[Marxism] Anger in Serbia

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

*****   The New York Times
February 15, 2004
Fed by Anger, Undercurrent of Nationalism Flows in Serbia
By NICHOLAS WOOD

BELGRADE, Serbia - Alexander Eror, a soft-spoken, 27-year-old
elementary school teacher, does not like to think of himself as a
nationalist.

So, he explained, when he voted in December for the most virulently
nationalist group in Parliament, the Serbian Radical Party, it was
not for its long support of a Greater Serbia or for its leader,
Vojislav Sesejl, who is facing war crimes charges in The Hague.

Instead, he said, he made his decision because of the sight of his
neighbor's top-of-the-line sports car.

His neighbor, Mr. Eror is convinced, is part of a criminal elite that
emerged in the 1990's while the former president, Slobodan Milosevic,
was still in power, and continued to prosper even under an elected
government dominated by reformers.

"I expected crime to be uprooted," he said. "Nothing has changed."

The anger and disillusionment of Serbs like Mr. Eror goes some way in
explaining how the Serbian Radical Party became the election's big
winner, with 28 percent of the vote, and is now the largest party in
the 250-seat Parliament. . . .

In 2002, two important groups in the coalition fell out. Mr.
Kostunica withdrew his Serbian Democratic Party from the coalition,
accusing the prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, of abusing the law in
his pursuit of reforms and failing to crack down on criminals, some
of whom the president claimed were closely linked to Mr. Djindjic.

Two senior aides to Mr. Djindjic, who was assassinated last March by
a member of an elite police squad that prosecutors say has links to
organized crime, were forced to resign last summer after it was
revealed that they carried out a series of deals with offshore
companies.

Most recently, Miodrag Kostic, a donor to Mr. Djindjic's Democratic
Party, and a close friend of the former prime minister, was
implicated in a sugar-trading scandal uncovered by the European
Commission.

His factories were accused of importing sugar from outside Europe
that was then repackaged and sold to the European Union, thereby
receiving a substantial tax break.

Such stories have dominated the news media, while the more visible
symbols of the Serbian economy appear to be in decline.

In cities like Kraljevo in central Serbia, the region's three biggest
state conglomerates have laid off hundreds of workers.

Most recently, Fabrika Wagona, which makes railroad cars and
industrial boilers, laid off 800 employees. The official unemployment
rate, like in the rest of Serbia, stands at close to 30 percent. . . .

The mayor said people were frustrated by the presence in the area of
at least 17,000 refugees, some of the more than 200,000 Serbs,
Gypsies and Serbian-speaking Muslims who fled Kosovo as NATO troops
seized control of the province in the summer of 1999. Almost five
years later, they appear no closer to going home.

Kosovo's final status has yet to be determined. It is run now by the
United Nations, but legally still a part of Serbia and Montenegro,
the federation that replaced Yugoslavia.

Montenegro itself, which throughout the 1990's threatened to break
away, is expected hold a referendum on independence next year.

Above all, though, it is Serbia's fraught relationship with the
international criminal tribunal in The Hague, which politicians blame
most for bolstering the nationalists. Opinion polls show that the
tribunal was not a major concern for voters during the last
elections, but it remains a constant source of friction between
Serbia and the West.

Most of the indictments issued by the court have been against Serbs,
adding to the impression that the tribunal is biased against them,
Serbs say. Western officials say the Serbs have not turned over two
of the top suspects from the war, the onetime leader of the Bosnian
Serbs, Radovan Karadzic, and the former Bosnian Serb general Ratko
Mladic.

Serbian politicians dispute their presence in the country. American
aid, worth up to $100 million, is conditional on full Serbian
cooperation.

"The indictments of The Hague tribunal have been a sort of national
humiliation," said Mr. Kostunica, the former president.

He urged Western governments to ease the pressure on Serbia over the
tribunal if they wanted to secure the reform process, which at this
point, analysts agree, is in jeopardy. . . .

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/international/europe/15SERB.html>   *****
--
Yoshie

* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
<http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>,
<http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/>
* Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
* Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
* Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>

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