Latest news with #Serbs
The Herald Scotland
a day ago
- Sport
- The Herald Scotland
Hibs and Dundee United learn who they'll face in Euro draws
The draw for the third stage was carried out earlier and should David Gray's side make it through, they would then get Norwegians Fredrikstad FK. Read more: Lose and they would drop into the Conference League. The Easter Road men have now learned they would face Ukrainians Olexandriya or Serbs Partizan Belgrade in the third round of Conference League qualifying. Dundee United were also in the draw for that and if they can get past Luxembourg side UNA Strassen in the second round, they would then be up against Decic from Montenegro or Rapid Vienna.
Straits Times
5 days ago
- Politics
- Straits Times
Bosnia's peace envoy moves to unblock state finances, Serbs cry foul
FILE PHOTO: Bosnia's international High Representative Christian Schmidt during the interview for Reuters in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, October 10, 2023. REUTERS/Antonio Bronic/File Photo SARAJEVO - Bosnia's peace envoy issued a ruling on Thursday to clear a long-standing state debt that has blocked the 2025 budget and deepened a political crisis, but Serb politicians rejected his move, raising the prospect of more turmoil. Envoy Christian Schmidt, using his powers to intervene in laws and finance, ruled that debt would be paid out of the autonomous Serb Republic's share of road tolls, and said his final decision would come into force immediately. Serb ministers - who argue the debt to Slovenia's Viaduct company should be paid out of the profits of Bosnia's national central bank - said Schmidt's imposition of a ruling undermined the fractured nation's complex balance of powers. The dispute underlined the challenges of governing a country - an EU candidate made up of the Bosniak-Croat Federation and the Serb Republic - under the fragile Dayton peace agreement that ended Bosnia's 1992-95 war. Schmidt has his powers under a separate accord, though the Serbs do not recognise his appointment. "Schmidt ... does not have the right to make decisions and everything he does is breaking Bosnia and Herzegovina down," Serb Republic President Milorad Dodik told a press conference. "This shows that European politics here has collapsed," added Dodik, a pro-Russian nationalist who wants the Serb Republic to secede from Bosnia. Dodik had accused the EU of backing Schmidt, a former German government minister. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Singapore Driverless bus in Sentosa gets green light to run without safety officer in first for S'pore World US strikes destroyed only one of three Iranian nuclear sites, says new report Business 5 things to know about Kuok Hui Kwong, tycoon Robert Kuok's daughter and Shangri-La Asia head honcho Singapore Man charged over manufacturing DIY Kpods at Yishun home; first such case in Singapore Singapore Fatal abuse of Myanmar maid in Bishan: Traffic Police officer sentenced to 10 years' jail Singapore Two women jailed for submitting fake university certificates to MOM for employment passes Singapore Sex first, then you can sell my flat: Women property agents fend off indecent proposals and harassment Singapore Premium China carmaker Hongqi, known for Xi Jinping's limos, to launch in Singapore in 2026 HYDRO-POWER DEBT The Serb Republic incurred the debt to Viaduct after it terminated a contract for the building of a hydro-power plant in 2013, said Zeljka Cvijanovic, a Serb member of Bosnia's presidency who was the Serb Republic premier at the time. The company took the regional government to arbitration through the Washington-based International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, Schmidt said in his ruling. That body ruled in April 2022 that Bosnia as a whole should pay Viaduct nearly 80 million Bosnian marka ($47.4 million) - with interest fees taking it to its current level of about 120 million marka, Schmidt added. Bosniak and Croat members of the country's tripartite inter-ethnic presidency have refused to approve the 2025 state budget until it is clear how the debt will be paid. The stand-off is part of a broader political crisis that erupted after Dodik was sentenced in February to one year in jail and banned for six years from politics for defying Schmidt's decisions. He appealed against the court's ruling. On Thursday Schmidt ruled that 120 million marka from the Serb Republic's share of road tolls would be allocated to the Treasury to settle the Viaduct claim. "This approach is in line with a principle that one who incurs the debt must pay for it," he said. In a separate ruling, he said that the central bank's profits could now be used to pay to upgrade voting systems ahead of general elections due in 2026. Serb Republic Prime Minister Radovan Viskovic said his government will ask Serb ministers in the national government to dispute Schmidt's decisions. REUTERS
Telegraph
7 days ago
- General
- Telegraph
My cousin was the ‘Angel of Mostar' – 30 years on she's delivering aid in Gaza and Ukraine
