In the spotlight: the Balkans challenged by the new outbreak of Covid-19

A man receives a Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at a clinic in Belgrade, January 13, 2021 © AFP / Vladimir Zivojinovic

Text by: Courrier des Balkans Follow

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Balkans who cry and Balkans who laugh.

While some countries, such as Kosovo and North Macedonia, are experiencing a marked improvement in their health situation, others are hit hard by

the fourth wave of Covid-19

, such as Bulgaria, Romania or Serbia.

One after the other, 

all the countries in the region are introducing health passes

.

However, in Romania, which is experiencing the strongest wave since the start of the pandemic, breaking all records for the number of contaminations and deaths

on a

daily basis,

we laugh a lot, on social networks, at the deaths and overcrowded hospitals

.

As if to keep one's own fear at bay, analyze sociologists.

Bosnia and Herzegovina rocked by corruption scandals

In Bosnia-Herzegovina,

corruption scandals

are on the increase and become issues of the political showdown: oxygen unfit for consumption in Republika Srpska, Chinese ventilators inoperative in the Federation.

Milorad Dodik, the all-powerful master of the Serbian entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina,

will he succeed in using the pandemic to carry out his secession projects?

But, beyond his provocations and his boasting,

does he really have a plan for secession?

Investigation into the impunity of the Orthodox Churches in Romania

A major investigation by

Reporter 

magazine

has just shaken Romania, on " 

the parallel world of the Romanian Orthodox Church

 ": a patriarch who behaves like the CEO of a large company, a well-established system to pump public funding, a cathedral with enormous costs, all without control of the Romanian state ... It is true that in all the Balkans,

the Orthodox Churches often remain above the law

.

Death of a figure from the former Yugoslavia

He is one of the last emblematic figures of socialist Yugoslavia who has just disappeared:

Admiral Mamula was carried away at the age of one hundred by the Covid-19

.

During the break-up of Yugoslavia, he criticized the Serbian nationalist line of Slobodan Milošević, demanding a seizure of power by the army.

Sarajevo War Era Exhibition

At the same time, an exhibition has just opened at the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Sarajevo, on

citizen mobilizations in Europe against the war that ravaged this country from 1991 to 1995

.

For these activists, " 

solidarity was more than a slogan

 ", explains the curator of the exhibition, Nicolas Moll.

Also find our

file on the summer of 1991, the last summer of Yugoslavia

.

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