EQUAL AND "MORE EQUAL"
Investigation: The Serbs and Ethnic Minority
To the question "whether the Serbs in Serbia should have greater rights than the other nations", majority of the citizens who participated in the poll answer "no". However, the fact that almost 40 per cent of the pollees (less than 29 per cent in Voivodina) believe that the Serbs should be "above the others" speaks that the struggle for human rights and equality of ethnic minorities in Serbia will not be taken off the agenda for a long time to come.
AIM Belgrade, 21 June, 1997
"I fear for my existence in the future, but what can I do - we, the Muslims are a minority in Serbia, and it is normal for a minority to be threatened"(!), a citizen of Serbia stated in an investigation about the Serbs and ethnic minorities conducted by the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia. The quoted statement is perhaps the best testimony of the extent to which the idea about minorities being threatened is "normal" and deeply rooted in this space.
The mentioned investigation of public opinion of citizens of Serb nationality on the one hand, referred to different aspects of equality and attitudes of the majority nation towards ethnic minorities in Serbia, and on the other hand, the experience of members of minority nations in Serbia concering equality was also registered in another investigation also carried out by the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia last year (in July and October, respectively), in fact by a team headed by Prof. Dr Miklos Biro.
"Acceptable" and "Inacceptable" Rights
This is how the citizens (Serbs) who participated in the poll see the manner in which interethnic tensions and distance to other nations should be resolved.
In answer to the question in which segments rights on ethnic minorities should be broadened or limited, a distinct division into two groups occurred: 36 per cent of the pollees believe that these rights should be reduced, while 41 per cent that they should be increased, while 12 per cent believe that in some aspects they should be increased and in others reduced.
Findings of the investigation show that the Serbs are extremely ready to recognize the right of the minorities to religion (members of the minorities, at the same time, also evaluate this right with the best marks, in other words there was not a single subject who complained of being deprived of this right, which might be interesting in the context of the thesis about the war in this space as the "religious war"), the right to cultural manifestations and existence of media in their language, and to a somewhat smaller extent the right to education in their own language.
The balance between acceptance and non-acceptance exists in the case of the right to names of places in the language of the minority, while in the case of use of mother tongue in official institutions, right to establishment of local administration in municipalities where members of a minority are the majority population and right to political organization are not at all accepted. It should be said that the latter refers to something that already exists in the political reality of Serbia, but that people obviously connect it with political destabilization of Serbia. Pollers prove it by the fact that this item is highly correlated with the experience of ethnic minorities as a "threat" to Serbia. Nevertheless, it should be stressed that the negative attitude to the latter three rights is considerably less expressed among pollees in Voivodina.
When speaking of resolving the problem of the tensions between the Serbs and members of other nations, by far the most frequent answer (72.6 per cent) is "growth of the standard of living so that we would all be satisfied", and immediately after it (with 37.1 per cent) is the answer "minorities should be given all the rights pursuant the UN charter and the international law. Satisfaction with this percentage can somewhat be marred by the fact that it is the same "democratic" one third of the pollees who in other questions also declare themselves in the manner which expresses tolerance and protection of minority rights. On the other extreme, however, is the other disturbing "antidemocratic" one third who believe that "members of minorities should be stimulated to peacefully emigrate to their parent countries" (29.4 per cent), which is judging by his latest statements, supported by the current president of FRY, or even that "everything should be done, even by force, to 'cleanse' Serbia of other nations" (7.9 per cent)! Only six per cent of the subjects would approve territorial autonomy and double citizenship for the minorities.
The pollers stress as a highly satisfactory datum that over 95 per cent of the pollees know that stirring up ethnic hatred is punishable by law, and even more that an almost equal percentage of them (93-3 per cent) agree with this law. But, as it often happens around here, when the question is reformulated to refer to a specific minority, significant deviations between principle and practice appear. This deviation is especially conspicuous when it refers to the Albanians and the Muslims, and somewhat less to the Croats. This order coincides with the stance that certain minorities are "dangerous" for Serbia. The Albanians rank the first concerning this question (77.9 per cent), followed by the Muslims (54.4), the Croats (36.5), and in a minor percentage the Hungarians (12.9) are also mentioned, as well as the Bulgarians (7.1), while the other minorities are quite negligible concerning this issue.
A similar attitude to the same ethnic minorities is obtained by all investigations which refer to ethnic distance. The greatest distance is obtained concerning the most intimate relationship - marriage (Albanians 67.6, Muslims 58.5, Croats 45.3, Hungarians 25.6 per cent), and then it declines when speaking about accepting a member of ethnic minority as a superior at work, a neighbour or a friend. For instance, ethnic distance to Albanian neighbours according to results of this investigation is measured by 38.8 per cent, the Muslims 29.1, the Croats 22.9, the Hungarians 5.3...
Fear for Survival
In the investigation about attitudes of minority nations, although a sample of one hundred subjects was considered among the Albanians in Kosovo, as well as among others, it was impossible to interpret the obtained results, because they proved to be obviously invalid, as the investigation team concluded. Indeed, to all the questions about equality, all the pollees answered absolutely the same: they evaluated their status (on a scale ranging from 1 to 5) with one for equality, and to the question what should be done to improve the situation, they all answered: "Give independence to Kosovo", or briefly "Reopublic of Kosovo".
