Bojana Novaković: Vučić is slowly selling Serbia to the US and China – Society

The Belgrade-born woman recently supported the petition “Stop Police Violence”, which calls for an independent investigation and punishment of those responsible for the Serbian police violence against citizens who protested from July 7-11, 2020.

The petition, which will also be sent to the United Nations, has so far been signed by almost 11,000 people.

– The corrupt system that initiated the police abuse is not in a position to investigate the attack on its own. For an investigation to take place, people must speak out. Make it clear that we as citizens do not allow anyone to trample us. Of course, we always face dilemmas in that fight.

Will it have any effect? Have international institutions across Europe paid much attention to human rights violations in Serbia? There is no answer in advance, we can only discuss. Also, I think it is important to understand that this type of relationship with the police is not normal for us.

This is the first systemic police violence against citizens in many years. The violence we saw in July scares me. If the authorities can get away with the brutal abuse of citizens, they will continue to do so.

We have to stop them before we have a situation like Nigeria, says Bojana Novaković in our newspaper.

In that sense, how did you experience the July protests in Belgrade?

– For me, the protests were a natural reaction of citizens to the violation of their rights by the authorities.

There is nothing unusual about people protesting against a government that risks the lives of citizens to win elections, a government that manipulates the media to usurp elections and that pretends that none of this happened while people wait in lines in line. street to enter. hospital.

So these protests weren’t unusual. It was unusual to brutally neglect the right to assembly, the right to freedom of expression, and the violence perpetrated by the police, who must protect us and not participate in the denial of our constitutional rights and assault citizens.

You spoke in front of the UN in New York during the protest. Why?

– I spoke by invitation and in support of my friend Masha Dakić in her disagreement towards the brutal treatment of our friends in Serbia under the Vučić dictatorship. Although it was not planned, they asked me to say a few words and out of solidarity I shared some of my thoughts.

Coincidentally and mainly because of the work I do, my words resonated louder than the voices of some other people here, but the message is common: we want to show support and solidarity with our friends in Serbia and let it be known that the diaspora sees what is happening. in our country and do not keep silent while our people are oppressed.

How do you perceive the media blockade in Serbia, in which the vast majority of the media is in the hands of Vučić?

– Serbia does not have freedom of information. Where there is no freedom of the press, there is no democracy. When a person or party controls information, they control how people view events, how events are interpreted, and what people are informed about, and therefore they control the minds of those people. The situation with our media is terrible.

It is also uncertain because H1 and Nova, which are run by local distributors who employ our journalists, are owned by the CNN corporation and its branches.

CNN is, of course, an American corporation, and we all know that Serbia has a troubled history of relations with the United States, so it is no wonder that people can barely understand who to trust. On the one hand, they have free TV broadcast, which is wholly owned by Vučić, on the other hand, they have cable operators owned by US corporations. It is difficult for people to develop trust.

I personally see H1 and trust it as a source, because I know the people who work there and I know their intentions. But not everyone is in the same boat as me. I would like to see independent media appear in Serbia, like “Democracy Now” or “TYT Network”, which are outside the influence of government and corporations.

From the point of view of someone who does not live in Serbia, how do you see life here under the Vučić regime?

– This is a pretty broad question. Whose life? If you ask me about the lives of people like me, that’s one thing. If you ask me about the students, that’s another. Intellectuals, farmers, doctors, police, everything is different.

If you ask me about gypsies, we could dedicate a complete article to you. So I don’t think it is my place to analyze “life in Serbia” using “external points of view”. By the way, I don’t live outside the country as much as people think. I spent six months there last year. I was also supposed to come this year, but the crown happened. We can look at things from various aspects. Are we talking about the environment?

The lives of average people? The economy? If we talk about the environment, I see that we have the best raspberries in the world, but the dirtiest air in Europe, we have some of the most incredible landscapes that I have seen in my life, but Vucic sells our country to foreign investors and they pollute our air with recycled rubber. If we look at art, music, cinema, it’s like it’s always been: underfunded and world-class, except for some nationalist propaganda movies that no one sees. If we look at interpersonal relationships, you could say that we are just as good to each other, we fight so much, and although the government is as racist towards our Roma communities as it used to be, individual citizens are awakened by that fact. The problem of Serbia today is so vast. Serbia is a huge conglomerate of things and people.

I would like it to be managed that way. Rather than trying to find a solution or answer, or a part that will take care of all these people, places and problems, I would really like to turn the system around and come up with strategic solutions. I see a lot of hope in Serbia in community-based and local initiatives. The system change comes from below.

Should the role of the international community be more important in protecting the rule of law in Serbia?

– If we talk about the UN or the EU, we should definitely get more involved. They should have learned a lesson from 1995. Metaphorically speaking, we should stop drinking brandy with the Balkan war criminals and the mafia who rule our country and commit crimes on behalf of our people. But if you are talking about financial support to USAID NGOs, I would say no, thank you! These organizations destabilize us more than our government.

They are the American military occupation under the guise of American aid. USAID sent billions of dollars to Haiti, to Palestine, just to increase those countries’ dependence on it. I strongly oppose receiving money from non-governmental organizations that are accountable to those from whom they receive money, and not to the local communities they are supposed to serve. We need to empower local communities to take action to regain the strength they need to have in a democracy.

I am not in favor of the forces of imperialism, but I am in favor of pressuring foreign bureaucratic entities to do their job and point out their responsibility in the protection of human rights.

How do you see the relationship between Serbia and the United States, considering that President Vučić recently signed an agreement with the Prime Minister of Kosovo in the White House with Trump?

– Vučić is selling the land slowly. Both they and the Chinese government. We don’t know what he sold to whom, so when we installed a bunch of G5 cameras from Chinese tech companies, he signed an agreement with the American team that all G5 surveillance in Serbia will now be elevated with the help of American technology.

We are caught in a game of great powers, who are themselves pawns of the rich whites who rule this world. As for the meeting on Kosovo, the only winner is the Israeli government. Kosovo can never be independent because it will always depend on the United States and NATO, and that is exactly the fact that the United States achieved its goal by occupying Eastern European territory.

Were you once at the protests against Slobodan Milosevic?

– I was with my family when I was 96/97. years in demonstrations. I even have recordings of Zorn Djindjic since then. I made my way in front of the stage and recorded his speech with an old camera.

Every time I look at it and see it, it gives me the creeps. The protests then contributed to the change of government and the Resistance was the main responsible for the fall of Milosevic. We do not need a new government, but a new system of government, where the people choose a government that serves the interests of the people, and not like now, where the mafia rules the people.

We have a system that is corrupt to the point of pain. So no matter who comes to rule, under that system they will always rule like the mafia.

We may be able to overthrow the government, but the real work, and the work that I see being done by the Free Serbia Assembly, the Go to Change Team and the Association for the Protection of Constitutionality and Legality and other local organizations, creates a system under which corrupt politicians cannot function. It is not about going after voters, but about a system in which citizens participate in the decision-making process.

I’m going if they are going to tear down the Old Bridge

– When this state of emergency is resolved, here I am on the first plane to Serbia. And maybe even before that, if they start to demolish the Old Sava Bridge, notes Bojana Novaković, who moved to Australia when she was seven. She won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actress in 2004, and also collaborated with Hollywood stars Mel Gibson or Keanu Reeves. She is also known for her roles on the series “Shameless” and “Instinct,” as well as Internet alter ego Yana Novak.

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