Yesterday’s decision of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Serbia to revive the Jadar project was followed by unacceptable pressure on activists, whose goal was to divide the population and discourage them from fighting for the environment. Nikola Ristic, an activist of the organized group SviĆa from Serbia, was detained for tweeting on suspicion of “calling for a violent change in the constitutional order”. On the same day, the activist of the Karton Revolucija movement from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nedimo Music, was banned from entering Serbia due to a “negative security risk assessment”, as stated in the decision to ban entry into the Republic of Serbia.
SviĆe and Karton Revolucija, in solidarity with other environmental movements and initiatives, continuously and intensively call people from the region to fight for land, water, air, forests, and against environmentally harmful mining projects whose goal is the exploitation of lithium and other mineral resources, which directly threatens the survival of people in this area.
This is our call for joint and solidarity action of the people, activists and experts from the region in the fight against the devastation of Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and other countries of the region, as well as the continuous systematic violation of basic human rights. We witness that our region is under attack by foreign mining companies, coming from both the east and the west, who want to exploit lithium and other critical raw materials from the land we live on. Fortunately, people from our region have recognized this danger and are increasingly uniting to defend our water, land, air, our right to life and home.
We remind you that at a recent meeting in Loznica, the activist of the Carton Revolution movement, Adi Selman, called people from the region to a united fight to save our hearths.
“There is no greater ideal, there is no greater motivation, than to fight for the piece of land on which we were born, for the piece of land on which we grew up, for the piece of land where the bones of all our ancestors lie. There is no greater ideal than to fight for Gornje Nedeljice, for Loznica, for Drina, for Sava, for Majevica, for Semberija, Mačva, Homolje. There is no greater ideal to fight for Serbia, Bosnia and for our entire region. We do not give you food, we do not give you our strawberries, potatoes, onions, we don’t give you”
said Ada at a meeting in Loznica on June 28, 2024.
For several years now, environmental struggles in our region have been a support for people to build togetherness through a united and solidary struggle for our common natural assets, which guarantee the survival of people in these areas. We invite lawyers and legal experts from BiH and Serbia to support us in stopping this type of oppression of activists. We invite international organizations and institutions to get involved and make it impossible to systematically exclude and prevent the work of activists from the region in the fight for a healthy environment and life.
We call on our people from BiH, Serbia and the entire region to stand by the brave activists and with that expression of solidarity do not allow the deepening of divisions created by our authorities for decades, all with the aim of continuing to sell our healthy land, healthy forests and clean water to foreign companies.