There was limited improvement in protections of human rights in Serbia in 2020. Journalists faced threats, violence, and intimidation, and those responsible are rarely held to account. Efforts to prosecute war crimes continued to focus on low-level perpetrators. People with disabilities continued to be placed and reside long term in institutions. Attacks and threats against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people continued.
Attacks and threats against journalists remained a concern and were met by inadequate response from Serbian authorities.
Between January and late August, the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (NUNS) registered 28 physical attacks and 33 threats or intimidation against journalists.
In September, the Appeals Court in Belgrade overturned the 2019 convictions of four defendants accused of the 1999 murder of prominent journalist and editor, Slavko Curuvija.
While reporting on a protest against Covid-19 restrictions in July, BETA news agency journalist Zikica Stevanovic was beaten by several police officers, including by baton to the head despite him showing his journalist ID, according to NUNS. Stevanovic’s beating was under investigation at time of writing. NUNS also reported that while covering the same protest, journalist Igor Stanojevic was beaten by police and arrested despite showing his journalist ID. He was charged with allegedly throwing stones at police and resisting arrest.
Between January and August, the War Crimes Prosecutor Office launched two new investigations and issued two indictments against a total of four individuals. An appeals court in Belgrade convicted one low ranking official of war crimes. The first instance court in Belgrade convicted three people for war crimes in the same time period. As of August, 34 cases against 188 individuals were under investigation and 14 cases against 36 defendants were pending before Serbian courts.
In September, a Belgrade court issued an arrest warrant for a bailed former soldier Rajko Kozlina, after he failed to surrender in June for his 15-year prison sentence for killing civilians during the 1998-1999 Kosovo war. His conviction and sentence in December 2019 were upheld on appeal in June.
In March, the Belgrade Appeals Court upheld the conviction of Nikola Vida Lujic, a former member of Serbia’s Red Berets special forces unit, sentencing him to eight years for a wartime rape of a woman in the village of Brcko in Bosnia in 1992.
A Belgrade court in July sentenced a former soldier to four years in prison for one murder and two attempted killings of civilians in Bosanski Petrovac, Bosnia, 1992. In the same month, the same court convicted an ex-Bosnian Serb Army soldier to two years in prison for beating and mistreating Bosniak civilians in Kljuc municipality in 1992.
The first trial in Serbia for war crimes in Srebrenica was marred by further delays, because the defendants, who are not being held in custody during the proceedings, failed to show up in court. Eight Bosnian Serb former police officers resident in Serbia are charged with the killing of more than 1,300 Bosniak civilians in July 1995. The trial has been postponed 18 times since it began in December 2016 because the accused claim to have poor health.
Following a meeting with Kosovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti in July, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic offered to cooperate with Kosovo’s government to identify the location of missing persons from the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo.
Between January and August, Serbia registered 2,084 asylum seekers, significantly down from 6,156 asylum seekers during the same period in 2019. Afghans comprised the largest national group in 2020. UNHCR estimates of the numbers of asylum seekers and migrants in government centers were also down to 4,050 in August from 5,420 the previous year.
The asylum system continued to be flawed, with difficulties for asylum seekers accessing procedures, low recognition rates compared to EU averages, and long delays before decisions are made. Between January and August, Serbia registered 56 asylum applications, granting refugee status to 9 and subsidiary protection to 7. Over the past decade, Serbia has granted refugee status to a total of only 78 people and subsidiary protection to 96. In mid-October, 6 out of 16 government-run camps were overcrowded.
By end of July, 37 unaccompanied children were registered with Serbian authorities, the majority from Afghanistan, compared to 437 during the same period in 2019. Serbia still lacks formal age assessment procedures for unaccompanied children, putting older children at risk of being treated as adults instead of receiving special protection.
There was little progress towards durable solutions for refugees and internally displaced persons from the Balkan wars living in Serbia, with the number of people registered as refugees and internally displaced persons from those conflicts in 2020 barely changed from the previous year.
Attacks, threats, and smear campaigns against LGBT people and activists continued. Between January and September, Serbian LGBT rights organization DA SE ZNA! recorded 17 hate incidents against LGBT people, including 8 physical attacks, and 9 threats.
In its first report on Serbia, the group of experts responsible for monitoring implementation of the Istanbul Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence noted ongoing gaps in services and obstacles to accessing help for survivors of violence against women and girls, particularly for rape and sexual assault, and called on the government to take urgent action to address gender stereotypes and promote equality.
Thousands of adults and children with disabilities remained in institutions across Serbia. The government failed to adopt a deinstitutionalization plan to move people with disabilities out of institutions and into community-based living arrangements. The government failed to release data on how many people with disabilities in residential institutions died of complications from Covid-19. Remote education and online learning put in place when schools closed in March, were not accessible to many children with disabilities.
In July, Serbia and Kosovo resumed the European Union-brokered dialogue on improving relations, stalled since November 2018, but failed to make specific commitments on strengthening protection of human rights.
Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Dunja Mijatovic in July called on Serbian authorities to investigate police violence against protesters during the July demonstrations in Belgrade against government Covid-19 restrictions.
After an April intervention by OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Harlem Désir, the Serbian government promptly withdrew a March decision to limit media access to information during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The October EU Commission progress report said Serbia should ensure the independence of its human rights institutions. The report noted serious concerns regarding intimidation, threats, and violence against journalists and the LGBT community and called on authorities to promptly investigate and penalize perpetrators.