Philea deeply concerned by police investigations of CSOs in Serbia
Philea has been informed by our Serbian members that on the morning of 25 February the country’s Criminal Police Administration entered the premises of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), including the NGO Civic Initiative and TRAG Foundation, to carry out investigations. According to a statement from the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office, the examinations are linked to civil society funding by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
We are deeply concerned that the motivation behind these investigations could be a further attempt to intimidate and pressurise CSOs in Serbia. If this is indeed the case, they can be considered as part of a broader trend of squeezing the operating space for those organisations working to protect human rights, democracy and the citizen empowerment. Furthermore, they would represent not only an attempt to delegitimise the valuable work of the civil society sector but also to create an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty amid the student and civic protests that have been taking place across Serbia in the last three months. Last month, participants attending a capacity building workshop at the ERSTE Foundation NGO Academy in Belgrade were interrogated by the Serbian authorities and subsequently banned from Serbia as a “security risk”.
These events provoke critical questions around principles of legal security and rule of law, as well as conflicts against freedom of association, which is guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights and which make it clear that states must not use repressive measures to limit the work of civil society organisations.
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