Open letter to the president of the European Commission on her visit to Serbia, calling for the freedom of political prisoners and respect for human rights.
Dear President von der Leyen,
Your visit to Belgrade coincides with a period of deep unrest in Serbia. Citizens across the country have been protesting for almost a year against injustice, violence, and the systemic abuse of institutions.
At the very moment you are meeting with the President of Serbia, people who peacefully expressed their political views remain deprived of their liberty.
Some of them have spent seven months under house arrest, after months in prison, enduring hunger and thirst strikes, and being stripped of their most basic rights: freedom and the right to work.
Our only “crime” was speech
We are not criminals. We are citizens and members of an opposition party represented in the National Assembly of Serbia, which belongs to the European political family Renew Europe, a political group in the European Parliament that shares the values you represent.
It is therefore difficult to understand how, while you meet with a man who systematically destroys those same values, his political opponents–our citizens–remain imprisoned, isolated, and stigmatised.
I am one of them: a professor, writing this letter to you from house arrest.
We are not a threat to the state, but a testimony that in today’s Serbia, speaking against the government has become grounds for punishment. Our case is a symbol of the collapse of fundamental political right–the right to think, to speak, and to act according to one’s conscience.
Europe’s test
On May 17, the European Parliament adopted a resolution explicitly calling for our immediate release, with our names listed in that resolution. Seven full months later, nothing has happened. That resolution is not just a political document; it is a test of the credibility of European values in Serbia.
If the decisions of the European Parliament remain dead letters, it means that the European word has lost its power to promote justice and no longer speaks in the European language.
Therefore, we publicly call upon you to take political responsibility and ensure that the issue of political prisoners is on the agenda of your talks with President Vučić today, guided by conscience and European values rather than by protocol or tactics.
Without the freedom of political prisoners, there is no European Serbia.
To secure its values and move forward
The European Union, as a community founded on freedom, dignity, and the rule of law, cannot remain indifferent.
Your words, your tone, and your choice of interlocutors in Belgrade send a message.
That message should not be a reward for an authoritarian regime, but a gesture of solidarity with the citizens who still believe in Europe and its values.
Serbia does not ask for Europe’s charity, only for the confirmation that Europe is still what we believe it to be: a space where words are not punished, where thought is not imprisoned, and where the dignity of every human being is worth more than political convenience.
President von der Leyen, if you are already here, you cannot ignore us.
This message is written by Radivoje Jovović, on behalf of all those who cannot speak publicly, from his place of detention.
