These are my links for April 2nd 2009 through June 29th 2009:

• B92 – News – Business & Economy – "Right time for Diaspora to invest" –
• Republican Riot » The Hoax that Continues a War – Devastating essay from Julia Gorin on the Hoax that led to NATOs illegal bombing of Serbia.
• Minority Rights Group International : Press releases : Kosovo’s independence leaves vacuum in international protection for minorities – Post-independence Kosovo lacks effective international protection for minorities, which is worsening the situation for smaller minorities and forcing some to leave the country for good, an international human rights organisation warns in a new report.
• BBC NEWS | Europe | Kosovo civilian abuses revealed – "The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) abducted civilians in Kosovo who were then mistreated and in some cases killed, a BBC investigation has found." Hello? This OLD news for anyone who knows even the slightest bit about the reality of Kosovo.
• European Commission and Serbia to sign Agreement worth €168 million :: emportall :: Business news from Serbia – Since 2000, the European Union has through various grant assistance programmes and credit lines provided over €2 billion to Serbia and another €1 billion has been tentatively earmarked for reform assistance for 2007 – 2011.

"UNHCR" by kitestramrt (click inage for original)

The International Relations and Security Network has a very interesting article about the role the media played in the Yugoslav wars of the 90s. From Balkans: Media and War Crimes / ISN:

Serbia’s Special War Crimes Prosecutor’s Office has launched a preliminary inquiry into the role of journalists in inciting war crimes in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, focusing on reporting on atrocities committed in Vukovar, Croatia, and Zvornik, Bosnia.

The investigation should be complete within the next two months, after which a decision will be taken on whether there are grounds for a full-fledged investigation. The Prosecutor’s Office said the aim was not to persecute journalists, but to establish whether there were elements of criminal activity in reporting.

The probe was launched after Serbia’s war crimes court in March sentenced 13 former Serb paramilitaries for the 1991 massacre of 200 Croats at a pig farm near Croatia’s eastern town of Vukovar.

Last year, the court also sentenced three former Serb paramilitary members for their role in the 1992 killing of 25 Muslims from the eastern Bosnian town of Zvornik, which borders Serbia. According to the indictment, the three beat and tortured men for weeks, carving crosses on their foreheads, cut off their ears and testicles and forced them to eat them. In 1992, more than 900 Muslim civilians were killed in the Zvornik area.

Bruno Vekaric, spokesman for the Prosecutor’s Office, told ISN Security watch that so far they had found some eight examples of instances in which the media could have provoked war crimes and that these could be used should the investigation reach the court. He said that the Prosecutor’s Office had taken the wartime archives from Serbian national television, RTS.

Vekaric said his team had “several examples” of reporting in which “lies” could be linked to strong reactions among people that led to killing someone “just because they saw on television or read in the newspaper something that has nothing to do with reality.”

One of those examples is false reporting by government-controlled media on the murder of Serb civilians in Croatia in 1991. Just days before Vukovar killings, Serbian media broadcast news that Croatian forces had murdered 41 Serb children, aged four to seven, in a primary school in Borovo Selo, near Vukovar.

The story was first reported by Reuters correspondent Vjekoslav Radovic, who claimed that he had seen the bodies of at least 40 small children in the school’s basement. The news rapidly spread among Serbian media, while RTS aired an all-night program on the issue, hosting witnesses claiming that they too had seen the bodies. An RTS journalist even questioned a Croat teenager held by Serb paramilitary forces, pressuring him to admit to the murders.

Though RTS later conceded that the information was false and all witnesses changed their statements to say that they had only seen a dozen closed body bags, which could have contained the bodies of Croats, and Reuters fired Radovic, it was too late. The information had done its damage and was absorbed by Serbs willing to join paramilitary groups in a campaign of revenge.

When Vukovar fell to the Serbs, paramilitaries seized the prisoners, taking some 200 of them to a pig farm in Ovcara, where they were beaten, tortured and killed. Their bodies were later found in mass graves.

