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LOCAL PRESS

 

Nikolic signs decision to slate parliamentary elections (RTS)

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic has slated early parliamentary elections for 16 March.
Based on the government’s argument, Nikolic signed a decree on the dissolution of the Serbian parliament and decision to slate early parliamentary elections. These will be 10^th parliamentary elections since the introduction of the multi-party system, and seventh early elections. While pointing that in two years since the previous elections Serbia has changed for the better, Nikolic has stressed that the merit for that belongs to everyone who hold state functions, and primarily the Serbian Government. He has added that in the meantime Belgrade has commenced the dialogue with the interim institutions in Pristina, and the state policy has been accepted in many states and organizations in the world. The Serbian President has sent a message to the political parties that the month and a half until the elections should not be used for arguing, but for gathering again. He told the citizens to choose those who will best guide them and take care of their children, representing the government’s policy around the world, and he stressed that all state bodies will carry on doing their jobs in line with the Constitution and the laws, without bias in the election campaign, so that the stability and security of the country will be ensured. While reminding that the elections are always an opportunity to reach better, nicer and most desirable things, Nikolic has wished for the successful elections.

 

Dacic, Patriarch Irinej discuss current political situation (Tanjug)

Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic and Serbian Patriarch Irinej have discussed the current political situation in Serbia, Belgrade-Pristina dialogue in Brussels, and the Serbian Government’s efforts to ensure the best conditions for the survival of Serbs in the southern province. Dacic emphasized that the Government will continue to work on realization of the key state and national interests, the Governments Press Office communicated.

 

Ivanovic’s arrest destabilizing northern Kosovo (Radio Serbia)

The court in Kosovska Mitrovica ordered a one -month detention for Oliver Ivanovic and he was taken to Pristina on Tuesday morning. On Monday, Ivanovic voluntarily contacted EULEX prosecutor in Kosovska Mitrovica, where he was charged with war crimes and aggravated murders that occurred 15 years ago. Serb representatives from the north of the province said that the arrest is politically motivated, and carried out in the politically most sensitive moment so as to intimidate Serbs and prevent the formation of the Union of Serb Municipalities. Ksenija Bozovic, a municipal councilor and member of Ivanovic’s Civic Initiative “Serbia, Democracy, Justice”, said the allegations are totally ungrounded and there is no evidence either. Bozovic wonders why it has taken such a long time and why it is undertaken just now during the election campaign for mayor of the northern Kosovska Mitrovica.

Provisional Authority in Kosovska Mitrovica condemned the arrest of the prominent Serb politician and demanded his immediate release. “In an already fragile situation, this does not contribute to either peace or stability in this part of the province,” says Aleksandar Spiric, President of the Provisional Authority. “If there is strong evidence Ivanovic committed serious crimes he is charged for, why was this not done during the past 14 years? This has made citizens very suspicious,” says Zvecan Mayor Vucina Jankovic. It is unacceptable for the Serb community that any investigation is carried out in this way, said Coordinator of the Management Team for the establishment of the Union of Serb Municipalities Ljubomir Maric, who expects the international community to act differently.

The arrest of Oliver Ivanovic, one of the moderate Serb politicians from Kosovo, again raises the question of safety of the Serbs’ lives and their legal protection in the province. The way Ivanovic was charged could be applied to charge all the Serbs in the province and that happened to many people in the past. It is enough that a couple of Albanians accuse a Serb of a crime. Evidence is less important and the goal is always achieved. The suspects are arrested and sometimes held in prison for several months, often along with mental and physical torture, and later, when their innocence is proved, they usually do not feel like living in Kosovo any more. On the other hand, Kosovo’s judiciary, with the help of international judges and prosecutors, has so far shed light on none of numerous crimes committed against the Serbs, kidnappings, murder of the reapers in Lipljan, the killing of children at the Bistrica River in Gorazdevac near Pec, the bombing of a bus in Podujevo, and many other murders. Therefore, there is again a question of motive in the Ivanovic case. Ivanovic is a prominent Serb politician, leader of a political party that is participating in the local government, a serious candidate for the mayor in the next election. His arrest at such a sensitive moment could endanger the constitution of the local government, and the formation of the Union of Serb Municipalities, which is certainly not of assistance to the Serb people in Kosovo and Metohija.

