Political and social contexts in which we work
Bosnia and Herzegovina: We’re not adapting to nobody, no way
Nothing is as certain, wrote journalist Ozren Kebo a while ago now, in a world of constant instability, as the fact that each new round of elections in BiH is more dangerous than the last. And yet, it seems that the elections scheduled for this autumn 2018 are in so many ways dangerously uncertain and unpredictable that this remark could become outdated already tomorrow, that what every journalist fears when handing in his article might happen: the events may overtake him, laying bare his reporting as naive, obsolete…
Delight is priceless
It is pointless to write about the possible outcome of the October elections and the post-election crisis that could ensue due to the failure to adopt changes to the BiH Election Law and BiH Constitution, as ordered by the BiH Constitutional Court and the European Court for Human Rights, for one simple reason. Namely, if the main loudmouths of the moment, currently warning us of a hellish post-election fiasco, happen to be handed a ministerial position or two, the hellfire that they speak of could very well be extinguished already with the first signs of snow. But then again, as the firefighters dressed up in the uniforms of the international community would say: In BiH, the fire is never extinguished, only localised, so you’re never sure which spark will reignite the flame. The election campaign that has been mounting throughout 2018 has merely exacerbated and fully laid bare the social conflicts that in BiH often follow along ethnically drawn lines, with the last few years seeing the focus of the conflict shift to relations within FBiH. In the simplest terms, the core of the conflict is between the socalled ethnic parties that advocate an ethnic principle for the elections and distribution of power, on the one hand, and the so-called civic parties that promote the principle of one person one vote. However, neither side is fully consistent and, in both cases, it comes down to a struggle for dominance where democracy is weaponised against opponents. Thus, for example, HDZ BiH, who demand an ethnic model for distributing power at the FBiH level, are against the self-same model at the level of the City of Mostar, where they insist on the principle of one person one vote. On the other hand, the so-called civic parties in Mostar insist on there being a mechanism to prevent the outvoting of Bosniaks, because they are in the minority in the city, but at the same time invoke Western best practices to insist on the model of one person one vote at the FBiH level where the Croats are the absolute minority. Frustrated by their powerlessness in this muscle game, the narcissisms of small differences see any criticism of their positions as a frontal attack, so that even the so-called leftists resort to the phrase made famous by the Gand Mufti, We’re not adapting to nobody, no way, those who, for years, swore by ZAVNOBiH, now see it as a Yugo-communist ruse that introduced the principle of constitutive peoples instead of citizens, or they moan about being vulnerable minorities as they alter the course of a river to build their villa… The principle being: we can’t do much, but at least we can mess it up for them, and we’ll do that with delight, whatever the price.
Exit, Voice, and Loyalty
Albert O. Hirschman says that a society in crisis offers its citizens three possibilities: Emigrating, protesting or remaining loyal. The easier it is to emigrate, the less likely protest becomes, and at the same time, emigrating is a form of protest. Emigration from BiH has ceased to be just a number or statistic; it has become populated with the names of our family, friends, neighbours. Although there is no research focusing on the reasons for leaving, from personal anecdotes, it is clear that the current wave of emigration is not primarily economic but comes as a response to two decades of deadlock in society without visible signs of the possibility of progress. With mass emigration and the high number of civil service sinecures keeping the number of loyal voters at a stable high, the result is not just less visible resistance but increasingly less space for any kind of resistance. The imaginary pendulum circumscribing the space for criticism has an increasingly shorter swing, while social networks, bots and anonymous portals make it easier to hunt down and lynch those who stand out. A race to the bottom and installing loyal followers in positions of power goes beyond the scope of just political parties and is definitely collapsing key institutions from the inside, with this year’s appointment of party young guns to the steering board of the Sarajevo University being a case in point. Using the past, especially the war-related past, is becoming an important factor in narrowing the space of freedom and in daily political take-downs. After a 107 long-standing moratorium imposed by the international community, this year the authorities have introduced lessons about the 1990s war(s) into the education system with the aim, as one minister put it, to impose our own version of the truth. In the war for interpreting the war (D. Jović), education is not the only way to pull new generations into the trenches of interpretation. Aware that the clock is ticking for war-veterans and veterans’ associations, efforts are now being made to forge a firm link between former war-veterans and future war-veterans, which led to the establishment of the Association of Descendants of War-Veterans in RS, while FBiH saw the formation of so-called Veterans’ Cooperatives under the leadership of descendants of war-veterans. Children dressed in military uniforms have become and indispensable part of commemoration ceremonies… History is brutally revised and reinterpreted to spice up the simmering post-war broth. This is a trend, by no means a new phenomenon, but the fact that the highest political instances take part (e.g. the production of the TV series Aliya, or the airing of the Dugo svitanje [Long Dawning] documentary series on TV Sarajevo) and that there is little to no resistance, make it a trend worth pointing out.
One step forward, two steps back
Although various peace initiatives have received formal support (the BiH Parliament has adopted the Peace Platform as a non-binding protocol document), we have taken institutional and material steps backwards when it comes to reconciliation. The RS President Milorad Dodik proposed, and the National Assembly almost unanimously approved retracting the Srebrenica Report that had been adopted by the government of the entity already in 2004. Looking at that Report from today’s perspective, its adoption and the statement made by the then president of RS Dragan Čavić seem like news from a distant future, from the year 4002, and serve as a litmus test that shows the regression on the path of dealing with the past. RS has also adopted a law on civilian war-victims that prevents or makes it impossibly difficult for those who were on the enemy side to access their rights. The recent attempts by Bosniak representatives to delegitimise the BiH Court and Prosecutor’s Office after the arrests and indictments against a number of veterans of the Army of BiH (Atif Dudaković, Sakib Mahmuljin, Dragan Vikić) once again highlight the matrix where no court is ever good or just if it prosecutes our own. The role of the international community, which has been pulling the strings in the Balkans for years, and whose favourite saying is We are prepared to accept any agreement the domestic leaders reach, was best laid bare this year when it came to increasing excise duties on oil derivatives. Fearing that the state could face a lack of funds to repay loans, European and other diplomats spent days hounding the 42 BiH MPs to convince them to adopt an increase in excise duties and thus secure the necessary 108 Montenegro: “Subjective experience” funds. There were invitations for cakes for Eid, late-night meetings and visits to home villages across the Bosnian mountains, the ambassadors were clear, unequivocal and uncompromising: the loans had to be repaid. It’s not that we hadn’t seen it before in Greece and elsewhere, but it was particularly painful to feel it on our own skins. At the same time, the Balkans, and especially BiH, have become a playground for diplomatic demonstration drills in an increasingly multipolar and divided world. Apart from the stronger influence of Turkey, Russia and to a certain extent China, now the UK, which is just about to leave the EU, has recognised the Balkans and BiH as an opportune location to come out as an independent player on the international scene. Dancing on the thin line between boldness and insolence, in the days of Brexit, London organised a conference on the future of the Balkans in the EU, wouldn’t you know, and sent 40 soldiers to BiH just in case. The idiotic position of the international community encouraging the leaders of Serbia and Kosovo to negotiate an exchange of territories (territories or populations?) and their demarcation is being closely watched from BiH, where we did an intensive exercise in demarcation from 1992 to 1995 which has left us with some experience and good practice examples that we thought we had left far behind.
Nedžad Novalić
Montenegro: “Subjective experience”
There have been no reports from Montenegro for a few years now, so permit me to use these pages not to give you an exhaustive list of events, that is, repetitions of the same stagnant rut we’re in, but to present a few humble “subjective experiences”.
Despite the majority of citizens being opposed to it, the Parliament of Montenegro, without organising a referendum, voted in favour of joining the NATO Alliance. Full membership in NATO was made official at a ceremony held at the State Department in June 2017, where Prime Minister Duško Marković said that “no more will decisions about Montenegro be made behind its back.” Prime Minister Duško Marković? Oh, he’s that charming man who was pushed to the side by Donald Trump only a few months later, at the NATO summit.
