INNOCENTS WITHOUT PROTECTION

AIM, Beograd, December 26

Deserters in Serbia

Summary: According to the FRY law in force, failure to report for mobilisation in the Yugoslav People's Army at the time of the war in Croatia, is a criminal act which does not fall under the statute of limitations for the next 20 years. No one has precise data on the number of young men from Serbia who might be called to answer under this law. The figures range from 30 to 200 thousand, although both these extremes are probably exaggerated. While deserters are, on the one hand, accused of treason, on the other their act is assessed as an act of civil resistance to the war policy of Serbia. No serious political factor has stood up to protect the deserters. The bill on amnesty came to a sad end in the Serbian Assembly in March 1992. After that, the problem of deserters was taken off the public agenda, but is, according to Nikola Barovic, attorney-at-law, used as a means of pressure on the population.

AIM,BEOGRAD, December, 26

News coming from some West European countries these days, especially from Denmark, namely that young men of Serb nationality who fled the country evading draft, will be denied residence permits, have reintroduced the somewhat forgotten story about deserters to the domestic political scene.

What will happen to these young people when they come to the Yugoslav border? Will the authorities arrest them? Will they arrest them all, or will this be done selectively?

Nikola Barovic, attorney-at-law from Belgrade, with much experience in representing deserters, states that failure to report for mobilisation constitutes a criminal act according to the law in force. From the legal point of view this offense does not fall under the statute of limitations for a full 20 years.

• If young men-returnees come to the border, they might be arrested. Some might be arrested later, says Barovic.

But, in his opinion the story about the deserters from this war is not only a legal, but also a political one.

COWARDICE OR RESISTANCE TO THE WAR

At the end of the summer and the beginning of autumn 1991, a large number of young men from Serbia, at the call of the YPA took up arms or went to war voluntarily. Some however, hid from the military summoners, and many failed to report even though summons had been served on them... The number of those who returned home from the front is not small. Many, on the other hand, choosing between a rifle and prison, - chose exile. Stories about patriotism and deserters shook and divided the public at the time. Hardly any people has such a deeply rooted pacifist tradition that its young men can remain immune to accusations that they are traitors and cowards. Let alone the Serbs, for whom sending off a young man to the Army is traditionally a family festival. One of them, Miroslav Milenkovic, a reserve member of the armed forces from Gornji Milanovac - killed himself on September 20, 1991 at the cattle market in Sid, between two groups of reservists - one who had laid down - "returned" their arms and another, who had taken them up leaving for the front. In the few minutes he had to decide whether to be a patriot or a traitor - deserter, torn between the two groups, Milenkovic was not able to solve this moral dilemma. He chose death.

A large number of young men had no such dilemmas. They decided to leave the country. Neither at that time nor now did anyone in Serbia have any precise data on the number of young men from Serbia that were out of the country. Numbers are frequently manipulated with, depending on the effect desired to produce on the public. Therefore, the estimates range from 30 to 200 thousand young men, but we might freely say that both these figures are exaggarated. Namely, it is known for a fact that between 20 and 25 thousand young Hungarians from Vojvodina are in Hungary alone, and some reports of foreign immigration organizations and the Red Cross, indicate that 90 to 110 thousand young men, evading draft, have found refuge in Europe and North America.

Natasa Kandic, Director of the Fund for Humanitarian Law, remarks that late this autumn the Council of Europe adopted a Resolution on the Protection of Deserters, in view of the behaviour of certain countries, primarily of Denmark, which is endeavouring to reduce the too large a number of refugees by denying its hospitality to deserters. - The problem of deserters is a major political problem Serbia is faced with, one which receives practically no media coverage. Since the oubreak of the war in Croatia, a large number of people have fled to foreign countries, not wanting to take part in such a war. In my opinion this is a very important political stand on the part of the young people, at a moment of homogenisation of political public opinion, when both the middle aged and older generations supported the policy of war. There was no political force to support their anti-war persuasion and protect them from the sanctions envisaged by the law. Figures on the number of those who have left the country, politically relevant in my view, attest to the civil resistance to war that exists in Serbia, although such assessments of this act have not yet been fully expressed - points out Natasa Kandic. According to estimates from different sources, even in the regime papers, in November 1991 about 200 thousand young men evading the draft were abroad. The relevance of desertion and refusal to participate in the war in Croatia, is also proven by the debates in the Federal Parliament. The highest military officials, general Veljko Kadijevic and admiral Stane Brovet attribute the failure of YPA, among other things, to the large numbers of young men from Serbia who have deserted from the YPA. At that time they made mention of 10,000 proceedings instituted against persons who had refused to receive their calls or had run away from the front.

