AMNESTY COMES TOO LATE

The State vs. Citizens

Amnesty for the presumed three hundred thousand young men from Serbia and Montenegro who refused to participate in the frantic war has come way too late. For a long time already they are living somewhere in the wide world as normal human beings, which will not be possible to do in FRY for along time to come

AIM Belgrade, 14 April, 1998

In summer 1991, hundreds thousand young men from Serbia, instead of setting out to battlefields of former Yugoslavia in wars that Serbia officially has never taken part in, with regular passports, were leaving to countries of western Europe, the USA, Canada, that is, wherever they could and depending on where they managed to go. They did not, of course, leave the country because of agitation and pressure exerted by the exhilarated and beligerent patriots from their environment, but because postmen, summoners from military departments, military and civilian policemen with call-up summons were roaming around Serbia and Belgrade. Everybody they managed to find, without any formalities, ended up at one of the frontlines - from Vukovar to Gospic. "After I had completed my military service, I was deployed in territorial defence unit of Stari Grad municipality, the task of which was last defence of Belgrade", says a young man, native Belgrader, who was in 1991 caught by military police. "Without any explanation, in less than 48 hours, I became one of the last defenders of the Erdut bridge".

Although officially, "Serbia was not in the war", for all the young men called-up by military authorities at the time, nothing but front mire, mortars, bullets, burnt down villages, destruction, welded metal coffins and everything else that war implies, lay in line. General mobilization was not proclaimed at all, and moreover - publicly - causes for which villages and towns were shelled, for which people died and were killed were not at all made public. The true disposition of the time, when the official war-mongering propaganda on "protection of the Serbs from genocide" is removed, is best illustrated by the response to mobilization: only fifteen per cent in Serbia, or five per cent in Belgrade.

"It is assessed that, during 1991, about three hundred thousand young men left the country", says Biljana Stanojevic, legal advisor at the Helsinki Committee of Serbia: "None of them wished to participate in the war, and they can be divided into three categories: those who were summoned for military drill (euphemism for molibization), recruits who refused to do regular service in the then Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), and members of the JNA who refused to take active part in the conflicts".

When in the beginning of 1992 mobilization was completed, they could not return to the country. Between them, their jobs and faculties, and their families, stood Article 214 and 217 of the Criminal Law of the Republic of Serbia. The former (214) prescribes the following: (1) Who for no justified reason fails to come at the appointed time to recruitment, to be given war deployment or to receive weapons, or to serve in the army, to military drill or do other military service, and if he was summoned by individual or general call-up, he shall be punished by a fine or a sentence in prison up to one year; (2) who is hiding in order to evade the duty from paragraph 1 of this article (...) shall be punished by a sentenmce in prison between three months and five years; (3) who leaves the country or remains abroad in order to evade recruitment or regular military service, military drill or other military service, shall be punished by a sentence between one and ten years in prison (...).

The latter Article (217) refers to active officers and implies very high penalties. In the situation of direct war threat which was at one moment proclaimed in Serbia and Montenegro, according to what Stanojevic says, the acts mentioned in these articles acquired even greater weight.

Therefore, the three hundred thousand young men who went abroad could have been convicted to as much as ten years in prison. Aware of the nature of the wars in former Yugoslavia, and the sanctions which awaited them if they returned to their country, the authorities of the states where the said "deserters" found refuge, did not deport them. In the meantime, majority of the young men who had fled lived temporarily - many without any relevant documents. "FR Yugoslavia waited in 'ambush' for all these young men", says Stanojevic and explains: "They all had had legally issued passports which as time went by expired. Sooner or later, they had to appear in consulates to prolong them. Even if they had the courage to appear in them, the clerks told them that their country would not prolong their passports. After that they could do nothing else but hide from the police of the country in which they resided".

As soon as the initial war-mongering hysteria quieted down, various initiatives appeared in FR Yugoslavia to enable return of deserters without consequences. At the same time, military judiciary started criminal proceedings - in absence.

"It must be admitted that the authorities were not too zealous in criminal prosecution of the young men who had refused to participate in the war", says Stanojevic. "They took their time with the proceedings and were in no hurry to pronounce verdicts. They simply wished to avoid to convict thousands of young men because it was not beneficial for them. How many proceedings were initiated and how many verdicts were pronounced, I cannot say precisely. When I tried to get data from the Military Court, I was told that such information were given only to members of the families of the persons concerned or their lawyers." Ms. Stanojevic states that she does not know whether any of these "deserters" were convicted, but that several ten active officers were serving sentences in prison pursuant Article 217 of the Criminal Law of Serbia. They were mostly persons of non-Serb nationality.

Nevertheless, after the defeat in former Krajina and B&H, even the current authorities in Serbia had the courage to accept that the intention to punish three hundred thousand young men was pointless. The regime of Slobodan Milosevic had in the meantime become the "factor of peace and stability in the Balkans". In just a short time, things like "all the Serbs in a single state", "protection of the Serbs from genocide", and "if all deserters are not punished pursuant the law, who will in the future respond to the call of the fatherland" were forgotten. The latter was repeated by all kinds of regime and opposition politicians like parrots, until the role of the world pariahs ate their tongues.

Finally, the then president of FR Yugoslavia Zoran Lilic signed, on 18 June 1996, the decree on proclamation of the Amnesty Law. In ten articles it was stated that "all persons who by 14 December 1995 committed the criminal act of failure to respond to call-up and evading service or the criminal act of willful escape (from articles 214 and 217 of the Criminal Law of FR Yugoslavia) shall be granted amnesty". Therefore, criminal proceedings will not be instigated, and if they already are, they will be interrupted, and the persons who are serving a sentence - must be released. Conviction for a criminal act will be deleted. Amnesty does not refer to professional soldiers, active non-commissioned officers and officers. So much for the law.

The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia has no data on how many young men who the amnesty refers to have come back. In this NGO, they state that the German authorities are getting ready to deport to FR Yugoslavia 20 thousand persons of all nationalities who had the right to reside in Germany on the ground of refusal to participate in the war. They also remind that before the Amnesty Law, the Inheritance Law was passed which deprives the "deserters", as unworthy, of the right to inheritance. Concerning this issue, legislature is not yet settled. The question of deserters still hovers in the air.

It is a fact that the current regime was at one moment ready to sacrifice thousands of its citizens in the war which they neither wanted nor believed in. It is also a fact that afterwards, with Lilic's amnesty, it tried to drown everything in a specific collective amnesia. Most of those who were "forgiven" by their state, after five years of living in the "wide world" are striving never to return to it if they do not have to. The only thing they are interested in is to live like all normal human beings. And in the state which they have left and which was so eager for their lives, they would not be able to do for a long, long time.

Philip Schwarm

(AIM)