It’s not often that we Serbs get to be the good guys. Historically, whenever our name is mentioned, it’s usually in relation to accusations of causing World War I or Slobodan Milosevic and the four bloody wars he fomented in the mid-’90s. But ever since refugees from Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere started fleeing their homelands and crashing on Europe’s shores, with more than 200,000 refugees passing through Serbian territory this year, our countrymen have set an example for the rest of the continent, teaching our neighbors, even the larger and wealthier among them, a lesson not only in compassion but also in good policy.
Europe responds to Cameron’s EU reform proposals
MAIN FOCUS: Catalonian parliament votes for secession | 10/11/2015
The Catalonian parliament voted on Monday in favour of a resolution for the region’s secession from Spain. The separatists have put themselves in an impasse with this move, some commentators criticise. Others blame the Catalans’ desire for independence on the EU.
The recent Serbia-Albania football match was like a microcosm of the twenty-first century Balkans: lots of intense, emotional nationalism and “othering” and in the end, the result was completely irrelevant.
A Belgrade view. Photo used with permission of author.It was a pleasant Sunday evening in Elbasan, Albania. Crowds were murmuring in the streets, creating a ruckus rarely seen in the town before. Police were everywhere. Trained snipers were strategically positioned on rooftops of every highrise in town. In approximately 2 hours, an event attracting tens of thousands of people would start; defining everyday life in the Balkans for weeks to come. It was a football game, a EURO qualifier, a game between Albania and its archrival, Serbia.
Why is communist nostalgia on the rise in Eastern Europe, and is it more than just a passing fad?
While the world focuses on refugees arriving in Europe from warzones in the Middle East, the plight of those fleeing war in Ukraine has been forgotten.
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