Serbia Activists Stonewalled Over Wiretap Request

Two activists from the Let's not Drown Belgrade campaigning group in Serbia have complained to the country's Commissioner for Information of Public Importance after the Interior Ministry refused to tell them whether they had been wiretapped from May 2014 to September 2016.

"We have already filed a complaint. We will not give up until we discover why and on whose orders this happened," one of the activists, Dobrica Veselinovic, said.

He and another activist, Ksenija Radovanovic, in September asked the Serbian Interior Ministry to clarify whether their telephones had been placed under security measures. 

The ministry last week answered that it could not supply an answer as the data they seek is "top secret".

"This response shows that state security services have been wiretapping phones of the activists from Let's Not Drown Belgrade, and that the activists have been declared to be a state security threat.
 
"We demand to know why citizens phones are being tapped ...We demand to know what makes us the threat for own country," the movement wrote in a statement.

Activists from Let's Not Drown Belgrade, a civic movement, started protests against the state-backed Belgrade Waterfront redevelopment project in 2015.

Protests grew after the night of April 24, when around 30 masked men demolished buildings overnight in Belgrade's Savamala district, where the huge complex is to be built, eventually gathering tens of thousands of people who demanded that officials to accept responsibility and resign.

On June 8, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic admitted that senior officials in the city had been behind the demolitions. However, no one has resigned or faced criminal charges over the case.

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