Riots in Serbia's Prisons

In a general rebellion that broke out in Serbian prisons, the inmates were the first to rebel, and the guards followed. The former are asking for better conditions, an end to physical abuse and a bill on amnesty, and the latter higher and regular salaries. The uprising of the "forgotten people" was for the first time publicly debated, and the public could see and hear both the convicts and the prison guards on TV.

AIM Belgrade, November 12, 2000

When the mother of former U.S. president Jimmy Carter was in Belgrade together with then U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale to attend the funeral of Yugoslav President-For-Life Josip Broz Tito in 1980, she subsequently expressed her desire to visit one of the former Yugoslavia's prison, turning many heads at the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry. Mrs. Carter certainly wasn't naive: she knew that much can be learned about a country by taking a peek at its prisons and the conditions the inmates live in. She knew that conditions in a state are reflected in its prisons. Since there was no time to swiftly prepare a model prison to impress Mrs. Carter, she was politely informed that such a visit was out of the question, and that, before leaving the country, she was welcome to take a glimpse of its natural beauties instead.

Less than 10 years later (in 1989) a fierce clash occurred in the Pozarevac correctional facility between Albanian and other prisoners. It was a cruel showdown, in which improvised knives were used and much blood was shed, which had left several inmates seriously wounded and one dead. One of the protagonists of the incident was sentenced to death. In the decade that followed there were no major riots, save for several low-intensity ones, occasional hunger strikes, escapes, and a prisoner or two killed during attempted escapes. It was so until half an hour before midnight on Nov. 5, exactly a month after the "October Revolution" in Serbia, when 1,300 inmates in the Sremska Mitrovica prison forced the guards and all other personnel out of their cellblocks and took over all prison facilities inside the prison walls.

Fires that were started, as it later turned out, caused enormous damage inside the prison complex. The three co-ministers of the Serbian Justice Ministry, Dragan Subasic, Sead Spahovic and Zoran Nikolic, hastily arrived in Sremska Mitrovica, and after speaking with the inmates announced that "the protest was caused primarily by the grave living conditions of the prisoners and by the failure of the warden and other prison staff to fully observe, over an extended period, the prison laws." The announcement also added that the inmates had prepared "a list of demands in regard to improvement of their living conditions and health care, and equal treatment of all." It is interesting that simultaneous protests erupted in the prisons in Nis and Pozarevac, the latter being the largest penitentiary in the Balkans.

The reasons for the protest and the prisoners' demands in all three prisons obviously followed the same pattern, which indicates that a spontaneous or a jointly organized simultaneous protest was in question, as there are prisoners who have mobile phones smuggled into the prison. The date the riots were organized is also of importance. There is no doubt that the prisoners were closely following all political changes and the toppling of the Slobodan Milosevic regime, and had expected that in the period after Oct. 5 representatives of the new authorities would visit them, that they would have someone to complain to about the dreadful conditions they live in, beatings and abuse, and that they would not be molested for simply speaking up, as used to be the case whenever a prisoner would decide to reveal to a visiting official at least a portion of what they had to put up with. The co-ministers in the new government, it appears, failed to look into this matter sooner and to anticipate the prisoners' reactions and hopes.

In the next two days, Nov. 6 and Nov. 7, the protests in the prisons were in full swing. Thousands of inmates were seeking mostly better living conditions and amnesty. The papers published their reports under captions like "Amnesty Sought for All Prisoners Alike, Not Only Albanians," "Nis and Zabela on Fire," "Inmate Vasilije Kujovic Dies," "Several Wounded while Attempting to Escape," "We'll Burn Everything to the Ground"...Vasilije Kujovic was killed when he fell off the roof off a 20-meter building in the Nis penitentiary. Flames engulfed the prisons: the fire in the Nis prison destroyed the library, cultural center, furniture and other equipment in the cellblocks. Mattresses, blankets, linen, everything was in flames... The police, of course, surrounded all the prisons, and not one inmate escaped. It turned out later that no one even tried to do so.

The co-ministers kept scurrying from Sremska Mitrovica, to Nis, to Zabela, and back, promised an amnesty bill and a speedy improvement of living conditions. Hundreds of prisoners stood on the roofs of the prison buildings in Sremska Mitrovica, holding sings saying "Respect Your Albanian Fellow Convicts," Long Live the DOS," "Long Live Serbia," "Stop the Terror," "Long Live Kostunica." With the riots gaining momentum, the demands of the inmates also expanded, some of which were unrealistic and impossible, as for example, amnesty for all. Vladan Batic, president of the Democratic Christian Party of Serbia and one of the DOS leaders, sent a letter to the Politika daily in which he backed most demands made by the prisoners, because "the living conditions in penitentiaries in Serbia are tragic and below the minimum of human dignity, accompanied by frequent instances of retaliation on the part of the prison staff, deeply sunk in corruption and crime." He added that he would do his best to ensure that norms of modern European legislation be included in future laws regulating imprisonment.

