Prison Sentence for Human Rights Activist

Youth Initiative for Human Rights

The Youth Initiative for Human Rights demanded from Serbian President Boris Tadic, the Prime Minister Kostunica and Minister of Justice Dusan Petrovic to intervene to prevent that Maja Stojanovic, YIHR activist, goes to prison on July 26, as ordered by the judge of the Misdemeanour Court in Nis.

On July 11, 2005, Maja Stojanovic, together with a group of activists from Nis, placed posters demanding that Ratko Mladic, chief suspect for the Srebrenica genocide, is extradited to the Hague Tribunal. Stojanovic was sentenced to the maximum fine for placing posters outside the specially provided spaces, in spite of the fact that posters were glued over already existing, older posters, for which nobody was prosecuted.

Having in mind that, as an act of civic disobedience, Stojanovic refused to pay the fine, she received the last warning to pay the fine by Jule 26, or risk that her sentence may alter to ten days in prison.

�Putting Maja Stojanovic behind bars for her publicly expressed opinion that Mladic has to go to the Hague and reminding of the Srebrenica genocide is totally unacceptable�, comments Andrej Nosov, President of the Initiative.

�Since state representatives publicly support the cooperation with the ICTY, we demand from the state to pay the fine itself, if the President and the other high offices we contacted have no legal mechanism to suspend the sentence. Prosecuting Stojanovic, Serbian officials again prove that they think of Mladic as of a hero, and that it is the activists that have to be prosecuted�, says Nosov.

YIHR reminds that most perpetrators of attacks on activists of the Youth Initiative and other NGOS were never identified or adequately punished, in spite of frequent attacks on activists and public materials posted by the Initiative.