Serbia

02.02.2006 The Security and Information Agency (BIA) filed a lawsuit to cancel the decision by the Commissioner for Free Access to Information, which ordered BIA to provide the Youth Initiative for Human Rights the information on the number of persons whose communications were tapped in 2005, reports YIHR.

01.02.2006 The Organiztions for Respect and Care for Animals (ORCA) strongly condemnen the ongoing indiscriminate mass extermination of stray cats and dogs, under the pretext of the fight against rabies.

31.01.2006 Amnesty International, human rights organization, reports that Serbian authority failed to investigate the alleged bad treatment of detainees during the “Sablja 2003” operation that followed the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic.

30.01.2006 Jovo Djogo, retired colonel in the Army of the Republic of Srpska and former chief of security of the Hague fugitive Ratko Mladic, was arrested on charges of assisting Mladic’s escape and hiding.

30.01.2006 The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) estimates that the high compensations for broadcasting licences may lead to elimination of private broadcasters and restricted freedom of expression in Serbia.

27.01.2006 Ever since the first news arrived on the horrible tragedy that fell on Montenegro at the beginning of this week, enterprises, institutions, political parties, individual citizens made unselfish contributions to assist the families of the killed and injured.

26.01.2006 Two in ten 16-year olds in Serbia tried some type of narcotic, almost all of them have tried alcohol, and three in ten are active smokers, show the results of the survey conducted in Belgrade, Nis and Novi Sad in October 2005. The survey was implemented under the Drug-Abuse Prevention in Serbia project.

25.01.2006 OWPSEE’s Dejan Milovac visited the site of the terrible railway accident, at Bioce near Podgorica, in which 45 people were killed and over 200 injured.

24.01.2006 The most tragic railway accident in the history of Montenegro happened yesterday at 16:03 hours, when the local diesel-electric train 6103, travelling from Bijelo Polje to Podgorica, derailed near Bioce while exiting a tunnel, with all four cars falling into a ravine. According to latest official data, at least 44 passengers lost their lives, five of them children, with over 200 injured.

23.01.2006 About 60% of the citizens of Leskovac estimate that the competent state institutions are inefficient in processing of the criminal offence of violence in the family and that the state bodies lack the capacity to solve the problem, report the representatives of “Zenski Centar” (Women Centre) the results from a recent poll.