I cannot calm the protests under the guidance of students who are just growing, Serbian leader of the strong, Aleksandar Vucic, reached for some tried victims, releasing his dogs in media attacks on groups with foreign funded abroad who have been him for years.
But what began as a well -known ritual intimidation against groups that document questions such as corruption, human rights and election fraud violations – and for which Mr. Vucic is to blame for protests – recently a strange and threatening turn.
Encouraged by the attack of Trump’s administration on the USAID US agency, the Serbian authorities on February 25 sent dozens of police officers, many of whom were armed, to execute the diet of four non -governmental organizations. They made attacks without a warrant.
One organization, Center for research, transparency and responsibility, He said he was a rational and that the police took copies of 8,500 pages of documents. Another target, Civic initiatives, He said he handed over 1,300 pages and a thumb drive containing confidential personal information about his staff and finances.
They both got a small part of their financing from USAID, as well as a third group. The fourth group did not receive assistance from the US agency.
The government justified the lawsuit, referring to the dismantling of the US agency to help Trump and its cancellation of Elon Musk as a “criminal organization”. This, said Nenad Stefanovic, a state prosecutor against a corruption who ordered raids, caused concern that US scholarship recipients were involved in money laundering because they used funds forbidden by what Mr. Musk said was criminal activity.
He said Serbia had requested the assistance of the US Ministry of Justice. The Ministry of Justice and the White House did not respond to the comment requests. On Tuesday night, President Vucic posted a picture that Donald Trump of the younger, son of the US president, met in Belgrade.
“They just use what Trump does in America against all people who want to scare in Serbia here,” said Maja Stojanovic, executive director Civic initiatives. She said that her organization, which provided legal assistance to detained student protesters, used about 10 percent of her USAID financing
President Vucic, she said, “sees the most powerful country in the world that behaves this way and decided that people he dislikes can be resolved here.”
When the Serbian journalist recently tried to ask Mr. Vucic about reports Connecting his son with organized criminal groupsThe president replied, accusing the journalist of working for “criminal organizations”. He asked her, “How much money did you get from the USAID?”
Serbia emphasized in the explanation of the White House why she excluded the foreign help, and the print secretary of Mr. Trump, Caroline Leavitt, citing $ 1.5 million approved to improve diversity in Serbian workplaces as a great example of “harmless priorities” by USAID
A support description 2022 in Serbia was accurate, but LGBTQ activist group that received money, The group outHe was not among the goals of recent raids.
Also, the biggest users of US money were left for help, more than 90 percent of which went to government and state institutions, including a national parliament. After Mr. Musk brand USAID marked the criminal company, Parliament quickly read the logo of the Agency to help from the starting page of its website.
His speaker, loyalist Vucic, former Prime Minister, Ana Brnabic, who has worked on projects funded by US AID for years, joined the attack by the attack by USAID and his users in Serbia as a threat to national security and sovereignty.
After the fall of 2000, Slobodan Milosevic, the authoritarian leader of Serbia during a series of wars with his neighbors in the 1990s, USAID funded projects that he hoped would strengthen the weak democratic institutions in the country, the judicial system and civil society.
The goals for Serbian Trump’s prohibition were private organizations that the Government accused of orchestrating protests under the guidance of students.
The protests, which expanded all over the country, reaching for the cities that voted strongly for Mr. Vucic in the past, began in November after 15 people were killed by a collapse of concrete canopy at the train station. Students and opposition politicians – who protested last week in a dramatic way by launching flashes and smoke bombs in parliament – blamed the tragedy for the disgusting work of performers related to corrupt officials.
By moving nationalist feelings, the Government initially blamed the unrest for money and activists from neighboring Croatia, the bitter enemy of Serbia during the 1990 Balkan Wars. In January, in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, five Croats who worked for non -governmental groups, and expelled “for the reasons of state security” associated with protests.
But Croatia has since faded as a culprit, replaced by USAID and Serbian groups that helped financing.
Recent attacks on four non -governmental groups and threats of criminal persecution have sent trembling through a small but vivid non -profit Serbian sector. They also pointed out that the Crusade of Trump’s administration against the “deep state” transferred not only Washington, but also distant countries where authoritarian governments have long rewinded the limitations of their powers by groups that do not control.
“There used to be red lines outside which Vucic would not go,” said Ivan Djuric, an analyst from the Center for Research, Transparency and Liability, one of the organizations executed. “But when the US government began to demonize USAID, Vucic decided that he could do whatever he wanted.”
For Mr. Vucic, he said, the signal of Trump’s administration that the season was open on civil society groups, it came at a particularly appropriate moment because in the fourth month they entered the whole of the country’s protest-founding challenge for his decade grip on power.
Ms. Stojanovic of Civic Initiatives said that the Government, caught by the size and endurance of the protest movement, had been floating for months of conspiracy theories that “traitors and mercenaries” who funded the page responsible for the unrest.
The media was branded in December, Mrs. Stojanovic, her husband, a former head of a long unwavering non-governmental organization and a third person as a “black trio” who worked with strangers to destroy the state by manipulating students.
The attacks on the USAID in Washington as a “criminal organization” took the campaign of abuse to a new level.
“Everyone is now afraid that they will be connected in any way with the USAID,” said Steven Dojcinovic, the editor of the Krika, a research media, long in the Government Cross Hair, “It’s like it’s part of a drugcase.”
He said his newspaper organization did not receive any money for US assistance, but that he was still pierced by the vicious tabloid tabloids as a “part of a large criminal family” that the US assistance agency ordered during the Biden administration.
The Government of Hungary and Slovakia, whose leaders are delighted with Mr. Trump’s supporters, also seized about the dismantling of USAIDs as a club with whom they can beat their home opponents. This neglects the fact that the assistance agency has completed most of its financing in its countries after joining the European Union in 2004.
By cheering to what he said, it was the effort of Mr. Trump to “launch a share through the heart of” “monsters” that USAID funded to serve a “liberal-globalistic empire”, Mr. Orban accused groups last week who tried to “demolish” their government and vow to throw them out.
“These international networks must be demolished, they must be removed,” Mr. Orban said on state radio. “It is necessary to make their existence legally.”
Unlike Hungary, which received only small amounts of money from USAIDs to Serbia, which applied to join the European Union, but not yet a member, was the main European recipient of the American aid, most of which went to the Government.
Among those who benefited was Jelena Milutinovic Ziljkic, the prosecutor investigated raids in non -governmental organizations for laundering money. USAID paid for a trip she went to Italy last year to study the Italian judicial system.
Serbian The largest source of foreign assistance, however, was the European Union, which provided more than $ 6 billion in loans and scholarships for road construction, improvement of sewage systems and paying other projects. He also gave more than $ 35 million to support non -governmental organizations, including those now attacked.
Bojana Selaković, coordinator National Convention, An independent body lobby for a long entry into the European Union of Serbia, said that “Trump’s effect” has returned the European aspiration of his country to empower nationalist, populist instincts of Mr. Vucica.
President Trump, she added, “allowed Vucica to say that she was acting in accordance with Western values and for the sake of things he could dream only before.”