Being pushed aside thus became Montenegro’s mark of distinction. In the past few years, we have been pushed into NATO, pushed together with Putin, pushed towards the EU, as well as being pushed against Mother Russia on whom we are courageously imposing sanctions, and so forth. In order to feed and grow strong, the youngest nationalism in the Balkans—Montenegrin nationalism— must be directed against some enemy, and, of course, it is most effective to direct it against our brothers of yesteryear and their Greater Serbia hegemony. So, in the name of a struggle for liberty or for unification with our brothers, we push ourselves in with Serbia or against Serbia. Since joining, sorry, being pushed into NATO, apart from some good publicity, all we have are scrapes and bruises, while the expected progress or, God forbid, any change for the better, is proverbially absent.
If you’re already worried that there was no mention of Milo Đukanović in the first three paragraphs, fear not, at the last presidential elections he won with a convincing majority—what else—and was re-elected for president. This means that ever since 1991, he has been the sovereign ruler of Montenegro, either as president or as prime minister, same difference. Comparisons with Josip Broz Tito are becoming inevitable, for Milo has been our beloved prime minister/president for almost thirty years and shows no signs of planning to retire. The only difference is that Tito was president for as long as he was alive, while Milo is alive as long as he is president/prime minister. For a long time, power has not resided with the institutions, if indeed they ever existed in the first place, but in the hands of one man. Neither the US nor the EU wanted Đukanović in power again, because it was expected that once he took care of the NATO membership, he would go into political retirement, which would be his third time, third time lucky — almost. However, very influential business circles with vested interests have made sure he stayed in power once again. “Duško Marković is the prime minister, but subjective experience points to Milo Đukanović.”
Conflict between those upholding the system and the “reformists” almost always has an added geopolitical dimension, “because all the problems of the great powers are also our problems, but our problems are ours alone.” Lately, Milo has been increasingly critical of the EU, and there are rumours that he is turning towards Russia again. Montenegro recently called for the arrest of Joseph Assad, 109 a US citizen, whom it accuses of having participated in the alleged coup attempt in 2016. Before we lucked out with NATO membership, the regime in Podgorica claimed that Russian forces had been behind the planning of the coup, which was meant to include liquidating Đukaonović. The trial is still ongoing, and the indictment includes opposition politicians. Nothing has been proven yet.
In Montenegro, a small Adriatic country of only 620 000 inhabitants, the judiciary and state administration are thoroughly riddled with corruption, nepotism, as well as political and economic interests. In such a society, it is the citizens that are always pushed to the side. Not even some of the opposition leaders are spared ill treatment: Nebojša Medojević faces a prison sentence for refusing to disclose the source of information that he presented while a member of parliament, and Milan Knežević has already been convicted for the same reasons. A similar fate also threatens the investigative reporter Jovo Martinović, who has been investigating war crimes, arms smuggling and diamond thefts for years now. Montenegro is a country of all its citizens, free and equal, but subjective experience suggests this holds true only if you have a DPS party membership card.
Montenegro is in many respects a leader in the region. Proportional to its population, it is at the top of the list of European countries when it comes to the number of gun deaths, and its citizens are also the most armed and proudly hold the first place on that list as well.
The war between Montenegro’s two most powerful criminal clans, the “kavački” and the “škaljarski”, has taken 24 lives in the past three years. The police are investigating whether some other liquidations in Montenegro, and in other countries of the region, are also linked to the feud between the two crime groups from Kotor. Apart from in Montenegro, the clans also liquidated rivals in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition to these two, a number of other clans are mentioned, mostly around Darko Šarić, the Nikšić clan, the Mojkovac clan, i.e. the clan of the pushed-aside prime minister, etc. We are also in a leading position when it comes to the number of clans in proportion to the size of the country’s territory, and when it comes to unsolved murders, need I even tell you our ranking? NATO membership makes Montenegro a safe place to live and a secure zone for foreign investments, but subjective experience says that we are inching closer and closer to the West, albeit the Hollywood-produced Wild West.
The state of the media in Montenegro indicates that the “country” is among Europe’s most dangerous countries for reporters. In the past few years, there were dozens of attacks against reporters and independent media. The most recent case happened in Podgorica when Olivera Lakić of the independent daily Vijesti was attacked. She was shot in the leg in front of her building. Lakić had been reporting on organised crime in Montenegro and the links between crime groups and the state leadership. This was the third attack against this reporter and many interpret it as her last warning.
Not a single one of the attacks on reporters in Montenegro has been brought to light. The obvious reason for this is lack of political will. Apart from being almost tropical, Montenegro’s is also a climate of impunity for organised crime and even murder of reporters (a case from May 2004 when the editor of Dan Duško Jovanović was shot dead in the street. His murder has not been fully solved to this day.)
In Montenegro, the mafia and the state have fused together to such an extent that they have become indistinguishable from each other. And politicians’ statements against critical reporters and media, such as Milo’s most recent claim that Vijesti are a fascist newspaper, encourage criminals to continue their attacks with impunity. Montenegro is taking strides towards the big family of European democracies, it is at the very threshold of the EU, but subjective experience would suggest that we haven’t budged from where we were in the 1990s.
Finally, if anything should compel you to visit Podgorica, a bout of temporary insanity, a stopover on the way to the coast along still unfinished highways, a strong desire to spend days on a train ride or an irresistible urge to expose yourself to +45 degrees Centigrade, don’t expect to find any of its symbols in place: old hotels, factories, cinemas, parks, bookshops—they are gone. Hotel City has replaced the old Ljubović Hotel, the Hilton proudly stands where Hotel Crna Gora used to be, in place of the factories: Radoje Dakić producing construction machinery and Marko Radović furniture factory, we now have Delta City and City kvart, and a 14-storey monstrosity looms above Hotel Podgorica, marring one of the most beautiful works of architecture in the region. Podgorica is increasingly a CITY, but decreasingly urbane. This is due to the absorption of accumulated dirty capital through unplanned urban development, meaning permanent cementing. Podgorica is a city of green parks, squares and bridges, but subjective experience says we are stuck at a shopping centre, sorry, MALL and are having the time of our life!
Raško Radević
Croatia: “Bearers of European Values”
There’s that old story about slowly cooking a frog. If you throw a frog into boiling water, it will jump out. But if you put it into cold water and slowly heat it up, the frog will cook before realising what is going on. I find that image inescapable as the metaphor for our situation. We’re being cooked.
If you write about Croatia from the perspective of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as I am doing on this occasion, the first thing that strikes you is the recent honorary doctorate awarded by the University of Zagreb to Dragan Čović. Čović, who as director of Soko Mostar in 1993 requested a free labour force from the management of the Heliodrom concentration camp in Mostar (controlled by HV and HVO) made up of its prisoners, was recognised by the University of Zagreb, it seems, for directing the numerous Croats emigrating from BiH primarily to Croatia (!). The irony being that this “merit” directly undermines the vital interests of the Croat people in BiH, for whom Čović is allegedly fighting. The report of the university committee also notes that Dragan Čović began his career “in the difficult moments of abolishment of the Croat Republic of Herceg Bosna”. That this entity never received international recognition and that, moreover, it caused irreparable damage to Bosnian and Herzegovinian, and especially Bosnian Croats (and not just them) was pointed out by professor Đurđica Čilić, the only one to directly address the members of the Senate, enumerating a list of reasons why Čović should not be awarded an honorary doctorate. However, much like in many other cases when conscientious citizens and members of the community react, the rulers of Croatia’s Social Reality persist in bypassing the rule of law, moral scruples, along with common sense, rendering the lot meaningless. And all this in order to legalise and politically legitimise criminal policies.
