AIM: All Migrations of the Serbs Under Milosevic
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Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 09:01:00 +0300 (EET DST)
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Subject: AIM: All Migrations of the Serbs Under Milosevic
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Original sender: Greek Helsinki Monitor <[email protected]>
AIM: All Migrations of the Serbs Under Milosevic
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*** All Migrations of the Serbs Under Milosevic
It is estimated that in the past ten years of Slobodan Milosevic's
rule about a million and a half Serbs have abandoned their homes,
cities and villages. Some of them have come to Serbia seeking refuge;
others have gone to other countries running away from wars and misery
AIM Podgorica, 27 September, 1999
(By AIM correspondent from Belgrade)
There is not a single photograph or video film of the president of FR
Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic with refugees - neither those from
former Krajina and Bosnia, nor with the latest ones from Kosovo. He
has never paid them a visit: neither when after the lost wars in 1995
the roads were thronged with endless columns of tractors, waggons
pulled by horses and overloaded trucks carrying women, children, the
elderly and demobilised soldiers, nor when the Serbs from Kosovo in
1999 met with the destiny of the Serbs from across the Drina. The
reason for this certainly is not the president's full schedule -
nothing and nobody like the refugees testify so convincingly about the
complete failure and breakdown of all Milosevic's policies. Aware of
this fact, his regime has never been choosy about ways of giving vent
to its anger on these people who have lost everything but their
accent: from delivering them as cannon fodder to Zeljko Raznatovic
Arkan and similar in 1995, to forcing the Serbs who have fled from
Kosovo to go back in 1999, although their lives in the full sense of
the word hang by a thread over there.
It is estimated that just in FR Yugoslavia there are more than 700
thousand refugees from Croatia and Bosnia, and another 200 thousand
from Kosovo. Their migrations have begun with the death of former
Yugoslavia, when its territory became the testing ground for those who
enjoyed drawing maps of new "great" national states founded on ethnic
engineering. The main tone in this process was set by Milosevic with
his hangers-on, although his example was closely followed by his
counterparts in other former republics. As at the time the then
president of Serbia seemed powerful and impossible to stop, they
appeared just as pale imitations who use all possible means to fight
him.
Like the Serbs, and even before them, the Croats, the Muslims, and
Kosovo Albanians, set out on the sad refugee journey. Their migrations
are directly caused by the manner in which by dictate of Belgrade Serb
self-proclaimed states of Krajina and then Republic of Srpska were
created in 1991/92, and control of Kosovo taken over and "resolution"
of the Albanian issue approached ever since 1987. When the listed
returned after they had won the wars, severe revanchism usually
followed. Often there were not even direct clashes: during the Balkan
wars at the end of the twentieth century every one of the conflicting
ethnic groups has learnt that it was best not to wait at home for the
army of another ethnic origin. Mass graves of civilians and prisoners
of war proved that they were right.
In the period between 1990 and 1999 there were a few major tides of
Serb refugees and/or displaced persons. The first was abandoning large
cities in Croatia and Bosnia, and places where the Serbs had been
minority population and departures to the self-proclaimed Krajina or
the Republic of Srpska, Serbia or the third countries. These were
prewar migrations or in the first months of the war, and the main
motives were pressure exerted by the authorities, retaliation,
uncertainty and lack of prospects for the future, as well as the wish
to be in one's own ethnic surroundings.
The second rush were refugee camps into which people withdrew
voluntarily to evade offensive action of armed forces of Croatian Army
or B&H Army: in summer 1991 tens of thousands of people from Banija
and Eastern Slavonia were in exile; a few ten thousand left their
homes in part of Western Slavonia in December that year; in January
1993 several thousand Serbs from Ravni Kotari near Maslenica became
refugees; 1 May 1995 (after Croatian offensive called Flash) marked
the end of the life of the Serbs in the rest of Western Slavonia with
the centre in Okucani, and in the beginning of August of that same
year (after operation Storm) almost the entire Serb population - more
than 360 thousand people - left the western part of former Krajina
with the centre in Knin, and in October 1995, Bosanska Krajina
experienced the same destiny.
The third tide consisted of the refugees after signing of peace
agreements. They were the Serbs from a part of Sarajevo controlled by
the Republic of Srpska after the Dayton accords, and slow and quiet
emigration from Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Srem after the
Erdut agreement in 1995, and the Serbs from Kosovo after the agreement
reached in Kumanovo in 1999.
