Anniversary of Flora Brovina's Arrest

Prisoner Despite Unproved Guilt

AIM Podgorica, 2 may, 2000

(By AIM correspondent from Belgrade)

Among the few Asian and African dictatorships and undemocratic regimes, Serbia bears the title of the country in which lives the best known political prisoner in the world. More than a year has passed since the arrest and almost six months since the imprisonment of the physician, fighter for human, primarily women's rights, strong opponent to repression of the Serbian regime against Kosovo Albanians and poetess Flora Brovina, whose liberation is demanded by unions of writers and physicians from Paris to Washington. This fifty-year old woman also differs from numerous Kosovo Albanians arrested and imprisoned on the eve, during and after NATO bombing of Yugoslavia because she is sentenced to the draconian punishment - twelve years of hard labour.

The case of Dr. Flora Brovina, arrested on 20 April 1999 in front of her apartment in Pristina, has reached the Supreme Court of Serbia. At its session scheduled for 16 May, the Supreme Court could decide to set her free. Although, as claimed by Biljana Kovacevic-Vuco, president of Yugoslav Committee of Lawyers for Human Rights, alleged guilt of Dr. Brovina has not been proved, “there is little, almost no chance that the court will break free of political control and do the just thing – reach the decision to free her of all charges”. Officially Brovina is sentenced to 12 years in prison for having “committed the criminal act of association for the purpose of hostile activities in connection with the criminal act of terrorism committed at the time of direct threat of war and during the war”, for which the mildest prescribed punishment is ten years in prison. Lawyer Kovacevic-Vuco has a different opinion about the reasons for her arrest and sentence in prison: “Brovina was sentenced because she has done nothing. She was an enemy of the Serbian regime because she was an activist of a humanitarian organisation and because she is a poetess. She destroys the stereotype about the Albanians as the inferior race, as a large number of inhabitants of Serbia think”.

“I am one of the best known humanitarians from Kosovo, I have sacrificed my health in order to offer aid to children and women. If I were free today, I would still have what to do and I would help those who are threatened”, were the final words of this poetess and pediatrician, who had founded the League of Albanian Women, at the hearing at the court in Nis when her sentence was pronounced. A few days ago, at a discussion organised by Belgrade Centre for Cultural Decontamination on the occasion of the anniversary of the arrest of Ms. Brovina, Vojin Dimitrijevic, president of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, declared that Dr Brovina, had she been free, would have been in Kosovo now “where she would have raised her voice against the Albanians, members of her ethnic group, because of violence against the Serbs and other non-Albanian inhabitants of the southern Serbian province”.

Serbian courts saw and evaluated activities of Brovina quite differently. Dr. Brovina was accused of having founded the League with another thirty odd women “with the task to organise hostile demonstrations, collecting food and drugs for separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and planning of terrorist acts”. She is also indicted for having been minister of health in parallel government of Kosovo Albanians and that she maintained contacts with high commanding structures of KLA.

Brovina listened calmly to all these accusations. She did not show emotions even when the subdued sobbing of her sisters was heard in the courtroom. The police quickly took the defendant from the courtroom, not allowing her any contact with her husband, sisters and friends who had come to the trial.

Along with two postponements of her trial, from her arrest to this day, Brovina's health has further deteriorated, which was not a sign for the authorities at least not to transfer her from one prison to another. Dr. Brovina was first taken to Lipljan from where she was evacuated on 10 June together with other prisoners during withdrawal of Yugoslav security forces from Kosovo. She arrived in Pozarevac prison with her health seriously damaged because she suffers from a serious case of angina pectoris which threatened to get even worse because in the beginning she did not receive adequate therapy, nor was she given the necessary drugs. Her right side was paralysed and there were moments when she lost her faculty of speech. Her health began to improve only after prison authorities permitted her lawyers and husband who visited her in the prison in Pozarevac to bring her drugs, so by the time for the trial her health was comparatively stable. From Pozarevac she was transferred to the prison in Nis on 10 November, after the Supreme Court authorised the district court in Nis to take care of the cases once resolved by the court in Pristina. To the question of judge Marina Milanovic, who is from Kosovo herself, whether she had complaints about the treatment, Flora Brovina answered: “The treatment was correct, they beat me on the head only once”.

Gradimir Nalic from the Committee of Lawyers for Human Rights believes that treatment of Brovina was not correct. According to his words, she was interrogated eighteen times, but not always in prison. After exhausting questioning, often without food and drink, “Brovina said herself that she would admit anything, even that she was a giraffe”, says Nalic. While still in Lipljan she signed a statement which, according to claims of her lawyer Husnija Bitic, she had not previously read, nor had anyone else. “They told her to sign what she had stated. Brovina was convinced that she was signing her own words”, declared Bitic. She could not have even dreamt that she would sign her own sentence, because her statement in the form of a photocopy which should not be recognised by the court was used as main evidence of the prosecution based on which the sentence was pronounced. The prosecution insisted on having Brovina's statement read in court, which despite opposition of her lawyers, she agreed to. Soon after reading had begun, Brovina shook her head and interrupted the prosecutor: ”I have never said that, these are not my words”.

To accusations that she had founded a polyclinic where terrorists, members of KLA, had been treated, and that she had provided clothing for the terrorists, Brovina answered that during the war (NATO bombing) she had been seriously sick and with one hand paralysed and that she had not worked even at her own private clinic. As evidence that Brovina's League had knitted sweaters for KLA wool confiscated at a warehouse in Pristina was used. Brovina explained that her organisation had received the wool from an English humanitarian organisation called Oxpham. “This was a part of the project in which women, traumatised by the conflict in Kosovo, would gather and knit – as a kind of therapy”, said lawyer Bitic. “Half of the yarn was given to the women, and half would be given back to Oxpham which distributed ready-made knitted articles as humanitarian aid. Brovina had cooperated in this project with other similar organisations from Pristina”, says Bitic.

At the moment when Belgrade regime and the courts are, probably as part of some secret agreement, releasing a large number of the Albanians from prison, the local fighters for human rights assume that there will be no such generosity when Brovina is concerned. What causes the greatest concern in this story is the fact that majority of opposition parties and even non-governmental organisations are passing her arrest and pronouncing of the draconian punishment in silence. The ones who raised their voices are the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, the Humanitarian Law Fund and a number of lawyers gathered around the Committee of Lawyers for Human Rights, the parallel union of writers of Serbia, but the Chamber of Physicians and the official Union of Writers were silent. Biljana Kovacevic-Vuco stresses that the opposition, democratic parties in Serbia, estimating that it was not politically opportune to fight for Brovina, decided to be shamefully silent. At that moment petitions for her liberation are signed by writers, poets, physicians and journalists from all over the world, and while in prison, Brovina received a few eminent international literary awards. According to the words of her lawyers, Brovina is the victim of the regime in Belgrade “which has ruined everything it has touched, even the judiciary”. “In this crime one participates silently, voluntarily, out of cowardice”, this is how Vojin Dimitrijevic defines the whole matter.

Vladimir Milovanovic

(AIM)