Speaking of BiH, last autumn, a conference cynically titled “Croats in BiH – Bearers of European Values” was spiced up by President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović with her claim that BiH harbours thousands of radical Islamists and announcement that this would become the focus of her work in the upcoming period. Meanwhile in “European” Kiseljak, Croat and Bosniak children do not go to the same classrooms and in order to prevent any possibility of contact, they go to school at different times. Meanwhile, members of the pro-fascist Autochthonous Croat Party of Rights were setting fire to the offices of the Novosti weekly in the middle of Zagreb, accompanying their arson with threats and calls for violence. This, of course, elicited no reaction from the President. And that, in a nutshell, is the calamity that is Croatian politics, which, ever eager to find external enemies, forgets to look in the mirror. Staring back at it from behind the mirror, it would see the wicked witch. These are her children:
The first arrests in the Agrokor case coincided with the retrial of Branimir Glavaš for war crimes against Serb civilians in 1991 and 1992. In June 2018, the judges at the County Court in Zagreb went against the decision of the Supreme court when they ruled to exclude key witness testimony from Krunoslav Fehir as inadmissible. This eliminated incriminating testimony in the Garaža case. An earlier decision of the County Court in Zagreb about separate trials eliminated the testimony of the co-defendants that had incriminated Glavaš for crimes against civilians in the Selotejp case. Judging by these developments in the retrial, it would seem that the ultimate aim is acquittal.
After those opposed to the ratification of the Istanbul Convention spent days that turned into months of inundating public space with disinformation and lies, after organising prayer sessions in front of hospitals to dissuade women from having abortions, they launched an initiative titled “Prayers of the Holy Rosary at Croatian Border Crossing Points” with the aim of protecting the homeland and the Croatian people. From whom? Branka Ljubić from the initiative responds, “Refugees? More or less. The question is whether all those who want to come to Croatia are truly refugees. You know, there are plans to wipe out Christianity!… It’s not that we want to threaten or push in front of everyone else, but you can see for yourselves that wherever they come, they build mosques, and our people have to bloody their knees to get any kind of rights in their own homeland.”
We don’t have such scruples when it comes to claims to territory in the neighbouring country: On 9 November 2017, the Croatian State Archives hosted the promotion of Jadranko Prlić’s book Contributions for the History of the Croat Republic of Herceg-Bosna, in three volumes. In the presence of the minister for culture Nina Obuljen Koržinek, the book was presented on the anniversary of the destruction of the Old Bridge in Mostar.
Only twenty days later, on 29 November, the same Prlić et al. were scheduled to hear the second-instance judgement in the case against them at the Hague Tribunal. At the celebration of the anniversary of the so-called Croat 111 Community of Herceg-Bosna in Mostar, Dragan Čović stated that these were honourable men whose actions actually contributed to the survival of BiH.
The ICTY Appeals Chamber did not share this opinion when in its final judgement it convicted of war crimes the six former officials of so-called Herceg-Bosna: Jadranko Prlić, Bruno Stojić, Slobodan Praljak, Milivoje Petković, Valentin Ćorić and Berislav Pušić, sentencing them to a total of 111 years in prison. The judgement confirmed that the joint criminal enterprise included the participation of the political and military leadership of the Republic of Croatia under Franjo Tuđman.
In the courtroom, Slobodan Praljak made a performance and drank poison, which then spilled over into the Croatian political leadership. While completely ignoring the victims of this criminal entity and the Croatian war policy of aggression in BiH, the Prime Minister and the President bent over backwards to prove how this was not a judgement against Croatia or Croats in BiH, and how despite the evidence and the judgement, Croatia was not an aggressor in BiH, but, on the contrary, a liberator. Therefore, those who survived the Croat concentration camps in the territory of BiH had no grounds to file charges against Croatia, explained the Prime Minister. He came to Mostar to honour a convicted war criminal who had ethnically cleansed Stolac, kept Mostar under siege and destroyed the Old Bridge. Not his victims.
With the expected highest budget allocations going to defence in 2018, the Ministry of Croatian Veterans has a special budget line allocating 50 000 hrk to the Society for Research of the Threefold Jasenovac Camp (from WW2), an obscure association of revisionist historians, for “further research” to show how Jasenovac was a labour camp where prisoners were afforded healthcare and were let go after “serving their sentences”. The hypothesis of Jasenovac as a “labour camp” has become so mainstream that Milan Ivkošić, a Večernji list columnist writes “with admiration and seemingly without shame” in a review of The Jasenovac Labour Camp that “the camp even had entertainment. There were sports matches, especially football, concerts, theatre performances, including plays written by the prisoners themselves.” It would seem to follow from all this that it is a mystery whose bones lay buried in the fields of Jasenovac and along the banks of the Sava. Is it, though? That any attempt at negating, trivialising or minimising the enormity of this genocide is morally reprehensible is something Ivkošić had to be reminded of by Menachem Rosensaft, the general counsel of the World Jewish Congress, whose article, published on the regional portal BalkanInsight, reiterates the fact that during the Ustasha regime, Croatian authorities killed between 320 000 and 340 000 Serbs from Croatia and BiH. The Jasenovac memorial complex has identified 83 145 Serbs, Jews, Roma and antifascists by name among those who perished in the camps of the complex.
In order to overpower a society, you must first rein 112 in its culture. The best way to do this was discovered by one Zlatko Hasanbegović who, in his previous mandate as minister, cut funding for independent media, dismantled the Croatian Audio-Visual Centre, used political trade-offs to obliterate Marshall Tito Square, and then came to sit on the board of the Croatian National Theatre (HNK). He installed the former intendant of HNK, and his close friend, Ana Lederer, who also used to be his assistant at the Ministry of Culture, at the head of the Office for Culture of the City of Zagreb. Immediately upon her appointment, she decided that city funds could no longer be used to finance the “political activism” of Oliver Frljić. City funds will not be withdrawn, however, from Robert Kurbaša or Jakov Sedlar to whose political activism, as opposed to Frljić’s, the new head of the Culture Office is more attuned.
That the circus had gone haywire was best demonstrated – where else – during the carnival. Namely, the Children’s Carnival in Kašteli featured the burning of the picture book “My Rainbow Family” as the main culprit for everything bad that happened to us in 2017. When asked why they were burning a picture book about a same sex couple’s family, the association that organised the carnival responded with “It wasn’t us who started it”. True enough, the orchestrated clerofascist campaign has been going in in Croatia for years. And as usual, when Croatia sneezes, Herzegovina gets a fever, so that at the carnival in Čapljina, they buried the living Komšić and celebrated the late Praljak, and at the carnival in Livno, they burned an effigy of ICTY judge Carmel Agius who had read the final judgement in the case of the Herzegovina six. “The parents, teachers and children greeted the burning of the effigy with deafening applause.”
The Council for Dealing with the Consequences of the Rule of Non-democratic Regimes, which is completely misunderstood in Croatia as a council for dealing with the past, spent a year in deliberation to conclude that the Ustasha salute of Za dom spremni is essentially unacceptable, with one exception: when used in situations related to the Homeland War. In translation, this means that the plaque installed in Jasenovac by HOS[1] veterans, and which was subsequently moved to Novska after a public outcry, can legitimately feature the salute. How creative and broad the use of this “officially tolerated unconstitutional practice” can be was shown at the “celebration” of the anniversary of Operation Storm in Glina, which was kicked off by Marko Perković Thompson with none other than the “Za dom spremni” salute. The police filed no offence report, nor will they. Besides, he has already been acquitted of doing the exact same thing last year in Slunj. Even more desecrating than Thomson himself is the fact that the event was organised in Glina, a place where in 1941, the Ustasha massacred the local Serb population at the Church of the Blessed Virgin, which was subsequently razed to the ground. In 1951, a mausoleum memorial was constructed at the site of the church for all victims. Following Operation Storm in 1995, this memorial to victims of fascism was renamed the Croatian Memorial.
