STOP EXTREMISTS UNTIL IT IS TOO LATE!

Press release

07/26/2007

"Civic Vojvodina” demands the relevant state institutions to identify and adequately punish the perpetrators of the last night’s brutal assault against the activists of the “All Different – All Equal” campaign organized within the Exit Festival with the assistance of the Council of Europe.

"Civic Vojvodina” takes that the assault was not accidental but deliberately aimed at compromising the Exit festival. Having used up other “methods” for compromising the Exit, right-wing extremists, xenophobes and ultra-nationalists resorted to their favorite form of “combat” – violence.

We demand the police to identify the offenders and the public prosecutor’s office to charge them with spreading racial, religious and ethnic hatred. The offenders should not be mildly punished for misdemeanor as that would message that violence does pay.

"Civic Vojvodina” warns the public that extremist movements mushroom in Serbia – not only in Novi Sad – with taciturn or covert financial support of certain both opposition and ruling parties. What they intend is to demonstrate – by assaulting foreigners at the Exit festival – that Novi Sad, Vojvodina and Serbia are not normal places one can live in, that we wouldn’t tolerate difference and that we are self-sufficient.

"Civic Vojvodina” is proud of the fact that some 15,000 people from abroad visited this year’s Exit festival. These days Novi Sad brims with all sorts of differences – different races, different languages, different nationalities, different religions…and that is what make us happy and perceive Novi Sad as a part of Europe and the world, which it has always been.

By adequately punishing those who assaulted the activists of the anti-discrimination campaign, state institutions will clearly show they would no longer tolerate violence, xenophobia, chauvinism, fascism and other retrograde phenomena this society swarms with. Otherwise, they would signal all and sundry that the highest governmental officials have never abandoned the policy of isolationism.

Novi Sad, July 13, 2007

"Civic Vojvodina” includes the following non-governmental organizations:
Center for Regionalism, Novi Sad
Independent Journalists’ Association of Vojvodina, Novi Sad
Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, Belgrade/Novi Sad
Center for the Development of Civil Society, Zrenjanin
Civic Fund “Panonija,” Novi Sad
Open Lyceum, Sombor
Civic Action, Pancevo

HCHRS

Copyright * Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia - 2007

Web Design * Eksperiment