KNIFE, WIRE, SREBRENICA

Slogans of hate at the stadium

Education and Sport Minister Slobodan Vuksanovic wants strict prohibition of racist behavior at sporting events. Yesterday, the Belgrade police took 152 fans of the Rad football team into custody for promoting national, racial and religious intolerance.

During the game, Rad’s fans shouted slogans such as “Knife, wire, Srebrenica” and “Serbia for the Serbs, out with the Turks.”

Among those arrested there were 47 Rad supporters who are under the age of 18.

Vuksanovic told B92 that he is concerned by this behavior shown by young people and that they have gone astray or have been disregarded at some point in their upbringing.

Vuksanovic said that the state institutions must react strongly to this racist behavior seen frequently at sporting events.

“Without strong reactions from the judicial institutions, quick processes and strict punishments, you cannot expect to have order. We should not make up and guess what the cure will be – we need to do what everyone in the world is doing in the fight against the same exact type of occurrences, which are obviously a problem in many societies.” Vuksanovic said.

Police arrest 152 Belgrade fans for racism

Belgrade police arrested 152 fans for racist insults at a Serbian second division match between local team Rad and Novi Pazar late on Wednesday .

"Police officers have arrested 152 Rad supporters, including 47 juveniles," police said.

"The offenders shouted slogans inciting racial, ethnic and religious hatred and intolerance."

The home fans shouted anti-Muslim slogans at Novi Pazar players and police moved in to remove them from the stadium.

Novi Pazar is a Bosniak-majority town in western Serbia. Some ultranationalist Serbs are hostile to Muslims, often glorifying the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of over 8,000 Bosniaks by Bosnian Serbs.

It was a second outbreak of racism at Serbia's soccer grounds in four days after a black player was abused during a first division match on Saturday.

Borac Cacak's Zimbabwean striker Mike Tawmanjira was insulted by the club's fans who wore white hoods with Ku Klux Klan insignia, did a Nazi salute and held a banner saying the player was unwelcome in Serbia.

Eight of them face charges of spreading racial hatred and prison terms up to five years if convicted.

Serbia's sports and education minister Slobodan Vuksanovic strongly condemned the incidents and said "decisive action must be taken to deal with these people who have lost their way."

"There will be no order unless the judicial authorities react swiftly and impose harsh penalties on the offenders," he told B 92 television.

"We don't need to invent any new solutions, we just have to implement what the whole world already has in order to combat this deviation many societies are obviously prone to."

Mosque goers threatened in Niš (Serbia)

The Niš police have arrested two individuals from Pirot for threatening and insulting mosque goers in Niš.

Željko C. (21) and Saša Đ. (19) from Pirot, according to the police, “urinated on the walls of the Hadrović mosque building in a visibly intoxicated state” at around midnight last night. After several mosque goers confronted them, the two began to insult and threaten the Muslim individuals and threw stones at the mosque.

The two youths were taken into custody by the Niš police.