Radicalisation of Serbia

"Fall Ye Force and Injustice"

In eight months since its reconstruction, Serbian government of national unity - as it likes to call itself, although it consists of only three parties - in relation to the public, social institutions and its own citizens, has manifested mostly force and justice the way it imagines and sees it

AIM Podgorica, 11 November, 1998

(From AIM correspondent in Belgrade)

Basically, the picture of Serbia as a state which is investing great efforts, enormous energy and a great deal of the available power into extermination of even the smallest traces of its own civic society, has not changed one bit. In fact, all the nuances of grey in the mentioned picture disappear in the black shadow regardless whether it is cast by public rhetoric of representatives of the regime, rule by decrees, haste and procedure of passing regulations and laws, obedience of the judiciary or the accompanying racket and hubbub of the media close to the regime. Threats with violence and application of violence - in both cases officially concealed under the shield of "operation of the legal state" - in relation to everything that is not directly controlled by the authorities, is quickly spreading and becoming a rule in behavior: regardless of whether it is the university, independent media, other parties, associations or activities of individuals.

That is why the assessment can be considered correct that by joint actions of the coalition in power - Slobodan Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), Yugoslav Left of his wife, Mirjana Markovic (JUL) and Vojislav Seselj's Serb Radical Party (SRS) - Serbia is rushing into transformation from "soft" into "harsh" dictatorship. The mentioned assessments were published last week in the magazine called "Nova srpska politicka misao" (New Serb Political Thought), which is itself the surviving remnant of an editorial board the authorities got even with two years ago. In the mentioned issue, the authors estimate that Serbia is increasingly fitting into the the definition of what modern sociology calls "sultanism", the system of rule in which parties, regardless of whether in power or in the opposition, serve only for the purpose of keeping up pretences of political pluralism.

Strangling University

In the clash with the old and renewed love affair of the SPS with JUL and the Radicals, the first victim was the University. This institution which has every reason to be proud od its hundred-year tradition, and even occasional resistance to regimes which changed in the past century in Serbia, fell practically with no resistance at all. To make it even more shameful, there was no organised resistance on any ground - professional, out of loyalty, of the trade union, of students or professors - to order introduced by heads of the faculties who are proud of their managers' authorisations. They are closing down departments, reassigning professors to non-existent posts, forcing them to retire or simply sacking them, engaging private security services to throw out the disobedient, and then calling the police if professors, like it happened at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering - try to lecture in the street.

Everything is, of course, done pursuant the law. Professors and associates of the University who refused last year to sign that they agreed to the status of regime clerks are sent away. Only Nedic's quisling government in 1941 demanded such declarations of loyalty from university professors; at the time, Milos Djuric explained to a colleague from the music academy why he would not sign any declaration of loyalty: "Contrary to you, I do not teach blowing the horn, but ethics". A surprisingly small number of teachers has made a similar gesture nowadays; most of this minority decided not to sign the declaration and are silently waiting for the outcome. The feeble protest of the students does not at all resemble the protests in 1992, 1993, 1996/97 or last year. It seems that the students, faced with verbal and actual bullies at the university and around it, have decided to carry out the ironic slogan of their former protests: "As soon as I graduate, I shall emigrate".

Repression Increasing

This calculation is certainly more practical than silently waiting or grmbling: it is advisable to take the advantage of the situation, in which, like for example in Law School, lecturers and examiners are hardly more educated than their students, before the world university community shuts its doors to graduates, postgraduates and doctors of sciences from here. Such threats are already hovering over the Faculty of Electrical Engineering which has so far had the best "passage" as concerning brain drain.

With the weak, fragmentised, and marginalised opposition both in media and on the political scene, uncapable of any serious strategic or even tactical cooperation, the next in line for the regime to get easily rid of were the independent media in Serbia. To be completely truthful it should be said, though, that control of the media has always been one of the important pillars for preservation of power of the regime; the latest attack differs from the previous ones by brutality of the assault and size of the stick the press, radio and television stations are "put in order" with. The immediate cause for "legalization" of squaring accounts with the media were threats of NATO bombing and one phrase uttered by Momir Bulatovic by which he "concluded" that the state of immediate danger of war existed. Past the Constitution and laws, this was used by Serbian government and minister of information, Aleksandar Vucic, to publicise the decree on acting of media pursuant which the ministry authorised itself to warn and lodge appeals, and magistrates - who are just government clerks - to ban, punish and practically shut down undesirable media.

