Due to the extreme importance of not only individual demands, but also the way in which students jointly fight for them, the employees of cultural institutions will suspend work in solidarity at their call from March 17 to 19.
It should be emphasized that the list of signed cultural institutions are on the budget of the Ministry of Culture and the City of Belgrade.
These are: Ethnographic Museum, Historical Museum of Serbia, Historical Archive of Belgrade, Yugoslav Cinematheque, Museum of Yugoslavia, Museum of Applied Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Natural History and Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments.
Fulfillment of student requirements
They demand from the competent institutions the urgent fulfillment of "both student demands, which they accept as their own, and those that are actively articulated in the domain of culture."
Their demands are as follows:
"In addition to the necessary increase in the budget for culture to a minimum of one percent and the improvement of the material working conditions, which are among the lowest in the public sector, we call, first of all, for those that are much more urgent, which concern the completely collapsed professional conditions that radically endanger or make professional activity in the field of culture meaningless."
General Staff
They demand the immediate annulment of the illegal decision of the Government on the termination of the immovable cultural property status of the buildings of the General Staff and the Ministry of Defense in Belgrade and the redetermination of the entire complex of the Belgrade Fair as an immovable cultural property.
"We demand from the Ministry of Culture to initiate the development of systemic protection of a large number of endangered cultural monuments as well as institutions that are under constant attack by investor urbanism, including spatial and urban plans related to the specialized Expo exhibition with transparent publication of the purpose and amount by which this exhibition will be financed from the budget of the Ministry of Culture," say the unions.
Depoliticization
And, a request that has not been heard from republican institutions until now:
Amendments to the Law on Culture that would enable the unconditional depoliticization of cultural institutions, i.e. fully autonomous decision-making by the employees and competent bodies of the institution in question on programmatic and professional activities, as well as compliance with the provisions on the public announcement of competitions for directors with the amendment and tightening of the criteria for their appointment, as well as the mandatory publication of application documents.
