Serbian Protesters Back Expelling Seselj From Parliament
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| Activists with a banner saying “Carry Seselj Out” in front of the Serbian parliament. Photo: YIHR. |
A Serbian rights organisation, the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, staged a protest on Tuesday in Belgrade in support of an opposition MP who was abused and threatened in parliament for raising the issue of ending Vojislav Seselj’s term as an MP as a result of his war crimes conviction.
“[We] demand that violent behaviour in parliament be punished, and for parliament… to initiate the procedure of ending the convicted war criminal Vojislav Seselj’s term,” the YIHR said in a press release.
Its activists stood in front of the parliament with a banner that read: “Carry Seselj Out” – a reference to an incident in 2000 when he was physically ejected from the legislature by security.
— Inicijativa Mladih (@YIHRSerbia) April 17, 2018
During Tuesday’s parliament session, MP Aleksandra Jerkov asked the speaker when Seselj’s term would be revoked, after which Nemanja Sarovic, an MP from the convicted politician’s Serbian Radical Party, called her a liar and denied the crimes for which his leader was convicted at the Hague Tribunal.
Jerkov, an MP for the Democratic Party, said that Radical Party MPs surrounded her and issued threats and insults.
“This is what I found waiting for me in the parliament chamber, after the horde of Radicals surrounded, insulted and threatened me. To the joy and approval of the [ruling] Progressives,” Jerkov wrote on Twitter with a photo of a note calling her an “Ustasa [Croatian Fascist] whore”.
Ovo me je docekalo u skupstinskoj sali, nakon sto su me horde radikala okruzile, vredjale i pretile mi.
Uz opste odusevljenje i odobravanje naprednjaka. pic.twitter.com/GW2bxT52yR
— Aleksandra Jerkov (@AleksJerkov) April 17, 2018
On April 11, the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, which has taken over the unfinished cases of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, sentenced Seselj in absentia to ten years in prison for inciting crimes with nationalist speeches in the Vojvodina region of Serbia during the war in 1992.
Seselj’s sentence legally disqualifies him from serving as an MP in parliament, but he has told the Serbian media that he will not resign. The 63-year-old spent almost 12 years in custody after surrendering to the ICTY in 2003.
Read more:
Seselj Conviction Leaves War Victims Dissatisfied
