CIVICUS spoke with Ivana Teofilović from Civic Initiatives about the causes of recent protests and the government’s reaction to them and Serbia’s elections under the COVID-19 pandemic. The immediate reason for the mass and spontaneous gathering of citizens in July 2020 was the announcement of the introduction of a new curfew, that is, another 72-hour ban on movement. In response, the security forces used unjustified force in dozens of cases and exceeded the powers entrusted to them by law. Also, bureaucratic measures were used against CSOs, for example, through their inclusion on a list compiled by the Ministry of Finance’s Directorate for Prevention of Money Laundering, which required banks to look into all the financial transactions made over the past year. Read more here.
Source: CIVICUS