Serbia's civil activist addresses MEPs over violence against regime critics

In the letter to Tanja Fajon, the Chair of EP Delegation to Serbia, Vladimir Bilčík, the head of the Delegation to the EU-Montenegro Stabilisation and Association Parliamentary Committee and David McAllister, the Chair of the EP Foreign Affairs Committee, Vujic said that from his experience the main generator of violence against critics was the government itself and that he considered it responsible for the attack on him on August 9.

The police filed criminal charges against a suspect how was said to have knocked down Vujic, a law student and activist because of his posts on Twitter.

Vujic was taken to the Emergency Room, where the doctors said he had two broken facial bones.

Vujic added that Serbia, as an EU candidate country,  should be closer to the values of the bloc, but that it had been going in the opposite direction for a long time.

Vujic writes that Serbia is a country with captured media and that civil activists, opposition politicians, civil society representatives and academics often experience a media lynching for criticising the government.

He added that the EU reaction to the events after the elections in Belarus reminded the citizens of Serbia why EU values were something they strived for.

"However, that emphasised the big gap between the support that the citizens of Belarus currently have from the EU and the support that the pro-democracy and pro-European citizens of Serbia, unfortunately, often do not feel they receive from the EU as a whole," Vujic's letter said.