With the outbreak of war in B&H this problem assumed somewhat different dimensions, particularly after May 19, 1992 when the Parliament of Serbia brought a decision on the withdrawal of citizens of Serbia from the territory of B&H, as it was recognized as an independent state on April 7, that year. Serbia could no longer mobilize citizens and send them to war on the territory of Bosnia. However, according to some interpretations it could not have done that even before that date, as no public decision, published in the official gazette, preceeded mobilization. Therefore, as attorney-at-law Nikola Barovic points out, the definition of desertion is rather problematic. The political rather than the legal aspect was more prominent in its interpretation.

FOR AND AGAINST AMNESTY

In the meantime, as the war subsided, it became more and more evident that the competent authorities would have to make some kind of a decision on the fate of those who had left the country on account of the war. In mid-March 1992 the Serbian Assembly received two opposite proposals. A group of deputies of the Socialist Party of Serbia proposed that the fugitives be prohibited from returning to the country, and the other, made by the DZVM (Democratic Union of Hungarians from Vojvodina) that a general amnesty be declared. 80 deputies voted in favour of prohibiting the return, the same number was against, while 23 abstained. Had 20 more deputies voted in favour, the proposal would have entered the regular legal procedure and Serbia would most probably have been left without 100 thousand of its citizens.

Both proposals were based on the Constitution. The SPS group of deputies thought that the Assembly had to adopt adequate laws in this field as soon as possible and put all its citizens in an equal position, both those that had escaped abroad and those who suffered hardships on the battlefield. The movers of the amnesty proposal pointed out that we were dealing with young men who believed that the war was not being waged to protect Serbia and the Serbian people, but for some other interests and that Serbia could not allow itself to lose so many young, educated men. The proposed amnesty would apply to those who have escaped abroad, as well as those who remained in the country, but did not respond to the draft. The issue of deserters stirred up the public. While ones wondered whether the Army had the moral right to strictly abide by the law in a non-defined state and legal situation, when it did not deal so zealously with those from its own ranks who contributed to its disorganized operations on the battlefield, others considered that a state was not a state of law if it didn't punish its deserters.

To prohibit the return of a whole generation of young men would, however, set a major precedent. A former judge of the Supreme Military Court Jovan Buturovic even then thought that the Assembly was "chasing the mosquitos instead of draining the marshes": if the wanted circulars and pillars of shame prove to be the wrong cure for the ailment called "running away from the battlefield", the Army needs to redeem itself by granting a general amnesty. When 10 thousand citizens do not answer the call to mobilization or leave the battlefield and proceedings are instituted against them, then either the law is no good or the legal state is not functioning. That is why Buturovic sees amnesty as a gesture of wise statesmanship. In May 1992 the faculty of Belgrade University submitted an initiative to the Serbian government to allow the unhindered return of young men to the country. However, the initiative was not put on the Assembly agenda. The initiative of deputy Dragomir Taskovic from November of that same year, to stay the proceedings until the adoption of a new law, was also rejected. The number of proceedings, if any, instituted against persons who did not answer the draft is not known and no further initiatives were mentioned.

It seemed that the problem of deserters had been taken off the agenda, to be raised once again only after Denmark announced its intention to return the Serbian young men to Yugoslavia. - Had the authorities been seriously considering amnesty, the law on amnesty would have already been adopted. Thus, the unsolved problem of deserters shall for a long time to come be used as a means of pressure on the population, and young men and their families shall continuously live in fear. Even more tragic is the fact that that fear meets with the full support of Europe. The authorities in West European countries are well aware of the situation here and what can happen to these young men, but they, nevertheless deny them the right to remain there - says attorney Barovic.

Whether the "return" of fugitives to the country will again release an avalanche of pros and cons for conviction - remains to be seen. In the meantime, a new issue is coming to the fore. A considerable part of the young urban population is no longer ready to do military service in the Army such as it is. Young people here try to bypass laws normally enforced in all countries in every possible way, by hook or by crook with the full support of their parents. This is public knowledge. Will the parents of future soldiers and of those who refused to be soliders under the war conditions of 1991 - 1992, influence the problem of desertion to be perceived within differently defined categories of patriotism and traitorship?

Vesna Bjekic Ozrenka Radulovic