… and the elections are coming (Serbia)

If analysed, a lot has happened in the state of Serbia in the period between September 2010 and September 2011. There are also positive things, the ones which so to say represent, from the standpoint of peace, perhaps the biggest steps taken in the last decade.
The arrests of Ratko Mladić and Goran Hadžić are events that have long seemed impossible. Regardless of the question how the two most wanted Hague fugitives were arrested on fairly public places and how is it that they could not be arrested sooner, their departure to Hague represents a success. It still remains unknown who helped them, how, whether and in what way did the state administration participate in that, or was it only the individuals, but the very acts of apprehension and extradition are enough to be noted as important. Also, even though Mladić is still considered as some kind of a hero with parts of public, the consequences of his arrest are also talks and reopening of files on war-crimes, questioning responsibilities, broadcasting documentaries on national television, which have enabled a big part of the public to view, in a different way, the events from recent wars and the individual, as well as the collective roles in them.
That is of course not enough for the reassembly of collective memory, but it is enough for the beginning of re-evaluation, instead of usual history, myth and legend.
In the political sense, there is nothing new in Serbia. Corruption, poverty, unemployment, groups organized to practice violence, sports hooligan groups organized to do violence (even though divided among many issues, many groups in Serbia are, it seems, easily organized when they are doing violence), political indifference to solving problems, demagogy instead of action, flirting with the election body, unsolved murders from the past, crime… World economic crisis as an excuse for everything bad that is happening, without an attempt to strengthen the micro economy and without any serious attempt to reduce the grey economy, which almost a million people depend on.
As if it were not enough, less and less children are being born in Serbia and the pensioners are the most numerous population, with lowest living standard. While politicians made careers in transition times, demanding sacrifices from citizens, those who sacrificed are by now 50 years of age and without job or perspective. Their children, even if educated are equally unemployed. With lives ahead of them, they feel incapable to steer their own lives. Tranquilizers are the most sold medication in Serbia, which has long ago been anesthetized.
The activist scene is, so to say, extinguished. During the previous period the big organizations have smothered the creation of small, local organizations with limited goals, so the NGO scene in Serbia exists in several central Belgrade streets. REKOM1 as an idea, even although initially supported by the majority of NGO and political parties in power, has tripped over its own structure and into recount – a lesson which has historically been repeated in the former Yugoslavia. When discussion reached the point of counting who is more, and who is less, who has more, and who has less, to whom belongs more, and to whom less, who has the credit for more, and who for less, who is in power more, and who is less – the country fell apart. And then 20 years later, the REKOM coalition has moved into action with an honourable goal, when they tripped over all sorts of counting. Certainly, a great assignment for REKOM is still to come, beside the numerous criticisms arriving on certain parts of the process, which can, only up to a certain point, be considered useful and encouraging for further steps.
After the Gay Pride that has taken place in 2010, this year it has been cancelled. It is clear that in year’s time not much has been done, neither to improve the rights of this community, nor to make their place in society more acceptable, so apart from the state administration, which has the most responsibility, a smaller part can be blamed on the organizers as well. Direct consequence of the parade not taking place and the publicly issued threats to the members of LGBT population is the vicious attack on the girl wearing a T-shirt with a LGBT sign. The sense or fear and insecurity, even powerlessness is more visible than this time last year, when the country stood up to hooligans.
And then we reach the ‘most expensive Serbian word’ – Kosovo, where the barricades still display that the road to cohabitation and even an ostensible peace, is still in the mist of crime, corruption and insufficient political willingness on both sides to sit down to the negotiating table and solve the problem together. Of course that solution cannot, at least for now, be comprehensive, permanent and final, but safety and the ordinary every day things can be guaranteed to people: valid documents, freedom of travel, the beginning of some form of cohabitation, could evolve into lasting peace.
In Kosovo the responsibility lays on a government whose president is under suspicion of war crime and trade of human organs, whose vice-president is convicted of corruption and is again in front of the court for war crimes, and all the witnesses have been killed under mysterious circumstances, the government whose previous president has also been accused for war crimes (Haradinaj). That government is partners with the West in ’the establishing of a legal state on the north of Kosovo’. Let’s think for a moment, what would the relations towards Serbia be, if due to some misfortune, accused of similar crimes were to head the state administration?
The lack of principles hurts and encourages the sense of injustice, so it is no wonder that the sympathy towards EU integration in Serbia is today for the first time under 50% (46).
There is no doubt that on the north of Kosovo Serbian criminals are working together with the extremist nationalistic parties and that Serbian and Albanian criminals are cooperating, but when did fire-makers become a part of the fire-brigade?
Declaratory, listening to the politicians of any majority side – everything is in best order. The country is, so they say, willing to protect and support the minorities. In reality, that is far from noticeable, so we have violence on every basis.
The prognosis for the 2012 is that there will be elections – and they bring along an increased amount of all kinds of violence, that the crisis will get worse, and that there is less and less excuses. Explanations, too. The feeling, I have a hunch – will be the same. Disappointed and anesthetized.
Katarina Milićević
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1 Initiative for the establishment of a Regional Commission (REKOM) tasked with establishing the facts about all victims of war crimes and other serious human rights violations committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia in the period from 1991-2001.