Mrs. Amina Šemsović holds a BA (Universi ty of Novi Pazar) and an MA (University of Kragujevac) in English Language and Literature. Her civic activism earned her a scholarship for the European Regional Master’s Programme in Democracy and Human Rights (joint degree) at the University of Bologna and the University of Sarajevo. After her graduation in 2016, she gained extensive experience in the field of human rights through numerous training programs, projects, and summer schools. In 2018, she was awarded the Fellowship at the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights. As a representative of the Bosniak and Muslim minority in Serbia, she spent a month in Geneva, where she participated in several UN bodies including the 11 th session of the Forum on Minority Issues. Amina Šemsović contributed to the 2018 and 2019 European Islamophobia Report with her chapter on Montenegro.

Shemsovic addresses the rise of racism, nationalism, hate speech and hate crimes sparked by increasingly hybrid attacks.

“From the perspective of a researcher and I can say speaking from Serbia and Serbian context we have a good legal context and legal framework. Unfortunately, we do not have that in practice. So, yeah of course hybrid attacks are pretty much present especially in huge growth of racism, nationalism, hate speech, hate crimes, but unfortunately when you see that on the paper everything looks fine, everything can be prosecuted but in practice very few cases have seen their end and have seen their justice right e specially speaking in the case of minorities, speaking of ethnic, religious, national minorities. In our experience when we talk about media especially in media landscape, I can say that unfortunately as for the last year 2020 I haven’t seen the cases that had their justice in the court and that’s unfortunately. I mean maybe you have court on the news that Serbia according to the House Report, it’s not considered democracy anymore right. And we have it also a little bit to speak about these problems that unfortunately are considered to be smaller than the problems we had currently who have way bigger handles and appears, and then when we activists actually speak about hybrid attacks we are not considered as serious…”, pointed Shemsovic.

“I would just like to add an example like two years ago we had the case of a local journalist who was investigating local corruption and he was attacked. He was a victim of several attacks, but he was of course not taken seriously and everything ended with a really huge incident when his house was set on fire. Of course the person who did this was never caught and even everything next to the political sphere and but of course on the court everything is still two years later and nothing resolved. Of course when we speak about especially journalists, journalist profession is not anymore considered to be a safe profession in Serbia.”, added Shemsovic, at the end of her address at the Regional Conference “Attacks on Democracy and Human Rights”, held on July 28, 2021 in Skopje.

Camera: Dehran Muratov

Video editing: Arian Mehmeti