 

 

REGIONAL PRESS

 

Serbian Prosecution conducting investigation against Oric (RTS)

The Serbian War Crimes Prosecution is conducting an investigation against Naser Oric and four more suspects for committing on 12 July 1992 war crimes against the civilian population in Zalazje, Donji Potocari, Srebrenica municipality, the Prosecution states. Oric and others are charged for killing nine Serb civilians. Taking into consideration that Oric is unavailable to the Serbian judicial bodies, it is expected that a warrant will be issued. The statement underlines that the Prosecution submitted on 4 August 2011 a request for conducting an investigation based on the criminal charges filed by the Serbian Interior Ministry, to the War Crimes Department, and that the investigation was launched on 9 December 2011. War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic has discussed with the B&H Chief Prosecutor Goran Salihovic the possibility of exchanging information and evidence in this subject, based on the Protocol on cooperation in persecuting suspects for war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of genocide, even though the investigation was launched long before the signing of the Protocol, and that these events can’t threaten cooperation of the two prosecutions, reads the statement.

 

Colak: B&H doesn’t extradite its citizens (Dnevni Avaz)

B&H Justice Minister Barisa Colak has not been officially acquainted with the information that Serbia will issue an international warrant for Naser Oric, the war commander in Srebrenica, over alleged war crimes. “I heard about this from the media and I have no official information on this,” Colak told the press in Sarajevo. He said that if a warrant would be issued and Serbia would request extradition of Oric or some other B&H citizen, B&H doesn’t extradite its citizens to other countries according to the law.

 

INTERNATIONAL PRESS

 

Kosovo Serb politician Oliver Ivanovic arrested over war crimes (BBC, 28 January 2014)

Oliver Ivanovic has become a well-known Serbian political figure in Kosovo

A leading Kosovo Serb politician has been arrested on suspicion of war crimes, according to EU officials.

The EU's police and justice mission in the region said Oliver Ivanovic had been identified as a suspect during a war crimes investigation soon after the 1990s Kosovo conflict ended.

Mr Ivanovic, 60, presented himself voluntarily, accompanied by his lawyer, on Monday, it said in a statement.

Details of the alleged crimes have not been made public.

But according to local newspapers, Mr Ivanovic is suspected of having tortured and murdered ethnic Albanians and is believed to have been one of the organisers of a now disbanded Kosovo Serb vigilante group known as "Bridgewatchers" - suspected of violence against ethnic Albanians.

He was ordered detained for a month, over crimes "which occurred in 1999 and in 2000 against Albanian victims", his lawyer Nebojsa Vlajic said, adding that he has been transferred to a Pristina prison.

His supporters insist the allegations are politically motivated.

Mr Ivanovic is the first senior Kosovo Serb official to be arrested by the European Union Rule of Law Mission (EULEX) on suspicion of war crimes against ethnic Albanians.

Neither most Kosovo Serbs, nor Serbia's government, recognise Kosovo's secession

EULEX has the power to take on sensitive cases that the local judiciary and police are unable or unwilling to handle.

Considered a relative political moderate, Mr Ivanovic narrowly lost to a hardline Kosovo Serb, Krstimir Pantic, in a recent election to be mayor of the Serb part of the northern town of Mitrovica, where he lives.

Mr Pantic refused to swear allegiance to Kosovo's ethnic Albanian authorities, so a new vote will be held on 23 February.

The 1998-1999 conflict began when ethnic Albanians rebelled against Belgrade, prompting a brutal crackdown.

Some 120,000 ethnic Serbs live in Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and which counts 1.8 million inhabitants, most of whom are ethnic Albanians.

However, the 40,000 or so Kosovo Serbs living in the north do not recognise Kosovo's independence. Serbia also rejects Kosovo's secession.

Despite this, Kosovo has been recognised by more than 100 countries, including the United States and most EU states.

 

Serbian Ex-Minister Accuses Vucic of Blocking Reforms (BIRN, 28 January 2014)

Serbia's recently resigned economy minister has accused Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic of deliberately blocking the reform of the labour, privatization and bankruptcy laws.

