{"id":419848,"date":"2025-02-26T18:28:55","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T17:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2025\/02\/26\/serbia-vucic-raid-polizia-ong-usaid\/"},"modified":"2025-02-26T19:50:35","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T18:50:35","slug":"serbia-vucic-increasingly-repressive-police-raid-four-ngos-offices-to-please-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/02\/26\/serbia-vucic-increasingly-repressive-police-raid-four-ngos-offices-to-please-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Serbia, Vu\u010di\u0107 increasingly repressive: police raid four NGO’s offices to please Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels – In Serbia, overwhelmed by the biggest protest movement<\/a> since the collapse of Slobodan Milo\u0161evi\u0107’s regime, the authoritarian president Aleksandar Vu\u010di\u0107<\/strong> is showing his muscles against civil society. He does so by taking advantage of the executive order by which Donald Trump froze<\/a> U.S. funds earmarked for foreign aid:\u00a0yesterday<\/a>\u00a0(Feb. 25), Serbian police raided the headquarters of four NGOs receiving funds from USAID<\/strong> and suspected of misuse of funds and money laundering.<\/p>\n

The four organizations targeted by the investigation initiated by the Special Department of the Prosecutor’s Office are the Centre for Research, Transparency and Accountability, Civic Initiatives, Centre for Practical Politics, and Trag Foundation. All four have been working for years on human and civil rights, the rule of law<\/strong>, democratic elections, etc.<\/p>\n

The Belgrade Attorney General’s Office confirmed<\/a> the opening of the case and that it has contacted the U.S. Department of Justice to provide the necessary information regarding “suspicions that top U.S. government officials have previously expressed regarding the misuse of funds, possible money laundering and misuse of U.S. taxpayer funds in Serbia.”<\/p>\n

The prosecutor’s Office released a statement citing “U.S. President Donald Trump, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio<\/strong>, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, as well as the Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk and even FBI Director Kash Patel” among those who “have expressed suspicions<\/strong>\u00a0about USAID’s work.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Aleksandar<\/a>
Aleksandar Vu\u010di\u0107 (credits: Angela Weiss \/ Afp)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The NGOs accused the state of “attacking basic civil rights and continuing to exert illegal pressure on civil society in Serbia.” Vu\u010di\u0107 reportedly seized the opportunity to intensify the crackdown.\u00a0The launch of the investigation follows weeks of public statements by government members and the president himself, who\u00a0alluded to the funding of student protests<\/strong>\u00a0by the U.S. agency.<\/span>\u00a0Since the start of the protests erupted over an incident <\/a>at Novi Sad station in which 15 people died, Vu\u010di\u0107 has repeatedly made generic accusations of foreign interference stirring up the protesters.<\/p>\n

Civic Initiatives released a\u00a0statement<\/a>\u00a0confirming that on Tuesday morning,\u00a0twenty or so police officers entered their offices without showing any search warrants<\/strong>.<\/span>\u00a0At the same time, law enforcement officers also raided the headquarters of the Centre for Practical Politics think-tank, which is located in the same building, despite the fact that the latter has no USAID-funded project. The think-tank’s director, Dragan Popovi\u0107<\/strong>, lashed out with a post<\/a> on X, calling the search “a senseless demonstration of the authoritarian regime’s muscles.”<\/p>\n

Popovi\u0107 expressed concern that “Trump’s action against USAID is being used to threaten the work of civil society in Serbia.” A fear shared overseas by Amnesty International USA,\u00a0according to which<\/a> the police raid against NGOs in Serbia “is a horrific example” of how “ Trump <\/span>and Musk’s allegations against USAID without documented evidence or due process<\/strong> have threatened human rights partners around the world.” Serbia is not the only country that has launched campaigns against NGOs after Trump’s accusations about USAID’s work. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has stated<\/a> that funds in his country “were undoubtedly used for political purposes, with the aim of favouring certain parties,” and promised more thorough investigations.<\/p>\n

\"proteste<\/a><\/figure>\n

Oceanic protests in Serbia against President Aleksandar Vu\u010di\u0107 (photo: Tadija Anastasijevic\/Afp)<\/p>\n

More than a day later, no comment has come from the top leadership of the European institutions. Neither from the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Kaja Kallas<\/strong>, nor from the Commissioner for Enlargement, Slovenia’s Marta Kos<\/strong>.\u00a0Yet Belgrade is\u00a0running<\/a>\u00a0for membership in the European Union and, as such, should guarantee a certain standard of respect for the rule of law.<\/span>\u00a0By choosing silence, the EU is supporting de facto the Vu\u010di\u0107 regime to the detriment of the democratic aspirations of the student-led protest movement<\/strong>. Sacrificed on the altar of stability: the EU does not want to isolate Serbia, a country already dangerously in Moscow’s orbit and capable of destabilizing the entire region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The freezing of funds to the U.S. Agency for International Development “threatens human rights partners worldwide,” Amnesty International denounces. The deafening silence of Brussels, not reacting towards the candidate country<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7527,"featured_media":419834,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25707],"tags":[26065,26650,30290,26071,30325],"class_list":["post-419848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-politics","tag-alexandar-vucic-en","tag-protesterand","tag-protests","tag-inserbia","tag-usaid-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7527"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419848"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":419884,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419848\/revisions\/419884"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}