Human rights NGOs call on President of Serbia to Exclude War-Mongering State Officials from the Political Life 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 …”.

Adviser to the Prime Minister, Aleksandar Simić,  demonstrated unequivocally that he has no vision of Serbia as a decent society and a good neighbour. This alone makes him unfit to participate in the public life of Serbia. The State Secretary of the Ministry for Kosovo, Dušan Proroković, openly showed, especially in interview for the International Herald Tribune,[2] that he has the same approach to resolving the Kosovo status as Slobodan Milošević and those political, military and police elites, which brought Serbia into a situation whereby it was bombed and isolated from the international community. In view of such public statements, the aforementioned state officials are a serious threat to the overall wish of society that Serbia stop upholding the legacy of Slobodan Milošević and finally go down the path of establishing the rule of law and accountable institutions.

The organizations for the protection of human rights appeal to the President of Serbia, Boris Tadić, to show greater determination in exercising the most important duty of a President: protecting the reputation of the state and its citizens; and, in this respect, to demand from the Government to exclude from its ranks those officials who, by using war-mongering language, cause great damage to their country and the citizens of Serbia.