Dear friends,

This award holds profound emotional and personal significance for me and my family, as it represents a deep recognition of my journalistic and academic work in promoting human rights, combating militant ethno-nationalist ideologies, and fostering reconciliation among the peoples of the post-Yugoslav region. This recognition will help me continue on this path, despite the increasing threats faced by all of us who advocate for human values. I extend my gratitude to everyone who nominated me for this esteemed recognition: the Society for Threatened Peoples, Reporters Without Borders, the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, and to all my friends, fellow journalists, academic colleagues, and students who support both me and my family during these challenging times.

I would like to express particular gratitude to the city of Weimar for its decision to grant me this award, marking the 30th anniversary of this prestigious recognition.

However, the greatest gratitude I owe is to my family, who has endured these many years and who – innocent as they are – suffers because of my journalistic and public work. I send greetings to you all from my wife, Aleksandra, our daughter, Dunja, and our son, David. I am especially happy that today my sister, Zlatica – one of the most important people in my life, my role model, my support, and my savior – is here with me.

The history of threats I have faced in Serbia, from both extremist groups and the regime itself, is long, from 1998, including numerous death threats from neo-Nazis in Serbia. I have been labeled a „domestic traitor,“ a „foreign mercenary,“ a „balija,“ an „ustaša,“ and a „Vojvodinian separatist.“ The reason for this is that my journalistic and intellectual work focuses on topics such as politics, human rights, accountability for war crimes, dealing with the past, and issues related to minority and marginalized social groups. I am a committed anti-nationalist and anti-fascist, which I express through my public writings.

In November 2020, for the first time, graffiti containing death threats was sprayed at the entrance to the building where my family and I live. The perpetrators were never found.

Again, in March of this year, graffiti explicitly threatening my life was spray-painted. The perpetrators have yet to be found.Since mid-March 2024, I have been the target of a full-on smear campaigns, including credible death threats.

campaign. This campaign against me and my family, primarily initiated by pro-Russian groups on the Telegram network, high-ranking regime officials, including President Aleksandar Vučić, have been involved. They are also trying to get me expelled from the university where I work.

During this period, I have received thousands of chauvinistic insults and hundreds of death threats – not only against me, but also against my family, including threats of rape against female family members. For 15 days, I was the „main story“ on regime media, and a „manhunt“ was effectively declared against me. This led, for the first time in my 35 years of living in Novi Sad, to ordinary people confronting and insulting me on the streets. I even faced a direct physical threat.

During this period, neither I nor my colleagues from the Independent Journalists’ Association of Vojvodina, primarily our president Ana Lalić, received any protection from the Serbian police.

However, what has transpired in the last month has rekindled hope that change in Serbia is possible, and that the country will not slide into totalitarianism under an authoritarian regime where one man – President Aleksandar Vučić – makes all decisions. Instead, citizens are determined to fight for democracy.

Unfortunately, the catalyst for the massive civic protests against the regime – which have not ceased – was tragic. On Friday, November 1, in Novi Sad, the city where I live, 15 people were killed and two were seriously injured when several dozen tons of concrete from a recently renovated structure at the Novi Sad Train Station collapsed onto them. This was yet another infrastructure project carried out in collaboration with companies from China. The contract, like all such contracts, was declared a state secret, and the public has never had the opportunity to see it.

Since then, citizens have been demanding justice and have not backed down, with Novi Sad becoming the epicenter of these protests. Instead of arresting those responsible for this state crime – a product of the widespread corruption within the government – the regime has responded with repression and violence against the demonstrators. However, unlike in previous protestscitizens responded to the regime’s repression with even greater determination to persist in their demands for justice.

The symbol of the protests is the red bloody hand, and the dominant slogans are: „Your hands are bloody,“ and „Corruption kills.“ What is particularly striking and encouraging is the fact that, in the largest demonstrations in Novi Sad’s history, with 25,000 participants, the overwhelming majority were young people.

The removal of the criminalized regime is a fundamental prerequisite not only for halting the collapse of Serbian society but also for achieving peace and stability in the Western Balkans region, of which the primary destabilizer is the regime of Aleksandar Vučić. He is a person who, even during the war years of the 1990s, was an active partner of Milošević’s regime, serving as the Minister of Information – or better to say, the Minister of War Propaganda – at the time when the regime carried out a mass campaign of ethnic cleansing and atrocities against Albanians in Kosovo.

When I was young, the symbol of our resistance in Serbia was the clenched fist, and with that symbol, we succeeded in overthrowing the criminal regime of Slobodan Milošević. I believe that the current symbol of resistance to a regime entrenched in corruption and violence – the open red fist – will have the same outcome: the removal of the autocratic, chauvinistic, and endemically corrupt regime from power.

Therefore, I dedicate this award to all the people in Novi Sad, in Vojvodina, in Serbia, and to all the human rights defenders around the world, who, with their defiance, fearlessly show that they will not give up – until victory!

Thank you once again for this valuable recognition, which has brightened the lives of my family and me!

Speech in Weimar, during the awarding of the Human Rights Award.

(Autonomija)