Explaining his resignation on January 24, submitted in writing to Prime Minister Ivica Dacic, Sasa Radulovic claimed that the mass protests against reforms of laws on labour, bankruptcy and privatization, staged that day, were held on the order of important political parties.

"The parties want to keep the existing economic policy that in the past ten years has proved faulty; to keep both party and union privileges in the public sector, and so damage Serbian citizens," he said.

"They are also being supported by the irresponsible managements of the public companies," he added.

Radulovic also compained that his ministry was not invited to participate in the drafting of austerity measures presented in October 2013.

In his resignation letter, Radulovic noted that, unlike Aleksandar Vucic, Prime Minister Dacic was "neither an obstacle nor a support to the reforms.

"The Prime Minister, acting under significant media pressures coming from the tabloid newspapers, did not show interest [in the reforms], nor did he deal with the economic interests of the government," Radulovic said.

"The main obstacle to all reforms was and has remained the cabinet of the Deputy Prime Minister," Radulovic added.

Radulovic was appointed Minister of Economy on September 2 following a reshuffle of the government, replacing Mladjan Dinkic.

Radulovic said he had tried to prevent representatives of Vucic's cabinet from interfering with the work of the Economy ministry, without respecting procedures, or the public, or analysing whether their actions were harmful to the country.

"Everyone wants to be a part of some kind of a deal. All these non-institutional projects were successfully stopped by the Economy ministry but they wasted energy and time," he said.

As examples, Radulovic mentioned the cooperation agreement with Etihad airline, from the United Arab Emirates, which is a partner to Serbia's national carrier in the recently formed AirSerbia, deals with the Al Dahra agricultural company, also from the UAE, a deal with Fiat, as well as promises of government subsidies.

"Non-transparent contracts, subsidies, and all the failed policies of the former minister [Dinkic] are apparently the only policies that they sincerely count on," Radulovic stated.

He also complained of a media lynch campaign against him, including stories that he is a spy to “made-up stories about [unsatisfied] chauffeurs, lies about how much money I made, to the latest false news about my children on the front pages of the tabloids."

"Self-censorship is amazingly present," Radulovic said, referring to the media, and signing off his resignation letter with the words: "Dosta je bilo" ("Enough is enough").

Vucic is widely seen as the most powerful politician in Serbia, as his Progressive Party, not the Prime Minister's Socialists, is the most powerful party in government.

In general elections, scheduled for March 16, Vucic is widely expected to capitalise on the expected victory of the Progressives by taking the position of Prime Minister from Dacic.

 

Former Bosnian Serb army commander Mladic attends his trial at the ICTY at The Hague (Reuters, by Thomas Escritt, 28 January 2014)

THE HAGUE - Former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic refused on Tuesday to give evidence in support of one-time ally Radovan Karadzic, denouncing the U.N. war crimes tribunal as "satanic" and saying he did not want to incriminate himself.Mladic, the former general who headed separatist Bosnian Serb forces, and Karadzic, the political leader, are both accused of responsibility for the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica near the end of Bosnia's 1992-95 war.

The two men are on trial separately, each accused of taking part in a conspiracy to use murder and terror to "ethnically cleanse" Bosnia of its Muslims and Croats in order to create a pure Serb state following the republic's secession from the then-Serbian-led federal Yugoslavia.

If it could be shown that the two men had not shared their alleged knowledge of events on the ground during the war, it would strengthen Karadzic's claim that he and Mladic had no common plan to drive out Muslims and Croats, which could help exonerate the former Bosnian Serb political leader.

Looking frail, Mladic, now 71, told judges he did not recognize the court where he had been called to testify on Karadzic's behalf.

"I do not recognize your court," he told presiding judge O-Gon Kwon. "It is a NATO creation. It is a satanic court."

But after being told he risked being charged with contempt of court, he asked court security officials, slurring his words, to fetch his false teeth "so I can speak better", and the cross-examination then began after a brief recess.

