NGO

BELGRADE - Serbian PM Ana Brnabic met with an ODIHR mission on Thursday and thanked it for its committed work and support to improvement of electoral conditions in Serbia in the past several years.

Naxhije Bucinca remembers the morning of March 16, 1998 as cold and overcast; she wore warm clothes and flat shoes suitable for a long walk.

"Milosevic's regime had intensified the murders, the displacement, and the burning of houses and granaries," said Bucinca, who is now 88 years old. "People in Drenica were left without shelter or bread."

Ljubljana – The 8 March Institute has already collected enough signatures to introduce a bill aimed at repealing several government-sponsored laws that the NGO finds harmful. The campaign started on Wednesday and the minimum threshold of signatures, 5,000, was crossed already that day, said the NGO, which aims to get 60,000 signatures.

The decision of the local assembly of Pantelej, a municipality of the city of Nis, the biggest city in southern Serbia, to make a convicted war criminal, Vladimir Lazarevic, an honorary citizen is not surprising and represents part of the "petty political game" of the ruling party, NGO activists told BIRN.

Ljubljana – An NGO that offers legal support to individuals and organisations that find themselves in legal proceedings because of their non-violent public activity has filed a criminal complaint against the head of the Government Communication Office (UKOM) over suspension of funding to the Slovenian Press Agency (STA).

The UN Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina on Monday condemned the Croatian police's allegedly violent pushback of a group of migrants trying to cross the border into the European Union country.

The "Prietenii Berzelor" ("Friends of Storks") Association was fined by the Sibiu Environmental Guard with a fine of 10,000 lei, after the association's volunteers rescued two bear cubs, abandoned near Biertan commune, which are currently at the sanctuary in Zarnesti, in Brasov County, announced the president of the NGO, Miruna Gritu, in a press release.

"Fewer cases are being left for the following year, but the essence is in the manner in which the cases are resolved," said Driton Demhasaj, director of the NGO 'Cohu', which has spent the past five years monitoring corruption cases in Kosovo.

Spark, a Dutch-based non-governmental organization (NGO) announced on Dec. 28 that it provided technical support and equipment to five Turkish universities to ensure proper access to distance education.

The country, which has been run by the same party for the past three decades, has a long record of restricting human rights and violating data privacy rights.

Activists fear the government will exploit the COVID-19 pandemic to clamp down further. The government says its overriding priority is to protect the lives and health of Montenegrin citizens.