Balkan News

With new regional and international tensions, internal political quarrels, stagnating economies and worsening public services, many people in the Balkans will probably want to forget the past year as 12 wasted months.

Despite police moves to stop any more rallies, thousands of people gathered again on Sunday in Banja Luka, in Bosnia's mainly Serb entity, to continue months of protests over the unsolved murder of David Dragicevic.

Tens of thousands of protesters marched again through the streets of Belgrade on Saturday, voicing anger at President Aleksandar Vucic and calling on him to fire the Interior Minister.

Kosovo President Hashim Thaci alleged in court that opposition Vetevendosje party leader Albin Kurti and one of his MPs were behind the ‘People’s Eye’ organisation, which is accused of trying to violently destabilise the state.

Four former Bosniak fighters were charged with involvement in abusing and torturing Bosnian Serb prisoners of war in the Gorazde and Visegrad areas in 1992 and 1993.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has sacked half his cabinet in response to the massive student protests that have exposed the scale of popular discontent with his rule.

The Bosnian prosecution indicted more people for war crimes in 2018 than in the previous year, but the number of prosecutors working on the cases is still higher than the number of indictments, a BIRN analysis shows.

Eight former fighters were indicted for wartime crimes against Serb civilians who were unlawfully detained and allegedly tortured and sexually abused in the Lukavac area in 1992.

Prime Minister promises action in January after the murder of a policeman who was responding to a bank robbery, which has put the lack of insurance for officers back into the spotlight.

The end of the year is usually a time for taking stock of life, whether personal, professional or political. The same sentiment is reflected in our Premium articles this week, spanning energy security, hybrid warfare or political turbulence. 

The Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre NGO said a Serbian court has acquitted two Bosnian Serb ex-soldiers of committing a war crime by killing five Bosniaks during the Bosnian conflict.

Hundreds of people from Kosovo took the witness stand against those behind the bloodshed of the 1998-99 war. Some say they found little solace by testifying in court, and are still haunted by what they saw.

Macedonia in 2018 adopted a law that extends the use of the Albanian language and begun probing for truth in some of the murky court cases that troubled inter-ethnic relations under the previous regime.

Concerned by the spread of radical Islamism, Bosnia adopted a five-year strategy to counter the threat in 2015. But the funds have not been allocated to implement it, according to a BIRN BiH investigation.

Almost all parties with realistic chances of winning seats in Moldova's parliament have registered for the February elections – with pro-EU opposition parties fielding a cast of newcomers and the older parties relying on more established names.

Former Belgrade mayor Dragan Djilas says “any clever statesman” would sit up and listen if tens of thousands are taking to the streets.

The former commander of the Bosnian Army’s Fourth Corps, Ramiz Drekovic, was indicted for committing a war crime by ordering artillery attacks on a Serb-populated village in the Konjic area in 1995.

Kosovo's state healthcare workers are ending the year with a two-day country-wide strike, demanding higher salaries.

Macedonia’s Social Democrats have made big moves abroad, but disappointed at home. Both fronts are important if the country and the rest of the Western Balkans are to succeed.

Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj was found guilty by the Hague war crimes court but remains an MP, while other war criminals continue to play public roles despite their convictions.