SECURITATEA OR SARAJEVO '94

THE SPIES ARE COMING

A "voluntary" association of citizens has just been founded in Sarajevo, the so-called SARA, which will help the army and the police in locating disobedient citizens - those who are hindering the work of the authorities with their talk and who are spreading rumours derogatory for the civilian and the military leaders! Later, they will all be "neutralized". Noone says how that will be done. But "volunteers" will be present in all municipalities, local communities, vestibules! And the citizens of Sarajevo are afraid again!

AIM, SARAJEVO, September 20, 1994

Once, certain, perhaps smarter, people named Bosnia - the dark vilayet. Such connotation has always threatened to mutilate the Bosnian soul, implying that there is a dark side to its fate. Those who are now deciding about the fate of Bosnia, unfortunately, are also doing their best to verify and incarnate Bosnia's dark ages. The latest attempt in this sense is the foundation of a specific "sekuritatea" in Sarajevo! Here, its name is - the Association of Citizens for Police Assistance.

This, as they say, "voluntary" association was founded in this city with the wish to assist the police in fighting crime, protecting the individual, and the state system. Of course, their great wish (fortunately, so far unfulfilled) is to have their branches and branchlets in every municipality, local community, even vestibule. The branches will be on the lookout to make sure that noone does anything wrong. They call themselves the "SARA"! Whether it means anything, is it an abbreviation or a code - it was not revealed. For the time being, only the following announcement was published:

"SARA - an Association of Citizens for organization and coordination of the people with the Army and the Police of B&H in preventing crime would appreciate it if the citizens would restrain themselves from presenting and passing all unverified information which could discredit the work and the behavior of civilian and military high personnel. It is evident that such rumours are harmful to our liberation struggle. We appeal to all the citizens to prevent their dissemination by ALL means. Telephone numbers 645-229 and 643-391 are at the disposal to all those who are willing to help SARA in neutralizing misinformation."

What does it mean "prevent by ALL means", does it imply prevention by force or peaceful "means", and what might happen when a "loyal" citizen or the watchful eye of SARA calls these phones and reports on his first-door neighbour that he is fishy because he talks too much with the neighbour living on the floor above, but noone knows what about - that has not been said. Probably the SARA considers this to be an exclusive information which need not be told to everybody. It is sufficient that SARA has been told. By those whose interests members of the SARA wish to protect, of course!

This is how we got an official association of city spies and inter-neighbourly snoopers, who will from now on and in the name of "high interests", directly attack the freedom of thought and speech. One should not be surprised if a police of SARA was also formed and armed, which would, just in order to protect our official police from working too hard, leap at every call of the mentioned telephones and beat up those citizens of Sarajevo whose opinion is not in line with the optimum for the "liberation struggle" and the existing "social system". Men in long leather coats and hats pulled down over their eyes could soon flood the city. And bedrooms, of course, since that is where majority of secrets are blurted out. After all, can you remember any other totalitarian regime which could take the liberty to call its citizens publicly, through the media, to spy on each other and report everything they hear by calling certain phone numbers. Didn't even "comrade Stalin" use much subtler methods to accomplish similar things?

What else is left for the citizens of Sarajevo to do but to read "The Spy" by Mesa Selimovic once again? For couple of years already they have been listening to the story told by the present power-holders that it was impossible to live in the former regime because human rights and freedoms were jeopardized. Nowadays, when former "defenders" of human rights are at the posts where power is administered from, it is really less and less possible to live here, and for those who somehow manage to survive, associations like this one are organized. Will these city snoopers, these guards of our conscience, soon be crouching around every vestibule? Will they take notes day and night of everything someone has said, to whom and when? Where and to whom will they report about it? Which are the repressive measures that will be taken against citizens in order to "neutralize" rumours? Who can and who cannot be a commissioner of the SARA? Whose calls will be trusted immediately, and whose will be checked? Who and by what criteria will pass judgement about the guilt of a "defendant"? Who is giving the money for this and who finances the SARA?...

All these questions, of course, lead to a single, most essential one - who has founded the SARA, or who stands behind it? Since none of the official state institutions appeared in public to say anythung concerning the foundation of the association with such a morbid program and objectives, it may be easiest to conclude that it suits them or some high state personality whose identity is guarded by silence. Should legal authorities, after all, manage to prove that their hands are clean concerning this mass espionage, does it not mean that bullies and vultures are lifting their heads again in this city, and that they will lobby by means of fear and terror until they get what they intended to.

Supporters of this spying association offer some strange democracy to Sarajevo, which will, like the heaviest burden weigh down on our backs in the form of fear. A new ideology! By definition, every ideology is a distorted consciousness, but this one leads to ultimate extremism. When supporters of such, retrograde ideology call the citizens to torment and maltreat one another - it is a mental subversion. It is not the matter of physical liquidation any more - because how else can one understand the concept of "neutralization" - but of a long-term creation of a society of fettered consciousness and washed brains. In other words, a society for preservation of a regime which, as claimed after the fall of Chausheskou, could hardly ever be repeated.

Sarajevo is staggering under the burden of spiritual pauperization.

MIRSADA BOSNO