academy organised by Erste Foundation, the biggest Austrian savings bank foundation. They were from Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, North Macedonia, Albania, Moldova, Romania, Austria and the Czech Republic.
Gazmir Memaj, who works for Mary Ward Loreto Foundation, an anti-human trafficking charity in Tirana, was one of the detained.
He told Euractiv that around midnight on Tuesday, people who claimed to be police took him and another Albanian colleague to the police station.
He said he was frightened as the police were not wearing a uniform, and the car was not marked as a police vehicle.
At the police station, he was asked to sign a declaration written in Serbian which was translated orally.
In his words, the document obliged him to leave Serbia on 23 January and bans him from returning within one year. His passport was also stamped accordingly, and confirmed in a photo seen by Euractiv.
Memaj said the police officers did show any aggressive or inappropriate behaviour, rather seeming embarrassed to execute the orders.
Croatian media also reported that five Croatian citizens spent a good part of the night in Belgrade police custody on the grounds of protecting “the security of the Republic of Serbia and its citizens.”
Croatian Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Gordan Grlić Radman said that his country will send a note of protest to Serbia over their arrest.
He also told reporters in Davos that Zagreb would revise the recommendation on travel by Croatian citizens to the neighbouring country for the sake of protection and security.
In addition, all instances of “mistreatment of Croatian citizens” by Serbia would be collected and sent to the European Commission and the Polish presidency of the European Union about it.
A source with internal knowledge of the matter told Euractiv that the matter is set to be discussed at a meeting of EU ambassadors.
Serbia’s war civil society
Student-led protests against President Aleksandar Vučić have gathered steam and made the authorities nervous in recent weeks.
The students demand justice for the collapse of the canopy of the Novi Sad train station that killed 15 people last November.
Serbia’s highest state officials, without providing evidence, claim in their statements that student blockades and protests are under the influence of Western intelligence services, with the aim of overthrowing Vučić.
Allegations of foreign service involvement in the protests were made by Vučić himself, who spoke to Pink television at the end of December 2024.
He alleged that Croatian intelligence services and a group of Croatian students were involved the student blockades.
Vučić’s allegations were also rejected as untrue by the students, but also by Croatian officials, led by Prime Minister Andrej Plenković.
(MM/ATB)
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