AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program

View Alerts By > Case | Date | Country | Victim

AAAS Human Rights Action Network

Letter of Appeal from the AAAS Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility

14 January 1999

His Excellency Slobodan Milosevic
President of the Former Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia
Fax: 011 381 11 60 32 45 or
011 381 11 63 65 24

Dear Mr. President:

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the largest organization of natural and social scientists in the United States, and the world's largest federation of scientific organizations, with 143,000 individual members and 275 affiliated groups. Our AAAS Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility was formed in 1976 to protect the human rights of scientists and to deal with issues relating to scientific freedom worldwide.

On behalf of the Committee, we are writing to express our deep concern about the denial of visas by your government to a delegation of prominent academics and scientists from the United States and Canada. The delegation, which included John Polanyi, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in chemistry, Jonathan Fanton, president of the New School University in New York, Richard Rorty, one of the world's leading philosophers, and Sam Treiman, a renowned physicist, was scheduled to travel to Belgrade on 9 January 1999. The group intended to meet with Serbian academics, representatives of the Alternative Academic Educational Network, and members of the student opposition movement, to discuss the crackdown on Serbia's universities, including the new Law on the University passed on 26 May 1998.

The Committee believes that this denial may be part of a concerted effort by government authorities to isolate the Serbian academic community. We are concerned by recent actions taken by the authorities, including banning the study of literature by Croatian authors; instructing students to study Russian, Polish, or Czech; offering only limited classes in English, French, and German; blocking the university's Internet computer servers from access to Web sites run by independent media; and ordering the deans at Belgrade University to stop students from using university computers to send messages and receive information over the Internet.

The Committee would like to express its disapproval of the new Law on Universities, which we believe seriously undermines academic freedom and the autonomy of Serbian universities. We are disturbed to learn that since its implementation, professors who have opposed the law or criticized the government have been targeted for dismissal.

We would like to point out that the denial of visas to eminent academics seeking to meet with their colleagues, the dismissal of professors for exercising their right to freedom of opinion and expression, and interference with Internet communications are contrary to several provisions in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was ratified by the former Yugoslavia, and to which the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia remains a State Party. These include:

* Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference (Article 19.1);
* everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his [or her] choice (Article 19.2);
* the right of peaceful assembly? (Article 21); and
* the right to freedom of association with others? (Article 22).


We urge your government to repeal the Serbian Law on the University and restore autonomy to universities in Serbia. We further call on you to guarantee the rights of professors and students to freedom of opinion, expression, association, and assembly without fear of reprisal. In addition, we respectfully request that scholars and academics from around the world be granted visas to collaborate with their Serbian colleagues, and that the government of the Former Yugoslavia cease its interference with Internet communications.

Sincerely,



Mary Gray Irving Lerch
Chair, Committee on Scientific Chair, Committee on Scientific
Freedom and Responsibility Freedom and Responsibility

Main | CSFR Letters | Science and Human Rights Program