Between 12 and 15 December 2007, Francisco Soberon was a guest of HLC in Belgrade and participated in the Seminar: Reparations – legal and moral obligations of the state, which HLC organized on 14 December in cooperation with the International Center for Transitional Justice with the financial support of the Swedish Helsinki Committee for Human Rights.
On 20 November 2007, it will be sixteen years since the war crime at the Ovčara farm near Vukovar was committed. Not a single person has been convicted for the commission of this crime and Serbian state institutions have not yet revealed the entire truth about the former Yugoslav Peoples Army’s (YNA) role in this crime.
HLC: In light of your recent visit to Belgrade, 25-26 October 2007, how would you assess the authorities’ level of cooperation with your Office?
The Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor raised an indictment on August 23, 2006 against Sreten Popović and Miloš Stojanović, members of Special Police Units of the Serbian Ministry of Interior, for the murder of three Bytyqi brothers, all US citizens, after 8 July 1999 when they were taken from the jail in Prokuplje by unidentified members of the Serbian Ministry of Interior.
Vesna Bojičić, a Voice of America journalist, has been physically assaulted in Kosovo for the fifth time since June 1999. She was assaulted for the first time after the international troops deployed to Kosovo in late June 1999 in her apartment in Pristina. The second time was in April 2000 in the Pristina Media House building.
Sorry, this entry is only available in srpski.
The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on the situation of human rights defenders, Ms. Hina Jilani, issued the following statement on her preliminary findings of her official visit to the Republic of Serbia.
Cultural Decontamination, Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, Women in Black and the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, have appealed to Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica to start proceedings to determine the accountability of Aleksandar Simić, Adviser to the Prime Minister, and Dušan Proroković, State Secretary of the Ministry for Kosovo, for their undiplomatic and belligerent comments in relation to Kosovo and Montenegro. By assuming the right to give statements on behalf of Serbia and its citizens that Montenegro “does not qualify as being on a civilized level …”.
On 10 September 2007 the Humanitarian Law Center, Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights – YUCOM, Centre for Cultural Decontamination, Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, Women in Black and the Youth Initiative for Human Rights submitted a request to the Ministry of Defence, on the basis of article 15, clause 1 of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance (Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia, No. 120/04), to disclose information of public importance connected to the bombing of the building of Radio-Television Serbia (RTS).
On 5 September 2007 the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC), as part of its programme of support to victims of violated human rights in the realization of their restitution and compensation rights, filed a charge for compensation on behalf of Šefko Bibić from the village of Ugao (municipality of Sjenica) against the Republic of Serbia for acts of torture committed upon him by Mile Nedić, Inspector of the Municipal Police Directorate in Sjenica.