The investigators concluded that such uniformity was unprecedented in public opinion polls and that it without doubt showed that the results were useless for a scientific analysis. The pollees have evidently presented the political stand of their national collectivity, and not their personal opinion. If one did not wish to interpret the obtained results by concluding that all the Albanians in Serbia feel utterly unequal and oppressed and that all of them down to the last one believe that the only solution of their problems was - independent Kosovo.
The datum which is stressed the most and which marks this investigation among members of minority groups in Serbia is - fear for survival in the future which appears almost equally among members of all minority nations in Serbia. More than a half (50.1 per cent) state their fear explicitly, expressing it through expectations that the fundamental minority rights would be increasingly more difficult to assert in the future. More than one third of the pollees think so.
However, the mentioned fear is not the result of a personal unpleasant experience, but it is based on "knowledge" that some members of his or her minority were or still are threatened. Only 1.7 per cent of the subjects (most of them Croats, with a few Muslims) say that they were physically threatened because they are members of a minority, and to the question of the poller "Do you feel physically threatened?" 10,5 per cent answer affirmatively. The precentage of physically threatened raises to 19.8 per cent at the time of war when to the question "has anybody from your srroundings been physically threatened because he/she is a member of a minority?", 42.3 per cent answered affirmatively! According to the opinion of the investigators, this opens the question of the effect of rumours.
To a certain extent it is a paradox that, although objectively the most threatened and on the whole discontented with their equality, the Croats and the Muslims, manifest comparatively the least fear for their survival in the future. It is obvious that the subjects experience the past war as the main cause of their troubles, but also as something that will be "gone with the wind" and things will get back to normal again.
On the other hand, minorities in Voivodina experience deterioration of their position through loss of the previously existing rights in using their mother tongue, discrimination in employment and the situation in the education system..., and they connect it with increase of Serb nationalism and look upon their future with a considerable increase of pessimism.
Abstract and Real
The second general characteristic of the investigation is exceptionally low awareness of minority rights. Majority of the pollees who declared that they were discontent with their status could not define what their unequality consisted of nor how their righhts should have been asserted. Majority of specific answers referred to a loss of former privileges, that is, what they could state as their rights from personal experience. Perhaps the best example to what expent minority rights (which are not part of personal experience) are felt as something abstract is the fact that not a single pollee (even on the average highly educated and well informed) of Hungarian nationality stated, as a solution, personal autonomy - the concept advocated for quite some time by political parties of Voivodina Hungarians, which is the topic of big discussions in Hungarian media.
Results of the poll among the Muslims in Sandzak have a bipolar characteristics and reflect an unusual picture. Majority of the participants express full satisfaction with their equality and believe that there is no problem with the Serbs. On the other hand, one third of the subjects is highly dissatisfied with their status as members of a minority group and express this stand throughout the poll. However, to the question "Has your feeling of equality changed in the past two years and how?", as many as 46 per cent say that it has deteriorated, and only 16 per cent believe that it has improved. To the question of equality in the future, they answer optimistically: 49 per cent expect improvement of the situation.
The question of equality in the use of language among the Muslim minority is also very interesting. Those who believe that they have no problems with equality, also think that the question of language does not exist at all, while those who believe that they have big problems, state that these problems are also reflected in their right and possibility to speak the "Bosniac" language.
A small number of them states an experience of physical danger, only seven per cent, but disturbing 56 per cent state physical danger of a person from immediate surroundings. Can that feeling of threat be interpreted as the already mentioned deeply rooted idea that "it is normal for a minority to be threatened", and even as a question of destiny, was explained by a pollee as follows: "God has threatened us by bringing us over here. Tito should have taken us along with him to the grave".
Lack of trust in the authorities can be considered to be one of the generators of fear which appears among members of minority groups. Investigators say that "change of authorities" is mentioned as the most frequently stated manner of resolving various problems of unequality (36.4 per cent). Besides, to the demand that they nominate political parties which represent their interests the best and parties which threaten them, the subjects much more often classify the party in power as a "dangerous" one for the minorities (31.3) than they mention it as a protector of their interests (12.3). As "protectors of minorities" (along with ethnic parties of minorities), parties of civic orientation are mentioned the most, while "big" parties of democratic orientation are mentioned very rarely. Moreover, some pollees mention them as "dangerous".
Among the parties experienced by members of minorities as threatening and "dangerous", absolute primacy is given to the Serb Radical Party (62.2), the Socialist Party of Serbia (31) and Arkan's Party of Serb Unity (12.6), which is especially mentioned among the Muslims. But, a certain number of subjects of the Muslim and Hungarian nationality are critical also to minority parties, believing them to be also nationalistic.
Vesna Bjekic (AIM)
Entrefilet:
Both investigations. "Experience of Equality of Members of Ethnic Minorities in Serbia" and "Attitude of the Serbs to Ethnic Minorities in Serbia" were carried out according to the standard interview made by trained pollers and psychologists. The poll among members of ethnic minorities which refers to various aspects of equality with the Serbs included 700 pollees, that is one hunderd of members of each of the following ethnic minorities: Albanians, Hungarians, Slovaks, Muslims, Romanians, Croats and Ruthenians. The poll was carried out in Voivodina, Sandzak and Kosovo. Trained pollers - psychologists were at the same time members of the minority they interviewed. The poll on stands of the Serbs concerning ethnic minorities included 500 pollees from different regions of Serbia.