Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments refused to delete the General Staff complex from the Central Register of Immovable Cultural Properties of Serbia.
They decided on this at today's meeting on Friday, about which they will publish a memo. They do not expect that acting director Goran Vasić will support them.
According to the law, in order for a cultural object to be deleted from the list of monuments of the Central Register, it must disappear or be completely destroyed. The Republic Institute says that the General Staff has neither disappeared nor been completely destroyed.
Their colleagues from the City Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments deleted the General Staff from their register of cultural assets and, according to procedure, informed the Republic Institute about it so that it could do its part and delete this cultural monument from the Central Register.
Trump Center
The Institute of the Republic, as was said, refused it.
Meanwhile, also on Friday, the Bloomberg agency announced that the investment company "Affinity Partners", founded by Jared Kushner, son-in-law of Donald Trump, and Emirati billionaire Mohammed Alabar, will jointly build a luxury hotel and apartment complex in Belgrade, on the site of the former General Staff. of the Yugoslav army, which was hit in the NATO aggression against Serbia in 1999.
This confirms the fact that Kushner is cooperating with the owner of Belgrade on the water.
In an interview with the Bloomberg agency, Kushner said that he talked to several brands before deciding on the name "Trump".
Government of Serbia has not nor does it obviously intend to cancel its decision of November 14 on the termination of the status of cultural property of the buildings of the General Staff of the Army of Serbia and Montenegro and the Ministry of Defense in Belgrade, which are located at 33-44 Kneza Miloša Street, and which are state property. That decision came into force on November 22.
Everyone is against it.
The profession is against this decision., SANU, domestic and foreign professional associations.
Yesterday, Thursday, they were joined by students. Students of the University of Arts in Belgrade are appealing for the government "which has so far shown an alarming lack of interest in preserving this cultural asset" to reverse its decision.
Immediately after the government's decision, the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments published a statement (this is the statement for which the BIA visited them) that the Government of Serbia did not follow the legal procedure when making the decision to revoke the status of a cultural monument to the General Staff complex, and that there is no no reason to make such a decision.
The same request was then sent by the Society of Conservators of Serbia.
It is also Organization Europe Nostra Serbia called on the Government of Serbia to urgently cancel the "illegal decision to delete the complex of buildings of the General Staff and the Ministry of Defense in the center of Belgrade from the Register of Protected Immovable Cultural Properties".
A month ago, RERI submitted to the Constitutional Court the Initiative for the initiation of proceedings for the constitutionality of the Serbian government's decision to revoke the status of a cultural property from the General Staff complex.
At the end of December, the UN special rapporteur for the field of cultural rights asked the government of Serbia to respond to her in the next month regarding the worrying information about the General Staff, the Sava Bridge, the Fair and the Kalemegdan Fortress.
So, what now?
The procedure initiated by Evropa Nostra Serbia in order for the General Staff complex to become part of this year's event is underway list of '7 most endangered' objects in Europe, and we expect the result in the second half of January. The possible choice of the General Staff for the list of the '7 most endangered' could perhaps affect the fate of this complex, let's remember the case of the Belgrade Fortress.
The answer to all of them will be the aforementioned information published by Bloomberg.
There are currently two hopes for the survival of the General Staff: the fact that the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments refuses to delete it from the Central Real Estate Register, and the Constitutional Court, where RERI's initiative to revoke the government's decision is pending.
The City Institute can only delete the complex from the cadastre, but their move allows for an appeal by law.
