“The law on information, on the
universities and the prepared law on NGOs should be strongly
opposed by all international organisations, governments and
NGOs.”
Jiri Dienstbier, Special Rapporteur of the
U.N. Commission on Human Rights
“Serbian authorities commit gross human rights
violations through new draconian laws that will further
undermine free media, education and civil society in Serbia.
Given its seriousness, we have heard deplorably few and
low-voiced protests from top diplomats, politicians, fellow
intellectuals and media people in the Europe and the US.
Dienstbier’s is an important exception” says TFF’s director
Jan Oberg.
The situation is appalling. After media and education,
NGOs will probably be targeted. People in Serbia are in a
double cage – that constructed by their own authorities and
that constructed by the international community since 1991.
Just look at how the Kosovo conflict is now “managed”
through the Milosevic-Holbrooke agreement and you’ll see how
the two cages reinforce each other. The losers? Ordinary
citizens – like in Bosnia under Dayton.
All citizens of Serbia – including the 650.000 forgotten
refugees from Bosnia and Croatia – have suffered enough
inside these cages since 1991. Shuttle diplomats, NATO,
OSCE, EU and the US display a profound and disastrous lack
of any strategy for civil society support. Much more must
therefore be done by European peoples’ organisations
everywhere to show solidarity with and assist independent
media, education and movements in Serbia – and urgently,”
says Dr. Oberg.
This is the background. In May this year, the Government
of Serbia passed a new university law without consulting
universities, teachers or students. It effectively reduces
academic independence, the autonomy of academia. The
government now controls the appointment and firing of
professors, deans and university governing boards and may
close faculties. The law further limits the influence of
professors on the curricula. Many professors refuse to sign
a new contract required by the law as they perceive it as a
humiliation. 43 professors have already been suspended; a
dean has promised to punish anyone who accepts research
grants from the Soros Open Society Fund!
A new law on Public Information was passed on October 20
by the Serbian parliament. The severest restrictions of this
law is Article 27 which is taken over from the Government of
Serbia’s Decree on Special Measures in Circumstances of
NATO’s Threats with Military Attacks against Our Country,
that is no longer relevant. Article 27 (1) of the law
prohibits any relay of either whole or parts of radio and
television political-propaganda programs produced by foreign
broadcast organisations whose founders are foreign
governments or their organisations. The law also requires
publishers to forward copies of each issue to the public
prosecutor and the Ministry of Information.
Article 67 stipulates fines to the – grotesque – amounts
of 400,000 to 800,000 dinars (35,000 to 70,000 US$) for
publishing “information calling for a forcible overthrow of
the constitutional order, violation of the territorial
integrity” and other violations that, one suspects, can be
used to stop any dissident publication in the future. But it
is an innovative method of combining authoritarian control
with money-making in a bankrupt economy! The law is
imprecise and self-contradictory as e.g. Articles 3, 4, 7
and 8 guarantees freedom for the media! This is the legal
foundation of hostile actions taken against independent
media, including the closure of Danas, Dnevni Telegraf, Nasa
Borba, the magazine Evropljanin, Radio Index in Belgrade,
and Radio Senta in Voivodina and fines against Glas and
Monitor .
The Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, directed by
internationally esteemed professor Vojin Dimitrijevic, has
issued two statements on the appalling human rights
situation in the media and at the universities. Here is an
excerpt that speaks for itself:
“Nikola Vasiljevic (19), Dragana Milinkovic
(22), Marina Glisic (22), and Teodora Tabacki (22),
students at various faculties of the Belgrade University,
were sentenced to 10 days imprisonment on 4 November.
Writing slogans against the University Act and Serbian
Law on Public Information, they, in a magistrate’s
opinion, “expressed civil resistance to the government –
and by insolent and delinquent conduct jeopardised the
peace and quiet of citizens and the public peace and
order”.
For the time being, the police is not arresting other
students at the faculties of Electrical Engineering,
Philology and Law in Belgrade, but para-police forces,
brought in by the government-appointed deans, prohibit them
to use the faculty premises and threaten them with physical
violence. Armed thugs at the Faculty of Electrical
Engineering do not allow 11 professors who have not signed
the employment contract (called “the declaration of loyalty
to the ruling party”) to enter the building.”
You can read them at TFF’s website at http://www.transnational.org/features/dimitrijevic.html.
or get them and other press releases from the Centre by
writing to
<bgcentar@EUnet.yu>. You
may also want to want to write to
Milos Vasic
<mvasic@merkur.bits.net>, President of the
Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia who is an
outspoken critic of the information law.
Dr. Oberg continues: “At least four factors operate
here and bode ill for the future. The clampdown on human
rights and civil society is probably 1) a sign of the
government’s feeling of rapidly decreasing security and
legitimacy; 2) a revenge for the huge civil society
demonstrations almost two years ago initiated by the
students; 3) related to the Kosovo conflict and the recent
deal(s) between by FRY President Slobodan Milosevic and
Ambassador Richard Holbrooke; and 4) the incredibly
counterproductive policies of the international so-called
“community” since 1991.
1) No government that is confident about its own
legitimacy and strategy seeks systematically to prevent its
citizens from knowing what goes (media) on and thinking
about it (education). Fortunately, it won’t be possible
either. There is human interaction and there are alternative
media that the government can’t control such as satellites,
e-mail, faxes and Internet. Independent media and
universities are two forces which can threaten the system.