My cousin Sally Becker had a strange recurring nightmare during childhood. Someone was about to remove her leg in hospital and she needed to escape. It instilled in her a long-term fear of losing a limb. But it somehow never stopped her from putting herself in countless situations where this might come to pass. Given the existence she has led in the past three decades, repeatedly entering war zones to save the lives of children caught up in bloody conflicts, it feels like a small miracle she's here at all. Since her early 30s, she's been shot in the leg, inhaled chlorine gas, gone on hunger strike in a Kosovo jail and crossed borders under sniper fire. She has helped evacuate civilians from Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine and Gaza. Witnessed the worst of human suffering and carried on, even when her freelance humanitarian missions threatened to become engulfed in red tape and resistance. Facing her for the first time in her tidy sitting room in Hove, East Sussex, I'm struck by how much like the rest of my family she is in appearance and manner. And yet how unlike the rest of us, hurling herself into life-threatening environments from which most would recoil in horror. She was dubbed the Angel of Mostar when she first came to prominence during the Balkans conflict in the early 1990s. The story of this plucky British woman driving an ambulance across the frontline in Bosnia to evacuate sick and injured children captured the public imagination. It captured mine too, not least because she's my father's first cousin, and my first cousin once removed. For years I had heard of her exploits and wondered how she did it. Marvelled at the genetic shake-down that meant she fearlessly entered war zones, while I very much did not. Had she always been so intrepid, so undaunted by danger? 'I was a bit worried,' she says, recalling the days before she set off on her very first mission, a typically understated and down-to-earth response. A bit worried is how I feel before a mild-thrill theme park ride. Sally, now in her 60s, is discussing how she felt when she ignored the warning of her father (my great-uncle Jack) and hitched a ride to war-torn Bosnia with a humanitarian aid convoy. 'You can't get insurance for dismemberment!' her dad called to her from the hallway before she left. He thought she'd lost her mind. My cousin was undeterred. After what she calls a 'fairly normal' childhood in Brighton, the second of four children, Sally had spent her 20s travelling and working as an artist. She was living on the Costa del Sol in Spain by the time the break-up of Yugoslavia at the start of the 1990s led to violent struggle between Serbs, Muslims and Croats. As opposing ethnic groups fought for territory, families that had lived alongside each other as neighbours found themselves on opposite sides of a brutal civil war. 'I didn't even know where Bosnia was,' Sally admits. But one April afternoon in 1993, a news broadcast stopped her in her tracks. The moment her life changed direction forever came when a civilian in war-torn Sarajevo – a woman accompanied by a little boy – looked straight into the camera and asked, 'Why is no-one helping us?' Sally took it personally. 'It resonated with me,' she says. 'I felt like she was speaking to me directly, and I thought, 'Well yeah, why aren't I doing something?' So I decided I would.' In her new memoir, Where Angels Fear to Tread, she tells the incredible story of what happened next. It's the story of a life spent going where the need was greatest, however perilous this was. Of taking huge personal risks to help as many people as possible. Of doing what she could to 'make a difference', as it's now known. 'People didn't really use that term then,' she reflects, 'but perhaps that's what I'd always wanted to do but hadn't found a way.' Becoming the 'angel' She had thought of becoming a doctor when she was younger. But when she asked her GP if she could borrow his books, he just laughed. Lacking both medical experience and engineering skills, she was turned away by various humanitarian organisations. Only when she approached a Croatian one called Suncokret was she finally accepted as a volunteer. Suncokret arranged for her to join a convoy of trucks setting off from Godstone in Surrey in May 1993 and travelling overland to the Balkans. 'I thought I'd be there for two or three weeks,' she says. 'Instead, here we are, 30-odd years later.' Delivering aid to a hospital under the control of Croat forces on the west side of the historic Bosnian city of Mostar, Sally saw wards 'filled with scarred and bandaged victims of the war raging less than a mile away,' she writes, in prose that capture the hell of armed conflict and its impact on civilians, as seen from the closest quarters. Lodging in a hotel in Čitluk, 14 miles from Mostar, she was kept awake at night by the sound of missiles. It didn't scare her away, and she spent those first weeks in Bosnia ferrying aid to the hospital and helping a community living close to the frontline. By June, divided Mostar was under siege from the Croatian Defence Council (HVO). They controlled access to the city and international aid organisations couldn't get in. Sally was determined. At the hospital she met the head of the Croatian Military Health Authorities, Dr Ivan Bagarić. She told him she and her colleagues had hired a car, a white Renault 4, but needed permission to pass through the checkpoints in Croat-controlled areas. Dr Bagarić obliged, meaning Sally was able to drive back and forth from Čitluk to Mostar delivering aid – seemingly the only foreign aid worker at that time who could. One day, a member of the UN Civil Police told her of the plight of a three-year-old Muslim boy living in East Mostar. He was suffering a serious heart problem and desperately needed surgery. Could Sally use her apparent influence with the Croats to obtain permission to evacuate him, asked the officer. Dr Bagarić gave her permission to do so, 'Not for one child but for all the sick and wounded children and their mothers,' he said. It marked a turning point in Sally's war work. 