The Belgrade Centre for Human Rights regrets that the Serbian state authorities have yet again made concessions to the most regressive forces in society. The Niš local authorities are ready to retract before hypocritical protests staged by residents of a city street against it carrying the name of the famous artist Šaban Bajramović. The blatancy and malice of the protests cannot be glossed over by the initiative to “reward” Bajramović, a Roma, by naming a street or building after him in the area “his people live in” i.e. in the Roma settlement. The other alleged reasons invoked by the protesters are mere bare-faced hypocrisy: so many streets and squares in Serbia have been renamed without consulting the people residing there by force of circumstance. Change of address in official documents takes minutes in any municipality. The South Boulevard is already called a “boulevard” and “South” definitely is not an attribute that must be preserved as a sign of respect of tradition.
Apart from regretting that such regressive attitudes still persist and have a voice in Serbia’s society, the BCHR condemns the Niš competent authorities for retracting, for again willing to share their powers with an insignificant group of dissatisfied citizens, for again presenting Serbia as a state in which racism and discrimination are legitimate and desirable.
