Balkans

John Pilger: once an inspiring truth-teller

John Pilger, who died on 30 December 2023, was once a brave and principled journalist who spoke truth to power. Many of us of a Certain Age can remember being moved and inspired in the 1970s by his exposures of war crimes, racism, injustice and human rights abuses. He was a war correspondent in Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Biafra and probably (in Britain at least) did more than any other journalist to bring the horrors of those conflicts to public attention. He twice won the UK Journalist of the Year Award: in 1967 and 1979. His eponymous TV series on ITV was required viewing as far as I...

Women’s protests in the Balkans

In the Serbian capital of Belgrade, protests have been held since September 2022, when a pro-government newspaper published an interview with Igor Milošević, who had served a 15-year sentence for numerous rapes and physical assaults on women. The piece instructed women on how to protect themselves during sexual assault. “While I was raping and robbing, I felt freedom,” said Milošević. He reportedly threatened the female journalist who interviewed him, telling her, “If I decide to rape you, I will.” Ženska Solidarnost (Women’s Solidarity), a Belgrade-based women’s collective, began calling...

Montenegro Pride: no more buts, no more excuses

Just two weeks after Belgrade’s much-talked-about EuroPride, Montenegro held their own week-long series of events; this Montenegro Pride (8 October) would be the country’s tenth. But in contrast to Belgrade’s protests and aggression in the weeks leading up to the event, this year Montenegro would see none of the same aggression. “Having been involved since the beginning, I’ve seen a huge change,” said Danijel Kalezic, member of the organisational committee of Montenegro Pride and an activist who has campaigned for LGBTQ rights and equality for over a decade. “I was here from the very beginning...

Belgrade reminds us: Pride is a protest

It’s time — two words that set the scene for Belgrade’s EuroPride in 2022. “It is time for laws on same-sex unions, time for equality, solidarity, and much, much more,” said Goran Miletic, longtime coordinator of the country’s EuroPride. “It is time for Belgrade.” It was also time for the community to come together against a backdrop of thousands who had gathered to march in the weekends leading up to Pride. “There was a strange mix of different right-wing groups, extremists, right-wing political parties, and religious groups who held joint protests, twice,” Goran explained. “They are vocal...

Far-right threat to EuroPride in Serbia

“I will curse all those who organise and participate in such a thing... If I had a gun, I would use it...” So Serbian Orthodox Church Bishop Nikanor Bogunović denounced this year’s EuroPride, due in Belgrade 12-18 September. The Church, a major prop of the far right regime of President Alexander Vučić, organised a march on 28 August to celebrate Vučić’s ban on the EuroPride week of events, imposed just two days before. At least 10,000 turned out. The march was led by the Night Wolves, a biker gang of 4,000 members and far right Putinist grouping which originated in Russia but roams across...

Against Putin, back Ukraine

William Burns, director of the CIA, estimates that Russian casualties in Ukraine have reached around 15,000 killed and perhaps 45,000 wounded. Russia has suffered the same number of military fatalities in a few months of war in Ukraine as the USSR in the decade it fought in Afghanistan. A growing number of Russian troops are refusing to fight. For example, Corporal Ilya Kaminsky and 77 other troops from Russia’s 11th Air Assault Brigade have refused to return to the front after four and a half months without leave during which, according to Kaminsky, around 1,000 troops — or half his battalion...

Protests challenge Serbia's oligarchs

Environmental protestors, including newly-elected MP Radomir Lazovic of "Don’t Let Belgrade D(r)own" (NDB), were attacked by police and private security in Serbia’s second largest city, Novi Sad, on Thursday 20 July. They were protesting against the General Urban Plan (GUP) which had only recently been revealed and will determine the development of the city over the next decade and beyond. The protestors were trying to get access to the Regional Assembly meeting called to approve the development. They had already organised a petition signed by over 20,000 citizens objecting to the development...

Bosnia: the impasse of the Dayton system

It’s not really clear what the leaders of Republika Srpska want, but it’s part of a long term trend and a strategy of progressively weakening the Bosnian state, since 2006, worse since 2010, and with a strong increase in tensions especially since the end of July 2021.

Jovan Divjak, 1937-2021

A year ago, on 8 April 2021, former Bosnian general Jovan Divjak died aged 84. He should be remembered. 2022 is thirty years since the start of the Bosnian War . Between 1992 and 1995 the newly independent ex-Yugoslav republic defended itself against Serbia and Bosnian Serb nationalist militias. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed, the great majority of them Bosniacs (Bosnian Muslims). Since the 1995 Dayton agreement, Bosnia has had a fragile and divided peace. Now Serb nationalists are threatening secession, raising fears of a new war. Divjak was one of Bosnia’s top generals during the...

Kino Eye: Left to die in the Balkans

No Man’s Land (Danis Tanović, 2001) demonstrates the problems of intervention in the Balkan wars, problems that the film does not resolve. A Bosniak soldier and a Serb soldier find themselves trapped in a trench in no man’s land. They argue, fight and almost shoot each other but they eventually calm down and begin to talk. They have a lot in common as they discover they come from nearby villages. However, their situation is complicated by the presence of a badly wounded Bosniak soldier who earlier, taken for dead, is placed on a landmine by a Serb. Any attempt to move him will detonate the...

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