Fired Over a Pack of Cigarettes

Serbia's parliament touched on the far-reaching issue of political control over the police last week. A proposal said that the parliamentary security committee should be limited to requests for information from the police instead of its current right to control it. The opposition managed to get the proposal thrown out, as well as an amendment to the rules of parliamentary procedure which called for a special board to control state security services and an amendment that gives anyone who appears before an investigating committee the same rights and obligations as witnesses at a trial.

The opposition feels that Serbian parliament security committee member and federal parliament security committee chairman Radmilo Bogdanovic, Serbia's former police minister, is behind successful efforts of preventing parliamentary control of the police before the last elections. The committee hasn't been working since Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) deputy Bogoljub Pejcic was sacked as chairman because he demanded an investigation into an allegation of human rights violations by police in the Sandzak, even though there has been suspicion that parts of the police are involved in crime.

Police inspector Dragan Mladenovic publicly made some unpleasant accusations against police officials, but the whole thing was whitewashed with several angry denials by the Serbian police. A demand for an investigation into his allegations is still blocked somewhere in parliament.

The public sometimes hears rumors (the independent police union) that some police officers want a politically neutral and professional police force, but it is hard to assess how great the inside pressure is both for and against that rumor. The only police force to go on strike over low pay since the breakup of former Yugoslavia was in Slovenia.

The police are trying to dispel doubts by saying they obey the Serbian internal affairs laws. Those laws say that illegal acquisition of wealth and similar acts are severe violations of duty and oblige the police internal affairs department to investigate as well as a disciplinary court. If the investigation covers documents that are classified state or military secrets, the accused policeman can't be defended by a civilian lawyer and public statements are made only when the police believe they are necessary.

Petar Zekovic, Belgrade's police chief, said last week that any policeman who takes as much as a packet of cigarettes will lose his job. A police statement in July said 98 police officers had gone before the disciplinary committee in the first half of the year; 23 of them were suspended and 31 were fired and charged with criminal acts. Those are not small figures but, unbelievably, excessive use of force was established in just three cases. Several human rights reports accused the Serbian police of much more brutality.

Internal Affairs minister Zoran Sokolovic was forced to apologize to actress Nadezda Bulatovic earlier this year because his police officers beat her. He also suspended the Belgrade policemen, but the case is still in court and the suspensions were withdrawn this summer.

Over the past few months, there have been a number of reports of arrests, including high ranking police officers, within the police across Serbia.

Reports from Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia said crime statistics were dropping, which means that either the same trends are present or the same police or the same statistics.

Last week, Zekovic told Belgrade city councilors that crime figures had dropped by 7.8% from last year.

Belgrade Mayor Nebojsa Covic indicated that he wanted to force the police into a serious battle with organized crime (the police is minimizing organized crime). Covic's criticism of the police deviates from the standard practice of unquestioning backing for the police. A fight against crime has been announced by Belgrade's Socialists as well, while the opposition is constantly trying to get a debate started on crime.

The Democratic Party (DS) submitted a draft law on a special state prosecutor and law on parliamentary control to the Serbian parliament on November 15. The special state prosecutor would be elected from among parliamentary deputies and would supervise control of direct or indirect involvement by state bodies in crime. The prosecutor would be a non-partisan lawyer acting independently.

Once established, the independent outside control of the police will face the problem that only professionals who know the inside workings of the police will be able to implement control with any competence. That casts doubts on the independence of the controllers.

Controllers drafted from the police (more recently they have been dealing with human rights violations) are disliked inside the force and are seen as potentially dangerous to solidarity within the police.

Only unstable societies allow themselves the luxury of not controlling the police.

In parliament, Bogoljub Pejcic advised (absent) police minister Sokolovic that he should accept political control of the police and recalled that police forces that aren't politically controlled did away with the likes of Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria.

Criminologist Vladan Vasiljevic says the main goal of international organizations is giving priority to the police in combatting crime as opposed to former socialist countries whose police were primarily charged with protecting the regime.