'I would have risked my life to save just one child,' she writes. 'Ivan was giving me a chance to save them all.' A ceasefire was arranged and Sally set off in an ambulance, steering around the spikes of deadly mines that protruded from the road. Crossing a disused airfield, she came under sniper fire and terror truly struck her for the first time. She was convinced she would be killed. 'Actually being in control of a vehicle which was being targeted by snipers was awful,' she says. 'I had a ceasefire arranged so I didn't expect to be shot at, it was totally unexpected. I just acted on instinct and decided to carry on driving while ducking beneath the steering wheel and putting my foot down.' She remembered from films how cars swerved to and fro to avoid being hit by gunfire. She did the same and somehow escaped injury. The mission was ultimately a success, resulting in the evacuation of five injured and sick children, who were taken to Italy and then the US for medical care. It made headlines around the world. The 'angel' moniker was coined, and it stuck. I was at primary school at the time and knew nothing of the Balkans and only a little about that side of my father's family. We lived in Leeds, far from the Beckers in Brighton, who my dad used to visit as a child. I heard about the Angel of Mostar and felt proud to be related to her, even if I didn't actually know where Mostar was. We learnt of Sally's exploits from the media, and no doubt also from my grandmother (her aunt). It all seemed exciting, if remote. I had no grasp of the danger she was in. Then, in July 2012, I was watching the opening ceremony of the London Olympics and suddenly there she was. Dressed in white, my cousin was one of eight notable figures carrying the Olympic flag into the stadium while the world watched. She walked alongside Ban Ki-Moon, then secretary-general of the UN , Shami Chakrabarti, then head of civil rights group Liberty and others. 'Oh my gosh,' I said, 'it's Sally Becker! Did we know she was going to be there?' It came as a surprise to me, but perhaps it shouldn't have. She had ended up evacuating about 300 children from Bosnia during the conflict, and had spent the years since then engaged in similar activities in other war zones. The numbers she saved had climbed into the hundreds. It was, she explains, that initial breakthrough in Bosnia that spurred her on. 'Suddenly finding that I was able to save a life changed everything for me,' she says. 'I felt like I was finally doing something worthwhile.' 'I didn't give death much thought' The publicity her work in Bosnia received helped draw attention to the plight of civilians but didn't come without criticism. The UN, she says, made out she was some kind of maverick. 'They said, 'We can't have every granny in a bus turning up.'' (She was in her early 30s at the time.) She describes the negativity she encountered from some as 'frustrating', more because it was unhelpful to what she was trying to achieve than because it was hurtful. Doing what she has done must require immense reserves of mental fortitude. But on the sunny spring day when I visit her, I learn she is far from immune to the inevitable physical hardships of working in war zones. Her friends called her 'the wimp of Mostar', she smiles. 'It's not that I get scared easily, it's that I don't like walking, I don't like being cold, I'm not into camping or sitting on uncomfortable chairs. I'm really a bit of a pain. But out there I had to face all those things and a lot more.' The distaste for uncomfortable chairs is understandable, given an episode in Kosovo, another part of the former Yugoslavia where ethnic tension had been escalating since 1993. It erupted into open conflict in March 1998 between Serb police and the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In December 1997, Sally started a campaign to raise money for aid and medical supplies to help civilians in the province. She appealed for British volunteers to join her on the mission, and set off with them in a convoy of ambulances and trucks from Brighton to deliver several tonnes of aid. In June 1998, after fighting had intensified, the borders to Kosovo were closed so she decided to bring the aid to some of the thousands of refugees who had fled to Albania. With 26 volunteers aged 30 to 65, she drove to the port of Bari in Italy, then boarded a ferry to the country. When the aid had been delivered and the rest of the convoy was returning home, Sally crossed the mountains on foot with a guide, to deliver paediatric medical supplies to a hospital in Junik, a town in western Kosovo surrounded by Serb forces. Here she was asked to evacuate sick and injured children and their families back across the border to Albania. It would be a hazardous journey, but she agreed and set out on foot with two guides and a group of 24 women and children. Those who weren't well enough to walk were carried on mules. Resting in woods at the border, they heard machine gun fire tear through the air. A helicopter gunship appeared overhead. While the rest of the group made it safely back to Junik, Sally stayed to help a woman and two children. After they were pinned down by gunfire for an hour, she surrendered and was arrested and taken to a police station in Gjakova in Kosovo. The Serb paramilitary police interrogated her while forcing her to sit for three days and three nights on a broken chair that could only be prevented from toppling if she balanced using her feet (an ordeal she blames for back problems she suffers today). Brought before a local judge, she was sentenced to 30 days in Lipljan Prison for crossing the border without a visa. She must have known she might not survive some of these situations. Must have reckoned with the prospect of death but somehow either accepted it or pushed it aside? 