The third is popular movements, civil society organizations,
or NGOs. So, we should expect them to be next in line as a
NGO law is being drafted. Around the time of the bombing
threat against Serbia, deputy prime minister Vojeslav Seselj
demanded that the USA should “withdraw their quislings like
members of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, Belgrade
(Intellectual) Circle, Women in Black, and not leave them as
hostages. Maybe we can not reach every airplane but we will
grab those that are close to us.”
2) The energy of the civil society mobilisation has
disappeared. There is widespread apathy – not even a million
of people in the street could change anything, so what can?
Well, they could have but what started out as a genuine
autonomous movement for democracy was co-opted by
power-gaming male opposition politicians who fought each
other. Thus, for instance, Mr. Vuk Draskovic is – quite
predictably – once again loyal with the system.
In addition, the Serbian economy is down the drain as a
result of the sanctions and the lack of a strategy for
economic reforms. As if this was not enough, Serbia also has
Europe’s largest refugee problem, 650.000 from Croatia and
Bosnia – conveniently forgotten by US and European human
rights groups and European governments. People in poverty
who have to fight for their minimum existence day-by-day in
a society that pays – if at all it does – its professors
200-400 DM a months are so humiliated by their leaders and
foreigners alike that it requires superhuman efforts to also
struggle for democratic change. But the guide below shows
that people miraculously do, in spite of all.
3) It looks like one aim of the new laws is to prevent
citizens from realising that vital parts of Serbia’s
governance is now in the hands of the US, OSCE, and NATO –
in military as well as civil, political terms. For years,
president Milosevic who always claimed that Kosovo was an
internal matter, took no steps except a) increasing
repression and b) suggesting a referendum in which
practically all citizens expressed their resistance to
foreign mediation. That is exactly what they’ve got now and
will have more of in the future.
It’s my judgment that the Milosevic-Holbrooke deal is the
first step in saying goodbye to Kosmet-Metohija. That’s what
intellectuals, media and popular movements in Serbia have
understood long ago could happen anyway given the
self-defeating stubbornness on both sides – and they never
cared too much about Kosovo anyhow. But the regime can’t
have them saying aloud to the rest of the people that Kosovo
will be lost sooner or later (although not won for the
Albanians, for sure). Neither can you have an open debate
about the fact that Serbia has been deprived of vital
aspects of the control it is supposed to have over its
affairs as a sovereign state. So, since the international
community got what it wanted, why should it protest human
rights violations?
4) Finally, since 1991 international government circles
have largely ignored the support to dissidents, small
opposition parties, youth, women, human rights people, peace
movements etc. in the republics of ex-Yugoslavia. The
effects of the sanctions in Serbia is to strengthen the
non-peoples’ organisations (the government) and undermine
the peoples’ organisations. What an injustice it is that
Serbian intellectuals – young and old – are practically
prevented from receiving government grants, scholarships,
project support and in general take part in international
academic exchanges and programs because of the policies of
the EU, the US and NATO.
Jan Oberg concludes: “Pressure creates counterpressure. I
believe the internal and external cage makers will
eventually help civil society to come together in civil
resistance, for democratisation. There is already an
alternative university in the making, there is a new
“Belgrade Open School” formed by some of the finest
intellectuals and educators. There is a students’
“Resistance Movement” and there are excellent NGO helpers
and grant-makers such as Soros Open Society. The Serbian
society has great human and cultural potentials. Perhaps one
day even Serbs and Albanians will come together in an
understanding that the lack of peace in a structural sense,
the lack of democracy and the “double-caged” erosion of the
Serbian civil society is their common problem.
But intellectuals, media people and NGOs throughout
Europe must wake up. The EU and other government
organisations must open up for media and academic
co-operation, for joint NGO projects. And if we mean
business by democratisation and humanism and democracy, all
sanctions must be lifted; they’ve been a mistake since 1991
and a violation of human rights. In short, let’s help
citizens of Serbia to free themselves from both cages and
shape their own future!”
G U I D E
Acquaint yourself with the situation and ask what you can best do to help :
• MEDIA CENTER
<mediac@opennet.org>
and <mediac@opennet.org>
http://www.mc.org.yu and
http://www.mediacenter.opennet.org.
• CAA, Centre for Antiwar
<caa@caa.org.yu>
• CAA Council for Human Rights
<council@caa.org.yu>
• Group MOST
<most@caa.org.yu>
• Radio B92 News, one of the best independent
sources
<b92eng@opennet.org>
http://207.10.94.56/opennet/b92inet.html/
• Write to Father Sava, the “Internet Monk” in
Decani, Kosovo and ask to be included on his listserv for
news from Serbia, including Kosovo, at “Fr. Sava”
<decani@EUnet.yu>
http://www.egroups.com/list/kosovo/
• Humanitarian Law Centre in Belgrade
<hlc@EUnet.yu> http://www.hlc.org.yu
• Civil Alliance of Serbia, Vesna Pesic
<vpesic@EUnet.yu>
• Democratic Party of Serbia, Vojeslav Kostunica
<dss@dssrbije.org.yu>
• Women in Black, Belgrade
<awcasv@eunet.yu>
• Belgrade Open School
<bos@opennet.org> –
website http://www.bos.opennet.org.
• The Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on
Human Rights, Jiri Dienstbier’s reports are UN General
Assembly Docs A753/322 of September 11 and Addendum of Oct
30, 1998. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva
http://www.unhchr.ch/.
Office in Belgrade headed by Barbara
Davis <davisb@un.org>
