People in Serbia - living in fear

It would not be sufficient to say that the people here fear their own shadow, as it is customary to describe fearful people, they are simply overwhelmed with fear of practically everything: they are afraid of illness, hunger, the regime, Europe, civil war, inflation, banishment, unemployment... The fears which usually so-called ordinary people are seized by, like for instance fear of death or fear of flying are unknown to the citizens of modern Serbia. They have their more immediate fears which resulted from the misfortunes they have lived with for a whole decade.

AIM Podgorica, 18 October, 1999 (By AIM correspondent from Belgrade)

If the intention was to intimidate the people in order to make it easier to rule them, the regime in Serbia has scored a brilliant, hundred-per-cent success! The territory from Horgos to Dragas, if these are still the borders of Serbia, is populated by the most frightened people in Europe! The latest public opinion poll in Serbia (carried out in September by a team of experts of the Centre for Investigation of Alternatives and Nezavisnost association of trade unions) confirmed that disappointment, confusion, hopelessness, anxiety and fear prevail in among the majority of ten million inhabitants of Serbia.

It would not be sufficient to say that people fear their own shadow as it is customary to say about fearful people, they are simply overwhelmed with fear of practically everything: they are afraid of illness, hunger, the regime, Europe, civil war, inflation, banishment, unemployment... Fears which usually seize the so-called ordinary people, like for instance fear of death or fear of flying, are unknown to the citizens of modern Serbia. They have their own more immediate fears which are the result of misfortunes they have been living with for a whole decade.

Director of Novi Sad Agency called SCAN and member of the team which studied the disposition of the people, Milka Puzigaca, says that until ten years ago "there was no fear in Serbia". Pollers encounter fear in 1990, at first in Voivodina where it was interpreted as the result of the "yoghurt revolution". Dissolution of certain provincial institutions and transfer of their duties and responsibilities to republican agencies of Serbia not only deprived many people of their jobs, but aroused fear in many others who did not share their destiny but were afraid that this could also happen to them. In the study of the origin and development of fear, Puzigaca determined that they are interconnected, almost related with the political and economic instability of Serbian society.

"In the beginning, the predominating were the fear of war, of dissolution of the country, of inter-ethnic and inter-republican conflicts and citizens' unrest, which prevailed until 1995. Social fear became prevalent after that and it spread on all strata of the population. The investigation we carried out in July last year for the whole of Yugoslavia and in September this year for Serbia without Kosovo, show that not even the last-spring bombing pushed back the social fear to the margins", says Puzigaca and explains that such fear characterises states ruled by high political and economic uncertainty.

Circumstances in Serbia are unstable and tiimes dangerous to such an extent that almost half of the pollees think that it is irresponsible to bear children, and as many as 68 per cent of persons below 30 are ready to leave the country. While interviewing about 1600 grown-up citizens in their homes, to the question "How are you?" the answer the pollers got from majority of pollees was that they were tired, nervous, with no energy, that they were torn by a feeling of hopelessness, that they were fed up of everything. Stating everything they were troubled by, the pollees have in fact made a long list of their everyday fears. The greatest number of them fear a decline of the standard of living (92 per cent), inflation (89 per cent), impossibility of employment (86 per cent), illness and impossibility of medical treatment (84 per cent), intervention of NATO and war with other states (82 per cent), sacking from work, corruption, immorality and lawlessness, and an equal number of them (80 per cent) fear civil war, social unrest, blockade and isolation.

Seventy per cent of the population of Serbia and an equal number of people in Voivodina fear hunger, although the latter is still claimed to be capable of feeding half of Europe. Milka Puzigaca says that she encoutered fear of hunger in the northern province of Serbia (Voivodina) six years ago and that it has not diminished since then. At the same time she explains that the pollees have just extended the list with the fear of the regime. In Serbia, 66 per cent of the pollees have expressed this fear, and in Voivodina one per cent less of the pollees. "Along with the fear of the regime, there is the fear of banishment (52 per cent in Serbia and 61 per cent in Voivodina) which testifies of enormous political uncertainty, equally among the Serbs and all the ethnic minorities in Serbia.

"In Sandzak, both the Serbs and the Muslims fear banishment, in Voivodina both the Serbs and the Hungarians, and according to my opinion, they all have plenty of reason to fear, because in Croatia, Bosnia and in Kosovo and Metohija in the past decade, both the majority and the minority ethnic groups were banished. There was simply no distinction among them", director of SCAN explains. The pollers asked the pollees to choose three predominant fears, and they made their own list of "priorities": fear of illness and impossibility of medical treatment ranked the first (37 per cent), fear of civil war ranks the second, and decline of the standard of living ranks the third (every sixth citizen fears the regime and social unrest). "A sick man needs an organised state which can offer him protection and help. People are impoverished and they have lost confidence in the capability and readiness of the state to organise treatment of the sick.

In Voivodina, this fear has ranked the first for two years already, and it is very characteristic that more than 70 per cent of the pollees in Serbia, to the question whether the state operates, answered that it is getting worse and that it might soon stop operating altogether", says Puzigaca. According to her opinion, fear of social unrest and civil war is quite justified, because the people are quite aware that a single spark is sufficient to trigger off such a catastrophe. Generally speaking, people in Serbia are disappointed with the regime, the opposition, the international community, especially its part called the West. Milka Puzigaca says that everybody here has intimidated people, and nobody tried to free them of fear. Nowadays the Serbs are the most phobic people in Europe, as the investigation shows. They are seized by fear ever since 1992, and just three years before that, according to her opinion, the people of Serbia had had the most positive attitude towards Europe, which was at the same time the best foundation for development and integration of Serbia into Europe.

"The explanation for Serbian Europhobia lies in the sanctions, bombing, different criteria, refusal of humanitarian aid". To the question whether fear, disappointment and hopelessness of the Serbian people is caused by their own weakness because they have not manifested sufficient level of maturity in difficult times, Milka Puzigaca protests claiming that there is a whose series of explanations why Serbian people appear to be immature. "You may be extremely mature but when fear takes over control of your reason, it dictates your behavior. I do not believe that our people are like sheep. They react on the basis of experience, based on what is acceptable or unacceptable to them. There is enormous fear which is multiplicating and growing which is extremely convenient for manipulation. If there are mechanisms for ruling by means of fear, you cannot blame only the people. I am convinced that all the elections in Serbia since 1990 were won by fear, which were intentionally induced, stimulated, and intensified".

How can the citizens of Serbia be freed of fear? Milka Puzigaca replied to this question with another question: how can they be freed of the regime whose rule rests on fear? By changes! The latest polls confirm that the people have overcome the fear of changes. Moreover, the people are motivated for changes. Milka Puzigaca adds that the people motivated for changes can be blocked only by fear of civil war, and it ranks in intensity next to the fear of illness! That is, it is persistent, large and according to the opinion of sociologists - justified.

Biserka Matic

(AIM)