EWB: EMI launches petition ‘Serbian democracy is under threat – The EU must act’

The EWB said the statement warned about Serbia’s “Government’s controversial response to COVID-19 crisis, saying that “ever since the start of the COVID pandemic, regimes in Europe and around the world have used the current crisis to compromise democratic principles. Recent events in Serbia are consistent with that trend and constitute a negative development for democracy and civic space in a country that has been on the path to EU accession for a while but where democracy has been in rapid decline for years."

 It added that the authorities’ decision “to hold large public events and go ahead with the national elections, in the peak of a health crisis, confounded many and made the imposition of draconian lockdown measures right after the elections seem politically motivated. In a country ablaze with the suspicion that the data on infections and deaths caused by COVID-19 has been manipulated by those in power, trust was already low.”

The statement said that in such an atmosphere, citizens had the fundamental right to hold the Government accountable.

https://twitter.com/EMInternational/status/1285855568369012736

“The wave of protests instigated by young people and joined by citizens from all walks of life is a manifestation of the Serbs’ wish to voice their legitimate concerns about the Government’s handling of its response to the pandemic. Their right to protest should neither be denied nor met with violence. Trying to silence protesters and journalists through the exercise of force is a violation of fundamental rights. Similarly, the freedom to protest should not be highjacked by a small minority of protesters’ intent to soil that right with the use of violence”, the statement said.

The whole EWB article read here.