Weimar Laureate Gruhonjic Calls on West to Aid Serbia’s People in Fight for Democracy

Dinko Gruhonjic (BETAPHOTO/Milos Miskov)

Having arrived in Weimar, Germany, where he will be awarded the city’s Human Rights Award on Dec. 6, journalist and Novi Sad University Professor Dinko Gruhonjic stated that the people of Serbia are committed to achieving democracy and called on Western press to visit the country and see this for themselves.

The removal of Serbia’s “criminalized regime” is essential to stopping the country’s social collapse, Gruhonjic said of the ruling Serbian Progressive party. “Mass protests in Serbia have revived faith in democratic changes in Serbia and the public is determined to fight for democracy,” Gruhonjic said at a joint press conference with Weimar City Mayor Peter Kleine.

It is “especially encouraging,” Gruhonjic added, that the majority of protestors are young people.

The professor and journalist recalled that the recent mass rallies against Serbia’s regime were spurred by the Nov. 1 tragedy in Novi Sad, when the collapse of a concrete overhang at the city’s newly-renovated central railway station killed 15 and left two people critically injured. The renovation, Gruhonjic said, was yet another infrastructural project actualized in collaboration with companies from China, the details of which remain unknown.

The Serbian public, human rights activists, civil society and the university students fighting for democracy, he said, deserve the support of the European Union and the international community.

“We often ask ourselves why such a repressive climate is being tolerated in the very heart of Europe? Why Serbia is not explicitly compelled to abide by the European Convention on Human Rights, the rule of law and freedom of the press and of speech? The standard of human rights accepted in developed democracies must be applied to the citizens of Serbia and the Western Balkans. Human rights are universal and indivisible,” Gruhonjic stated.

The Weimar City laureate concluded by asking why certain highly-positioned European officials continue to offer legitimacy to “Balkan autocrat” Aleksandar Vucic by “publicly commending him for so-called economic achievements.”