[ALBSA-Info] Fwd: HLC - PRESS - Serbia’s partriotic forces ( by Natasa Kandic)

[AAlibali]

--- In balkanhr at yahoogroups.com, humanitarian law center <office at g...> (by way of Greek Helsinki Monitor <office at g...>) wrote:
Serbia's partriotic forces

Mr Dušan Mihajloviæ
Minister of Internal Affairs of Serbia
Belgrade


Mr Minister,
I have learned from a press release carried by the media that I will be 
charged by police with a misdemeanor for slapping a displaced person, 
allegedly because he demanded to see my identification card.  The release 
says that this took place on 30 August at a public assembly of the 
Association of Families of Missing Kosovo Serbs held in Belgrade to mark 
the World Day of Missing Persons.  What it does not say is since when 
ordinary citizens or Kosovo Serbs have the authority to check the 
identities of persons in the street.
I do not find this latest lie by the Ministry of Internal Affairs 
surprising.  Three days ago, your Ministry denied allegations of severe 
beatings at the police station in Batoèina, even though the victims are in 
hospital in Kragujevac for treatment of their injuries.  Police officers 
were actively involved in what happened in Belgrade's Republic Square on 30 
August and, with a group of extremists from Kosovo, settled scores with a 
"Serb traitor," namely me, and then issued a press release on how the 
"mercenary" insulted the displaced and slapped one of them on the face.
True, I did slap a "patriot" from Kosovo because I was forced to defend 
myself from the torrent of "Serb patriotism," insults, blows, and 
pushing.  I was alone in the midst of "patriots," which in Serbia means 
people who are allowed by the authorities to physically and with weapons 
assault their political opponents.  I slapped a man older than myself after 
his third assault on me.  What were my options: to try to defend myself or 
let him kick me in the name of "Serb patriotism"?  These are the facts 
about the 30 August event in Belgrade at the assembly of the Association of 
Families of Missing Kosovo Serbs.
I find it extremely concerning that Serbia has a police force that 
assassinated the country's Prime Minister in the name of Serbdom, and that 
it makes no secret of wanting to continue settling scores with "Serb 
traitors."  Two plainclothes officer at the assembly, who looked like 
hooligans, not members of an institution whose primary duty is to protect 
human dignity, pulled me this way and that and shouted at me.  The taller 
one used his hands and some kind of shoulder bag he was carrying, and the 
shorter one his huge stomach.  "They (the Association) see you as a traitor 
and being in foreign pay, so you had better leave," the policemen told 
me.  They seemed delighted that someone, in this case Kosovo Serbs, had at 
last decided to give a "Serb traitor" a thrashing, and repeated the words 
countless times while supposedly protecting me.  Shortly before that, they 
both watched calmly as old men, women, and men in top physical form hit me 
and pushed me around.  Nor did they react when a big man with a mustache 
and yellow shirt pushed me hard in the back and nearly knocked me to the 
ground.  The expression on the faces of the two policemen was easy to read: 
All those like her should be killed.  If it's so easy for that man to lift 
his hand at me, what did he do in Kosovo during the NATO bombing, was the 
thought that crossed my mind.
Where were you, Mr Minister, and your colleagues in the Serbian government 
on 30 August, the World Day of Missing Persons?  It was a fine opportunity 
for you to see the "patriotic forces" in your ranks and the mood of the 
Kosovo Serbs.  Had you been there, you would have seen men like Zvezdan 
Jovanoviæ, relentless against "traitors" and ready for violence.  But of 
course, it was not a place for ministers and their bodyguards.  You must 
take good care of yourselves for, as you keep telling us, your lives are in 
danger.  Do any of you realize that, with your bodyguards, jeeps, 
factories, and rhetoric, you increasingly resemble those same patriotic 
forces you accuse of assassinating the Prime Minister?
I do not rule out the possibility of some elements of the police and others 
in Serbia again organizing themselves to protect Serbdom and take action 
against "traitors."  Have you or others in the government been informed 
that the assassination of Prime Minister Djindjiæ was occasion for 
celebrations in some police stations and departments?  Thousands of drug 
dealers were arrested during Operation Saber, as if the Prime Minister died 
of an overdose and not a sniper's bullets.  And how many of those in the 
ranks of the "patriotic forces" were arrested and are still in 
custody?  Let me tell you - only a couple of dozen and these "deserving 
Serbs" were treated with the greatest respect.  Police inspectors, their 
comrades in arms during the war, saw to their comfort in jail.  The talk in 
Vojvodina is that one Slobodan "Boca" Mediæ, the wartime commander of the 
"Scorpion" reserve police unit, spent three weeks in custody in Novi Sad 
and was very pleased with how he was treated: visits from family, 
homecooked meals and profuse apologies for being held.  The only reasons I 
can see for the high regard in which this wartime commander is held is his 
order to his bodyguards to shoot a group of Srebrenica Muslims and burn 
their bodies to destroy the evidence, and the liquidation by his unit of 
"Albanian terrorists" - women and children - in Podujevo during the NATO 
bombing.  At the end of the war, this man was a hero and very rich, and is 
still "Commander Boca" to Serb fighters.  He owns a huge house in Novi Sad, 
a big farm in the country, automobiles, jeeps, and motor cycles, and has 
good connections with the police and an enormous amount of money thanks to 
being the number one in the oil business in Djeletovci, Slavonia, up to the 
Erdut Agreement.
There are thousands of patriots of his ilk in the police and elsewhere in 
Serbia.  Many of them use their wealth to buy government officials and 
ministers, and a good reputation for themselves.  What should we "Serb 
traitors" do?  Stand by and watch the unraveling of society and 
institutions of government, telling ourselves that we are witnessing 
Serbian history in the making, and give up all hope for a better 
Serbia?  That is something I will never accept.

Sincerely,
Nataša Kandiæ
--- End forwarded message ---