“One of these people said that we are in a mountainous area full of wolves and that it would be a shame if those wolves tore me apart”, activist Ivan Milosavljević Buki retold the threats he received on August 26th.
Milosavljević was cornered by three men while he was on a civilian watch in the Homolje region. He and other members of the civilian environmental protection group RIS – Rangers of Eastern Serbia have lately been intensively monitoring Homolje for two reasons.
On the one hand, they are helping the battle against of one of the three major fires currently raging in Serbia; on the other, they have found out and documented cases of water grabbing done either by or in favour of a Canadian mining company with local presence.
Dundee is stealing water from the rivers, activists claim, and the public utility company is giving a helping hand
The Rangers claim that the local branch of Dundee Precious Metals Inc. is stealing water from rivers and streams in the Žagubica municipality and using it in its exploration wells. In addition, Rangers published video material documenting that the vehicles of a local public utility company are supplying the said exploration wells with drinkable water from the public water supply system.
Several conflicts of interest are at hand. The use of drinkable water for industrial purposes is prohibited by Serbian law (except in cases of food manufacturing and farmaceutical industry). The Rangers warned that not only the water, but the mobile water tanks themselves should not be used to facilitate the work of the mining company, but to help in the fight against the flames which are swallowing old forests in the future Beljanica-Kučaj national park, or to help the towns and villages which are facing drinkable water shortages and other consequences of a severely dry season.
Second attack on Milosavljević in a week
The attack on Milosavljević is the second one in a week. Last week the activist and a filming crew of an independent media, who came to Homolje to shoot a documentary, caught two workers of the public utility company red-handed, in the act of tanking the water from the public water supply for exploration wells. The workers threw stones and took steel rods in their hands to scare off Milosavljević and the crew, in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent them from filming the illegal activities.
In a statement for Mašina Milosavljević pointed out that Rangers actually got a confirmation by the informative center of Dundee that the company takes drinking water from the local water. The workers in the information center offered an explanation that such activities are necessary because there is no technical water in the municipality of Žagubica. Milosavljević states that the employees of the info center were warned that they were thus participating in illegal activities.
The activist added that citizens have tried, but still haven’t managed to get hold of the information about the quantities of water delivered and invoiced to the Dundee company for three business years and the specification of vehicles which were used for this.

Last year Milosavljević was kidnapped and held in a basement
The president of the Žagubica municipality, Safet Pavlović, was fast to accuse the Rangers of attacking the public utility company workers. Pavlović’s name is related to several types of murky businesses, and his behaviour earned him a title of “a perfect example of the current regime” by the members of the Serbian opposition.
The three men who attacked Milosavljević and basically threatened to throw his body to the wolves were actually Pavlović’s “entourage”, as Milosavljević puts it. Additionally, this is the second time that Pavlović’s people attack Milosavljević. Namely, last year the activist was taken to a basement of a casino in Žagubica against his will by men in Pavlović’s company, where he faced accusations and death threats by the president of the municipality himself.
On that occasion Pavlović tried to coerce the activist to stop talking against the mining projects in Eastern Serbia (and, more precisely, leave his name out of public statements). The case hasn’t been processed by the police although Milosavljević recorded the whole conversation and made it public through the remaining independent media.
Homolje: the biggest forest area in Serbia, threatened by mining
According to the local activists and chemistry experts, the consequences of the golden ore mine Dundee intends to build in Homolje would be more severe than the mine of Rio Tinto in Jadar region, which sparked mass protests in 2021 and this year.
Homolje region is a wildlife gem. It includes the largest forested area in the country and a future Beljanica-Kučaj national park, together with smaller protected areas and one of the country’s largest deposit of underground freshwater.
Activists point out that all of that should not be sacrificed under any circumstances, and even less so for mere dozens of milions of euros in ore rent which Serbia would cash in if the mines were to be built.
“Will activists be left to be ‘eaten by wolves’?”, ask the Rangers
“For those who follow what happens around the world when people rebel against mining companies, this is nothing new,” say RIS activists. “It may be news to the thugs who have been tasked with threatening and attacking environmental activists, but the corpses of people around the world reveal the truth and the true intentions of big corporations,” they state in a video published on social networks.
Citizens are now publicly wondering if the state will protect the activists or if they will be ‘eaten by wolves’, of which, according to Safet Pavlović’s security guard, there are many in Homolje?
“When will the state react? When will people get protection? Will the violence and even the killing of people fighting against the mining companies be allowed, as they allowed Beljanica to burn?”, ask the activists of RIS – Rangers of Eastern Serbia in a video published on social networks.
Adaption from Serbian: Iskra Krstić
This article was ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED in Serbian on August 27, 2024.