The news that the former warden of the Sremska Mitrovica prison was arrested echoed much more in the public than the riots themselves, at least when the Sremska Mitrovica prison was concerned. The warden, Trivun Ivkovic, the most hated man in the prison, was sacked from the post immediately after Oct. 5. It just happened that he was arrested only hours after the riot erupted, for criminal business activities, which may seem odd only at first glance: namely, it is widely known that being a warden is like owning a gold mine, since possibilities for abuse are unlimited. The former authorities did not interfere with his job, because no people of importance to them could be found there except for those who were written off and whose fate was of no concern to anybody from the ruling parties. Ivkovic was a protege of the ruling circles, especially of Mihalj Kertes, the former head of the Customs Service. He became known to the wider public when last May he said the following: "The Communists came to power straight from prison, and we will take the opposite path." For those who might have taken the statement as somewhat odd, he added a clarification: "This is why we'll never step down!" Triva, as he was affectionately known in the prison, used to say even when not asked: "I am loyal to Slobodan Milosevic and his family." It could easily happen, however, that because of machinations and abuse of prisoners, he could soon become an inmate in the prison he used to run. This is what a number of prisoners are looking forward to, particularly those who happened to have a taste of his invention -- a sedative in the form of a baton used for beatings, nicknamed "the 1,000 mg tranquilizer."

On the third day of the riots, the inmates were joined by the prisoners in the Padinska Skela prison near Belgrade and the Valjevo prison for minors, who went on hunger strike and refused to go to work.

The rebellion of the inmates in the Central Prison located in Bacvanska Street in Belgrade failed, but several days later the guards and other staff went on strike demanding that the former warden, Radomir Gudalovic, who "does not belong to any party because he did not want to participate in shady deals," be reinstated. In the Padinska Skela prison, however, the situation calmed down rather quickly, and only a few of 140 inmates continued a peaceful strike.

On the same day, Nov. 9, unofficial sources close to the Justice Ministry told the Glas Javnosti daily that "the rebellion was organized by certain top members of the State Security Service with the purpose to destroy, in the ensuing chaos, all documentation on financial machinations, and portray the new authorities as incompetent." The fact is that all prisons are organized in such a manner as to prevent the gathering of more that 60 inmates at the same place simultaneously, and that even then they are not together for too long. It is, therefore, more than strange that under such circumstances a thousand inmates were allowed to gather and move freely around the prison. "It appears that the scenario was successful, and that the eruption of simultaneous riots in all three prisons was not a coincidence," says Miodrag Djordjevic, the warden of the Nis prison. In addition, it only recently became know to the public that there was a rebellion in the Zabela prison at the end of last month over poor food and unheated rooms, and that the prison administration covered up the whole affair by promising to meet the demands of the prisoners, which, however, it never did.

It is not known whether the warden, Stipe Marusic, informed his superiors of the rebellion at all, but shortly afterwards the Justice Ministry announced that there would be no grounds to initiate the passing of an amnesty bill, as promised to the inmates, if the protests and the destruction of prison property did not end within three days (by Nov. 11).

By Nov. 10, an agreement was reached between the Justice Ministry representatives and the rioting prisoners. The rebellion started to subside in all prisons, and the inmates began clearing the mess in their ravaged facilities, and buildings and workshops ruined by fire, although some of them remained on the roofs. The loss of motivation and fatigue was quite noticeable.

Many were surprised by an unexpected report that Flora Brovina, an Albanian physician from Pristina, until recently herself an inmate of the Nis prison, visited Albanian inmates in most Serbian penitentiaries in the company of the head of the Serbian State Security Service, Rade Markovic. Brovina later said that Albanian inmates were fine, that their living conditions are bad, but that there were no instances of ethnic intolerance nor ethnic clashes during the riots.

Asked about the possible involvement of state security in the riots, Rade Markovic said that such allegations were "nonsense." Zarko Mihajlovic, a senior official of the Civic Alliance of Serbia, however, said, although offering no evidence, that the former regime was "to blame for the continuation of destabilization processes in the country, which is best proven by the prison riots and shortage of electricity." The head of the Belgrade Socialist Party of Serbia chapter, Ivica Dacic, in a statement to the state-run Tanjug news agency announced new riots in prisons, explaining his forecasts in the following way: "When you free Flora Brovina for political and financial reasons, you should expect other prisoners to seek amnesty." Brovina was spared further prosecution (she was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but the verdict was not yet effective) after being pardoned by the Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica, because her trial was staged. Dacic, obviously, cannot bring himself to accept the fact that a person charged on the basis of lies can be set free without any political or financial compensation. Dacic did not make any statements, for instance, when several years ago, the then Yugoslav president and a Socialist party official, Zoran Lilic, used the same procedure to free and promote the former commander of the Novi Sad Corps, Bora Ivanovic, who was on trial before a military court for obvious abuse of authority, illegal trade, and several other felonies.

Be as it may, on Nov. 11 the protests in all major prisons in Serbia almost completely ended, but protests by guards began in Pozarevac and Nis, over low salaries. Justice Co-Minister Dragan Subasic said that his ministry, together with the Finance Ministry, had secured funding to pay prison guards one-half of their August salaries on Nov. 13, and the other half by the end of the week. Referring to the demands of the prisoners, Subasic said they were not exactly demands, but involved problems whose resolution was already under way. This week, as a token of goodwill, the Justice Ministry pardoned several prisoners ahead of the passage of the amnesty bill, which should take place at the first session of the new Serbian legislature that will be formed after the Dec. 23 elections.

Due to the quite serious rebellion, the prisons, fortunately, have stopped being a taboo topic in Serbia. Representatives of non-government organizations, such as Natasa Kandic, director of the Humanitarian Law Fund, and reporters contacted the prisoners directly, without being accompanied by prison guards. Thanks to them, the public in Serbia for the first time was able see an unaltered picture of the prisons and inmates disfigured by police torture, and hear their complaints. The fact that the protesters in the Sremska Mitrovica prison said they would end the riot not when their demands were met, but when they were published by state TV, speaks volumes about the current state of affairs in Serbia. And this is what happened : state TV aired the prisoners' demands and the riots in Sremska Mitrovica ended.

Jovan Dulovic

(AIM)