'I was always an optimist,' she shrugs. 'So I probably didn't give it much thought.' 'I'll do it as long as I can' After Kosovo, Sally became a single mother to a daughter, Billie, now 25. I was informed of this development, oddly, by my GCSE history teacher who had read about my cousin in the news. Looking back now, I realise that while I was sitting through history lessons, she was making history and not just headlines. Billie's father was Bill Foxton, a decorated former soldier who worked in conflict zones around the world and who Sally had met in Kosovo, but the relationship didn't last. If Sally had to go away, she left Billie with her mother back home. But motherhood raised the stakes. 'It became much more frightening because there was so much more to lose,' she says. 'Apart from my mum, Billie only had me.' Still, in 2017, she travelled to Mosul in Iraq, again to help evacuate women and children caught in the crossfire as Iraqi forces fought to take the city back from Isis. 'I didn't tell [Billie] I was going to Mosul until I got back,' she says. 'The possibility that [if I was captured] she might see me being held by Isis dressed in an orange jumpsuit doesn't bear thinking about.' Does her daughter ever try to talk her out of going into conflict zones? 'No, she doesn't, she knows it's pointless,' she laughs. Fortunately she can now help save lives remotely as well as in the field, having set up an app called Save A Child, which connects doctors in conflict zones with an international network of specialist paediatric consultants. It enables doctors in remote places, such as parts of Afghanistan, to upload paediatric case histories and receive expert advice on how to treat a child. The app hasn't kept her at home though. In the last few years she has been to Ukraine and helped evacuate 240 children and mothers, and briefly to Egypt to help evacuate nine injured Palestinian children and their families from Gaza. Sitting in her comfortable home on a quiet and leafy residential street near the southern English coast, I wonder how she adjusts each time she returns. She's done it for so long, she says, that it doesn't feel jarring, not really. 'It's more that when I get back I think, 'Oh my goodness, I can have whatever I want to eat,' because obviously it's always difficult to get nice food in a war zone.' Can she imagine a time when she decides not to go any more? 'It's becoming physically difficult as I get older. But I'll do it as long as I can.' After that, she won't quit altogether; she'll continue her work remotely. My cousin isn't someone who stops, I realise. Wars are still raging across the world and she's still got so much to do.
LeMonde
15-07-2025
- Politics
- LeMonde
In Srebrenica, 30 years after the genocide, the 'vicious circle' of denial continues
"Welcome to the Las Vegas of Bosnia, we attract at least as much attention [as the American city]." On Wednesday, July 9, the mayor of Srebrenica, Milos Vucic, displayed this peculiar sense of humor, two days before the July 11 commemorations marking the 30 th anniversary of the 1995 genocide in his city. This Bosnian Serb, who is also a cousin of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, said he would not participate in the ceremonies meant to honor the more than 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks killed in a matter of days by the forces of Serb General Ratko Mladic, in what is considered the worst massacre of civilians in Europe since the end of World War II. "I was not invited, and I do not see why I should go when my deputy [a Bosniak] isn't coming here," said the 37-year-old official during a small counter-ceremony he organized in a predominantly Serb neighborhood of his municipality. Decorated with Serbian flags and set to the Serbian national anthem, the event was dedicated solely to Serb victims of the war, which claimed around 100,000 lives overall between 1992 and 1995. "Serbs were killed in much more horrific ways than the Bosniaks, for example by decapitation, as seen in certain Muslim countries, but have you ever read anything about them in the international press?" Vucic exclaimed, criticizing what he described as a "double standard" from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which convicted Mladic of genocide in 2021. It mattered little that the Serb victims commemorated on Wednesday by a few dozen Serbs gathered around the mayor of Srebrenica did not die on that precise date, or that the local commander of the Bosniak forces, whom they accuse of being responsible for their deaths, has been systematically acquitted by international and Bosnian courts. The main objective was to stage a counter-event ahead of July 11, which is expected to draw tens of thousands of people this year. Several senior European officials, such as European Council President Antonio Costa and French Minister for European Affairs Benjamin Haddad, are expected to attend in this eastern Balkan town.