Vekaric said that the prosecution was also analyzing statements given by some of those accused and convicted of war crimes. One witness, a Serb paramilitary volunteer, testified during the Vukovar trial that he had joined Serb paramilitary forces in Croatia after watching a news program in Serbia.

He confessed to having participated in the murder of 200 people in Ovcara after seeing stories in Serbian media about crimes committed by Croatian forces against Serb civilians. “I watched the program, and then I went out [to join paramilitary units] and gave them [Croats] what they deserved,” he testified.

This fascinating story should be read in its entirety.

From Serbia resolves to ban neo-Nazi activities (SETimes.com)

Last month, the Serbian parliament passed a law banning neo-Nazi and fascist organisations from gathering at events and using Nazi symbols. Adopted by parliament on May 29th, the law bars those convicted of war crimes before The Hague tribunal or in domestic courts from spreading ideas. The law also prohibits the fuelling of national, religious and racial intolerance.

So it seems to be a pretty standard EU style anti-Hate Speech law, except for this strange direct reference to the Hague Tribunal.

…The League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina (LSV), a member of the ruling coalition, proposed the law. Nenad Canak, LSV leader, said the new law is “a big step for democracy and for Serbia’s path to Europe”.

Canak told Serbian media that “all who call for the persecution of a national or religious community or a church will be legally prosecuted,” and explained that “Serbia is not a fascist country, but a country that has fascist organisations.”

Or a church? I wonder if they have sneaked in a religious intolerance provision that protects the Serbian Orthodox Church (and others) from criticism?

For example, could the recent media circus surrounding the beating of recovering drug addicts at a church centre be classified as “fueling religious intolerance”? One Irish friend of mine recently wrote on Facebook that she “wishes her son did not have to attend a school run by the world’s largest paedophile ring” (i.e. the Catholic Church).  Would that be hate speech in Serbia now?

The sentiment of the law appear to be spot on…

According to Canak, the government should fight such groups in their infancy, before they emerge on the country’s social or political scene.

…But the threat is minor and this law, like all these sorts of laws, is ripe for abuse and curtailment of rights rather than an effective weapon against Serbia’s tiny problem of Neo-Nazis.

The best way to defeat Nazis, or any bigot for that matter, is education, open debate and social approbrium.

One simply has to look at Denmark and Sweden to see how different policies in similar countries have produced radically different results.

Sweden with its extremely aggressive anti-racism and anti-Nazi laws have bred itself a huge and growing neo-Nazi problem, expressed via the massive black metal scene whereas Denmark with its pragmatic openness and permissivness has a comparatively tiny problem with Neo-Nazis.

Serbias fascists are mostly misguided nationalists, a hangover from the previous era, and they are declining, not ascendant:

Two days before the law’s adoption, an anti-fascist panel was held in Belgrade. Visiting speakers said that fascist ideas have not become an epidemic in Serbia, despite the neo-fascist activities of groups and individuals.

One of the panelists, Dragoljub Micunovic — a senior official of the ruling Democratic Party (DP) — said it is an exaggeration to say that neo-Nazism is a threat to Serbian democracy, but added it would be a mistake to underestimate it.

Tomo Zoric, a spokesperson of the state public prosecutor’s office, added that “forms of fascism and Nazism in Serbia cannot be described as a pandemic,” but said state institutions must suppress those ideas even when promoted by merely a few organisations or individuals.

I disagree. It is those minority opinions that need protection in the law. Even the most vile and repugnant ideas have a right to be expressed.

State agencies did not provide the exact number of active neo-fascist groups in Serbia, but registered activities of the neo-Nazi movements “Blood and Honour” and “National Order”.

The public prosecutor’s office initiated a procedure in Serbia’s Constitutional Court to ban “National Order” activities. Supporters of the organisation stormed into an anti-fascist forum in Novi Sad in late 2005, and began slapping forum participants, while others extended their arms in Nazi salutes.

This is the right approach. ban organisations for breaking the law. Prosecute people for actions – like conspiracy – rather than ideas or expressing ideas.

The courts should act on a case or organisation by organisation basis, not have blanket bans on disapproved of ideas or philosophies.