In the wake of a brutal assault on Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia's Public Relations Officer, Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) has warned of possible "Russian parallels" in Serbia. "We are extremely concerned over this threat to the life and physical well-being of Branko Zivkovic, who was beaten up in public by unknown assailants", declared STP International's President Tilman Zülch, speaking in Göttingen on Wednesday. "We are calling on the Serbian authorities to take urgent action to protect this courageous campaigner for press freedom and freedom of expression and identify and punish his attackers. Because we must not find ourselves facing a situation where human rights activists in Serbia are under the same sort of threat to their lives as they are in Russia. Since 1999 more than 200 journalists have been murdered in the Russia Federation. In 2009 alone eight human rights activists and civil rights campaigners died violent deaths in Chechnya and Russia and in exile in Austria.

Last Friday evening while out for a stroll near his home Branko Zivkovic, a fearlessly critical commentator in the national and international media on the human rights situation in the Balkans, was attacked from behind and severely beaten about the face and head. He is now suffering from severe headaches and unable to remember the attack. This is the second recent assault on the journalist and human rights activist. One month ago he was attacked verbally as well as physically. The police intervened and arrested his assailant. The case has now been referred to the Public Prosecutor.

Zivkovic has for some time been threatened and harassed, above all because of the Helsinki Committee's critical coverage of the situation in the multiethnic Sandzak area, divided between Serbia and Montenegro. Some 500,000 of the area's approximately 800,000 inhabitants are Bosniaks who experience oppression and discrimination. The Serbian media show very little interest. The Helsinki Committee's critical position on the very difficult human rights situation of the Muslim minority is, so the human rights organisation believes, considered a thorn in the side of the Serbian government.

For further Information please contact Tilmann Zülch: 0049 - 551 - 4990624

Translated by Elizabeth Crawford