Serbia recorded the biggest drop in democracy in the Freedom House report "Nations in Transition 2023", which covers 29 European and Asian countries.
"Two consecutive mass murders in May caused protests which lasted during the summer, to which the Serbian government responded with rigged extraordinary elections in December," reads the report "Nations in Transition 2023" Freedom House.
The state of affairs in the country is directly reflected in the media, as confirmed by NUNS General Secretary Tamara Filipović for "Vreme".
"The biggest drop was recorded in the field of media freedom, we got minus two points." From hybrid regimes, we have come much closer to autocratic regimes, and the decline in media freedom contributes to this," says Filipović.
She adds that NUNS is witnessing an escalation of violence against journalists since the beginning of the year.
"Last year, NUNS recorded 56 cases of violence. Physical attacks, death threats and other threats to journalists. This year, we recorded 38 such cases in the first three months alone. And we still have nine months before the end of the year", says Filipović.
REM more passive than ever
Regarding media pluralism, we see that REM is more passive this year than ever, says Filipović.
"The other day, we received information from REM that Pink TV was warned for the petition we submitted two years ago. So there is no question of efficiency, let alone the effectiveness of their work," she says.
A historic decline due to the Vučić regime
The report states that Serbia experienced a historic decline due to the efforts of President Aleksandar Vučić to establish power in 2023.
"A large part of the country's democracy is shown by the election process." In the last elections, we saw how votes are stolen. "We assumed that there was electoral theft, but the ways in which it was carried out could not have occurred to even the most creative people," Filipović recalls.
He also points out that media freedoms, the election process, and freedom of association are continuously declining in Serbia, and he says that this is clearly visible in the reports of domestic and international organizations.
