Serbia's Deputy Minister of Human Rights Steps Down

Serbia's deputy minister of human and minority rights announced his resignation on Friday, while Human Rights Minister Svetozar Ciplic said the deputy had been sacked.

“Most things are done secretly outside the law and without the possibility of a professional exchange of information and agreement,” Deputy Minister Petar Antic said in a statement explaining the reasoning behind his resignation.

Minister Ciplic, meanwhile, said that Antic had in fact been removed from his position as part of a restructuring plan in the Ministry.

“The number of departments has been decreased, and therefore the number of deputies. That is why Petar Antic has been dismissed from his position of deputy minister. Under the new system, it is envisaged that Antic will become a senior adviser. In addition, a person who is removed from office cannot resign from his position,” Ciplic said in a statement.

In his resignation announcement, Antic said that the Ministry had no strategic plan and that all the activities were carried out without a longterm vision, and with no real desire to improve the position of Serbian citizens.

He also claimed that Minister Ciplic has made his office into his own private company, which Antic says threatens the idea of human rights instead of protecting and promoting it.

Antic is not the first high-ranking official from the Ministry to step down in recent months. Ahead of the Belgrade Pride Parade in September last year, Marko Karadzic, state secretary in the Ministry, resigned, citing disagreement with the Minister’s policy.

Karadzic has been recognised as one of the loudest government defenders of the rights of marginalized groups, particularly Roma and members of the LGBT community.

Antic’s resignation comes ten days after the Ministry called for new elections to the Bosniak Council in the turbulent Sandzak region of southwest Serbia to be held on April 17. The largest Bosniak party dubbed the move undemocratic.

The Bosniak Cultural Community, led by a radical mufti, Muamer Zukorlic, won 17 of the 35 seats in the Council in the disputed elections last year.

Since the polls, Zukorlic and the Human Rights Ministry have been locked in a dispute over the formation of the Council.

“The attitude towards the Bosniak National Council and behaviour towards Marko Karadzic… has made me give up the fight for human rights in this institution,” Antic explained in his statement.