Bosnia's war, which was part of the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia, ended in a peace deal hammered out at a U.S. air base in Dayton, Ohio, in 1995 after NATO air strikes that forced Bosnian Serbs to the negotiating table.

Mladic had at first refused to appear before the court when, last year, Karadzic, 68, sought to summon him as a defense witness. Karadzic, seeking to distance himself from crimes investigators attribute to Mladic, then obtained a subpoena from judges, compelling the ex-general to appear.

MLADIC CITES HEALTH, LEGAL ISSUES

Karadzic had a list of six questions he wanted to ask of Mladic, focusing on the general's knowledge of the Srebrenica massacre and the Serb siege of the capital Sarajevo, and how much of that information he had passed to Karadzic.

Karadzic was expected to argue that he was unaware of his most senior general's activities, and so could not be held personally responsible for the worst bloodshed in Europe since World War Two.

Mladic gave the same response in answer to each question: "I cannot and do not wish to testify ... because it would impair my health and prejudice my own case," he said, offering instead to read a seven-page statement he said he had written the previous evening - an offer judges refused.

Proceedings were complete after less than two hours and Mladic was led out, exchanging nods with Karadzic.

"Thanks a lot, Radovan. I'm sorry, these idiots wouldn't let me speak. They defend NATO," he said as he passed, referring to the court. As he came down from the witness stand, Mladic smiled at the public gallery, which is separated from the high-security courtroom by a pane of bullet-proof glass.

Beforehand, his lawyer Branko Lukic had told judges that Mladic's poor health, the result of a series of strokes that left him partially paralyzed, had caused gaps in his memory so that he was unable to distinguish fact from fiction.

Karadzic and Mladic were indicted shortly before the end of Bosnia's war, which cost up to 100,000 lives, but spent more than a decade living on the run in Serbia before their arrest.

They face sentences of up to life imprisonment if convicted of charges that include crimes against humanity and genocide.

 

Scars, Visible and Invisible, in Bosnia (New York Times Blog, by Kerri MacDonald,  29 January 2014)

It seemed like a simple question: How old are you?

But when Matteo Bastianelli asked people he met in Bosnia and Herzegovina, he could hear the pain in their answers.

“They start to say, ‘I was 15 when the Bosnian war started,’ ” said Mr. Bastianelli, an Italian photographer. “It’s like people are locked in the past.”

Mr. Bastianelli moved to Sarajevo, the capital, in 2009, drawn to stories he had heard on previous visits. He spent the next four years working on “The Bosnian Identity,” a dark project that explores the hidden emotional wounds left by the 1992-95 war that changed the country. He sought to ask what it meant to move on after enduring such ravaging violence.

“At the beginning, I just looked around me and saw that the city was full of scars,” he said. “The holes made by machine-gun fire are everywhere in Sarajevo. It’s really scary to see.

“But I could not see the scars of human beings.”

Mr. Bastianelli encountered a mass grave for the first time when he joined investigators with the International Commission on Missing Persons in their search for victims. He watched as they collected identity cards and personal items to be handed back to grieving families of the dead from Srebrenica to Cerska. He started to understand why grief was the norm in Bosnia.

“They are locked in the past,” he said, “because they have something inside that cannot be repaired.”

Many of the people Mr. Bastianelli met lost their parents in the conflict. One of his primary subjects, Adis Smajic, was 10 when his father and grandfather were killed. Five years later, he stepped on a mine while going to play soccer with friends.

Mr. Bastianelli met him over coffee in Srebrenica, where Mr. Smajic had been working as a driver for a couple of photographers. Mr. Smajic offered him a cigarette — “and in Bosnia, you cannot say no,” Mr. Bastianelli said. “You always need to say, ‘Yes, of course.’ ”

They met again in Sarajevo, where Mr. Smajic lives with his wife, Naida Vreto Smajic, and their child. Naida works at a shop while Adis sits outside, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes all day. He belongs to a rap group called Found on da Street, but, like many Bosnians, he doesn’t have a job.

Adis Smajic with his rap group, Found on da Street,  in a recording studio in Sarajevo.Mr. Smajic is trying to forget the war. But in cold weather, his leg throbs with pain. When he stands in front of a mirror, he sees the scars — a missing arm and a missing eye.

