Serbian artist and architect, Andrej Josifovski, known by the name the Pianist, painted the main Belgrade city square in black to represent the dimensions of the canopy of the railway station in Novi Sad that killed 15 people. Regime corruption kills

Zajedno sa @KatarinaTadic_ gledamo “Trauma Zone” od Adam Curtis, dokumentarni serijal o raspadu SSSR i tranziciji u Rusiji, od 1985 do 1999.

Politika ne odslikava realnost, već priča priču koja nam pomaže da je razumemo.

Exactly 100 year ago Jean Jaures was transferred to Pantheon. He was a central figure of the French left, tireless fighter for peace and social justice.

His drawing below is painted on the Arcades of the Place Capitole in Toulouse.

The song is of Jacques Brel, “why did they kill Jaures?“

Pressures to release Gnyot luckily worked, but no pressure will work on the 🇷🇸 regime to step down from power if they lose in the elections. If this happens, the regime will rig the results as it happened in Belarus in 2020 and Vucic will turn into a fully blown Lukashenko… /21 END

According to all observers, @freedomhouse to name one, from 2012, until today Serbian democracy has steadily deteriorated. This is going to continue and when push comes to shove for the regime to stay in power it will turn towards dictatorships in the East /20

As the only purpose of the Serbian regime is to stay in power and reap the benefits from it as long as possible, it is already clear in which of the two directions it is going to go /19

As Andrey Gnyot put it in our interview, “Serbian authorities try to balance between East and West, but it means between law and between the absence of law, between democracy and between dictatorship.” /18

Second, Gnyot’s story is telling of the true nature of Vucic’s geopolitical balancing act. The balancing is not in 🇷🇸 national interest, but has a sole purpose of keeping the president and his oligarchy in power as long as possible /17

Politically motivated arrests continued in the case of people protesting against corruption that caused the death of 14 people in the collapse of a canopy of the main railway station in Novi Sad on 1 November /16

Already this summer, the regime started arresting environmental activists on bogus charges of overthrowing 🇷🇸 constitutional order, only later to coerce them through plea bargain agreements into lesser crimes that they equally did not commit /15

Gnyot’s horrible story is telling, and a symbol for 2 things. First, it is a symbol of where 🇷🇸 is going - towards a Lukashenko-style fully authoritarian regime. /14

The only reason why Gnyot was eventually released and not extradited to Belarus is because of the pressures on Vucic from Western governments /13

Second reason, the ideological background of the 🇷🇸 regime is deeply authoritarian. Vucic and his entourage intimately despise democracy and prefer authoritarian government /12

There are 2 reasons for his captivity. One, Vucic wanted to ingratiate himself with the Lukashenko regime and improve relations after 🇷🇸 joined Western sanctions against Belarus in 2021 /11

No other country has kept Belarusian political activists hunted by the Lukashenko regime so long in jail. Why did Serbia keep Gnyot for 7 months in jail and then another 5 in house arrest and why was he later released? /10

Beg u slobodu Zovem se Andrej Gnjot. Ja sam reditelj, novinar i politički aktivista iz Belorusije kojeg režim Aleksandra Lukašenka želi da uništi.

You can read (in Serbian) about the extraordinary day of Gnyot’s departure from Serbia on @RadarsRS radar.nova.rs/drustvo/andr... /9

Finally, Serbian authorities were legally obliged to release him and Gnyot was able to leave the country on 31 October. This is because maximum duration of extradition jail under Serbian law is one year /8

There are different forms of house arrest in 🇷🇸, but Gnyot was totally unnecessarily ordered the harshest one: he could leave his flat maximum 1 hour per day /7

Even when the 🇷🇸 Appeals court overruled the verdict of the Higher court ordering Gnyot’s extradition to Belarus (which would mean torture and probably death in prison), 🇷🇸 authorities decided to keep him under house arrest /6

Even when Interpol later withdrew the warrant judging it politically motivated, Serbian authorities decided to keep Gnyot under arrest basing this decision on a bilateral agreement between Serbia and Belarus /5

He was arrested based on an Interpol warrant issued by the Belorussian authorities under fabricated charges used against most political opponents of Lukashenko /4

Intervju sa Andrejem Gnjotom, ponedeljak u 20h Reditelj, novinar i politički aktivista iz Belorusije. Andrej Gnjot proveo je sedam meseci u zatvoru u Beogradu pre nego što je prebačen u kućni pritvor, u junu 2024. godine.

The episode was aired last Monday on prime time slot on Serbian TV and was viewed by many in the country until then unaware about the horror Gnyot has been going through n1info.rs/najave-emisi... /3

He spent 7 months in the notorious Belgrade Central prison and another 5 months under house arrest. One year of hell and uncertainty about his future. He told us about his Serbian ordeal in an exclusive @bezbednost_org Lighthouse podcast /2

youtu.be/qHajCUeHjD4?...

🧵On 30 October 2023, Andrey Gnyot, Belorussian director, journalist and political activist came to Serbia to film a commercial. He had planned to stay in the country 7 days, instead he remained one year /1