Novi Sad Council Rejects Hate Speech Declaration
Kreni-promeni sought condemnation of a remark about slaughtering Serbs, the ruling majority in Novi Sad refused to put the item on the agenda, and opposition councilors walked out.
The Novi Sad City Council refused on Monday, September 7, to place a Declaration Condemning Hate Speech and the Targeting of Political Opponents on its agenda. The proposal had been submitted a day earlier, on September 6, by the Kreni-promeni council group, with councilor Slobodan Vukas formally filing the declaration on the group’s behalf. After the ruling majority voted against adding the item, opposition councilors walked out of the session.
The declaration was prompted by a remark made at the council’s previous session, held on July 21, by Serbian Progressive Party councilor Cvija Vasic, who addressed it directly to the opposition benches.
You won’t succeed. You’ve slaughtered enough Serbs.
Council Speaker Dina Vucinic did not respond to the remark at the time, even though opposition councilors, according to accounts from that session, repeatedly asked for it to be sanctioned with at least a formal warning. No reaction followed in the days after either, until Monday, when Kreni-promeni tried to bring the matter back into the council’s procedure through its proposal.
What the Proposal Sought
The declaration put forward by the Kreni-promeni council group was not, based on available information, limited to a single incident. The group framed its proposal around a broader description of the atmosphere it says it is operating in.
This is not an isolated incident, but a continuation of an atmosphere of hatred in which citizens, activists, students, and opposition councilors are branded as “Ustasha” and enemies.
As of this writing, the ruling majority had not publicly explained why the proposal was kept off the agenda, nor did its representatives lay out counterarguments during the session itself, at least according to the reports that emerged from it. Without an explanation, it remains unclear whether the decision was driven by the content of the proposal or by the procedure under which it was filed.
A Moment of Silence and Routine Business
The session opened with a moment of silence for Ratko Mladic, at a point when opposition councilors, according to available footage from the session, were not yet in the chamber. Only afterward came the debate over the agenda, during which the Kreni-promeni proposal was voted down, followed by the opposition’s walkout.
Despite the departure of part of the council, the session continued. Other items remained on the agenda, including decisions on Novi Sad’s intercity cooperation with the Russian city of Surgut and the Uzbek city of Samarkand, a measure on housing for war veterans, and amendments to city parking regulations. None of those items, based on available information, produced a dispute comparable to the one over the declaration.
A Second Attempt in the Same Council
This is not the first time relations between the ruling majority and the opposition in the Novi Sad council have come to an open clash over what can be said from the podium without consequence. The July 21 incident, according to Kreni-promeni, went unanswered by the presiding speaker, and that failure to act was the basis for the September proposal. By refusing to even let the declaration reach the agenda, the ruling majority effectively closed off the possibility of a vote on the matter itself, regardless of how such a vote might have turned out.
For the opposition, that means the dispute remains open outside the council chamber. For the majority, it means the proposal has, for now, been taken off the agenda without a public explanation. Whether Kreni-promeni will file the declaration again at a future session, and whether it would get a different response from the ruling majority, remains an open question.
