A-Infos (en) Letter from 2 activists from Belgrade

[Yolanda R <roal@nodo50.org>]

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Dear friends,
Seizure of NATO bombing relieved us here in Belgrade about the
immediacy, but left us in a specific state of vacuum and with a great
uncertainty about the future. We are choked by the pictures we receive
via satellite TV, dominated by horrible evidence of atrocities by
Yugoslav militia and paramilitaries conducted in Kosovo, and withdrawal
of YU armoured vehicles with soldiers waving flags and bottles singing
(on withdrawal!?). All combined with home TV full of congratulations "we
won", medals to heroic generals and officers, and our dictator not
concerned at all for being indicted for war crimes enthusiastically
announcing the reconstruction of the country. Pleased that the
monstrosities of the war are stopped make us concerned equally about
retaliations, despite KFOR heavy presence, against Serbian civil
population and Albanians in Kosovo, that are called collaborators even
by BBC commentator. After incredible bombardment, which as we envisaged
didn't hit the regime, with bitterness we wonder how one should name all
of us who worked hard and a with great courage, lobbying all these
years, since summer 1991 for peace and right of voice of pluralistic
multiethnic civil open society. We are the victims on the ground,
expelled from the community by extremes of the regime, from the air by
bombs (ecological and psychological impacts are catastrophic) and now
the international community imposes on us all the collective guilt and
consequent punishment by exclusion of NGOs and academic contacts from
any dialogue.

All in all, this produces a really schizophrenic context in which we
have to think about our immediate tomorrow with no sugar in shops, no
petrol in the pumps and no money in our pockets. It gets more depressing
to think of the coming summer with yet another year without any holidays
and of approaching winter with no heating; and then what about prospects
with the status quo (lawlessness) institutions where we still earn our
wages (read humanitarian aid), where new "patriots" are mushrooming. In
the first session of Parliament after bombing one smells the internal
exterminations, just proving how little the regime is hurt. But how
disadvantaged are we, the seeds of otherness, and a community which
could generate reconciliation inside the country but more so across the
region.

We then listen to Mr. Clinton saying "no help to Serbia so long as the
dictator is in power", also stressing "we are not going to get him, you
Serbian people should know how to achieve a change". The grim reality as
the poor country is getting poorer (and Serbia is devastated
economically and financially), the change to liberal democracy is less
likely, poverty produces a distribution of misery and an economy of
rationing, and junta-type authoritarian dictatorship with this finale of
military intervention.

Of course one resists and considers the urge for a change either by free
elections - which means unfortunately within a framework of a
brainwashed xenophobic "patriotic" population who "have beaten NATO",
without the free media to promote an alternative (or at least to make
people aware what happened), and without control over ballot boxes and
counting. Even if elections were won, the question would be the seizure
of power, as in 1996 local elections; the four political parties in
power are actually the fractions of a single block, a continuation of
single party system. The threshold of democracy has not been crossed.

The alternative and opposition parties are slowly consolidating but in
three blocks: all fragmented with numerous leader-dominated parties and
NGO groups, disunited, disorganized (with no real resources to travel
within the country to promote themselves, even to have reasonable
premises). So even with the great dissatisfaction of the vast majority
of the population about the real economic issues (with average income of
metal worker of DM 41'8 a month, many work without any salary), the
"patriotic" rhetoric like a drug dominates media and minds and we fear
the future months.

The alternative to this: a much more constructive and legitimized,
visible support of the international community to the alternative
democratic forces, to proven, long-standing civic society active NGOs,
enclaves of free media and alternative democracy-promoting projects
conceived even before the bombing started, and dispersed, but not really
ruined, in these events.

But in this state of vacuum with all the focus just on Kosovo, the next
catastrophe could happen in the core of the country. We fear that this
scenario is not enabling us "to put our own house in order" but rather
that we will be swept away as well. We plead for understanding and for
strongly structured support.


Sonja & Milan Prodanovic
Ecourban workshop
e-mail: ecourban@eunet.yu

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