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Danas interlocutors on Minister Aleksandar Vulin’s proposal to abolish anonymity on the Internet due to death threats to the state president.
In authoritarian regimes, social media threats to government officials are often an excuse to call for censorship and regulation of the Internet, and such an idea from Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin brings Serbia closer to systems that do not respect the freedom of expression and shows the unwillingness of the police to respond to threats with existing mechanisms. Danas’s interlocutors believe.
Photo: FoNet / MUPFurthermore, the abolition of anonymity on the internet would cause the most damage to the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), considering the numerous accounts flagged as bots – that is, 8,500 fake accounts that Twitter recently removed due to connections to the ruling party.
The request for “abolition of anonymity on the Internet” comes from Minister Vulin after threats sent to the state president, Aleksandar Vučić, and his family on social media.
This is not the first time that state and political officials have been threatened, the police have twice recently arrested people on suspicion of endangering the safety of President Vučić, although in cases of threats to journalists, activists or the opposition, they weren’t that fast.
Djordje Krivokapic of the SHARE Foundation points out that the removal of 8,500 fake and anonymous accounts from Serbia, which Twitter claimed to have promoted the ruling party, is relevant to this story.
– Anonymous speech is often a source of misinformation and exceeds freedom of expression. However, this does not mean that it should be abolished, as this would jeopardize the standards of freedom of expression and introduce society to a system of absolute supervision. Thus, in the western democracies to which we aspire, the European Union and the United States, anonymity is not in dispute. But in China, Russia is often attacked and demands the abolition of that anonymity. From a regulatory approach point of view, such demands tend to turn towards those regimes, Krivokapić tells Danas.
Remember that social networks like Facebook, with their user rules, force them to use their real name and surname, and have mechanisms to report those who misrepresent themselves.
On the other hand, threats sent through social networks, Krivokapić recalls, must be sanctioned by state agencies, and mechanisms for this already exist.
– We have seen a great efficiency of the state organs in the cases in which the threats are directed to the highest officials of the State, even some advances regarding threats to journalists. Threats are certainly not allowed, it is a criminal act of endangering security, for which he is prosecuted ex officio, and it is necessary to increase the capacity of the prosecution and police to investigate these criminal acts, concludes Krivokapić.
Rodoljub Sabic, lawyer and former Commissioner of Information of Public Importance, points out that Vulin is not the first to propose something like this, but that Vulin’s call is a campaign to defend the president, and that it is impossible to implement it.
– Personally, I am always under my first and last name and I do not have much sympathy for anonymous action, but it is an achievement of the Internet and in much of legal theory it is treated as an integral part of freedom of expression. Whether Vulin likes it or not is one thing. Under specific conditions, I don’t know how sincere it is or is it just a parade for threats to the president. Especially since the political group behind the minister uses anonymous orders en masse and I’m not sure they support something like that. I would like to hear from Minister Vulin, and to do so technically, it seems completely impossible, notes Sabic.
The latest death threats against Vučić via social media, sent in mid-November via social media, ended with the immediate action to arrest MP (30) from Paraćin.
He announced on Facebook that he was constantly watching Vučić through the sniper’s sights.
Immediately after that, Vučić told the public that the murderer Čaba Der allegedly told the Hungarian investigative bodies that he had received an offer from two criminal clans to assassinate him.
This year, several people were arrested for threatening to assassinate the president of Serbia.
In April, Valjevo’s GP was arrested because, among other things, he wrote on Instagram: “Aleksandar Vučić, I come from the forest, my friend, to knock you down! They will beat you, bald, until I poke out your eyes.”
Then in May, DM from Belgrade was arrested because he directly called for Vučić’s murder on Twitter several times.
On the other hand, when the opposition, to which the president of the Freedom and Justice Party Dragan Djilas, objective journalists and other public figures who criticize the Vucic regime was threatened with death, no one in power called for the abolition of the anonymity on the Internet.
That is, just three days before he threatened Vučić with a “sniper”, Djilas received threats from Dejan Ivanović: “Damn yellow, infection, why don’t you die?” It should be sent by sniper to the graveyard of the infected and sick in an aluminum box. And their genes must be destroyed so that such ugly and sick monsters will never be born again. “
In May, ML from Loznica was arrested because he called directly on Twitter for the murder of relatives of Djilas, Bosko Obradovic, Janko Veselinovic, Borko Stefanovic, Ivan Ivanovic and Slobodan Georgiev.
“Vucic’s puppets”
Yesterday, the Democratic Party (DS) condemned the threats directed at Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and his family, although, according to the DS, they are led by people “who have long been recognized as Vučić puppets”. DS Executive Board member Srdjan Milivojevic assessed that “the entire public in Serbia knows that the remote control to handle these people, known for their extremely extreme attitudes, is in the hands of Aleksandar Vucic.”
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