Mr. Bastianelli didn’t photograph Mr. Smajic at first. “To take a picture of someone, I really need to feel accepted,” he said. “I don’t want to steal pictures.”

But he eventually reaches a certain moment in a relationship — a “frozen moment” — when he is ready.

That happened with Mr. Smajic on the outskirts of Sarajevo, while he was giving Mr. Bastianelli a tour of the mountains. Mr. Smajic turned to him and told him to take all the pictures he wanted. He borrowed Mr. Bastianelli’s camera to take snapshots of the two of them, like a smartphone selfie. (Mr. Bastianelli shot the project on film, using both a Canon and a Holga.)

One of the oldest survivors of the genocide carried out by the Serbian-Bosnian army, in Potocari, Bosnia and Herzegovina. 2010.For Mr. Bastianelli, those selfies are significant. “I’m present in the picture,” he said. “Sometimes I think that it’s a good project based on him not just because he is a man who has a handicap. It’s just because you can see in the pictures that it’s a person full of life.”

In other words, they became friends.

They traveled to Croatia together and Mr. Smajic visited Mr. Bastianelli in Rome, where he is now based. They drank together — sometimes too much. “He makes me mad sometimes, but that’s our relationship,” said Mr. Bastianelli, who will be the godfather of Mr. Smajic’s child.

“The Bosnian Identity” combines documentary with personal experience, also following the stories a small gang of criminals from Sarajevo and a man named Ammar Mirvic whom Mr. Bastianelli grew to know well.

He has finished the project, which includes a book and a documentary film, but Mr. Bastianelli is far from done with the Bosnian story. He hopes to spend more time in Serbia, where he went in 2012 to see the nationalist Tomislav Nikolic elected president.“I really think it will be hard for me,” he said. “But I will try.”

Though his priority is to exhibit the pictures in Sarajevo, “The Bosnian Identity” opened Jan. 16 in Velletri, a small town near Rome where Mr. Bastianelli was born. He met with students there last week to talk about the conflict.

He hopes the work will teach them not only something about history, but also about humanity — “the way people are moving on, even if they’ve been through a terrible circumstance like a war,” he said.

“For me, that’s the main reason to work at photography. And it’s a way to understand something more about yourself and the person you are.”

 

Kosovo, FYROM and NATO (Neoskosmos, by Markus A Templar 29 January 2014)

An unstable state attempts to secure a future through NATO and by appropriating the history of others

The FYROM's government's antiquisation project of the country and its NATO membership through the back door aim to establish two goals.

Firstly, a connection of the Slavs to the ancient Macedonians in order to obtain legitimacy from the existence of the ancient kingdom and consequently claim on the ancient territories and secondly, to secure the FYROM's stability in order for the country to avoid eradication.

Serbia's recognition of Kosovo as an independent state would open the gates for the FYROM triggering a territorial rearrangement between the FYROM and Kosovo. The activation of the 1992 referendum for 'Ilirida' under the UN Charter articles 1.2 and 55 by the FYROM Albanians could do just that - bypassing normal procedures that mean the controlling power would have to recognise the results of the referendum on self-determination as 'jus cogens'. Under the present conditions FYROM PM Nicholas Gruevski would be legally incapable of stopping the Albanians from seceding and joining their northern brothers, taking almost one third of the country including parts or perhaps the whole city of Skopje with them.

Gruevski knows it and expects it. He knows that NATO is the only rock of stability in the country while the FYROM retains its sovereignty. With NATO stabilising his country, Gruevski could continue searching for his 'ancient roots' in Mavro Orbin's Kraljevstvo Slovena (The Realm of the Slavs) who, as Dr Nadezhna Dragova put it "like Pribojevic, Orbini unifies the Illyric and Slav mythic identities and interprets history from a pan-Slavic mythological position using the same discretionary research 'methodology' of the same false basis of autochthonism as Pribojeviæ had done before and identified the Illyrians". Consequently, the FYROM with its ethnocentric government would not have to negotiate anything with Greece. Therefore, Gruevski's cry for the upcoming danger of disintegration of the FYROM is real, but the instability in his country and in the Balkans is neither Greece's responsibility nor it is Greece's fault, but due to Gruevski's anachronistic, irrational, and outlandish governance.

