Serbia: Break-in and ransacking of Ljiljana Nešić’s home

On 22 December 2025, the home of woman rights defender, Ljiljana Nešić, was broken into and ransacked by unidentified individuals in Leskovac, Serbia. The incident took place just days after her television appearance on 17 December 2025, in which she publicly addressed recent incidents of femicides in Leskovac.

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Ljiljana Nešić is a woman human rights defender and the President of the Citizens’ Association of Women for Peace. Since 2007, Ljiljana Nešić has been protecting women's human rights and peace activism in the fight against patriarchy, nationalism, militarism and fascism. Žene Za Mir (Citizens’ Association of Women for Peace) is a human rights organisation founded in 2007 in Leskovac, Serbia. The human rights organisation runs a hot-line for women and children who are victims of domestic violence and works to empower women survivors. Their mission is to promote, educate and protect women’s rights, with a commitment to building peace and achieving non-violence.

On 22 December 2025, unidentified individuals forcibly entered and ransacked the ground floor of Ljiljana Nešić’s home. The woman human rights defender lives on the first floor with her family, which has a separate entrance. She reported that she hadn’t noticed anything unusual when she left home early that morning. Around 12pm local time, her husband called to tell her that the ground floor had been broken into. Specifically, that he had discovered the door lying open, with its glass window broken. Shortly after, police arrived to the scene. All drawers and cupboards had been thoroughly ransacked and the furniture was turned upside down. However, nothing was taken from the property, despite money and other valuables having been left on the table. This combination of facts raises the concern that this incident was not an attempted burglary, rather an act of intimidation against the woman human rights defender.

On 26 December 2025, Ljiljana Nešić went to Leskovac police station to give her statement regarding the incident. She told police officers that she believed the break-in was staged to intimidate her, as a result of her work as the President of Žene Za Mir. She also relayed that she had previously faced a series of attacks, related to her human rights work.

On 28 December 2025, she returned to the police station, where police showed her CCTV footage obtained from a neighbouring house. The footage was missing a 10 minute segment, which likely contained visual evidence of the perpetrators and the break-in itself. When Ljijana Nešić asked why the footage was missing, the police said that it could have been a technical glitch or that the camera’s sensor may have not picked up any movement. However, the CCTV footage obtained by the woman human rights defender, within the space of ten minutes, directly cuts from showing the undamaged ground floor door, to the same door with a broken glass window. In this way, the missing footage covers the time in which the break-in took place. This points towards the possibility that the CCTV footage may have been deliberately tampered with to conceal the identity of the perpetrators and their forced entry into Ljiljana Nešić's home.

On 17 December 2025, five days prior to the incident, the woman rights defender had appeared on N1 TV. She gave an interview regarding a recent femicide committed on the street in Leskovac. During the interview, she talked about the serious number of femicides in Leskovac and the failure of the public institutions to protect women and combat gender based violence and femicides. The combination of missing CCTV footage, and the timing of the incident, raise the legitimate concern that the break-in was a targeted attack designed to intimidate and silence Ljiljana Nešić and to stop the work of the organisation, Žene Za Mir.

Since 2022, both Ljiljana Nešić and Marija Trajković⁩ who run the organisation, Žene Za Mir, have become frequent targets of harassment and intimidation. They have been threatened, faced cyber attacks and have been subjected to smear campaigns and criminal complaints. Additionally, both women human rights defenders have been physically attacked, stalked and surveilled by unidentified men and have received non-verbal warnings, such as suspicious damage to their cars and the repeated disappearance of their pets.

Front Line Defenders is deeply concerned for the safety of Ljiljana Nešić. The organisation believes that the woman human rights defender has been targeted solely because of her legitimate work in the defence and empowerment of women’s rights, specifically regarding gender based violence and femicides. The circumstances surrounding the missing CCTV footage and the inadequate response from the authorities, who have ignored the defender’s legitimate fear that this was a targeted attack, undermine the confidence in the investigation process and raise serious concerns that the perpetrators may not be identified or held to account. Front Line Defenders believes this further endangers Ljiljana Nešić and contributes to a culture of impunity for those who target human rights defenders in Serbia.

Front Line Defenders calls on the authorities in Serbia to:

1. Ensure that the ongoing investigation into the break-in and ransacking of Ljiljana Nešić’s home is prompt, thorough, impartial and capable of bringing those responsible to account in line with international standards;
2. Investigate the possibility that the CCTV footage was tampered with, and take the necessary administrative and judicial measures to hold those responsible to account;
3. Take all the necessary measures to guarantee the physical and psychological integrity and security of Ljiljana Nešić and all of the team at Žene Za Mir;
4. Guarantee that all human rights defenders in Serbia can carry out their legitimate human rights activities without fear of reprisals and free from all restrictions.