During all that time, apparently concealed, the fourth tide of
refugees or emigrants was leaving Serbia: students and experts were
constantly leaving, but others too who wish to live off their work,
without wars, ethnic differentiation...
When speaking of the life of refugees and displaced persons, it
constantly deteriorated. In summer 1991, politicians of the regime
simply competed to show concern for Serb refugees from Croatia, state
television followed closely their movement, and humanitarian aid from
Serbia was sent regardless of whether it was needed or not. In the
search for justification of the war every sacrifice was welcome. As
the Serb armed forces and former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA)
progressed, majority of these people returned home or moved into the
houses of refugees of Croat ethnic origin from the territory. But this
was just a temporary state: after a few years they were forced to set
out from their homes again.
December 1991 refugees from Western Slavonia were already the
merchandise to bargain with in the exchange of territory for
population: Serb forces conquered Vukovar, and Croat troops the
mentioned territory of Western Slavonia, so that the Sarajevo
ceasefire between Republic of Croatia and JNA could be signed in the
beginning of January 1992. This meant that there would be no return.
Received and accommodated at first in Banja Luka, western Slavonians
sharply accused the army leadership and self-proclaimed Serb
authorities of treason, but they were calmed down by politicians such
as Dr. Radovan Karadzic. A part of them were colonised in Eastern
Slavonia, in houses of the Croats and Hungarians, and others set out
towards Serbia. A certain number of those who arrived in Voivodina
were used in exerting presure and intimidation of the local Croats and
Hungarians. The most notorious example was the local power-wielder
from the village of Hrtkovci Ostoja Sibincic. But when Sibincic and
similar were denied protection of the regime, refugees from Western
Slavonia were forgotten and left to shift for themselves. This is best
illustrated by the case of a few ten of them who were promptly thrown
out of a building owned by the army in New Belgrade in 1993 where they
had moved in "illegally".
A real refugee crisis exploded in 1995 in former Krajina. The first to
set out on the journey were refugees from the remainder of Western
Slavonia under Serb control. Very few managed to enter the "parent"
country: they were directed to Eastern Slavonia or remained in the
Republic of Srpska. The aim was to keep them on the territory emptied
of the Croats and the Muslims at any cost. However, three months
later, nothing could prevent refugees from Korenica, Gracac, Knin,
Petrinja, Benkovac, their entire population - from mayor to garbage
collector - to arrive in Serbia via Sremska Raca.
With scarce rations of humanitarian aid, with refugee identity cards
as their only documents, these people live day by day in various ways.
Just because the regime is not willing to grant the citizenship of FR
Yugoslavia to them without a severe bureaucratic procedure, this does
not mean that it had given up on the people from Krajina whom
Milosevic, like to all the Serbs for that matter, had promised life in
a joint state. Like in Krajina, they were ruthlessly manipulated in
Serbia whenever needed: there was the illegal mobilisation in 1995,
accusations that they were fascists who formed the backbone of civil
protests in 1996/97 (by Dragan Tomic, chairman of the Assembly of
Serbia), they were directed and colonised in Kosovo, and in various
ways confrontations were artificially provoked with the domicile
population, in which the most prominent was the one with the
para-regime association called Society of Natives of Serbia.
Refugees from Bosnian Krajina who fled in October 1995 were spared the
mentioned ill-treatment because they mostly remained in the Republic
of Srpska. They were displaced on the territory where before the war
majority of the population had been the Muslims and the Croats. And
vice versa - the territories where the Serbs had been the majority
population are nowadays inhabited by members of the other two B&H
peoples. A simple case of ethnic engineering: in other people's homes,
in other people's surroundings, but among one's own...
Emigration after the signed agreements, contrary to the described
ones, although it did not take place under cannon or machine-gun fire,
was no less dramatic. After signing of the Dayton accords, a part of
Sarajevo controlled by the Serbs was left without its inhabitants: on
the one hand their leaders pressured them to emigrate in various ways
in order to persist in combinations aimed at proving that no form of
coexistence was possible, and on the other hand, the authorities of
B&H Federation did not strive to give them convincing guarantees for
normal life after the war.
The case of the Serbs from from Eastern Slavonia is somewhat
different. Having learnt the lesson from their ethnic brethren from
Croatia, a considerable part of them decided to stay. They were
primarily aborigines. Nevertheless, after departure of those from
other regions who had moved into the homes of the Croats, the younger
members of the Serb population who believed that they had no future
there, sold their estates and silently left for Serbia.
