Citizens who gathered a few days ago in protest in front of the Belgrade Assembly were attacked and beaten – with chains, cables, clubs, umbrellas – by members of a private company hired to safeguard the Assembly building. The police, although present, stood calmly by the whole time and observed the fight that took place after the attack. Eventually, they arrested five citizens, activists from the “The Bridge Remains” movement, among them a distinguished writer, winner of the supposedly most prestigious national award for literature. None of the security workers, some of whom were recognized as known criminals, were detained, even though they caused the fight by exceeding the authority of private security.
It is interesting and bizarre that the mayor of Belgrade found it convenient, at a time when such events abound, to promote yet another, new “security” structure – the Security of the City of Belgrade.
At the end of last year, he presented more or less the same idea, when he announced the establishment of the “Belgrade Security Service”. Back then, like many others, I reacted and warned that it was not possible to implement this in a legally valid way. It is not in accordance with the Constitution and the Law on the Capital City, which determine the competences of the city of Belgrade and which does not allow for the establishment of a security service. It was also completely unclear what kind of authority the new service would even have. If it fell under the authority of the local self-government, then it falls under the Law on Communal Militia, which already exists and operates, or rather, at least it should operate, in accordance with the powers established by law. Why, then, should a new local structure be established? The establishment of some kind of “auxiliary police” would require changes to the Law on Police. The government has already tried something similar once, at the end of 2022, but luckily it gave up and withdrew a scandalously bad draft law that presented a danger to a number of human rights. Even if we consider only the terminology, the name “security service” was in direct contradiction to the Law on the Basics of the System of Security Service Regulation, which expressly establishes that the security services are the Security Information Agency, the Military Security Agency and the Military Intelligence Agency, and leaves no room for the creation of any other security service.
The mayor, or someone more important behind him, out of the multitude of objections, seems to have decided to accept only the formal ones. So now we are not talking about the “Belgrade Security Service”, but “Security of the City of Belgrade”. All other objections were completely ignored, which again confronts us with three major problems.
First is the problem of the obvious lack of a valid legal basis, but also the lack of need for the formation of this new security structure, and the lack of sense in doing so. The discrepancy with the already mentioned valid laws is impossible to overcome, so there are no answers to a number of potentially important practical questions, for example, about the powers of the “security,” or training, security checks or the (in)admissibility of membership in a political party for its members.
In addition to obvious illegality, the complete lack of transparency is also a problem. Everything is done without a public tender, hidden from the public, by direct bargaining. We heard (albeit only unofficially) that the contract will be signed under conditions already defined with a private company. But despite the formal demands, the public is not aware of what those specific conditions might be. It is known that the software procurement contract has already been signed and that some official vehicles have already been purchased for the famous “Security” (they are also visible in the promo video clips), but it is not known how much or at what price. This way of spending public money is always corrupt, so it is particularly tragicomic that the government does it while at the same time loudly talking about “the fiercest fight against corruption ever seen”.
But there is something worse than corruption. It is known that the contract for the procurement of software for the new security structure has already been signed with a company that is very close to the ruling party, the company on whose premises the party’s call center was located during the election. And that the main contract will be signed with a company close to the ruling party. In all probability, the already mentioned official vehicles were acquired in a similar way. Many years of observed practice have shown that the current government mainly implements big deals, for big money, through companies close to the ruling party. Sometimes so close that it gives the impression that these companies are in fact “epigones”, mere economic “branches” of the party.
This time, there is big money in play, of course, but also something bigger than that. The authorities have let the citizens know that there is a possibility that, in the foreseeable future, in addition to the very weakly controlled police and communal militia and barely symbolically police-controlled private security, they will get (and pay for) another completely fluid and completely uncontrolled “security” structure – the party police. And such “security”, regardless of whether they wear brown, black or blue (even “Nemanjić blue”) uniforms, have always been, and will always be, a great danger to citizens and their rights.
Translated by Marijana Simić
Peščanik.net, 13.03.2025.
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