It should also be noted that the mayor of Zagreb plans to build a monument commemorating the holocaust in Zagreb, even though the central European memorial was built in 2005 in Berlin, while a monument commemorating victims of the NDH Ustasha regime which killed 80% of the Jewish national minority in Zagreb is conveniently bypassed. It does not bother Bandić in the least that “Crna Katica”, the locomotive of the train that took NDH prisoners to the Danica and Jadovno concentration camps, still sits at Zagreb’s main train station as a “tourist attraction”, after it was installed there in 1992. Additionally, the Danica Memorial Site is located in Koprivnica, another stop on Thompson’s tour this summer.
These are just some bits and pieces that could have been overlooked next to the “main events”, such as the offensive of the clerical right against the Istanbul Convention and the football championship that ended with a protracted delirium of red and white squares in the streets of Zagreb, with Thompson (again) on the bus with the team and the spontaneous revelries of the masses that found no other way to express themselves than by screaming and shouting for hours on end, “to battle, to battle” and “my blood for Croatia”, as if we were heading off into war, not a celebration, while the defeat of the team in the finals was uplifted with suspicious epithets such as “Croatia’s greatest victory since Operation Storm”.
A people enamoured of the military, a president enamoured of her tailored fatigues, and Thompson singing while trampling the bones of victims of the Ustasha regime… Croatia truly is difficult to love, for that love is painful and disappointing.
This summer, the veterans turned censors decided that Bajaga should be banned from performing at the Karlovačko Beer Fest because, and let’s not lie to ourselves as they lie to us, simply because he is a Serb. I seem to have missed the point when we decided the Beer Fest was a patriotic event, because it was patriotism, after all, that inspired them to make sure that the Ojkače Festival of UNESCO-recognised heritage would be banned because it was scheduled for 113 Kosovo: What have(n’t) we learned from our neighbours the same day as the inauguration of the monument “to mark the occasion when Franjo Tuđman visited Petrinja on 25 August 1991”. They said that ojkanje on that day would be a Serb provocation. Under public pressure, the ban was converted to postponing the Festival for a few months, but the hatred and intolerance are seeping into the pores of Croatian society without delay, and fear has become the dominant marker of behaviour. How else can we explain that after all the arrangements were made for the War of Memories exhibition of the Centre for Nonviolent Action to be displayed in Sisak in November 2018, we just received an e-mail informing us that it is “not the right time” for the exhibition, after all, which is why they have decided to withdraw their hospitality. The War of Memories exhibition is part of the project “War Monuments in Bosnia and Herzegovina (since 1991)” whose aim was to research, document and analyse the memorialisation policy and culture of memory in Bosnia and Herzegovina on all three sides, viewing it primarily from the perspective of building lasting peace and trust. It would seem that this precisely was the problem.
Davorka Turk
[1] HOS – Croatian Defence Forces – paramilitary organisation later integrated into the Croatian Army. HOS was established and ideologically modelled after the Croatian Armed Forces, the army of the Independent State of Croatia during WW2.
Kosovo: What have(n’t) we learned from our neighbours
Kosovo: What have(n’t) we learned from our neighbours
Our geographic region of the Balkans is not a particularly large territory, but it has pronounced demographic, linguistic and ethnic characteristics that perhaps make this part of Europe quite interesting. And perhaps also, unfortunately, quite exotic. In that Balkan hotchpotch (melting pot?!), each ethnic group does its utmost to distinguish itself from the others, to foreground the specificities that make it better, nobler, older, with more historical – and therefore political – rights, although that argument is in itself rotten. Wars have been fought over such great differences, both in the literal sense and on the scientific, intellectual and political scene, with a single aim – to make those great differences even greater differences. And even when one of the ethnic groups won a victory on the battlefield of inventing differences, another would be quick to play copycat and become even better at emphasising its own differences. At this point, we should definitely provide some examples, so that all this doesn’t end up sounding too academic. If in Albanian we put a question mark at the end of the sentence What have we learned from our neighbours, it will became a rhetorical question of What haven’t we learned from our neighbours, or, to put it more colloquially, the things I’ve heard. See how miraculous Albanian is? The language, not the bird.[1]
What have(n’t) we learned from our neighbours?! We have learned how to celebrate defeats. The Serbs (and here I mean the official or political narrative, not the whole people) have been imagining the Battle of Kosovo to the point of mythomania. They tell us about some Miloš Obilić (or Miloš Kopilić, why not?!), who sneaks by the numerous guards of the conquering sultan, enters his tent and kills him. I think we’re all familiar with the story. The Balkan peoples, under the banner of a Balkan king, lose the battle, the war and everything else, and yet this is one of the most glorious victories of the Serb people. The story is repeated throughout history, though the myths get progressively toned down as we approach modern times, which is understandable after all. Instead of thinking about how defeat is not something welcome, not something to be celebrated, the truth is better even if does not show us in the best light, we have been learning from our neighbours and doing the same thing. We start from the fact that Miloš Kopilić was an Albanian and continue through the whole of history (with some 400 years of darkness without information during the Ottoman Empire) and arrive to the most recent battles in Kosovo. To the epics. And because I am a language lover, I like browsing the dictionary the way children browse picture books. Albanian dictionary: EPIC f. 1. literary Type of epic literature, a long epic poem or narrative work describing historical events and legendary deeds related to the life of a people or nation. Homeric epics. To write an epic. 2.fig. A heroic event or group of events of historic importance in the life of a people. A glorious epic. The epic of the people’s liberation struggle. The Epic of Krujë. We have so many epics from this last war that we could proudly say that no one in the region will be able to 114 surpass us in a hundred years. To our dismay, these epics are accompanied by horrific massacres of civilians that in a heroic face-to-face battle would never be considered something to be proud of. Although I don’t have a lot of information about epics in Bosnia, I do know of a fictitious number that gets thrown about in Kosovo of 20,000 rapes during the war. The number has never been supported by any empirical data. Perhaps we took it from Bosnia, where monstrous systematic rapes were committed. We have the advantage there. Kosovo: Region 1 – 0 A difficult topic. Let’s move on to the entertainment section of the programme. Every sport, even artistic activities, have to be imbued with national pride, have to be accompanied by an outpouring of superiority over others. A football match in the world cup between Serbia and Switzerland (let me repeat: between Serbia and Switzerland) would not have the same lure if Xhaka and Shaqiri had not made the eagle sign after scoring their goals. Victory is not victory if it does not come with national hatred. As events before and after the match clearly demonstrate. The football match between Albania and Serbia in Belgrade was interrupted after a drone with a Ballist (an interesting name with the -ist suffix) and a curious card flew across the stadium. And the match was suspended. Who won? Kosovo – Region 0 – 0 We’re back to difficult topics. Albanians are descended from Pelasgians, Illyrians. The Bosniaks are descended from Illyrians. The Croats are descended from Illyrians. The Serbs are a heavenly people. If the Serb quasi-scientific machinery had done everything in its power to foreground the origin of its people with unprecedented myth(oman)ic fervour, and if we were until quite recently unable to respond in kind, we are now slowly catching up and gaining ground. I like the hypotheses that logically connect the Pelasgians-Illyrians and Albanians based on linguistic arguments, but the problem is that there are very few tangible facts to support any empirical conclusions. And I am not among those who believe a blow should be met by hitting further below the belt. We should not leave out Macedonia, to be sure, with Alexander the Great at its helm and the Skopje 2014 project (and he was actually Albanian? Greek? Ancient Greek?). The result would have to be tied again. Kosovo – Region 0 – 0 Although antifascism is a universal human value, nations in the region are gradually rehabilitating their hardened war criminals. We have witnessed the rehabilitation of the Ustashas in Croatia, the Chetniks in Serbia, and we are slowly learning from our neighbours how to do the same. But we lack courage. We lack the courage to say that fascism did good by us, and that the partisans persecuted us. We lack it at the official level, not behind closed doors. Still, the developed machinery and logistics in this area put the region in the lead. Therefore: Kosovo – Region 0 – 1 We Albanians are known for our hospitality, kindness, blood feuds and forgiveness, etc. What is more, we have codified them in the famous Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini. But, to our dismay, the other peoples of the region pride themselves for having the self-same distinguishing features. Apart from blood feuds, these are universally human and should perhaps be claimed by all reasonable people. But we codified them. So, we win, hands down: Kosovo – Region – 1 – 0 There are so many social aspects and levels that speak to our (incontestable) similarity. Take a Croat, a Serb, a Bosniak, a Macedonian, an Albanian and a Montenegrin (and to make it more interesting, take a Bulgarian and a Turk, too) of similar age and social and economic status, and see whether you’ll be able to pick out the Macedonian, for instance. If you can’t, then there’s something wrong with you. Or with them. If we had taken on good characteristics from each other, if we had fought against faults (above all) our own, and then those of others, if we had emphasised and appreciated the virtues of others and worked to improve our own failings, things could have turned out better and we wouldn’t be so exotic. I don’t know if that would have an effect on tourism, though. Final result: Kosovo – Region 1 – 0 At the end, I recommend you watch a documentary that I believe fits in with everything I said here. The film is very cheery and is called Whose is this song?
