National Assembly of Serbia (BETAPHOTO/NEMANJA KICOSEV)
A special legislation bill on tearing down the General Staff building complex in downtown Belgrade, damaged in the 1999 NATO bombing, will be on the agenda of a Nov. 4 Serbian parliament session.
The Union of Architects of Serbia sent an open letter to the Serbian government on Nov. 3 asking that it urgently withdraw from parliamentary procedure the Bill on special procedures to realize the project of revitalization and development of the General Staff building complex site in Belgrade.
The letter stressed that there had been no public discussion of the bill, that it threatened the institutional integrity of the system of protection for cultural heritage and paved the way for its misuse, adding that it was concerning that the legislation was being put forward at a time when the Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime had launched investigative proceedings against Goran Vasic, acting director of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of Serbia, Aleksandar Ivanovic, acting director of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of the City of Belgrade, and Slavica Jelaca, secretary at the Ministry of Culture, on suspicion of complicity in the forgery of documentation based on which the procedure to strip the General Staff of its protected status was initiated.
The informal community of judges and public prosecutors In Defense of the Profession called on the Constitutional Court and the State Attorney's Office to move for the Constitutional Court to evaluate how constitutional and legal the Bill was, noting that the sponsor had not provided reasoning for the urgency and that parliamentary rules of procedure had been violated, and stating that there was no transparency in the process, that there was danger of errors being made, and that democratic procedures had been abused.
Transparency Serbia said in a press release that the bill combined two of the most dangerous types of corruption -- legalizing violations of the law and shaping general rules to fit the hidden interests in one specific case.
The executive board of the Serbian National Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, an international non-governmental organization dedicated to the preservation of monuments and sites worldwide, said in a press release that the Bill "treats this established cultural asset as a ruin without any characteristics of a monument," that it was "dangerous to the lives of citizens," and that the legislation would not only destroy Serbia's cultural legacy, but also threaten the country's reputation worldwide.
The employees of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of Serbia and the Institute for the Protection of Monuments of Culture of the City of Belgrade have issued a public appeal to MPs not to vote for the special legislation, underlining the illegality of the decision to strip the building complex of the General Staff of the Army of Serbia-Montenegro of its status as a cultural asset, and stressing that a democratic country and a state of law did not "sell off cultural heritage to a private investor when it is clear that he intends to destroy it and build commercial content in its place."
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