Nonetheless, FYROM politicians expect that Greece will abide by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision. But abide by what? The ICJ has not issued a remedy. It just issued an opinion that Greece violated the Agreement. Great! So what? The ICJ decision for the FYROM is an empty victory. The ICJ had also found the FYROM in violation of the Interim Agreement for displaying the symbol of the 'Sun of Vergina'. In addition, the Court found itself incompetent to order any remedy (compare to the US case Marbury v. Madison) resulting in the FYROM not receiving what it was after, i.e. an automatic membership to NATO. Even if the ICJ had ordered NATO to accept the FYROM as a member, Turkey would have objected to such a move because it would have affected Cyprus' membership to NATO (if Cyprus had applied for membership), but it would also have allowed Cyprus and Malta to join the EU/NATO strategic cooperation.

The EU is, as I put it, a 'non-political' confederation with highly integrated economies, but with only coordinated foreign and defence policies which fall under the Common Foreign and Security Policy. Despite the fact that the economic crisis in Eurozone affects mostly the countries in the eurozone, the issue of terrorism is threatening the national securities of each and every European country. European destabilisation invites Islamic fundamentalists who could illegally enter an EU country and then easily move to any other country, with the easiest border to the EU being the Turkish-Greek border. According to the agreement that Turkey signed with the EU on March 6th, 1995 Customs Union Agreement, Turkey has failed in its obligation to catch and return the illegal immigrants to their home country. The UK, France, Italy, and Germany would be among those that would suffer first and most because they have heavy Islamic minorities. Leaders of EU countries are not willing to expose their countries to turmoil and destabilisation in order to facilitate the stabilisation of the FYROM, a country that suffers from bad ethnocentric governance.

On the military side, pressuring Greece to accept something that goes against its national interests and therefore its national security would juxtapose the NATO criterion of 'Creation of interior and easily defensive borders within the alliance' and Greece's own stability. NATO cannot pressure Greece to purposely destabilise itself so that the Alliance stabilises the FYROM. But, one must consider that the nature of the Deputy Prime Minister of the FYROM Mrs Teuta Arifi's visit to Greece in January 2012 had a lot to do with Kosovo's possible recognition by Serbia and Greece and its possible consequences of that recognition as the disintegration of the FYROM.

A few years ago, Georgi Daskalov, lecturer at the Department of History at Sofia University 'St Kliment Ohridski' stated a view on the status of the FYROM Slavs that should not be lightly dismissed. He expressed the prevailing opinion of his compatriots that the FYROM's disintegration is only a matter of time. The question is whether the remaining land is going to be absorbed by the three neighbouring countries - Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece - or is it going to be annexed by Serbia as compensation for the loss of Kosovo? Dr Daskalov hopes that Greece would prefer the Slavic speaking lands of the FYROM to pass to Bulgaria in exchange for Bulgaria's amnesia of the Bulgarian minority(!?). Thus far we had to deal with an imaginary 'Macedonian' minority that grows in a positive geometric progression while simultaneously all other populations decrease in a negative geometric progression. From now on we will be dealing with a Bulgarian 'minority' that grows the same way. This kind of thought is very common in the Balkans and so it does not surprise me. Perhaps Greece should raise the issue of a Greek minority in both Bulgaria and the FYROM. A true and valid EU sponsored population census in the FYROM will show who is what. But somehow the imaginary minority of 'Macedonians' in Greece have been perceived as Bulgarian minority by Dr Daskalov and friends.

By the way, is Dr Daskalov ready to admit to the torture and killings of innocent Greek civilians and destruction and stealing of Greek properties such as icons and other very precious religious items by the Bulgarian occupation forces of Eastern Macedonia during WWI and WWII? I highly doubt it.

*Markus A. Templar is an expert on the Balkans. He is a former President of the Macedonian Society of Greater Chicago, and an advisor to the Pan-Macedonian Association of the USA Committees of National Issues and Strategic Planning.