However, the Serbs from Kosovo, despite the awareness of what being a
refugee means, after another failure of Milosevic's policy and the
lost war, did not wish to wait for the return of the Albanians who had
fled to northern Albania and Macedonia together with the armed Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA). Although averted by the regime, not only
verbally and politically, but also physically by the police, majority
of them left the province. Since then they are facing administrative
limitations and listening every day to the news about their kidnapped
and murdered ethnic brethren who had stayed in Kosovo.
During all this time, the young educated people are leaving FR
Yugoslavia. There is nothing queer about it: national income in 1990
in Serbia and Montenegro amounted to 2700 dollars per capita, and
nowadays it is estimated to be about 980 dollars. Depending on their
profession and skills, these people have fared differently: while some
of them are dish-washers in restaurants, others are quickly working
their way up as experts. Many of them suffer from home-sickness.
However, they are quickly cured after occasional visits to their
fatherland.
What was Milosevic's attitude towards all these migrations during his
rule? It is estimated that about 1,500,000 Serbs have left their
homes, their cities and their villages and set out as refugees to
Serbia or other countries where it is possible to live normally. The
simplest answer would be that Slobda Milosevic was not at all
interested in the destiny of these people. They were simply just the
material by means of which his regime developed, consolidated and was
preserved. Once used for his purposes, they became later just a mere
burden and unpleasant witnesses.
The Serbs from Kosovo were at first used by Milosevic to come to
power: in the late eighties manuipulation with their position in the
province was the foundation of the notorious "anti-bureaucratic
revolution". In the nineties they were turned into voting machinery of
the ruling party which due to the fact that ethnic Albanians boycotted
elections ensured about thirty seats for Milosevic's party in the
republican parliament right from the start. Finally, when Milosevic's
"easily promised speed" in resolving the problem of Kosovo experienced
a complete debacle in the war with NATO, the regime could find no
other role for these people but to keep as many of them in Kosovo as
possible which would enable him to claim for internal political
purposes that FR Yugoslavia has preserved its sovereignty and
territorial integrity over the province. Moreover, their suffering and
lack of protection by KFOR were abused as one of the crucial arguments
for the thesis on global anti-Serb conspiracy.
A similar thing was done to the Serbs from Croatia. As seen from the
book by Borislav Jovic (member from Serbia in the last collective
presidency of former Yugoslavia) titled "Last days of SFRY", in
1991/92 Milosevic was mostly busy planning how to get hold of parts of
Croatia in which the Serbs were the majority population. The destiny
of the Serb population in Croatian cities which was more numerous than
the one in mostly rural Krajina, was of no interest to him. Using Knin
for five years both in order to exert pressure on Croatia and as an
important stake in haggling with the international community, but also
because of paralysis of political life in Serbia itself, in the end
when everything went to the dogs, for Milosevic, the people from
Krajina were to be blamed for their misfortune. It turned out that
they had drawn him into the war, and not vice versa.
In the initial plan for creation of "trimmed" Yugoslavia (Serbia,
Montenegro, Macedonia and B&H), the Serbs from Croatia were suppoased
to play the role of the detonator; Bosnian Serbs should have been the
decisive factor. Since this ideal could not have been achieved,
leaders from Pale had the assignement to take control over the largest
possible piece of Bosnia, to enable contacts with Krajina and remain
in power for as long as it might be needed, at least to establish
another Serb state on the territory of former Yugoslavia. After seas
of blood shed in Bosnia, ethnic cleansing, suffering and destruction,
Dayton accords came as a forced move made to save the Republic of
Srpska from total ruin similar to the one in Krajina.
Contrary to the Serbs who had left their "eternal homes" and whose
"protection" was the fundamental alibi of Milosevic's war-mongering
policy, the regime did not notice the exodus of the young and educated
people from Serbia proper. This process was even convenient for it:
those whose knowledge and capabilities are the greatest threat to the
current regime in Serbia - such as it is, are leaving or have already
left.
In the past ten years Milosevic has rejected all reasonable solutions
and then regularly faced a debacle. From his point of view this was
even logical: how could he admit it that from the very start
everything was a complete failure. For as long as national enemies are
created and cherished, national failure does not threaten the regime.
Refugees and displaced persons as one of the most dangerous and most
terrible consequences of this policy, for Milosevic and his followers
are nothing but side effects of relentless and shameless preservation
of their power.
#Philip Schwarm
(AIM)
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