Voivodina Against the War - Again

Resistance to the Deja-Vu

Parents of the soldiers from Voivodina demand two things from military authorities - to enable them to get in touch with their sons and that they be re-deployed in military barracks in Voivodina within 48 hours. Parents are protesting in Belgrade, Kragujevac, Nis, Smederevska Palanka...

AIM Belgrade, 21 June, 1998

"Within the domain of human destiny, it is a true tragedy. Within the domain of a process, it is a true farce. We can see that the same thing we had in Bosnia is going on in Kosovo, where nationalistic parties ran in the elections as a coalition, then made an agreement about division of Bosnia and then could not agree about perentages, so a terrible war broke out. I think that the agreement about division of Kosovo is also certain, but that concerning the percentages we will have all this bloodshed". That is the answer to the question - in what form is history being repeated in the developments about and in Kosovo? - given for AIM by the deputy of the Republican assembly and leader of the League of Social Democrats of Voivodina, Nenad Canak, who is ever since the escalation of the conflict in Kosovo, insisting that it is a war and who is unsuccessfully trying to put the discussion about it on the agenda of the parliament he is a member of.

Last week, together with another republican deputy, mayor of Subotica, Jozsef Kasza (League of Voivodina Hungarians), and member of the federal parliament Mile Isakov (Voivodina Coalition), he protested in front of the General Staff in Belgrade along with parents whose sons-soldiers are in Kosovo or were deployed there in the past two weeks. However distinctly they separated their party engagement from the help offered to the parents to bring their sons back from the Albanian border, in the first statement of the General staff of the Army of Yugoslavia carried by state news-agency Tanjug, it was stressed that they were present as well as a "large number of foreign journalists and television crews".

Parents of the soldiers from Voivodina wrote two demands for the military authorities - that communication immediately be enabled with their sons stationed or recently deployed in Kosovo and that within 48 hours, soldiers from Voivodina be brought back from Kosovo to military barracks in Voivodina. This deadline has just expired.

Since winter, rumour goes around Voivodina about mobilization for Kosovo, and since two weeks ago there has been an increased number of complaints of the parents that proportionally far too many young men from Voivodina are being sent to military barracks in the vicinity of which there are conflicts of the police and what the official propaganda calls "Albanian terrorists". One of the parents, anonymous since he is a "Hungarian from Subotica" and "does not wish his son to pay for" his words, says that in the military barracks in Djakovica where he recently visited his son, he found at least 80 per cent of the soldiers from Voivodina, mostly Hungarians and Croats from Voivodina.

According to the opinion of Nenad Canak, shooting is just "making time" which should serve Slobodan Milosevic this time as a pretext when he abandons Kosovo: "That is why we warn that this is just another bloody farce of Slobodan Milosevic's regime and that one should not participate in it. It is hardly believable that 140 thousand policemen are needed just to guard him from the love of the people who every now and then pour out into the streets. The difference between the police in Kosovo and the army is that if a policeman does not wish to be in Kosovo he resigns and then he is not there. And the soldiers are collected as cannon fodder and sent there to be killed for the sake of follies of Slobodan Milosevic".

When in the end of last week, several hundred parents of soldiers from several cities in Serbia gathered in front of the General Staff of the Army of Yugoslavia and demanded that their children return from Kosovo, everything resembled a deja-vu drama in all the wars Serbia has participated in. There is shooting and people are killed, while neither Yugoslavia nor Serbia is at war, the Montenegrin parliament and parents from Serbia are refusing to have their children sent where the shooting is, and the regime is convincing them that this is exactly where they should be and teaching them a lesson in patriotism. And it is assisted in this, either at the top of their voices - Vuk Draskovic who claims that "by refusing to defend Serbia, certain gentlemen from Montenegro are risking, God forbid, after the fall of Serbia, the fall of Montenegro" - or silently by what is (or was) usually considered to be the opposition in Serbia.

Ivica Dacic, spokesman of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), warns that "in this case, we are not speaking about Slovenia or Croatia", but of defence of the part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and that "this which is happening is not happening in a foreign country" - as if "last time" it was any different and as if the mentioned states have not only subsequently become foreign countries. Vojislav Seselj, this time from the position at the very top of the authorities, as usually points his finger at those "behind the protest of parents", he understands the concern, but explains that that the state and the army are taking care of their sons. These two explanations are, in fact, the pattern of mystification. The impression is that the rebellious parents understand that - they do not wish their sons to be heroes in a non-existent war after which something else will become a foreign country, and they are perturbed because of the very fact that "the state and the army" are taking care of their sons, at the border on the other side of which NATO troops are training for the attack they have promised to launch. They would rather, like the Montenegrins, pay the lowest possible price of peace which comes after every war.

From the hall of the Ministry of defence where they were received in the end - after they had refused to be taken to the barracks of the guards in Topcider (at the outskirts of Belgrade) and be shoved under the carpet with an adequate quantity of patriotic speeches - the parents emerged more than discontented. They did not even try to go to Kosovo in order to avoid being left somewhere in front of Leposavic or "driven around Zvecani", like the parents from Kragujevac. Major general Gradimir Zivanovic was unambiguous in his speech to the parents - the soldiers shall remain part of the Pristina corps. Later he declared that the army had taken certain measures, so the soldiers could call their homes and, whatever that may mean, everything would be done to "establish communication by post".

"Nothing is good here and nothing ever will be", more to herself and in a very low voice a mother of a soldier from vicinity of Novi Sad is repeating. For more than two months she knows nothing about her son and in a voice which is hardly audible says that "all that" should after all be resolved peacefully, "they are also human", and if the Squiptars once had and seek autonomy, why should anybody be killed... Her son is supposedly in Prizren, but for two months she had no contact with him. Another mother says she is lucky her son is a signalman, so he occasionally phones, but she wants him to be somewhere where there is no shooting. In the crowd in front of the General Staff building it was also possible to hear the following story: "We went to visit him on 19 April. First they were in Stimlje in the forest, then he was taken away, and now he is for almost two months in Dulj. They do not dare go to the toilet without guns and weapons. It is a state of war."

To them, like to the majority of parents who have decided to express their protest publicly, names of Kosovo cities and bordering watchtowers mean what they see on state television or read in the papers. If it is a conflict with "well-trained terrorists, what are insufficiently trained soldiers doing there" - is their most frequent question. They think that this is the job of the police. All the stories are similar. Their concern is enormous and personal. This makes the contrast in the encounter with the "state" all the more stunning. General Zivanovic, as they say, explained to them that the army has a "definite task" to protect the borders and advised the parents to talk with the Supreme Defence Council. They do not seem to understand rationaliity of colonel Mirko Starcevic who in Nis (according to Nasa Borba) explained to the parents that their sons were "in the field" in order not to be in "barracks-mousetraps" where "the terrorists can shoot them with mortars".

This and the explanation that even the March class of recruited soldiers was sent to Kosovo to enable those who are putting on uniforms for the first time right now to be "protected" obviously is a good enough reason for the mayor of Subotica Jozsef Kasza, leader of the League of Voivodina Hungarians, to say immediately after the talks that it seemed to him that the aim of the general who had received the parents was "to tire them out, to set them at variance and solve nothing; and he succeeded in doing it".

In front of the General Staff were parents from Belgrade, Subotica, Novi Sad, Zrenjanin, Senta, Pancevo, Kragujevac, Nis, Smederevska Palanka... The general message was: bring our sons back from Kosovo. On a placard it was written: "Marko for a soldier, Sloba for the reserve forces".

Milena Putnik

(AIM)