RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMPROVING THE SITUATION IN SOCIETY CONCERNING THE REMOVAL OF GRAFFITI AND MURALS THAT PROMOTE HATE AND INTOLERANCE

07 Dec RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMPROVING THE SITUATION IN SOCIETY CONCERNING THE REMOVAL OF GRAFFITI AND MURALS THAT PROMOTE HATE AND INTOLERANCE

A working group consisting of representatives of organizations from the non-governmental sector (YUCOM, Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, Partners Serbia, KROKODIL Association and the Youth Initiative for Human Rights) have worked for a year on mapping the best international practices, local legislation and procedures, and identifying current needs in the field. A list of proposals and recommendations has been prepared for improving the situation in society regarding the removal of graffiti and murals that promote hatred and intolerance in public spaces.

The list, set out in this document, will serve as the basis of a public petition that will be sent to citizens all over Serbia for approval and signature.

We, the undersigned organizations, will also submit the above list of proposals to all election coalitions, because we believe that it is in the interest of the people that it be included in the political agendas of each political party.

Recommendations for improving the situation in society regarding the removal of graffiti and murals that promote hatred and intolerance in public areas:

1. Development of the legal framework for murals: We must insist on changing the existing regulations in this area, and preventing the selective application of existing regulations on the use of public space, bearing in mind inadequate sanctions for vandalizing walls, the failure of local governments to act in accordance with their competences to remove disputed graffiti, and the transfer of practically the entire responsibility for their removal to the tenants of the buildings or the owners of the buildings where such contents are illegally applied. Therefore, the competent institutions should establish clear guidelines and regulations and thus regulate the area of mural creation. Such regulations should define the procedures for obtaining permits for the installation of murals and the conditions that ensure that the artworks contribute to the aesthetics of the city and the community.

2. Support for creative individuals: Introduce incentives for artists and organizations who want to create murals. This could include financial support including royalties for artists, together with a major simplification of procedures for obtaining permits to create murals in public spaces.

3. Balance between freedom of expression and protection of the public: Besides establishing a balance between freedom of expression and protection from hate speech and discrimination, it is necessary to undertake activities to prevent the abuse of rights and freedoms that contributes to the creation of divisions in society. Timely recognition of hate speech would improve the current practice so that the problem of graffiti propagating violence is not treated only as a communal issue and would enable appropriate and consistent application of all relevant regulations. These activities would have preventive effect in suppressing negative messages in the public space.

4. Cooperation with civil society: By sanctioning representatives of civil society for removing disputed graffiti and not prosecuting those responsible for vandalizing public areas, the authorities are sending a message about the existence of unequal and discretionary treatment. It is necessary to stop this practice and enable cooperation between the authorities and civil society organizations, artistic communities and experts in order to develop legal frameworks and policies that reflect the real needs and values of the people.

5. Transparency and accountability: The authorities should be transparent about their decisions and actions related to the installation of murals, in order to avoid suspicions that the decisions are politically biased. Authorities should, through their practice, demonstrate determination and readiness to eradicate hate speech from public discourse.                   

6. Raising public awareness about these topics: Local institutions must take active measures to inform the public about these topics and how the public can engage in their local communities in removing graffiti that promotes violence from buildings and other structures.

7. Prohibition of using these issues for political purposes: We have been witness to certain political parties using graffiti that incites violence and intolerance for the sake of gaining political points. Therefore, further abuse of this topic for political purposes should be prevented, along with the open targeting of individuals who stand for democratic values and the protection of human rights of all citizens of this country. It is necessary to prevent discriminatory treatment towards citizens who want to clean their buildings and other objects of graffiti, and to prohibit the abuse of the rights and freedoms of citizens in the pursuit of goals that lead to further social polarization.

The walls of residential and public buildings and other structures in the public spaces of cities and towns in Serbia, which are otherwise characterized by a general state of disorder, have for a long time been a platform for various right-wing groups to promote hate speech freely and with impunity. The result is an urban landscape saturated with scrawled messages, stencils, graffiti and murals that directly call for aggression, anger, narrow-mindedness, hatred, glorification of convicted war criminals, nationalism, militarism, racism, sexism and generally spread various toxic content, creating a social environment saturated with violence at all levels.

The misuse of walls and other structures for spreading hate speech, the unwillingness or inability to apply the regulations governing the creation of murals that will contribute to and not damage the aesthetics of our cities and towns, and at the same time the systematic punishment of precisely those who, out of civic duty, strive to remove illegal drawn or written contents that spread messages prohibited by law, together with the selective application of regulations and the consistent policy of impunity – all this has led us to a truly worrying situation in which extreme groups, mostly from the extreme right, dominate the public space.

Such a situation has a very negative effect on society as a whole and especially on young people.

These facts disturb a large number of citizens who have joined the Free the Streets/Free the People initiative in the last year.

The intention of this two-year citizen’s initiative is to influence the change of the described practice through three main directions of activity and to raise awareness of the harmfulness of the chauvinistic and reductive way of thinking about past, present and future.

They are:

1. networking of citizens around artistic street actions,

2. positive transformation of public spaces,

3. public advocacy at the local and national level with the aim of changing legal solutions regarding the expression of hate speech.

Signatories of this letter:

KROKODIL Association

Partners for democratic change in Serbia

Youth Initiative for Human Rights

YUCOM – Lawyers Committee for Human Rights

Belgrade Centre for Human Rights