Kleine Zeitung: Florian Bieber – for the regime in Belgrade, the embodiment of an enemy

The regime in Belgrade views things exclusively in black and white, sees political dissenters or critics as enemies, and the professor from Graz, Florian Bieber, is just one of many who have been labeled as enemies, writes the Austrian daily Kleine Zeitung.

For the Serbian government, the 53-year-old Bieber is not a distinguished professor; for them, he is an “Albanian lobbyist, propagandist, an undesirable person throughout the Balkans,” which is what members of the Serbian government have said about him, writes the Graz daily.

The university professor and political scientist has, in fact, been known for years for his precise analyses and at times clear criticism of the Belgrade authorities, the paper writes. Bieber himself tells the paper: “The government in Belgrade is not democratic, the power in Serbia is autocratic.”

The attacks on Bieber, writes Kleine Zeitung, are a reflection of the system of Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, “who knows only black or white, friend or enemy, supporter or opponent.”

“In recent years of Vučić’s rule, Serbia has changed. There are no longer any critically oriented media with national frequency. Instead, the president dominates, who can be seen all day on all channels – giving speeches and denouncing the opposition,” writes Kleine Zeitung.

For Vučić, traitors also include Bieber and his colleagues, which Serbian political scientists feel directly, writes the daily. According to Bieber, there are scientists in Serbia whose cars are destroyed just to send them a message.

Kleine Zeitung writes that it can never be proven that the authorities are behind this, and that the official explanation is always that football hooligans are responsible, even though they are “hardcore thugs who have surprisingly close ties with the Serbian government.”

Bieber himself does not see himself as an opponent of Serbia, but as a researcher and analyst, and he has been following events in Serbia for 30 years.

According to him, this is sometimes depressing, sobering, and exhausting. In Serbia, Bieber adds, real reforms are lacking, and economic stability and increasing repression keep the regime in power.

“My interest in the Balkans developed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. I simply wanted to understand how it was possible for war to break out again in Europe,” says Bieber, who teaches at the Karl-Franzens University in Graz and heads the Center for Southeast Europe there.

Bieber is preparing to travel to Serbia these days to monitor the elections on October 25, but he is not sure whether he will be allowed to enter the country.

“Of course, there is a possibility that they simply will not let me in,” Bieber tells Kleine Zeitung, without bitterness or fear, more in the spirit of political analysis.