Environmental Group Eko Straza (Eco Watch): Discontinuing Arrests of Activists Not Enough, Concrete Steps Will Be Taken

Environmentalist Protest in Front of Serbian Public Broadcasting Service, Sept. 1 2024 (BETAPHOTO/MILOS MISKOV)

Environmental association Eko Straza (Eco Watch) on Sept. 2 said that discontinuation of the regime’s practice of arresting activists involved in protests against lithium mining in Serbia was not enough, announcing several concrete steps to be taken in the next two weeks. 

The day after a mass protest outside state public broadcaster RTS building in downtown Belgrade, Eko Straza wrote on its X social network account that “someone has to be held accountable for abuse of the legal system and media blackout.” 

To do this, one address is the Prosecutor’s Office and the judiciary by “naming each of the accountable persons individually,” and the other address is RTS, that is, broadcaster’s General Manager Dragan Bujosevic “as the responsible person,” according to Eko Straza.

“We still demand to be given airtime on RTS, which has to respond by the end of this week. Unless we get a response from RTS, we will first file a criminal complaint, and later also a class action against Bujosevic personally, the association said in the post. 

Eko Straza also said that one of its steps would be to deal with an anonymous movement called “We Will Mine,” which on Sept. 2, published “a registry of eco- terrorists,” containing the names of a number of individuals opposing lithium mining in Serbia. Another step, the association added, would be to have experts conduct forensics of environmentalists’ cell phones to check for potential mobile spyware.