Headlines: demonstrations, manhunts and tear gas, ultra-tense climate in Lesbos

Text by: Florentin Cassonnet | Mail from the Balkans

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It's an almost insurrectionary atmosphere that has reigned since the beginning of the week on the island of Lesbos. After a demonstration at the Moria camp violently repressed by the police, residents attacked the migrants. Some blame these abuses on the new repressive policies of the Conservative government.
Refugees in Greece: demonstrations, manhunts and tear gas, ultra-tense climate in Lesbos
North Macedonia: 53 migrants found in the back of a truck

For twenty years, joining the European Union has been the only political prospect offered to the countries of the Western Balkans. However, this prospect was blocked by the veto opposed by France to the opening of negotiations with Albania and North Macedonia, and the "new methodology" proposed by the Commission is unlikely to revive it. Today, it is the very meaning of the European project that is called into question.
Faced with the European deadlock, the great solitude of civil societies in the Balkans

Did the DPS shoot itself in the foot by forcefully passing the law on religious freedom? For six weeks, rallies have not faltered and the party of "lord" Đukanović begins to tremble while legislative elections are scheduled for October.
Montenegro: the processions that rock the regime
Montenegro: Milo Đukanović, thirty years of unbroken reign
Serbian Defense Minister on "provocation mission" in Montenegro

The first mosque in Slovenia opens its doors this week in Ljubljana, more than half a century after the filing of the first building request. It was necessary to overcome the financial obstacles and the opposition of the nationalists.
Islam in Slovenia: Ljubljana finally has its mosque
Balkan Islam: a tradition of tolerance threatened?

On February 7, the Constitutional Court made a historic decision recognizing same-sex couples the right to adopt. If the left welcomes, the parties and movements close to the Catholic Church did not take off. Overview of reactions.
Croatia opens adoption to gay couples, reactionaries scold

With the approach of the legislative and municipal elections announced for April 26, the atmosphere is bleak in Serbia. Refusing to " legitimize an autocratic regime ", the majority of the opposition decided to boycott these elections, running the risk of finding themselves completely marginalized and of strengthening power a little more. Some criticize this choice.
Serbia elections: boycott or not boycott, opposition tears
Serbia: Aleksandar Vučić, the authoritarian drift

Two news items have brought the scourge of domestic violence back to the Romanian media scene: the murder of a woman by her husband under a removal order and the assault of a television star by her partner. But the Romanian authorities are still not tackling the problem head on.
Domestic violence in Romania: women still at the mercy of their spouses

For eight years, the capital of Herzegovina has had no mayor or city council. Several local public institutions are now in agony, starting with the city's orphanage. Its director sounds the alarm.
Bosnia and Herzegovina: the orphanage, symbol of the bankruptcy of Mostar

Will he be 100%, despite his ankle injury, for his first All Star game, Friday night in Chicago? Selected in the "Team Lebron", Luka Dončić should nevertheless be one of the attractions of this 2020 edition. Portrait of the young Slovenian who panics the counters of the NBA.
Basketball: Slovenian prodigy Luka Dončić lives his American dream in the NBA

In late January, Romanian justice again acquitted two former Securitate officers accused of torturing the dissident Gheorghe Ursu to death in 1985. For his son, who has been fighting for years to have this state crime recognized, as for many historians, it is a sign of the persistent influence of the old political police.
Romania: justice still under the thumb of the Securitate?

The lights of the Tirana National Theater do not want to go out. For two years, artists and citizens have come together to defend this cultural and heritage center of the Albanian capital, promised to be destroyed by the government of Edi Rama. A struggle for culture, against corruption.
Albania: two years of resistance at the National Theater in Tirana

He is one of the best journalists in Serbia who died on February 5 of a cruel illness. Founder of the independent weekly Vreme in 1991, at the start of the wars in Yugoslavia, Dragoljub Žarković had tirelessly fought nationalism, for the truth, without compromise.
Serbia: in memoriam Dragoljub Žarković, founding father of the weekly Vreme

In his latest novel, Lisière , Kapka Kassabova walks the borders between Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, in the forests where the Thracian tribes dug the earth in search of gold, in the valleys that the shipwrecked of the block of East were trying to go up to pass to the West, in the villages where the fire and the springs are celebrated. The legends respond to the tragic tales of these populations of margins a hundred times mixed, the destinies meet in the same torrent of Balkan history ... Meeting.
Bulgaria: Kapka Kassabova, an author on the edge

The Beli Manastir tool library is open to everyone. In addition to lending the necessary equipment, the association, which brings together volunteers from the Roma community, encourages mutual aid and social dialogue while breaking down prejudices. A unique initiative in Croatia. Reportage.
Croatia: a "tool library" against inequality and prejudice

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