Murder of Bosko Perosevic

Ominous Marketing of Death

How and why is the regime using the murder of prime minister of Voivodina

AIM Podgorica, 15 May, 2000

(By AIM correspondent from Belgrade)

After the speech at the opening of the Agricultural Fair in Novi Sad in which chairman of the Assembly of Serbia, Dragan Tomic, ceremoniously attacked the opposition – especially the People's Resistance Movement (Otpor) – the present official set out on a ceremonious tour of the stands. Their bodyguards, all tall and stout men with earpieces in their ears, were very conspicuous. And then at exactly 14.05 h, a single shot sounded: behind the exhibited cows lay, bent double, Bosko Perosevic (41) while a pool of blood was spreading around his head That is how the president of the provincial executive council of Voivodina, member of the executive board of the main board of Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and president of Novi Sad Socialists. That is how it came about that, unfortunately, one in the series of murders of men from the underground and state officials which are shocking Serbia for years, finally took place in front of TV cameras.

Viewers of the central daily news of Radio-Television Serbia could see in the same show – before the picture of the crime in Novi Sad – a group of highest police generals and high officers headed by minister of internal affairs Vlajko Stojiljkovic at the reception convened by president of Serbia Milan Milutinovic; awards and decorations for “courage, patriotism and high professionalism” were just pouring. The day before, president of FR Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic decorated for the same reasons 135 members of the Ministry of internal affairs (MUP), among whom were head of state security service Rade Markovic and general Senta Milenkovic who has been his bodyguard for years. And the occasion was the Day of Security – 13 May – the same day when Bosko Perosevic was murdered.

Stojiljkovic and his generals did not show on the screen a trace of shame or responsibility. It seems that for them resignation is quite an obscure act even when all moral and professional reasons demand that it be submitted.

It seems that in a regime such as this one it is much more important to (ab)use police as Pretorian Guards, for preventing rallies of the opposition like the one scheduled to take place in Pozarevac than to deal with the long list of victims killed in unresolved murders. Probably, contrary to the awards, there are no resignations because MUP of Serbia shows its efficiency in the arrests of the minor activists of Resistance, in issuing statements which are fully in accordance with the previously issued ones by the ruling parties and, in general, in servicing all the needs of the team in power.

The assassin of Bosko Perosevic was caught at once. He is Milivoje Gutovic (50), who worked on physical securing of Novi Sad Fair, a man who is from the same village (Ratkovo near Odzaci) as his victim. And while the viewers were still under the impression of the picture of loading the mortally wounded Perosevic into a pick-up and taking away of Gutovic with a cut eye, SPS and Yugoslav United Left (JUL) came out with statements for the public. Before any statement of the police it was proclaimed that “traitors and gangs of criminals among whom are Resistance and certain other ones, by order of their foreign and local mentors, used terrorism – the already tested means in the war against our country and people” (SPS), and “we demand resolute action of the system of the state in application of adequate means and action in opposing the perpetrators and patrons of terrorist crimes” (JUL).

It was not necessary to wait long for the “action of the system of the state” to measure of the regime. First, Novi Sad police stated that in the search of Gutovic's apartments it had found propagandist material of Resistance movement, that the murderer was an activist of this organisation and of Serb Revival Movement (SPO) of Vuk Draskovic, that he had stayed abroad and that, whatever was meant by this, he maintained contacts with foreigners.

After that, this was further elaborated at the press conference of the federal minister of information Goran Matic, the man who in an exceptionally sharp competition of officials of the regime blazes the trail in “unmasking” various “treacherous, spying, mercenary” conspiracies of foreign intelligence services and the domestic opposition. Matic declared that Voivodina prime minister was not “killed by a maniac”, but that it is an assassination with “a political and ideological background”; he repeated that Resistance was a terrorist organisation making a comparison with Brigatte Rosae as products of CIA; he stated that Gutovic was a fan of Nazi Martin Borman and that he had “dubious sexual inclinations”; he accused the opposition, independent media and non-governmental organisations of treason, and “reinforced” the police statement by waving a leaflet of Resistance, which can be seen on every fence in Serbia, as material evidence

Perosevic himself, one of the rare politicians of SPS who the opposition had understanding for and praised him for tolerance (e.g. mayor of Novi Sad who is a member of SPO, Miroslav Vrbaski), thanks to what has been said, remained deeply in the shadow of the regime's threats and calls for lynch. According to the latest public opinion poll on popularity of politicians in Voivodina, Perosevic ranked first.

In the ruthless exploitation of this death – and as president of Democratic Alternative (DA) and former Perosevic's party comrade Nebojsa Covic has said, he was a man who was in a conflict with JUL and for a few years greatly pushed to the margin – there is something triumphant, something that doers not leave a trace of reverence either for the victim himself or his family. To put it briefly, a shadow of arrests, staged political trials and conflicts has fallen on Serbia; there is plenty of fear that the regime may use the tragic murder of Bosko Perosevic for a showdown with the opponents to the regime, just as Stalin used the Kirov case.

Whether this will actually happen depends much more on the citizens than on the will of the team in power. Actions of the regime increasingly testify of its agony and victims of that agony. Therefore, before representatives of the regime like Matic and secretary general of SPS Gorica Gajevic at the commemoration in Belgrade had begun the ominous exploitation of Perosivic's assassination, they had better give answers to a series of questions.

The first is the one about their own responsibility for the situation in the state in which people are murdered almost every day, not rarely professionally and in an organised manner, in cars, cafes and as it happened on 13 may, at the opening of an agriculutal manifestation.

The second question concerns the murderer: how come that this man who is employed in physical securing of Novi Sad fair, was armed on the shift when the crime was committed, how come the police, because of the very nature of his job, had not previously checked him? Then there is the question how come legal organisations such as Resistance and the opposition parties whose war is public are labelled as terrorists without any evidence?

And finally, there is the question of all these threats and qualifications without any results of investigation – do not the circumstances of the murder (the presence of numerous policemen and bodyguards of state and party officials) point out to possible personal motives or a mentally deranged person?

An honest answer of regime officials to all these questions could hardly contain anything else but a confession that with its campaign of intimidation and extremely dangerous straining of the internal political situation, regardless of even the most difficult consequences, the current regime is by all possible means and at any cost striving to prevent its own inevitable departure from the scene.

Philip Schwarm

(AIM)