“People are not questioning the information that they’re getting, and its really leaving a lot of space for malinformation, leaving many misinformed.”
During the war he described Muslims as “excrement” and called for Croats to have their eyes gouged out.
Seselj tweeted that he was “proud of all my war crimes” and was “ready to repeat them”.
Before the hearing, he said: “I don’t care about the ruling. Now I’ll go and have a siesta.”
Lawyers and NGOs urged the Serbian parliament to call a halt to Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj’s term as an MP because he was convicted of wartime crimes by the UN court in The Hague.
Serbia’s information commissioner, NGOs, and experts have criticised a draft law that they say will make it easier for institutions and companies to withhold important information from the public.
Serbia’s Ministry of State Administration has come under fire for proposing a law that many experts fear will allow institutions to avoid answering freedom of information requests, while totally exempting state-owned commercial companies from the obligation to do so.
Access to Justice in Serbia isn’t guaranteed for poor and marginalized citizens due to fragmentary and poorly developed system of free legal aid. The Law on Free Legal Aid still hasn’t been passed, although Serbia is bind to pass such a law by the Constitution and strategic documents brought in the last ten years.
When we speak about Access to Justice that is guaranteed by the European Convention of Human Rights and the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, the majority of people in Serbia usually isn’t even aware of their rights or doesn’t have enough resources to finance access to justice, especially due to the fact of non existence of such law that would regulate free legal aid as also due to the low standards of life insufficient to enable hiring lawyers or legal advisors.
In democratic societies, the possibility of effective legal protection of violated or endangered rights is a basic condition for the maintenance of Rule of Law. One of the instruments for exercising the right to access to justice and respecting the standards for a fair trial is the right to legal assistance. According to Article 67 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia (hereinafter: the Constitution), the right to legal assistance under the conditions specified by law is guaranteed to everyone.
In a letter to the UN Secretary-General, a coalition of more than 70 civil society organisations has put forward proposals to revitalise and enhance the process to select the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Lawyers Committee for Human Rights – YUCOM is conducting a regional project under the auspices of the Balkan Regional Network for the Rule of Law (BRRLN) in cooperation with the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Macedonia, Tirana Legal Aid Society (TLAS) from Albania, Balkans Policy Research Group (BPRG) from Kosovo and the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Law on the Prohibition of Discrimination was adopted in 2009. It is estimated that during eight years of implementation, around 150 cases were initiated before Serbian courts. The analysis presented here is based on representative sample of 87 cases, gathered primarily from legal service of the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality and the civil society organisation Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (JUKOM) from Belgrade.
The aim of this publication is primarily to provide overview of some of the existing solutions for the problem of hate crime and hate speech in the European Union Acquis, as well as the practice of the European Court of Human Rights. In its numerous judgments, this court has thoroughly dealt with these issues though different legal systems of the states signatories of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and which, in their historical and social specifics, faced similar problems in processing of hate crime as Serbia today.