Pleasant watching!
Qerim Ondozi
[1] Alb. shqipja is a homonym for 1. ‘Albanian language’ and 2. ‘eagle’. (translator’s note)
Kosovo: There is Tension (Again)
This past year was quite turbulent, and Kosovo has been the focus of attention, both for the region and the international community. I would say it is so stressful, tense and taut that even remembering it for the purpose of writing this text causes me distress, given all the things I will have to remember. You try to find something positive, something bright, a glimmer of hope, a way out, something you can smile about with anticipation, but unfortunately, I don’t see it, it’s not there. Apart from fewer and fewer dear friends and acquaintances, because people are increasingly leaving any way they can, looking back paints quite a dull and bleak picture. Still… let’s give it a go…
After the Kosovo Government was constituted in September 2017, with support from representatives of the Serb List, local elections were held in October, so we also had local governments set up. In the case of the ten municipalities with a Serb majority population, this meant the victory of the Serb List supported by official Belgrade, i.e. the Serbian Progressive Party of the current President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić.
The final report of the European Union Election Observation Mission found that during the campaign for the early parliamentary elections, held four months before the local elections, within the Kosovo Serb community, “the campaign environment was marred by a deep pattern of intimidation and instances of violence from within the Kosovo Serb community against candidates and voters, as well as insufficient response from law enforcement agencies.” They also cited pressure on individual candidates to withdraw, violent incidents in Leposavić/Leposaviq, as well as pressure on political parties and candidates challenging the dominance of the Serb List.
During the campaign, four candidates withdrew from the list for councillors from among the SDP Civic Initiative of Oliver Ivanović, who was later killed. One of them even issued a statement calling on citizens to vote for the Serb List. “
These are not elections, this is not democracy, this is violence against democracy. This situation can escalate, it can get worse, but it’s already bad enough 116 that we will need time to remedy the consequences of such irresponsible behaviour,” Ivanović said in an interview for Radio Free Europe, adding that he did not feel threatened himself, but that the citizens standing by him do feel in danger and that they will be thinking about whether to stay or leave Kosovo. “If someone in power is shaking the foundations of what is needed to stay here, then I have nothing more to say,” said Oliver Ivanović.
After the elections, the Serb List won in all the municipalities with a Serb majority in Kosovo, including the posts of all ten mayors.
Oliver Ivanović was killed early this year in front of his office, with six shots to the chest. Ivanović was the leader of the Civic Initiative “Serbia, Democracy, Justice” and a member of the local parliament of Severna Mitrovica. He was admitted to the Mitrovica hospital without vital signs and could not be revived.
A vigil by the citizens of Severna Mitrovica was held that night at the party office where Oliver Ivanović was killed. By a decision of the Serbian Government, he was buried alongside other notable citizens in the New Cemetery in Belgrade, and as his hearse was leaving the day after the murder, thousands of people came to pay their respects and express their gratitude for everything he had done for the city in the years following the war.
Both Pristina and Belgrade opened investigations. In Kosovo, the investigation is officially in the hands of the Kosovo Special Prosecutor’s Office, but not much has been done.
A serious deterioration of already taut relations between Belgrade and Pristina, that also led to the Serb List leaving the Kosovo Government (only formally, as it will turn out), was caused by the arrest in Severna Mitrovica of the director of the Office for Kosovo of the Serbian Government, Marko Đurić, by a special unit of the Kosovo Police ROSU. Namely, the Pristina authorities had not approved his stay for the day he had requested, while Đurić disregarded this and showed up for the round table organised as part of Serbia’s Internal Dialogue about Kosovo.
Sirens, stun grenades, the brutality of the special police towards the crowd, including reporters, accompanied Đurić’s arrest and transport to Pristina, from where he was soon released from custody and taken to the border or administrative crossing point with Serbia. (You may call this crossing point whatever you please, but to enter, you will need all the documents required at any other border crossing point, goods are subject to customs, and if you are from Bosnia and Herzegovina, you will also need a visa, which you can have issued, if you’re lucky, in Zagreb. Or Tirana, Skopje or Istanbul.)
In the police intervention, 32 people were injured, five of them seriously, according to a statement by the director of the Clinical Hospital Centre in Severna Mitrovica, Milan Ivanović. Among them was the Minister for Agriculture in the Kosovo Government, Nenad Rikalo, and the Mayor of Leposavić, Zoran Todić. Injuries were inflicted with gunstocks, barrels, and heavy-duty footwear.
The President of Kosovo Hashim Thaçi called for peace. He said the Kosovo police had acted lawfully and in line with its authorisations during the arrest of Marko Đurić who had entered Kosovo illegally. Thaçi added that following regular prosecutorial and court procedure, Đurić was escorted to the border crossing point between Kosovo and Serbia.
The President of the Serb List Goran Rakić issued a statement that the party leadership had held an emergency meeting where it was decided they would leave the Kosovo Government, saying that dialogue did not make sense under the circumstances. A joint session of the ten municipal assemblies in Kosovo with a Serb majority was soon convened and it unanimously supported the conclusion that, unless “official Pristina is prepared to start forming the Community of Serb Municipalities (ZSO) within the next three weeks, the Serb municipalities and institutions” would start the formation of the community themselves, but they later gave up on this.
Avni Arifi, chief of staff to the prime minister of Kosovo and chief negotiator in the technical dialogue with Serbia, stated that “there is only one way to form the Community of Municipalities with a Serb majority, and that is through internal dialogue with the Kosovo authorities.” The Serbs are demanding that the ZSO be given executive authority, and the Kosovo side is opposed.
At this point, it is clear that the ZSO is not yet feasible, even five and a half years after the signing of the Brussels Agreement. The Serbs in Kosovo are distressed, lost, almost desperate. Year by year, more and more of them are leaving, and it seems that everyone else is just waiting for their chance. Most see no future in Kosovo. Secondary school graduates, despite having a University in Kosovska Mitrovica, opt for studying in other cities in Serbia. Instead of stabilising, the situation is constantly on the verge of escalating. Simply put, people are tired. They still face empty shelves in pharmacies, problems with personal ID documents, limited freedom of movement.