Euronews
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Euronews
European Commission takes no position on Kosovo-Telekom Serbia dispute
Kosovo's Prime Minister Albin Kurti has launched a renewed attack on Serbia's largest telecom operator, Telekom Serbia, accusing it of waging what he called 'a hybrid war' against Kosovo, with the company responding by saying it has been a frequent target for the authorities in Pristina. A false bomb alert triggered the evacuation of the Kosovo parliament in Pristina last week, prompting Kurti to share a Facebook post by Interior Minister Xhelal Sveçla, who claimed that the phone number behind the threat was registered in Serbia and belonged to Telekom Serbia's mobile operator MTS. Kurti praised the Kosovan authorities for their 'prompt response' in the investigation and repeated his past claims that the incident reaffirmed the existence of Serbia's ongoing hybrid war against Kosovo. The company's management stated that it has been subjected to repeated attacks and pressure from Kosovo leaders in recent times. Vladimir Lučić, CEO of Telekom Serbia, strongly rejected the bomb threat incident accusations in a statement to Euronews Serbia, describing them as 'an absurd and shameful attack on a company that has long been a thorn in the side of the Pristina authorities for two years." He said the attacks are taking place almost daily as a form of wider political pressure, including a failed attempt to shut down its presence in Kosovo two years ago, which was stopped after the international community's intervention. Lučić added that Telekom Serbia operates in accordance with the law and international agreements, including the Brussels Agreement, according to which the company has 28 base stations in areas where ethnic Serbs live in Kosovo, while its headquarters and technical infrastructure are located in Belgrade. Brussels chooses not to step in A former province of Serbia, Kosovo declared independence in 2008, which Belgrade has so far refused to recognise. More than 100 countries have recognised its independence — but not the likes of Russia, China and five EU member states. Since 2011, Brussels has facilitated a dialogue between the two countries designed to decrease tensions and resolve bilateral issues — which is also one of the requirements for both countries' progress along their path toward full-fledged EU membership. However, the two leaders — Kurti and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić — have failed to participate in trilateral meetings with EU representatives since May 2023, casting doubt on the effectiveness of the Brussels dialogue as a means to find solutions to outstanding issues. When asked by Euronews for a reaction to the Kosovo leader's statements on Telekom Serbia and the operator's claims of repeated attacks, the European Commission chose not to address the developing political implications but instead referred to the technical framework. "Compliance with the Kosovo regulatory framework is the responsibility of the independent regulatory authority for electronic and postal communications," the European Commission said in a statement to Euronews. Anouar El Anouni, a spokesperson for the European External Action Service (EEAS), said that the matter falls under the jurisdiction of Kosovo's national authorities and that telecommunications compliance is the exclusive responsibility of Kosovo's independent regulatory authority. El Anouni also recalled that under the EU-facilitated dialogue, agreements on telecommunications were reached in 2013 and 2015 to normalise operations. These agreements enabled MTS to operate legally in Kosovo. Big hopes from Washington Meanwhile, the CEO of Telekom Serbia is counting on US support to obtain a third 5G licence in Kosovo, which was agreed upon by Pristina as part of an international deal but was then repeatedly refused. Serbia has been hoping that US President Donald Trump can decrease regional friction by promoting economic cooperation and growth — something Serbian Foreign Minister Marko Đurić said last week officials in Pristina have failed to adopt. At the same time, Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani praised Trump for his role in de-escalating tensions between Kosovo and Serbia in recent times. "We have the continued support of the United States, and President Trump was very clear that he was the person who stopped Serbia from continuing its efforts," she said at a recent event at Johns Hopkins University in Washington. "I am very convinced that (war) has been stopped thanks to America's role and its direct involvement in preserving and protecting peace," Osmani added. Meanwhile, these and other similar statements have sparked a reaction from Richard Grenell, the former US special envoy for Serbia and Kosovo negotiations, who said Osmani was misinterpreting Trump's remarks, making it seem as though Serbia was about to go on an offensive against Kosovo. "Shame on Vjosa Osmani for manipulating President Donald Trump's words," Grenell said in a post on X.