Along with the previously completed "cleansing" of the air by means of the public competition for channels, the decree which was overnight promoted into the law on information, dailies Nasa borba, Danas and Dnevni telegraph along with the weekly Evropljanin were practically shut down. Court fines pronounced just in the latter two cases amounted to 3.6 million dinars or 600 thousand German marks at the official exchange rate. Pronouncing of draconic fines and confiscation of property were not prevented even by the obvious absurdity that, in view of the value of the average salary in Serbia, the fines will be collected over the next hundred years. Warning of experts that the law on information was a threat to the very foundations of the law and legal system was also of no avail, because as judge Zoran Ivosevic said, it turned lawyers into "coroners of jurisprudence and the judiciary".

The fact that they registered their newspapers in Montenegro did not help the owners: Serbian police immediately started confiscating trucks which transported newspapers along with cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, petrol and everything else that is arriving on the black market to Serbia from Montenegro. Obvious race of the "leftists" and the "rightists" in cleansing Serbia seems to have exceeded proportions of an ordinary purge and is threatening to turn into an avalance.

Resistance, Despite Everything

Independent media - no matter to what extent and how they differ - appeared to be state enemy No. 1 solely because by informing about developments, they pointed out to the proportions of state or rather national catastrophe Serbia is facing in Kosovo. There is another important reason for squaring accounts with them: no matter how small their circulation, how limited their audibility, how hardly visible and financially insignificant they may be, independent media seriously endangered the monopoly of the regime in the sphere of information. Therefore, nobody should wonder that the main issue in the law on information is the ban of broadcasting or re-broadcasting of foreign programs in Serbian language.

Arrogance, arbitrariness and the severity of the state coup on civic society of Serbia - or what is left of it - was so far most seriously opposed by journalists. The emergency convention of the Independent Union of Journalists of Serbia (NUNS), held in the beginning of November, loudly and clearly warned that the coup against the university and the media was just the first and not the last step of no-return, the step which did not affect only the journalists, university professors and students, bur everything that still represented the civic society of Serbia, regardless of whether it opposed the state in any way, or just happened to be in its way. That is why NUNS appealed on all the citizens, organizations, parties, trade unions and local authorities to join the struggle against lawlessness. Right this minute, 15 thousand signatures are being collected which are necessary for initiating parliamentary debate for repealing this law. In Serbia, the very fact that there are people who are ready to put their names and family names, identity card number and personal number on such a demand, is an encouraging sign of civic courage.

Some children have manifested a different kind of courage: four students - three girls and one young man were arrested on 8 November at the square of the Republic for drawing a graffito on a wall in the form of a clenched fist and writing the slogan "Death to Fascism". They were convicted immediately and sent to serve the sentence of 10 days in prison. They, of course, are entitled to lodge appeals, but contrary to the (express) trial, no law prescribes a time limit for decision-making on an appeal, nor does it postpone the sentence. The ad-hoc formed students' organization called Resistance, organised a protest with the slogan: "Say No to introduction of fascism in Serbia on 9 November (day of the world struggle against fascism) on the same square". People who gathered were invited to write slogans and address them to the authorities - this possibility was used in the range from vulgar messages to epic folk wisdom - but the essence of the resistance was explained by Darko Kocijan, journalist of the shut down and moved to Montenegro Radio Index. "If four students were arrested because they were drawing a hand clenched in a fist side by side with the slogan 'Death to Fascism', they were disturbing the public peace and order only if those who are in power feel like fascists", he declared to Dnevni telegraf a days before it was confiscated again, this time for carrying the picture of the graffitto with the clenched fist.

In the past few days lonely voices of protest because of the developments at the University, individual public appearances of professors, party leaders and activists, stifling of media and "legal state"'s venting its anger on students, students' refusal to listen to lectures given by hastily found replacements, are starting to sound like a chorus. It would be easy to imagine that its musical theme could be the once popular song "Fall, ye force and injustice"; nevertheless, the students have chosen a more precise slogan. If it is comforting at all, there are still people in Serbia who are ready to offer resistance.

Aleksandar CiriC

(AIM)