The expert with global reputation in international law, two honorary doctorates of reputable universities, a member of the exclusive associations such as the Institute for International Law and the International Commission of Jurists, a journalist and longtime director of the Belgrade Center for Human Rights Vojin Dimitrijevic is one of the few authorities whose word is respected even by those with opposing views. During the tense political battle ahead of Sunday’s election, Novi magazin and Vojin Dimitrijevic made a sketch of Serbian society today.
What would be the first word to explain the past decade in Serbia?
The main word would probably be: disappointment. It’s not just a problem for me, but for many other people as well, and we have to understand that disappointment comes a result of one’s previous fascination.
Maybe I was preoccupied with the monistic goal of overthrowing the regime of Slobodan Milosevic and, like many people, obsessed with the thought that everyone is welcome.
At a time when we most intensely fought against Milosevic (and he certainly was not alone) and against his regime which was a combination of revived Stalinism and nationalism, there were practically no political parties at all. They were still in early stages and I know that we were talking people into joining parties, because no changes could happen without the parties and elections. Well, Milosevic used the same idea of some kind partisiansihip without parties to win the presidential elections with 103 percent of the votes!
Blinded by just one aim, we had not noticed all those who trying to become a part of the elite and were preparing for the time when ordinary people will win the changes. Suddenly there were parties that had not existed before and people who had previously been afraid of membership in political parties instantly became members (Their motto used to be – “I am not a member of any party or parties”). But the idea of higher value and higher purpose – to change the society – has become a pragmatic idea of replacing one government with another without ideals, ideologies and other goals.
Has this led to the disappointment you are talking about?
In the elections in 2000. Milosevic’s opponents won with a candidate who was a little different from him – Vojislav Kostunica – with just a little more than 50 percent of the votes. That half of the voters who, after so many years of suffering, deprivation, humiliation and poverty, still voted for Milosevic and Co. is still here.
You need to remember that at the end of 2000. his party has almost vanished, as well as the Serbian Radical Party which was very popular at the time. But, instead of decisive changes, that was the beginning of the compromises and adjustments in the ministries, with the possibility to remove all traces of earlier acts, so we ended up with the situation that we have today. The people who ran the SPS and then hid in other parties are now coming back to their base. It has changed to some extent, but it attracts people who have spent some time in the Democratic Party of Serbia, the intellectually closest to them, due to which Kostunica enjoyed the popularity of religious leaders for a while.
Apart from the return to the political base, a misty scene of endless combination is being created and you cannot tell if someone is fighting for an idea or a long-term concept – everyone is turning into a profession that is about to rule. Compromises require abandonment of rooted believes. Today, even the hard nationalists are avoiding the issues that cannot be beneficial for them. You’ve noticed that no one is going to Kosovo and it is used only as a phrase. We forgot that leaders, as responsible political figures, should present serious topics and issues, even at the cost of defeat. A good policy idea can fail in one election, but can win in the next ones.
What do you see as the most important question that was left unanswered?
The basic question is why is the reputation of Serbs and Serbia so bad? We cannot fool ourselves that Novak Djokovic will come to save us and wonder why did a Swedish presenter compare us with the worst Nazis, racists, terrorists and Breivik supporters. Instead of asking where did this Breivik get the idea of us as role models and a stubborn belief that he is responsible for our reputation, we should ask ourselves what have we done to change this.
The constant shift of blame to others reminds me of the nineties when it was constantly claimed that the foreign media (as well as the domestic betrayers) were to blame for the image that the world had about us because they were telling lies and how we “lost the media war.” Radio-Television Serbia once introduced a satellite program in Serbian that addressed only the Serbs in the Diaspora and misinformed them to a great extent.
We still believe that everything said about us was made up, instead of facing the things that happened. At the moment, everyone is focused on bombing and when the progressives brought Giuliani no one mentioned the basic problem – how much did it cost and who paid for his arrival – the only thing mentioned was that Giuliani supported the bombing. Well, in the entire U.S. only Noam Chomsky and some members of Serbian Diaspora did not support the bombing.
Let’s put aside the fact which I had already wrote about, that the bombing was an unprecedented nonsense that will cost our democracy even more – no one is still addressing what was done in 1998. and 1999, what was signed by Perisic and the plan to exile 800 thousand people.
Another issue that we do not open, recently written about by Dubravka Stojanovic, is that the Kosovo problem dates from 1912. which was the origin of all subsequent disputes. There are still claims that Kosovo is historically our territory where its inhabitants are just a supplement or an accessory.
Kosovo was obtained on the table and it can be taken the same way. Why does no one accept that reality?
Back in the 1912. when Kosovo was obtained in the Serbian parliament, the question was raised of whether it would become a constitutional part of Serbia or a military rule. This was the seed of the problem.
Although there was no Serbian majority in Kosovo at that time, the Albanians have been declared illegal immigrants in 1987. They existed only when necessary and in elections organized by the SPS when they supposedly voted for this party (you remember the famous district of Pec). Then, after 2000, they disappeared from the lists. No one raises the question where have so many people disappeared, how and why? Was it the result of their boycott, or did someone make and sign the decision to delete all Albanians from the voting register? Was this possible to achieve without racism?
When will we realize that the trains which transported Albanians from the station in Pristina did not come alone (among them were Keljmendi brothers, who were taken off the train and murdered), someone had ordered these trains and someone had to manage them. And, to go back to our reputation – we easily lost the support of Israelis, who have long believed that Jews and Serbs shared the same fate. The trains on Pristina station reminded them of transports to Auschwitz and we lost their sympathy. And we were not worried by that. Today we accept few of Milosevic’s internal policy mistakes, but give me an example of some criticism of his foreign policy moves. There is no such thing and it is not a coincidence.