"Give us a roof over our heads anywhere, it doesn't have to be here, we are always on the military rankings, so we drop from second place to 25, from fifth to 11. How long?" say the homeless soldiers, tenants of the former "Jakub Kuburović" barracks, which was handed over to an investor.
There was once a case of homeless soldiers who, since the beginning of the nineties, when they escaped from Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, were accommodated in the "Bristol" hotel, which was owned by the Ministry of Defense. Then came the project "Belgrade on the water" and they had to be expelled from there, and it was known by whose orders.
However, thanks to the writing of the media, and "Vreme" was the first to point out the case and followed it, the banditry of people from the Ministry started a downward trajectory and in the end, those people, who all had solutions for temporary accommodation until the apartment was allocated, still won their battle - they got apartments.
During that time, it came to light that the city of Belgrade, due to a project of strategic importance, allocated more than 130 apartments to the Ministry of Defense so that "Bristol" could move out and give them to a "partner" from Abu Dhabi, and that only about 30 homeless families received those apartments. The others disappeared, "evaporated", and no one in the Ministry was responsible for that.
Evicting military homeless
And now something similar is happening - the case with homeless soldiers who have been housed for decades in the now former barracks "Jakub Kuburović", located in one of the most beautiful locations in Zemun, which was once called "Francstal". At one time, the group of the Serbian Progressive Party led by the Ministry of Defense gave that barracks to Jugoimport SDPR, a public company for arms trade, and that for a miserable exchange - for six "NORA" howitzers. Beyond all common sense, because it is an area where 470 apartments will be built (price without VAT 3.500 euros per square meter) and many business premises.
And there are only 20 families of military homeless people there, and they all have decisions about temporary accommodation. Instead of the Ministry offering them apartments (the ones that the city government gave, and they gave to who knows who), or that the SDPR gave them 20 of those 470 apartments, workers hired by one of the daughter companies of the SDPR PCM gradnja (which is a daughter of PCM engineering) arrived on Monday morning to demolish the interior of one of those spaces.
Before that, they offered the tenants who have decisions about the use of the space 20.000 euros to leave, and two of them agreed to it. They probably have their own "combinations".
Without a permit to carry out works
And then the confusion begins. Other tenants come to block the start of the works, because other parts of the building where families live are being damaged. The police also come, with several vehicles, they behave correctly, and the tenants ask them and the representatives of the PMC for permission to carry out the work, which they refuse to show. The head of the PMC, looks like a typical progressive fan, argues with them, but does not show permission.
The police are trying to calm the situation, there is no physical conflict, nor was there, and the workers, the two of them, are working hard inside, breaking down doors and windows, and none of them has a protective helmet or a vest, which is required by the law on occupational safety. There is also the communal inspector of the municipality of Zemun who does not react to it.
IMG_20250310_143617_699Photo: DL
And then everything got serious when they heard that a representative of the media had come. The works are immediately suspended and negotiations begin between the tenants and the representative of PMC construction, Stojan Ljubinković, who, coincidentally, is the uncle of the director of PMC engineering, Saša Ljubinković. A security guard hired by the PMC is trying to find out who the journalist is, and since he is dressed in a way that violates at least three articles of the Law on Private Security and when pointed out to him, he walks away without saying a word. That unfortunate man, hired for who knows what reason, had no idea that there was someone there who knew the law.
The police are correct, at one point the citizens ask to legitimize those people who are demolishing the building and to check who they are who present themselves as representatives of the SDPR, and they clearly say - until we see a solution, we will block until further notice. Of course, the "civil servants" refuse to show the solution, and the citizens build "barricades", there is no way out for the official vehicle, nor for the van of the demolition company.
"Hey countryman, here I am again at the barricades," said a refugee from Zadar, then from Benkovac, a civilian in the army.
Consultation with the prosecutor
The police are now in doubt, they consult the prosecutor on duty, he tells them to, in their capacity as citizens, take information from one or two people who will provide documents that there are tenants there. Two people go to the premises where they live, the so-called apartments, and go with them to the police station in Zemun. They have nothing to hide, they have all the papers and regularly pay the military post office at the Batajnica airport for electricity and other utilities.
The PMC representatives, however, still refused to show any paper or document on the basis of which they came to demolish, and the tenants calmly say: "Your vehicles will not leave here until we see it."
The same thing happened again as with the "Bristol" hotel, and if the military homeless persevere - they will get some kind of conditional apartments, because these are not. What are 20 apartments compared to the 470 that are being built? And the tenants say - give us a roof over our heads anywhere, not necessarily here, we are constantly on the military rankings, so we drop from second place to 25th, from fifth to 11th. How long?
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The citizens of Kosjerić are threatened by a waste incinerator for which an environmental impact assessment has not been carried out, claims the Democratic Party
"True and real fear and all the problems and frustrations that we have inside and outside of us are nothing but precisely the fear of that enemy called death," emphasized Patriarch Porphyry
Anyone who condemns the regime's targeting of people from the media, the non-governmental sector, the opposition and universities, must not agree to this targeting of RTS editors and journalists either.
Depriving Dejan Ilić, an intellectual with an impeccable life and work biography, of his freedom, without the slightest meaningful reason, is just one of the brutal indicators that the regime has turned against its own citizens and is entering a phase of terror
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What is happening in the country and the world, what is in the newspapers and how to pass the time?
Every Wednesday at noon In between arrives by email. It's a pretty solid newsletter, so sign up!