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Republic Square, Belgrade (lmeao/WikiCommons) The Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR), press freedom and free expression partners express our firm support for our colleague Massimo Moratti, the Senior Research Affiliate for the Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa (OBCT), as he faces expulsion from Serbia in apparent connection with his human rights work. We urge Serbian authorities to immediately withdraw the expulsion order and allow our colleague to remain in the country with his family and continue his work. On 4 September, Serbian authorities denied Moratti’s request for temporary residence on grounds of “unacceptable security risks for the country”, ordering him to leave the country within 15 days and imposing an entry ban of one year. Serbian authorities did not provide any additional information regarding the grounds for the decision.  An Italian citizen, Moratti is an experienced human rights advocate who has spent more than 20 years in the region and has been living in Serbia continuously since 2022, when he moved to Belgrade following his partner’s assignment in the country.  Moratti has served as a correspondent for the OBCT media outlet in Sarajevo and later in Belgrade since 2005. From 2011 to 2018, he worked in Serbia on multiple EU projects assisting displaced persons and refugees, as well as potential asylum seekers, while later moving to London to serve as Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s European Regional Office. After relocating back to Belgrade with his family, he joined the MFRR team, playing a crucial role in shaping the consortium’s media freedom advocacy efforts in the Western Balkans. In late January, Moratti and his family submitted a request for temporary residence to Serbian authorities. In May his partner was granted temporary residence. In June, a formal meeting was scheduled with the Serbian State Security and Information Agency, which questioned him about his current and past professional activities in the country. On 3 September, his partner received a call from the police that notified that the following day Moratti was expected at the premises of the foreign citizens’ department, where he was eventually handed the expulsion order.  With the assistance of his lawyer, Moratti filed an appeal against the Office’s decision on 10 September, and subsequently requested an interim measure from the Administrative Court to suspend the enforcement proceedings, asking the Court to take into account the forced family separation that his expulsion would entail.  While there has been no specific explanation given for the justification of this decision by Serbian authorities, there are grounds to suspect that the removal order is connected to his different roles as a human rights and media freedom advocate, for his reporting for OBCT on the social and political tensions that have been rising in Serbia over the past few years, or for his work within the MFRR consortium.  In the last few years, the MFRR and OBCT have documented the deepening slide into what we and others have called a media freedom crisis in Serbia, including escalating physical violence against journalists and the attempt by Serbian authorities to censor or silence independent journalism and critical voices. In this context, the MFRR together with the Council of Europe’s Safety of Journalists Platform conducted its last visit in the country in March 2026, an advocacy mission which was joined by Moratti on behalf of OBCT, and published the mission’s final report in July 2026. This timeline overlaps with the administrative backlash of which Moratti has been the target.  Our organisations consider his permit of stay denial and the expulsion order that was subsequently issued to be a form of administrative harassment intended to intimidate him in retaliation for his work, and for supporting journalists in the country and the broader region. This permit rejection measure follows a worrying trend. Over the past two years, there have been multiple documented cases in which foreign civil society activists, journalists and human rights advocates in Serbia have had their residence permits refused, revoked, or were expelled and banned from re‑entry, or denied entry in the first instance, often on similarly vague “security risk” grounds. This trend has been documented in the European Commission’s 2025 Rule of Law Country chapter. The undersigned organisations stand firm in solidarity with our colleague and urge the Serbian authorities to immediately revoke the expulsion order targeting him and to refrain from further forms of administrative harassment, allowing Moratti to live with his family and continue his work in support of media freedom. As this is a crucial case involving a human rights advocate standing up for media freedom in the country amid a dramatic deterioration in press freedom, the undersigned MFRR partners and free expression organisations will closely monitor the proceedings. Signed: Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa (OBCT) European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) Free Press Unlimited (FPU) ARTICLE 19 Europe International Press Institute (IPI) Index on Censorship Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Balkan Free Media Initiative (BFMI) International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) READ MORE

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UN Security Council Will Get Advice on AI Risks From Tech Giants Building It

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UN Security Council Will Get Advice on AI Risks From Tech Giants Building It

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In brief

  • Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepSeek, and Moonshot are all set to address the UN Security Council on AI risks Wednesday.
  • The briefing follows Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call to slow AI development while urging continued U.S. chip export restrictions on China.
  • The meeting lands two days before President Trump’s September 24 summit with Xi Jinping.

The UN Security Council will spend Wednesday afternoon listening to the people who build the technology it’s most worried about.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, AI safety researcher Yoshua Bengio, and Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue are all scheduled to brief the 15-member council—the UN body with the power to authorize sanctions and military action—on the risks posed by artificial intelligence.

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DeepSeek is invited, too. The Chinese startup that wiped roughly $600 billion off Nvidia’s market cap when it launched a cut-price model in January 2025 has been asked to make a statement, alongside another Chinese firm, Moonshot, developers of the Kimi models..

France organized Wednesday’s session and holds the council’s rotating presidency this month. Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot will chair it, and the concept note behind the meeting reportedly centers on AI systems slipping beyond human control.

The same briefing is expected to touch on AI that could eventually run cyberattacks, sway elections, or design weapons without a person in the loop, which is why a council built for wars and sanctions is hearing from tech CEOs instead of generals this week.

Amodei will join remotely rather than show up in person. On September 12, he published an essay called “We Must Pace the Frontier,” arguing the industry should deliberately slow how fast it builds more capable frontier models—the biggest, most advanced AI systems any lab has released. He said Anthropic would give outside evaluators permanent, staff-level access to check its safety promises. Sam Altman and Elon Musk both said they agreed within hours.

Amodei called China “the autocratic country with by far the most advanced AI capabilities” and argued the U.S. should keep restricting exports of advanced chips to Beijing, even while asking Beijing to cooperate on global safety rules. China’s Foreign Ministry called the essay counterproductive, and state media branded it a “Cold War playbook” aimed at containing China.

President Donald Trump, meanwhile, wants no part of the slowdown push. After Amodei’s essay dropped, the president called AI-takeover warnings a “hoax” tied to the “Radical Left” and accused Amodei directly of wrongdoing without offering evidence.

Days later, King Charles hosted executives from Anthropic, OpenAI, Nvidia, and Google DeepMind at his Scottish estate for an AI safety summit that produced conversation but no publicly known agreements.

Wednesday’s session isn’t likely to produce a binding deal either. It lands two days before Trump sits down with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington on September 24, a summit where AI safety is reportedly on the agenda alongside trade.

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