For the past several decades, Serbia has seen many populist narratives. Instead of becoming meaningless over time, as the facts surface, these narratives keep popping up incredibly often and cause less and less public reaction. One of the consequences of the lack of reaction is the increasingly frequent acceptance of complete falsehoods as facts or at least statements which “must hold at least some grain of truth”. Although there are many good examples, these days, for the umpteenth time, we are hearing one specific such story: the one about organizations, groups and individuals (students) who are supposedly receiving money from abroad.
It is important to understand the context of this narrative. First, those who spread it (including government officials) often openly accuse the West of giving money. These accusations most frequently do not contain information about the country of origin of the money, exactly how much money and when, from whom (donors can be state or private), who exactly has received the money, whether it was in cash or via bank transfer. The latter is not just an unimportant detail, because receiving money through an account (standard practice for all NGOs in Serbia) means that institutions have absolute insight into money flows, and that organizations submit reports that are publicly available. As for the activities that are financed, two extremely imprecise formulations are always mentioned – “to overthrow Serbia” or “to overthrow the government” (the current version of the latter is “to overthrow Vučić”). When one adds to these activities the (again imprecise) information that the money is given by “foreign agencies”, most will believe that this is some version of Star Wars in which the evil Empire wants to enslave poor little freedom-loving Serbia. Even reasonable people who are not overly inclined to conspiracy theories would believe that maybe not all of this is true, but that there must be some grain of truth to these statements. The problem is that the truth is actually very boring – no one is destroying Serbia, and it is in the interest of the West that Serbia and all the countries of the region are as stable as possible. This way, they will get more developed countries as their neighbours with whom they can trade and do business, instead of allocating money for humanitarian and other aid (like in Eastern Europe). Although they make unnecessary mistakes in all of this, donors are certainly not in the business of destroying institutions. On the other hand, Russia and China apparently never have to worry about such accusations. Despite Sputnik and programs like the one on TV Happy, no one believes that their secret services are doing something bad, that there is “someone” or “some money” behind their activities. Instead, there is an incredible prejudice that they are not involved in spreading influence or undermining the stability of Serbia. In the past two decades, we have very rarely heard that the Russian secret service has done anything, while the Chinese service was hardly ever mentioned.
The key is to demystify the toxic narrative about Western money. Various donors from Western countries (ministries of foreign affairs, development agencies, ministries of other countries), private donors (who mostly operate globally) and multilateral organizations in which Serbia is a member or wants to become a member (UN and its agencies, OSCE, Council of Europe and EU ) give a lot of money to different actors in Serbia. However, the most important point is that this money is not intended for the destruction of Serbia, the overthrow of the government or Vučić, fomenting “colour revolutions”, nor for the Serbs to be declared a “genocidal people” – but for the building of institutions that will guarantee that everyone living in Serbia has equal access to justice, and to diverse sources of information about important social issues, that corruption is at an “acceptable” level (and that there is systemic fight against it), that we confront the truth about war crimes (and not deny them), that there is room for different minorities in society and that their problems are addressed, that those who enforce the law (police, prosecution and courts) are able to do their job according to the laws, and that the elections are fair and free. All of the above would lead to a favourable environment for economic development, but not at any cost (e.g. with respect to environmental protection laws). Of course, there are also a large number of programs concerning women, youth, art, professional cooperation of various actors, helping refugees, etc.
The next important point is who gets the money. Contrary to the popular opinion that the money is mainly received by independent media and NGOs, the truth is that the largest amount of foreign (Western) money goes directly to various institutions in Serbia. Many different projects are financed this way, and consideration of their variable effectiveness is a topic for another, dedicated article. Only a small portion of the money from these sources actually goes to organizations, media and media associations based on very clear and publicly available tenders, specific procedures and with frequent audits. No procedure is perfect, but we must let go of the imposed feeling of shame and embarrassment that stems from the fact that an organization is a beneficiary of money from abroad.
The most important point is the type of activity that is financed, which I have already mentioned above. As a long-term employee of a Sweden-based agency which helps various organizations all over the world, including in the Balkans, I have never received any instructions from anyone about who to support and who not to. In my two decades of experience, I have met countless times with employees of the Swedish embassies from the region, the ministry in Stockholm, other embassies, international organizations, etc. I have never heard anyone talking about doing anything destructive to any of the countries in the region, especially not some kind of revolution and overthrow of the government. To demystify these meetings – most of the time, they are actually an exchange of opinions and views regarding what is currently happening in a given society (meeting participants often have different views on this). For the past two decades, the goal of almost all donors (private and state) was to support all six countries of the Western Balkans in becoming members of the EU. Therefore, all donors have their strategies and similar documents that elaborate their view of the problems in a country and list activities they support in order to solve these problems. Denigrating programs and projects by claiming that they are “alleged democratization projects” is senseless, but it is clear that paired with suitable “analysts” it causes the desired effect – the impression that there is something shady in all this.
Rejecting this and other populist narratives is one of the most important needs of society in Serbia. It is difficult to differentiate from ubiquitous xenophobia and popular conspiracy theories, but the cure for this narrative is not silence, shame and embarrassment about sources of funding, but facts and truth, no matter how boring or unbelievable that may seem to some citizens.
The author is the director of Civil Rights Defenders Europe
Translated by Marijana Simić
Peščanik.net, 19.12.2024.
