By Milica Saric

It’s a new kind of war.

In an effort to stop their neighbors from dying of drug abuse, residents of Lazarevac, a Belgrade suburb of about 60,000, have taken on rich and powerful drug dealers by publishing the names of 44 local drug dealers over the past year.

In March 2013, five men in their thirties published the names and addresses of eight drug dealers operating in Lazarevac. As members of a citizens’ association called Sveti Sava, they handed out pamphlets to their fellow citizens, publicly condemning the actions of the local criminals. After they published the data on the association’s Facebook page, it surged in popularity.

Says “A.D.”, one of the group’s founding members, “We started creating the first list when drug addicts began attacking people on the streets of Lazarevac. It was August 2012, some drug addicts were using crystal (methamphetamine) that made them bite people’s ears off, bite their hands and so on. A dangerous situation.”

He says the residents felt so unsafe, they did not venture outside of their homes. “It was summer, when everyone should be outside, but for those last couple of weeks of August no one could be seen on the street. The police didn't know what to do with them, it was a state of emergency.”

The group was tiny at the start, he says.

“In the beginning there were only 10 of us. These narco clans have lots of money, lots of people … Pulling the first action with only 10 people was crazy,” admits A.D. “But then people started joining us – they were supporting us although they couldn’t announce publicly that they were with us.”

The association was formally registered in August 2013, under the name of Sveti Sava (Saint Sabbas) – named for the First Archbishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Three months later in November, the association published the Black Book of Drug Dealers No. 1, with 33 names and nicknames, addresses, dates of birth, previous convictions, what cars they are driving (with registration numbers), as well as where and for how long they have been selling drugs and who are their assistants.

“For years now, we’ve known everything about these people,” says A.D. “These people are more or less our classmates, they went to school around the same time we did, and back then they began with drug dealing.”

Read more