Vulin's witch hunt: What is hidden behind advocating for the so-called foreign agents law
In the tragic 1990’s, during the regime of Slobodan Milošević, his political opponents were often stigmatized as “foreign mercenaries” in the pro-regime media. Now, three decades later, the forces that constituted an important part of Milošević’s government are calling for a hunt on foreign mercenaries yet again.
It was done at a session of the Serbian Assembly, held to elect the government of Prime Minister Miloš Vučević, by Bojan Torbica, an MP and member of the Presidency of the Socialists’ Movement (Pokret socijalista, PS), a party whose vice president is Aleksandar Vulin, the founder of PS and formerly a well-known member of the Yugoslav Left (Jugoslovenska levica, JUL), which was led by Milošević’s wife Mirjana Marković.
Torbica called for the adoption of the so-called foreign agents law, demanding that all organizations that receive foreign aid be denied government funding, and labeled as foreign agents. He referred to the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and stated that this would affect “non-governmental organizations that openly work against the state and national interests of Serbia”. According to his proposal, such organizations would have to be registered as foreign agents, to report the money they receive from abroad, the activities funded by it, and to present a detailed report on this at the end of every year.
It is clear that in this case Torbica is saying what his party ideologue Aleksandar Vulin is thinking. In fact, Vulin himself has recently, before he was appointed government vice president, discussed a similar topic on a TV program, also referring to the US legislation.
It sounds a bit strange that a man who is under US sanctions for “corruption, involvement in organized crime and drug trafficking, and connections with Russia”, refers to the achievements of that country. It is more likely that Vulin, the recipient of multiple Kremlin decorations and a close political-intelligence friend of Russia’s Number One spy Nikolai Patrushev, found his inspiration during his many visits to Moscow.
American idols of Russia’s man
The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a United States law enacted in 1938 to counter Nazi propaganda, and later amended on several occasions, requires the persons who work for or lobby in the interest of foreign entities to be registered as foreign agents. So, there is no condition that they have to be financed from abroad, nor does this include all those who receive money from outside the US. However, a similar Russian law was somewhat “amended” so that under its provisions, all those who receive support from abroad or are “under foreign influence” are regarded as foreign agents, and, believe it or not, this coincides exactly with what Torbica proposed. As such, this law has become one of Kremlin’s main instruments against anyone who could pose a threat or point to the failures of the government in any way. As the list of foreign agents now includes independent media, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and individuals (numerous journalists, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov, opposition leaders Mikhail Kasyanov and Mikhail Khodorkovsky), many of them had to move abroad to avoid costly fines. Based on that law, without any court ruling, the work of more than 100 media outlets, as well as a large number of NGOs, including scientific foundations and trade associations, has been banned.
Milorad Dodik intends to pass a similar law in Republika Srpska and his government has sent a corresponding bill to the parliament several months ago, but it has not yet been adopted, as it was met with strong criticism from the domestic and international public.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán passed such a law in 2017, but it was then repealed as the European Court of Justice established that it violated EU legislation.
A law on “foreign agents” has recently also ignited Georgia, where tens of thousands of people are gathering in protests against the adoption of the “Russian law” and the intention of the government to, as the protesters claim, push the country away from the EU integration and closer to Moscow. The authorities in Tbilisi have rushed to explain that the protests are aimed to “take power by force using the methods of the Serbian non-governmental organization “Kanvas”, founded by the former “Otpor” activists”. Whether Georgia’s intelligence services consulted on this matter with the former head of BIA Vulin, who often talks about potential color revolutions in Serbia, remains unknown.
Government mouthpiece
In Serbia’s “big tent” coalition in power, which gathers highly diverse ideological allies, from extreme nationalist to allegedly pro-European, Vulin and his party are most often in charge of spreading the nationalist and pro-Russian narrative (the so-called Serb World, frequent verbal conflicts with the neighboring nations, Vulin’s constant “warnings” about attempted “color revolutions”, close cooperation with Moscow, exposing members of the Russian opposition to Kremlin’s intelligence services...). Maja Stojanović, executive director at Civic Initiatives, agrees that it is possible that the proposal put forward by Vulin’s party is, in fact, what is on the mind of the strongest party in power, the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).
“Vulin and his party have always played the role of promoters of what the government is thinking, but is not supposed to say. In order to continue sitting on two chairs at the same time, it is necessary for the SNS officials to talk about the importance of civil society and democracy, but then the SNS satellites deal with that same civil society by demanding laws on foreign agents,” Stojanović tells NIN.
Serbia is undergoing a sharp decline in democracy, according to a recent report by “Freedom House”, and a law of this kind would be yet another confirmation of the country's descent toward autocracy by limiting the ability of NGOs to operate effectively, including many organizations that have nothing to do with politics.
“The intention of every authoritarian government is to silence all criticism. In democratic countries, the organizations that deal with environmental issues, social services, the fight against corruption, investigative journalism, protection against torture, protection of children and other vulnerable groups, as well as other human rights, are funded predominantly from the budget of that country,” Stojanović says.
Those organizations are there to identify and help the state solve systemic problems by discovering corruptive practices, by helping the persons whom the authorities cannot reach that fast, and similar, she explains.
“In Serbia, the first step was to destroy such organizations with threats, lawsuits and negative campaigns, in order to prevent the detection of systemic problems and build a criminalized and captive state. The second step was to divert the vast majority of funds from the budget to fake, government-organized NGOs, which return the money to the parties in power or use it for other, corruptive activities. It was precisely owing to the projects funded by foreign donors that such money flows were discovered. The third step is to have the organizations that criticize the government, which is the role of the civil society, suppressed even further by passing laws aimed at making their work completely impossible,” Stojanović warns.
Criticizing the government, whether it is to point to the corruption, violation of human and minority rights, connections with criminals, or poor state of democracy, has never been an easy task in Serbia. The only difference was in the extent to which the government was ready to accept such criticism, more or less reluctantly, or try to suppress it. The law on foreign agents would be a big step in suppressing criticism of the government coming from the public, rather than the opposition parties. That is what the proposed foreign agents law is actually about, and not about the “unmasking” of those who work for foreign interests. That is clear from the fact that the state itself receives huge foreign aid, which the government officials often boast about publicly. Maja Stojanović also points to that illogical fact.
“Any political party founded on democratic principles understands international solidarity and the need to provide developmental aid to other countries. Most of that developmental aid goes to the state itself, while around three percent go to civil society organizations. Consequently, the accusations about foreign agents make no sense – if civil society is accused of being a foreign agent because of those three percent of developmental aid, then the parties in power should first give up the 97 percent of those same funds,” she tells NIN.