An all-women, anti-war movement’s headquarters have been sprayed with graffiti in the Serbian capital of Belgrade, sparking outrage from fellow activists organizations.
The Women in Black organization, which has a faction in Serbia, found the exterior of their office had been sprayed with the names of war criminals, including Ratko Mladic, the “Butcher of the Balkans”, convicted of genocide during the Bosnian war.
They also scrawled “whores in black” and “only the unity of Serbs saves us” across the white front door.
The attack is believed to have taken place on 22-23 October in the center of the city. The NGO has asked the authorities to find and convict the perpetrators. They also accused the government of President Aleksander Vucic of using fascist groups to target “free-thinking groups and individuals, and above all, those who demand a radical break from past crimes.”
They added that Vucic and his regime “were not only a silent observer but a very active participant” in the atrocities carried out during regional wars.
Women in Black is a women’s anti-war movement comprising around 10,000 activists globally. The group initially started in Israel, but the group of members from the former Yugoslavia are renowned for standing up against violence, nationalism, and hatred.
The group that has been present in Serbia for 30 years said this is not the first or the last threat they have had.
“Women in Black activists, as well as the premises, have often been the target of physical attacks by various fascist groups and individuals, which always ended in impunity,” the NGO’s statement reads.
“We ask the competent institutions of the state of Serbia to end the climate of unpunished and unpunished violence by finding those responsible for this attack and punishing them adequately,” it added.
The Bosniak National Council condemned the attack and said it came when the organization had supported and called for a resolution on the genocide of Bosniaks at Srebrenica.
The Srebrenica genocide took place in 1995 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. More than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were rounded up and murdered by the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska under the command of Mladic.
Serbia has consistently denied genocide and has tried to claim it was retaliatory or that the numbers of those dead are vastly inflated. However, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has unanimously ruled it was a genocide in a decision that the International Court of Justice upheld.
Earlier this month, Serbian MPs refused to discuss the Srebrenica Genocide Resolution, which would ban the denial of the genocide and condemn it.
