Serbian Police Close Military-Style Children’s Camp

Serbian Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic said on Friday that the camp ran by Serbian and Russian veterans that gave military training to children and young adults was shut down late on Thursday.

“We issued a warrant to disband the camp due to the possible abuse of children and disturbance to the public,” Stefanovic told media.

The Serbia-based Association of Participants of the Armed Conflict in the former Yugoslavia, UOSYU, organised the Youth Patriotic Camp Zlatibor 2018, that opened on August 9 and was meant to run until August 18.

At the camp, uniform-clad children and young adults aged from 14 to 23 were given military training, taught first aid and survival skills by Russian and Serbian veterans, many Serbian media reported.

Russian international TV network RT published a brief video report on the camp.

The president of UOSYU, Zeljko Vukelic, said that the police arrived late Thursday, after 10pm, and demanded that the Zlatibor camp be vacated, but showed no written warrant.

“We told them it was not right of them to come like that, and that we didn’t violate any laws,” Vukelic told BIRN, adding that there were no weapons at the camp and that children were trained with rubber and plastic replicas.

He said that the camp was modelled on ‘patriotic education’ camps in the Russian Federation. Asked about the two Russian teachers at Zlatibor, Vukelic said that one of them was a veteran but claimed not to know from which war.

Milan Stamatovic, the mayor of the municipality of Cajetina where the camp was held, told BIRN that the negative image of the event was created “for political reasons”.

“They chased the children off like they were the worst enemy,” said Stamatovic, leader of the far-right opposition Healthy Serbia Party.

Stamatovic first criticised the police action after midnight on Twitter, when he said: “I am more afraid of military-able migrants than the children at Zlatibor camp that [the authorities] closed down with 20 policemen.”

Last year the camp was organised in Russia, also by the Association of Participants of the Armed Conflict in the Former Yugoslavia.