Serbia Routinely Ignoring Human Rights Rulings, Experts Say

After Serbia ignored the advice of the UN Committee Against Torture and extradited Kurdish political activist Cevdet Ayaz to Turkey, activists and experts have accused of Belgrade of disrespecting important human rights bodies.

A human rights lawyer, Danilo Curcic, told BIRN that the Ayaz case marked a continuation of a trend in Serbia towards ignoring internationally accepted commitments.

"Serbia has rich history of partial execution of judgments and recommendations of international human rights bodies and it rather pays damage to victims than implements systemic changes," Curcic said.

On Monday, Serbia extradited a Kurdish activist, Cevdet Ayaz, to Turkey, despite the UN Committee saying Serbia should not remove him until procedures before this body ended.

The activist and torture victim has been sentenced to 15 years in jail in Turkey for acts against the country's constitutional order.

Curcic said it was not the first time Serbia had ignored decisions of international institutions with competencies over human rights.

He recalled also cases concerning workers from failed closed companies, cancelled pensions in Kosovo, compensation for old foreign currency savings, the "missing babies" case and others.

Around 80,000 workers from closed social companies in Serbia are still claiming their earnings from the state, based on the verdict of the European Court for Human Rights from 2011. The workers collectively claim about 304 million euros, according to a report published in 2013 in state-owned newspaper Vecernje novosti.

In the case of "Alisic and others" versus Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia, the European Court ruled in 2015 that Serbia should repay citizens who had not been...