In June, the President of Kosovo Hashim Thaçi announced that the dialogue was entering its final phase and that Kosovo would ultimately become a member of the United Nations with reciprocal recognition between Kosovo and Serbia. “I am convinced that the time has come, after negotiations that have lasted these past 20 years, to sign a historical agreement between Kosovo and Serbia, ending a tragic epoch that lasted for over a century,” Thaçi said.
The agreement, he said, would be followed by constitutional changes in both Kosovo and Serbia; in Serbia because of the preamble, and in Kosovo because of the reciprocal recognition of Serbia. He said the border issue would also be discussed.
“A division of Kosovo’s territory, an exchange of territories or any option that would alter the borders is not an option for the Government of Kosovo,” said the chief of staff to the prime minister and chief negotiator in the technical dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina, Avni Arifi.
The population in the north of Kosovo was unsettled and frightened again in early August when Serbian media used scandalous headlines and reports to practically announce a cataclysm, a new war, that is, the takeover by Pristina of the Gazivode[1] hydro system, which is currently controlled by the Serb side in the Zubin Potok municipality, and everyone feared another, and probably the final exodus of Serbs from Kosovo.
“No one can usurp the Gazivode hydro system, it belongs to Kosovo and any attempt to usurp it constitutes aggression against Kosovo,” said Kosovo’s government officials, while officials from Belgrade contended that Serbia would protect both Gazivode and Trepča and the Valač transformer station in the north. All of the above are of high strategic importance for Serbs in the north, and the officials came to such verbal spats over it in the previous days that KFOR troops were sent in to guard the facilities under the guise of performing a “regular drill”, contrary to what the situation in the field clearly indicated. During those days, the media launched an unbearable campaign and spread unrest and fear among the population of Serb municipalities in Kosovo.
The situation in Kosovo is once again unstable, because there is increasingly talk of dividing Kosovo, drawing a demarcation line, resolving the centuries-old conflict, etc. This has led to new divisions among Serbs, but also Albanians. It has led to drastically divergent positions of the Serb List and the Serbian Government Office for Kosovo, on the one side, and the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo and Metohija, i.e. the Eparchy of Raška-Prizren, on the other, which in turn led to numerous statements and attacks on Sava Janjić, the hegumen of the Visoki Dečani monestary, who was accused of spreading panic among the population in the north of Kosovo and Metohija, but also of supporting Albanian interests. Janjić is against any kind of division or demarcation lines in Kosovo.
His position against any option that would include a division gained the support of the entire Eparchy, with all the monks, nuns and clergy signing an Appeal that they addressed to the Serbian authorities.
The presidents of Serbia and Kosovo met in Vienna on 24 August but informed the public of their meeting only on 26 August. They say they are determined to resolve the centuries-old problem and will not give up, though certain countries oppose “changing borders”, while Thaçi says a “correction” will be made.
We must live together, we are the two most numerous peoples in the Balkans. If we cannot solve this, who can,” Aleksandar Vučić was “conciliatory”. “Now is the time for a binding legal agreement between Kosovo and Serbia, we have cracked open a window and should use it,” said the President of Kosovo Hashim Thaçi.
They seem so determined that they “won’t be stopped” by either Britain or Germany, who are against changing the borders. However, the key issue is what do the people of Kosovo and Serbia have to say?! It is increasingly likely that there will be a referendum.
Thaçi and Vučić are to meet again on 7 September in Brussels with Federica Mogherini. The next day, Vučić plans a two-day visit to the north of Kosovo. The deadline for handing in this text, I’m happy to say, is 3 September.
Maja Fićović
[1] The Gazivode reservoir is for the most part located in the north of Kosovo, in the Zubih Potok municipality with a majority Serb population, and a smaller part belongs to the Tutin municipality in Serbia. It supplies drinking water to the north of Kosovo, as well as to Pristina and its suburbs. The hydro system also delivers water to the thermal power plants in Obilić, which is used to cool the power plants Kosovo A and Kosovo B, and additionally, the water from the Gazivode reservoir is also used to irrigate agricultural land.
Macedonia: At a Crossroad Again
It has been a very eventful year for Macedonia, with little tangible results and a growing dissatisfaction with the changes that followed and the ones that were expected but didn’t happen, after the VMRO-DPMNE – DUI regime fell, and we ended up with the government coalition SDSM – DUI. And after all the political turmoil until the new government was established, the challenges on how to deal with the aftermath of all that was done immediately appeared.
Soon after the new government coalition between the social democrats of SDSM, the “social democrats” of the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) and the Albanian nationalists of the Alliance for Albanians was established, the local elections had to be held. This felt as it was to bring about the next step towards the overcoming of ethnic lines in terms of voting and of pre-election coalitions, but that didn’t happen.
“Getting back in line”
SDSM and DUI didn’t form a pre-election coalition, and the Alliance for Albanians even left the government coalition at some point. SDSM and DUI stayed as national government partners, but for the local elections they decided to not go together. However, in a hidden – in a quite dishonest way – coordinated their campaigns to support one another. This was a hard blow to the thousands of Albanian voters and members of SDSM which voted for them for the parliamentary elections and were willing to vote for the local ones and eager to run campaigns to win them. Many voters, members and sympathizers which were seriously disappointed in DUI felt that they were being betrayed by SDSM who were making serious compromises for DUI. This turned out to be a huge step back in terms of the voting beyond ethnic lines.
The feeling of betrayal, a few months after the local elections, was also shared by the Roma who had been fighting against the regime, including the Roma partners in it, only to have that Roma party join the government coalition of SDSM and DUI.
For DUI the local elections were the golden opportunity to retrieve the political capital lost during the parliamentary elections, and they took it. They did lose a few municipalities by the other Albanian parties, and they lost to SDSM at a municipality that suffered a lot during 2001 and is perceived as being a very Albanian nationalist place. But in any case, DUI came out of the local elections with consolidated power and a role in the government greater than it had during their partnership with VMRODPMNE.
The local elections resulted with VMRO-DPMNE being crushed by SDSM, who won 56 municipalities plus the city of Skopje. VMRO-DPMNE won only 5 municipalities, none of which are considered big municipalities in terms of number of voters. DUI won 10 municipalities, the Alliance for the Albanians got 3, BESA and the Democratic Party of the Albanians both won 1 municipality each, and so did the Democratic Party of the Turks. Also, three municipalities were won by independent candidates.
New times for the same mistakes
As one of my friends says every time we discuss about daily politics in Macedonia, “we have a classical bad government”. There is a clear difference between the current government and the VMRO-DPMNE-led regime, but in many aspects, there are similarities that, as time is passing, are becoming more visible and more serious.
SDSM and DUI are continuing the tradition of VMRODPMNE and DUI in “DUIng business” in accordance to the law, but with serious suspicion of corruption and adjustment of practices to be fully legal yet problematic in different aspects.
Party employment is also closely hidden behind positive discrimination or equal representation, most often shifting the blame from party discrimination to ethnic discrimination, although the parties previously agreed on how many people from the “open” call get to be from which parties. So often, Macedonians whom have been rejected for jobs see the blame on the Albanian side, instead of seeing the real source of identity discrimination – party affiliation. The same goes for the Albanians. And of course, the smaller ethnicities get the “crumbs” and continue to be discriminated, especially the Roma.
Even with the new couple thousand Albanian members of SDSM, party employments continue to be ethnically “pure”, meaning SDSM don’t seem to do much to employ their Albanian members, as Albanian spots are reserved for DUI members.
Doing a disservice to justice
With the fall of the regime, there was serious hope for serious changes in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the security forces, in the Public Persecutor’s Office, and the judiciary, having in mind the complete domination of VMRO in all these government bodies and institutions until the fall of the regime. VMRO had a list of judges that they considered “theirs” and set up cases for them to judge on in their favor. They also kept ordering the public persecutor to act or not to act on many cases. And the police were so misused and abused for political purposes, that they used to take violent policemen to different parts of Macedonia during election campaigns to beat up SDSM members promoting SDSM. Just a few examples.
