From: malenovi@plains.NoDak.edu (Malenovic Nikola V.)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Serbia in a Broken Mirror ( VREME NDA 28 Aug 1992 )
Date: 28 Aug 92 20:45:15 GMT
Article-I.D.: plains.19947
Organization: North Dakota Higher Education Computing Network


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     "Vreme" News Digest Agency                     No. 47, August 17, 1992
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    Serbia in a Broken Mirror
    -------------------------


                         BETWEEN DRESDEN AND NUREMBERG


           "No-one  can   be  arbitrarily  arrested,   detained  or
           exiled",  Article 9  of the  General Declaration  of the
                                Rights of Man

    The political holidays went on while in the heat of the summer all media
    wavelengths spoke of concentration  camps, ethnic cleansing, war crimes,
    possible military  intervention in Bosnia,  and as the  hardest decision
    the  Security Council  can make  approaches, Serbian  politics are  in a
    state of total confusion.

    Those who  calmly and heedlessly  talked of the  "exchange of civilians"
    now have to face the fact that  this "exchange" has taken on the form of
    a war crime. Milosevic, along with  his associates, finds himself on the
    list of  those against whom  charges may  be  made for war  crimes by an
    International  Court, whose  formation has  been proposed  to the United
    Nations by "Helsinki Watch". This  initiative could possibly be a chance
    to get out of the mechanism of collective guilt and collective reprisal;
    after this Belgrade would be closer to Nuremberg than Dresden.

    Resolution  771, which  speaks of  a  demand  for all  sides, under  the
    "threat of  force", to stop  with their violations  of human rights  and
    which  announces  an  investigation,  is  for  this reason probably more
    interesting to Belgrade than Resolution  770 which talks of the military
    securement of humanitarian aid.

    There is  a wide-spread feeling that  Serbia will become the  subject of
    collective  reprisal, and  Belgrade another  Dresden, and  this has been
    accepted with  fatalistic indifference. There  are no signs  that anyone
    has  made  any  preparation  for  the  protection  of the inhabitants of
    Belgrade. One general, as if with the aim to comfort, announced to VREME
    that not  a single city  has been left  without successful air  defence.
    Cosic made  the announcement that  any intervention on  the territory of
    Yugoslavia will  be met with  fierce resistance. This  atmosphere of the
    homogenization of the attacked works well for Slobodan Milosevic.

    When war politics is in question, more  than in any other country on the
    former Yugoslav territory (except Sarajevo before the outbreak of war in
    Bosnia), there existed  in Serbia an opposition to  the regime, but this
    great capital was never activated  because of the ideological torture by
    which  the catastrophic  policies of  the regime  were proclaimed as the
    only  possible protection  of the  cousins, even  though this protection
    brought down the cousins' houses around their heads....

    News came through  from the concentration camps, whose  existence was at
    first negated; then there was an attempt to show that they were ordinary
    prisoner-of-war camps, with the  extracted admission that drunken guards
    were known to abuse their position.

    An extremely painful impression has been left, in spite of the fact that
    there was quite convincing proof that on the territory of the FRY itself
    there were  no camps apart  from those for  refugees. There has  been no
    adequate answer to the horrific charges  which will be brought against a
    generation,  and   the  only  answer   could  have  been   an  energetic
    investigation accompanied by extensive humanitarian action...

    The  humiliation worthy  of respect  that the  Yugoslav Prime  Minister,
    Panic, is  being subjected to  at the moment,  could be capitalized  one
    day. At  present his position of  negotiation is limited by  the company
    that surrounds him,  the manner in which the  FRY was proclaimed, though
    this proclamation,  like the elections  that followed, was  rushed under
    the pretense that it would  facilitate communication with the world. Now
    everyone maliciously watches him all on his own.

    The Serbian  radicals, probably on  a tip from  some general, constantly
    repeat  the demand  that Milan  Panic  find  a commander  for the  army.
    Bozovic  undermines his  concept  of  rapid privatization.  The radicals
    criticized his intention to recognize Croatia in the Federal Assembly.

    The first  local test has  still not  been  passed - the  Law on Amnesty
    which  was roughly  attacked by  representatives of  the Serbian Radical
    Party and Colonel Milan Milivojevic in the name of the Union of Veterans
    from the 91-92 war.

    A large number  of political factors  consider that sovereignty  is lost
    and that an international protectorate practically established, all with
    the beating of  breasts and "a return of dignity"  and that this will be
    broken  by  some  European  conference.  When  Panic  went  to Tirana he
    announced the  initiative for talks between  the Yugoslav Government and
    the  Kosovo Albanians  in Belgrade,  in  the  presence of  Greece as  an
    authorized observer  from the European Community,  in practice accepting
    the  demand  which  Cosic  and  Milosevic  rejected  in  talks with Lord
    Carrington.

    The  Albanian  political  leaders  of  Kosovo  persevere with secession,
    counting on coming to a separate state  by boycott, and in this way they
    put the political powers in Serbia which are prepared to do something to
    ensure the civil and basic political  rights of members of the minority,
    in a very difficult position.

    Thirty percent of  the half million refugees which  have taken refuge in
    Serbia have nowhere to go, and the Serbian authorities, according to the
    announcements of some politicians in  Belgrade, intend to settle them in
    Kosovo. From  ecclesiastical circles it  has been leaked  that Cosic was
    the  one who  insisted that  the church  relics from  the monasteries in
    Kosovo and Metohija be removed to a  safe place because of the danger of
    an uprising at any moment. This  caused alarm among the Kosovo Serbs who
    think they will be left in the lurch.

    DEPOS  (the umbrella  organization, consisting  of several  oppositional
    parties and  institutions) has published  a document on  the territorial
    integrity of Serbia which contains  the position of minorities, and this
    was  announced  two  weeks  ago  by  Vojislav  Kostunica  (leader of the
    Democratic Party of  Serbia) in an interview given  to VREME's reporter.
    Serbia would be divided into areas - like Srem or Sumadija - which would
    have a  certain level of functional  autonomy and local self-management,
    but this self-management would not have a social status.

    The  rights of  minorities, which  in practice  are less  than those  in
    theory, according  to DEPOS would  be more easily  achieved in the  four
    areas where the concentration of  a minority is significant. In Metohija
    there would be 83 and in  Kosovo 81 percent Albanians, in Southern Raska
    78.5  percent Moslems  would live,  and  in  Northern Backa  (a part  of
    Vojvodina) 60  percent of all  the Hungarians. In  Metohija the Albanian
    language would be equal to Serbian,  and in Northern Backa the Hungarian
    language. In these  areas there would be no  obstacles to the organizing
    of university courses  in these languages. The number  of civil servants
    of each nationality would reflect the national composition of each area.

    The  problem  is  simple  and  unsolvable,  and  if  Serbian politicians
    continue to make  it known every day that not  a single change in border
    by force  will be tolerated, they  can use the loss  of unification with
    the Serbs in Bosnia or Croatia as  an argument to keep Kosovo as part of
    Serbia, and  vice versa. The  hopelessness of this  calculation has been
    obvious for a  long time, but unfortunately the option  of a civil state
    in the  post-communist unraveling in  Yugoslavia has been  defeated with
    consequences  that are  tragic for  both the  former state  and all  its
    citizens.
                                                             Milan Milosevic


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     "Vreme" News Digest Agency                     No. 47, August 17, 1992
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Xref: sparky soc.culture.yugoslavia:8294 soc.culture.greek:8166 soc.culture.europe:7871 talk.politics.misc:42584 soc.culture.bulgaria:1241 soc.culture.turkish:9473