Free Republic

The Hungarians have had it with the invaders known in the media as “migrants” and are doing something about it: Hungary has begun building a fence on the country’s southern border with Serbia, meant to stem the unprecedented flow of migrants, the government said Monday. Military personnel began working on a 150-meter (490-foot) “sample section” Monday morning on the outskirts of the town of Morahalom, where a bulldozer and other heavy machinery were preparing the ground for construction, according to a joint statement from the interior and defense ministries. “A daily average of 1,000 illegal border crossers are arriving in...

The U.N. Security Council delayed a vote on a British-drafted resolution that would condemn the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica during the Bosnian war as “a crime of genocide” until Wednesday after Russia informed council members it would veto the measure. Supporters of the resolution had been hoping for its unanimous approval to mark the 20th anniversary of the slaughter by Bosnian Serbs of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys who had sought refuge at what was supposed to be a U.N.-protected site. But leaders of the Bosnian Serbs and Serbia, who have close religious and cultural ties to Russia, have...

A monument to Gavrilo Princip was unveiled on Sunday in Belgrade in the presence of Serbian and RS [Republika Srpska in Bosnia] presidents Tomislav Nikolic and Milorad Dodik. Princip was a member of the Young Bosnia (Mlada Bosna) movement in the early 20th century, who on Vidovdan (St. Vitus Day, June 28) 1914 in Sarajevo assassinated Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. “Gavrilo Princip was a hero, a symbol of the idea of freedom, the assassin of tyrants and the carrier of the European idea of liberation from slavery,” Nikolic said at the ceremony. As far as Germany and Austria-Hungary were concerned,...

Less than two weeks before the Srebrenica massacre’s 20th anniversary, Muslims and Eastern Orthodox Serbs in the Bosnian town are as divided as ever. Serbs put up anti-European Union posters on Sunday with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s portrait on them and the words “Eastern alternative” and “Republika Srpska,” or “Serb Republic.” Most of them were plastered on the bullet-riddled walls of a warehouse in the nearby village of Kravica, where Serb forces executed Muslim Bosnians during the 1995 genocide.Bosnia’s Muslims want the country to join the EU, while Serbs would like their half—called Republika Srpska—to secede and stay close to...

Serbia on Sunday unveiled a monument to Gavrilo Princip, whose assassination of the Austro-Hungarian crown prince in Sarajevo helped ignite World War I and still provokes controversy in the ethnically-divided Balkans. Hundreds of citizens attended the ceremony in central Belgrade held on the anniversary of the 1914 assassination which is also the Serbian national holiday of St. Vitus Day. President Tomislav Nikolic described Princip—who is viewed as a terrorist by many outside Serbia—as a freedom fighter and hero. …

Battle of Kosovo icon. ...The heart of Serbia, her soul, which was Kosovo, lay here. Lazar’s territory began to feel the threat for real in 1381 when the first Turkish raids in northern Serbia began. The pivotal invasion would come on a Tuesday, eight years later. That Tuesday, June 28, 1389, would become probably the single most important date in all of Serbian history, and the impact of the events of that single day would not only effect the Serbians and their lands, but all of the Balkans and the future of Europe as well. It is impossible to quantify...

BELGRADE – The Serbs are among the rare nations that were completely on the right side in World War II, and Serbia has nothing to be ashamed of regarding the fight against Nazism, says Israeli Ambassador to Serbia Yossef Levy.Yossef Levy, Israeli Ambassador to Serbia In a statement published in Wednesday’s issue of Vecernje novosti, he said that the Serbs are among the rare nations that had the courage to fight against Nazi Germany without hesitation or fear. Levy declined to comment on the debate in the Serbian public and the region on the recent rehabilitation of General Dragoljub Mihailovic,...

Portrait of General Mihailovich by Wisconsin artist Jim Pollard. Aleksandra's Note: It's now 40 years since a group of American Airmen rescued by General Mihailovich in WWII along with Serbian patriotic organizations in the Diaspora initiated the effort to get a monument to General Draza Mihailovich erected on the grounds of Washington, D.C. at their own personal expense. From the time the effort was initiated in 1975, progress was made, then setbacks had to be dealt with. Now in 2015, many of the American airmen are gone, but their dream does not have to die with them. A lot has...

BELGRADE -- The commander of the WW2-era Chetnik movement Dragoljub Draza Mihailovic has been rehabilitated by the decision of the Higher Court in Belgrade.The process was seen by many as "historic." This ruling reverses the judgment passed in 1946, sentencing Mihailovic to death for collaboration with the occupying Nazi forces and stripping him of all his rights as a citizen. Mihailovic was a high ranking officer in the pre-war Yugoslav Kingdom Army, and after 1941, he headed the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland (Chetniks). During the Second World War and the occupation, a civil war was waged by Chetnik (royalist)...