In the past year, the police had changes in positions of power, but most people that served the regime continue to be there although many have been serving the VMRO and have even participated in the storming of the Parliament on the 27th of April when VMRO supporters beat up the members of parliament that formed the new government. New facts reveal they had serious intentions and plans to assassinate Ziadin Sela, the head of the Alliance for the Albanians and Zoran Zaev, the current Prime Ministers and head of SDSM.
The Public Persecution did, however, go after the people involved in the violence during the storming of the Parliament building, with 28 people charged with Terrorism and 2 for Helping in the committing of a crime.
In May of this year, the charge of bribery that the Prime Minister Zaev was facing was dropped, more precisely, the court’s verdict was that he was innocent. Zaev insisted that the whole charge was a political case designed to stop him from publishing the wiretapped recordings.
Speaking of high government officials and their criminal charges – the ex-Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison for the illegal purchase of a 600.000 euro Mercedes and is currently in the Appeal court trying to change the verdict. He is being charged by the Special Public Persecution for other crimes too.
The Special Public Persecution is continuing with its work, having multiple active criminal charges for government officials from the regime.
Focusing on the outside
It seems that the biggest priority of the new government is to pave the way for Macedonia to find a solution for the name, join NATO and start the negotiations for entry into the EU. And to make that possible, the Prime Minister seems to be focused most of the time on our relations with the neighbors and with other countries. This is leaving people frustrated because of the expectations to have solutions to everyday problems that are of domestic concern, solutions which seem to be ignored. In addition, it seems that the new public officials with their arrogance and greediness are making things worse, and for many, the only person brave, honest and good enough in government is Zaev, so he should focus on the domestic issues more and fix this. This feeling goes in line with the idea that Macedonia needs and deserves one leader who can fix anything and everything, – something that has previously created Gruevski as the type of a cultish authoritarian leader that he was.
Macedonia has made progress in terms of improving the relations with the neighboring countries though, in particular Bulgaria and Greece. In January, the Parliament of Macedonia ratified an Agreement for good neighbors, friendship and cooperation with Bulgaria. Obviously, this resulted with nationalist opposition to it, with rhetoric typical of any sensitive national issue – full of insults and name calling against the Macedonians of SDSM, and Bulgarians, and of course, Albanians.
To be or not to be North Macedonia
After a period of great pressure and support from the international community, and a lot of nationalist outbursts, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of both Greece and Macedonia signed the agreement for the name dispute, accompanied by the Prime Ministers of both countries, the UN Special Representative Mathew Nimetz, Federica Mogherini etc.
As it has been put, the solution for the name dispute is the new name to be Republic of North Macedonia, and to be used erga omnes – towards all. The official language is to be Macedonian, and the nationality is to be Macedonian/ Citizens of Macedonia.
On the day of the signing of the agreement, VMRO – DPMNE held a protest in Bitola and in Skopje, there were riots by the Macedonian nationalists, in a way connected to VMRO – DPMNE. The police had to use force to deal with the rioters, and the opposition immediately brought up the protests against the VMRO government, stating that the force used on the protesters of the agreement has been much greater. When it comes to riot and protests against VMRO regime, it is funny how the Macedonian police for the Macedonian nationalists are like Schrodinger’s police – at the same time for them they are “Macedonian Sons” and “Shiptar (Albanian) Police”.
In any case, for the agreement to be finalized, there has to be a referendum for it. It was VMRO – DPMNE that first began insisting that a name change would happen only after the people would confirm it in a referendum. Now that VMRO – DPMNE are in opposition though, they are against the agreement, although Wikileaks recently published documents that show that they, with Gruevski in charge, have in 2008 accepted the name to change to North Macedonia but Greece at the time had refused it.
There is a boycott campaign which is quite ridiculous and disgustingly nationalist. Won’t go into too much details, but basically, it is a combination of hardcore Macedonian nationalists, Macedonian “liberal” intellectuals, the party Macedonian Unity that bragged about having had its members trained by Russian officials to take over the government, and the leftist party The Left.
The government decided that the referendum is going to be consultative, not obligatory. Leaving space for political maneuvers if it is to fail. One serious option if it fails is to make a deal with VMRO for amnesty, pass the agreement in the parliament with support from quite a few VMRO MP’s and have new parliamentary elections. All Albanian parties and SDSM along with its Macedonian partners fully support the referendum and the only challenge to whether the referendum is successful is if enough people go out to vote. The majority of the votes being yes is pretty much a sure thing.
There were quite a few issues related to the referendum, starting from the fact that all ministries that can are funding the campaign, especially the Ministry of Defense funding it for NATO. Another issue is the way the question is framed. The question is: Are you for membership in NATO and EU with the accepting of the agreement between the Republic of Macedonia and the Republic of Greece?
The question is a bit misleading, although anyone that is to vote will know beforehand what the referendum is about. But it also limits people that are against NATO, forcing such people to vote yes to a question they perhaps agree with only in part.
In any case, the referendum is going to be held on the 30th of September. And whatever the result is going to be, there will be a serious division in our society, with one side feeling betrayed by the other and with a feeling that they have lost something important. The way we address this is going to be very challenging. Especially having in mind that while the ethnic Macedonian community is divided on the issue, the other ethnic communities seem to be in great numbers for the referendum to pass.
Emrah Rexhepi
Serbia: As the old saying goes, “The higher they climb the harder they fall”
Few things stand out in daily life in Serbia this year that could be interpreted as indicators of any change or at least its beginnings when compared to a few years ago. The political climate fits in with the picture spreading around the world unabated, created by lesser or greater conservative political rulers. Russia, the US, Brexit leaders, Hungary, Turkey, Montenegro, North Korea… they all have their “saviour” who will sacrifice himself for the good of the state/nation, for which everyone owes him a debt of gratitude. Looking back, it is possible to recognise in Serbia, already since 2012, the beginnings of a similar pattern for coming to office and usurping power, establishing an extrainstitutional (intra-party) network of decision making, intimidation, a state of constant election campaigning and early elections, etc. conducted by a structure that has become embodied in the figure of the already at that time ubiquitous First Deputy Prime Minister (does anyone even know who holds that office today?) and leader of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) Aleksandar Vučić. Shortly thereafter, he became the prime minister, and he is currently the president, but his omnipresence and need to be the first to have his say about every subject, big and small, has remained constant and unwavering, regardless of which political office he happens to be holding at the time. Who will be prime minister, and who a minister, who will be mayor of Belgrade, who will manage the Niš airport and who will control the volume in the RTS studio—all these are issues that the President insists he must weigh in on first. In strengthening SNS rule, all those who dare to criticise anything the government does (or, for instance, fail to support the same football team as the president) are labelled (political) enemies and (almost) everything directed against them is deemed legitimate and permissible. When they are “crucified” in public space, no attention is spared for the time, place or manner, they are called idiots, murderers, criminals, traitors, rabble-rousers, etc. Nobody is spared, nobody is “given any slack”. It is as if the government’s adherents and “defenders” have started a game to outdo each other and are using these attacks to show the immensity of their loyalty/obedience to the powers that be. The worst thing that could happen to them as a result of launching these attacks is that the President might say that someone went a little bit overboard and shouldn’t have, that he wouldn’t have gone that far, but… to preserve his role as a “moderate” and a factor of stability. The front pages of quasi-newspapers, web portals, social media, TV stations, etc., but also the parliament’s podium, factory openings and inaugurations for kilometres of motorway, the laying down of various “cornerstones”—all are becoming places the average citizen of Serbia shuns, and, seeing who the targets are, lives in fear that his/her name might get mentioned at one of these publicity occasions. Ultimately, all s/he can do is “reconcile” him/herself to the fact that things are actually a lot better than s/he thinks, because we keep being told that progress in economic development is of historic and unprecedented proportions, new factories are opening every day with thousands of new jobs, kilometres of motorway are being built, big projects are being started, and equally big ones will soon be completed, salaries and pensions are going be increased any day now… and all the other unfulfilled promises. And everything that stands in the way of such “progress” must somehow be “overcome” or discredited. Whether it comes in the form of citizens taking to the streets to protest the Niš airport being taken away from the city and handed over for management by the central Serbian government, or in the form of legal procedures, competences and institutions. Some call this state of affairs “stabilitocracy”, but many in the EU bureaucratic apparatus are not averse to it either. On the contrary.
