Civic Initiatives
More than 140 CSOs, media and individuals have signed a document stating that the CSOs society and media will not give up the fight for a democratic and free Serbia, says an announcement posted on July 29 on the Civic Initiatives’ website.
The reason for the statement was a decision by the Finance Ministry’s Administration for Preventing Money Laundering requiring access to all bank transactions since the beginning of 2019 of numerous media workers, nongovernment organizations and citizens associations – 20 physical entities and 37 organizations or associations – “so as to determine whether any of them have connections with financing terrorism or money laundering.”
The announcement says that the media and CSOs demand from the Finance Ministry and its Administration for Preventing Money Laundering to “immediately make available the reason for ordering the extraordinary gathering of information from commercial banks concerning the listed organizations, media and individuals.”
“Since the list contains the names of numerous organizations and individuals dealing with investigative journalism, protection of human rights, transparency, film production, developing democracy, the rule of law and charity, it seems that what this is all about is political abuse of institutions and a dangerous attempt to further undermine the rule of law in Serbia,” the announcement warns.
Among the signatories are the European Movement in Serbia, the Association of Independent Electronic Media-ANEM, BIRN, BIRODI, the Center for European Policies, CRTA, the Danas newspaper, B92 Fund, the Ana and Vlade Divac Foundation, the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, the Institute for European Affairs, Transparency Serbia and KRIK.
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