The mayor of Srebrenica, the site of Europe’s worst massacre since World War II, has accused Bosnian Serb authorities of harassing Muslims under the pretext of investigating Islamic extremists. Camil Durakovic, a Bosnian Muslim, said Thursday that Serb police from outside town stormed the homes of Muslims who returned after Bosnia’s 1990s ethnic war, and carried out arrests without explanation. He called it a “form of repression.” “Terrorism is a serious global problem and we must all fight against it, but you cannot use it as an excuse to send masked, armed men to search houses of Bosnian Muslims and...

Arthur Jibilian, 86, speaking at the "Forgotten 500 Reunion" 'Lest we Forget' Halyard Mission commemoration Michigan June 17, 2009 Photo by Aleksandra Rebic. Aleksandra's Note: This year, 2015, the world will be marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two, the era of the "Greatest Generation." For me, one of the measures of a man who dies is how deeply the loss is felt in the hearts of those who knew him, and if they didn't know him personally, were affected by his work or by his existence on this earth in a positive way. OSS radioman...

With the advent of modern communication and means of travel, it seems unlikely there is any area of the world left unclaimed by one nation or another. But such land does, or in fact did exist within Europe, and one man has just made his claim to it and created a brand new European nation. The man in question is former Czech Vit Jedlicka. He is now the president of the Free Republic of Liberland, which is a 7km2 stretch of land on the west bank of the Dunube river between Serbia and Croatia. It is actually disputed land by...

The world’s newest microcountry wants to become its foremost tax haven. Liberland, which sits on 2.7 square-miles of land along the Danube River between Serbia and Croatia, was founded earlier this month and plans to have only voluntary taxes. "We don’t want the state to take money from the people," Vít Jedlička, a native of Prague and Liberland's new president, told Business Insider in a phone interview. "We want to have voluntary taxes." Elected into office by a three-person committee, Jedlička says he started Liberland to “turn the concept of a state upside down.” After working as a financial analyst...

Welcome to Liberland, population 250,000…and anyone else looking for a tax haven. A self-professed Libertarian politician from the Czech Republic says he has created a new, sovereign country on the Croatian-Serbia border where citizens decide their own tax burden, property and individual rights are respected and the national motto is "Live and Let Live."

On your next holiday in Eastern Europe, make sure to include Liberland in your itinerary. In fact, if you wish, you are just in time to apply for citizenship of this newly founded country; you may just become one of the lucky 3-5000 people to be selected to form part of this new nation.

WHAT IS OWED TO THE SERBS. One of those moments you never forget: Before the dawn on March 25, 1999, I stepped outside the door to find The New York Times there on the ground with the headline announcing that NATO had begun its bombing campaign against the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia on March 24, 1999. I remember looking at that front page of the paper before picking it up and thinking - "They are really doing it. It's no longer a threat. It's real. It's real. What a mistake. What a mistake." Then I picked up the paper...

Leaving Kosovo: Exodus of young people as frustration soars By Guy De Launey BBC News, Kosovo 22 March 2015 From the section Europe "We are like two million birds in one cage, but we are hoping for a better life" The scene in Mitrovica's 7 Arte Cafe seems convivial enough. Fairy lights twinkle, a mixture of Albanian and English-language hits play over the sound system and the 20-somethings gathered around the tables regularly break into laughter. But the joviality papers over a grim reality for these young people. Kosovo may have unilaterally declared independence from Serbia seven years ago, but...

The photo is taken during the division training at Neuhammer. The romantic notions that Himmler had about the Bosnian Muslims were probably significant in the division’s genesis. He was personally fascinated by the Islamic faith and believed that Islam created fearless soldiers. He envisioned the creation of a Bosnian SS division constituted solely of Bosnian Muslims in a manner similar to the Bosnian divisions of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. Many of these soldiers came from Bosnia, and it was a conscious decision to fight the Communist Partisans and the nationalist Chetniks. The Nazis tried to cater to the Muslim religious...

The Ukrainian government needs to find a “fine line” that would allow it to both protect free speech and fight Kremlin propaganda, a top official of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe said in an interview with the Kyiv Post. There has been a debate in Ukraine on whether pro-Kremlin media, which are inciting Russia’s war against Ukraine and fabricating lies, should be banned. While some argue that they are a threat to national security, others condemn such measures as an attack on free speech. “The Ukrainian government needs to find a very fine line with the help...

On a pleasant Thursday in December 1948, Emilio Traubner, a correspondent for The Palestine Post, found himself near Abu Kabir, not far from Jaffa. Trenches and expended cartridges were strewn about, reminders of the fighting between units of the Irgun and local Arab forces that had taken place there seven months previously. There was a large Arab villa from where Traubner recovered a diary. It turned out to be the daily record of Yusuf Begovic of Pale, a town near Sarajevo in modern-day Bosnia-Herzegovina. In it Begovic had described his activities as a cook for the "Arab Army of Liberation."...