There will be a referendum.
Kosovo as a topic, a stumbling block, part of the Preamble to the Constitution, a ballast from the past… or in a (most frequently used) word, a “problem”. Any survey would show that it gets by far the most mentions in Serbia’s public space. Not counting the President’s name, of course. It was in this context that a young woman[1] who lives in Belgrade, with a BA in political science and an MA in diplomacy from a foreign university, said she knew nothing about what it was like in Kosovo. Her words are a good illustration of a large (illogical) discrepancy between how much Kosovo is “talked about” and how much people in Serbia know about what it is like there. How do people there? How do the Albanians live, and how do the Serbs live in Kosovo? What do they think about each other and how well do they know each other? What does it say in their passports and which countries require that citizens of Kosovo (both Serbs and Albanians) get a visa, and which do not? What kinds of documents do you need to have to go to Kosovo? What kind of music do they listen to in Pristina? Which authors are popular at the moment? What’s the coffee like, and what about the Tres Leches? … very rarely is a window opened onto Kosovo in this sense. And even when such an opportunity presents itself, the windows are often slammed shut. Photographs for an exhibition in Belgrade during the “Mirdita – Dobar dan” festival were not allowed “entry” into Serbia, because they showed Pristina as it is today; the female youth handball team from Kosovo was banned from playing a match with their peers in Serbia for security reasons; the author Shkëlzen Maliqi is not allowed to cross the border known as the Merdare administrative crossing point… And until these windows are opened and the image of Kosovo is “aired out” to rid it of branded trains, pre-arranged arrests, recitals in the Parliament addressed to the stone of Kosovo, “…and it goes without saying that you should score a big win against the Swiss national team”[2]… little will change, despite negotiations/dialogue or whatever they call those meetings in Brussels between “Pristina and Belgrade” mediated by the carrot and stick holders. The Kosovo “problem” cannot be solved either in Belgrade, or in Pristina, or in Brussels, but only through efforts to establish a fair, open and honest dialogue—which will not be easy—between the societies of Serbia and Kosovo. And that these efforts are not used for trade and negotiation about who should give how much, but as an opportunity where we can tell each other what we need and what we expect from the other side. So that we can share the burden of a painful past, a difficult present and an uncertain future, freed from myths and delusions, with a desire to get to know each other and find ways to make life better for everyone, free of mutual hatred. And it is delusional to think all that can fit into a single referendum question[3].
Lost in Transition
The Democratic Party, who were in power before the current powers that be, and who, before that, were the main lever in the opposition to Slobodan Milošević’s regime, had a historic result at the elections. Namely, for the first time since the party’s founding, it did not pass the threshold and will not be part of the city assembly. Fairing slightly better, but without significant influence, were the newly founded parties under the leadership of already spent politicians (Dragan Đilas, Vuk Jeremić, Boris Tadić) and some “fresh” faces that no longer look so fresh (Saša Janković). Add to that Dveri (extreme right) and there were plenty of those in the coalition that was set up by sheer ideological acrobatics who also failed to cross the elections threshold in Belgrade, and they are all that is left of the opposition today, which is supposed to stand up to the current powers that be. In full acknowledgement of 123 how hard it is to be the opposition among such a ruling majority (and when was it ever easy), the opposition must also take its share of responsibility for the current situation and the election results, at least for their lack of ideas or, worse, flirting with nationalism. There is talk of creating a united opposition and a common platform aimed at “bringing down Vučić’s regime”. One of the main points of criticism of the current government is its attitude towards Kosovo and its readiness to “sell” Kosovo in order to buy the favour of the West. In other words, they criticise the Vučić of today for not being enough of the Vućić of old. It would not be the first time that as soon as the opposition “unites”, their spiel becomes that the people voting in the elections are conservative, inundated with nationalism and hatred, braying for war, backward… while the civic options that promote tolerance, respect for others and those who are different are condemned to failure. Expecting such an opposition to bring about profound changes is unrealistic, to put it mildly, and the very thought of who such an opposition could nominate as their candidate for president, should the elections be called tomorrow, leaves a bitter aftertaste.
What about the neighbour’s cow (schadenfreude)?
Isn’t it a pretty picture when people in Croatia realise during the football world cup that their national team has so many fans in Serbia, and when Novak Đoković exchanges photos with them and sends words of support, when the national teams of Serbia and Croatia play a water polo match and the coaches exchange warm and friendly greetings, immediately deflating the nationalist fervour of the commentators, when a vast number of people are genuinely sad to hear that Oliver Dragojević has died, when people are angry and fiercely, openly and unconditionally condemn the tweet of Vice-Speaker of the Parliament Vjerica Radeta, which she wrote upon hearing that Hatidža Mehmedović had passed away[4] … isn’t that image prettier than the image of a military/ police parade or drill, of hand-me-down MiG planes, Šešelj on a chair at the entrance to Hrtkovci or in a TV show on “Happy TV” together with other criminals on the day before the commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide, than comments about the agreement reached between Macedonia and Greece on the name issue to the tune that there is no cause for congratulations, than seeing Milorad Dodik paraded around various events… To me it is. Unfortunately, those who are in power, and who are rightfully given “credit” for the tragic 1990s, present the latter as “normal”, “natural” or at least acceptable. There is no genuine care for national interests, though they talk of little else, just a charade to mask the lack of democratic capacity for establishing relations with our neighbours so that they are not a threat to us, nor we to them, and so that we can be at ease and at peace (both us and them, whoever they are) in the full sense of that word.
Where Next
Although sometimes the situation seems unchangeable and despite efforts to make odious any form of rebellion[5], overly expensive new year’s decorations and masts pile up like unfulfilled promises, suspicious public procurement, fake doctorates, aunts from Canada… feeding the feeling of injustice and the resulting anger. They grow in proportion with the pressures and increasing arrogance, moving inexorably towards an ever-greater face-off and change. When, how and to where will this change lead is still unclear, it is still obscured by the fog of propaganda by those who fear such a change. Still, reality cannot be bent to someone’s will indefinitely and to such a degree, because at some point it will inevitably break, leaving behind nothing but a big lie. That’s when the hard part will begin.
Nedžad Horozović
[1] Participant at the training for people from Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo, Introduction to Peacebuilding MirPaqeMir
[2] The words with which President Aleksandar Vučić ended the send-off of Serbia’s national football team to the world championship on 1 June 2018, (probably) alluding to the fact that the Swiss national team had a number of players of Albanian origin.
[3] Increasingly, there is talk of the referendum as a way for citizens to decide on solutions for Kosovo.
[4] Vjerica Radeta posted on her twitter profile: “I hear Hatidža Mehmetović from the association of businesswomen of Srebrenica has died. I wonder who will bury her. Her husband or her sons?!” The tweet was speedily removed after a deluge of reports, and the profile was suspended by the administrators of the platform.
[5] These efforts are easily discerned in the arrests of two parliament seats taken out on 5 October 2000, the attitude towards “Ne davimo Beograd” or the citizens of Niš who took to the streets to keep their airport, in threats with a Macedonia-like scenario…