The FRY is still part of the old eastern block in those terms. Serbia had a police control law in former Yugoslavia, but it was abolished under the new constitution and no new law has been adopted.

Following the Rankovic case (1966 scandal involving the suspected bugging of Tito's residence by his vice-president and chief of state security), the police at the time were under the control of republican and provincial political leaders. Bodies such as the council for the protection of the constitutional regime served to direct the activities of the secret police more than a form of control. Now there isn't any control and there are announcements that a federal law will be adopted on controlling security services.

There have been occasional demands to open the archives. The last of them was made by New Democracy (ND) leader Dusko Mihajlovic, who made allusions to opposition politicians who were allegedly involved in public virtues and secret vices once. DS leader Zoran Djindjic said recently that opposition politicians are being bugged and even claimed that Socialist parliament deputies were retelling telephone conversations by the opposition.

Attempts by civil rights groups to protect human rights were satanized by the authorities, nationalist groups and national figures.

Efforts to introduce an ombudsman, in the form of a human rights ministry, were fully compromised by the systematic irresponsibility of minister Margit Savovic, probably the most thoroughly compromised of all human rights ministers.

The human rights situation in this country is so bad that it could close the doors that have finally been opened only slightly. Amnesty International called the Serbian authorities to impose adequate control of police discipline and respect international standards in Kosovo on October 20.

There is an important precondition to introducing police control: the public has to firmly condemn brutalities and crime.

That is lacking amid the prevailing mood in which figures who should be moral guardians oppose the international war crimes tribunal.

Public opinion over the past few years allowed the uncontrolled brutal use of force, especially if it was aimed against ethnic or political minorities. Bullies were acclaimed as heroes, con men and women became national treasures and brutality was another way to preserve the regime.

Can the frustrated, politically manipulated and crime-ridden police force be expected to feel obliged to allow politicians to control it in a mood like that? Can the Serbian parliament change anything?

So far, it hasn't had much luck with controlling the police. A recent attempt by a federal parliament investigation committee to investigate the Dafiment Bank bankruptcy after the police and judiciary investigations failed looked like an attempt by its members to get their money out of the bankrupt bank. There was no result unless you count the fact the committee chairman Vukasin Jokanovic was appointed federal police minister.

The last police concession to parliament was in 1991, after the March 9 demonstrations, when a committee passed a judgment so severe that there was no way for Radmilo Bogdanovic to keep his job. But that was caused more by public pressure than by the investigation committee.

Memories of that episode probably brought the latest proposal to limit the parliamentary security committee.

The Serbian opposition now claims that the police is the last bastion of the party state. The Serbian Radical Party (SRS) is especially loud in voicing that belief after earlier statements full of understanding for the police. The rest of the opposition cite police behavior towards SRS leader Vojislav Seselj as an example that the police isn't politically neutral. While he was allied to the regime, he had access to police files which he used to attack opponents. After he clashed with the regime, the security services' attitude changed and he started complaining that SRS members were being persecuted. SRS leaders said they'd gone to war with members of the Serbian police at their side and now this...

The SRS efforts to make their confrontations with parliamentary security officers political failed. The police were carrying out the orders of the parliament speaker in recent clashes with the Radicals, masked in a majority vote decision. Unlike the opposition rebellion of June 1993, the police didn't just throw away parliamentary ID cards when they arrested deputies recently.

The opposition, frustrated that the police had thwarted their attempts at exerting non-parliamentary pressure in 1991 and 1992, demanded the abolition of the state security service on several occasions. On one of those occasions in 1991, Sokolovic reminded deputies that the state security service in Serbia was just one form of organizing personnel in the internal affairs ministry.

President Milosevic relied on the police several times and the police are answerable directly to him. He never showed any doubts about the police and never imposed controls. In his speech in Vranje (southern Serbia) in September, he said that even crime rates weren't as high as "our enemies" expected under the blockade.

So, attempt after attempt to control the police and limit crime has failed.

On the other hand, there have been several proposals to limit the police in their investigations (the lawyers chamber) and revise laws (the constitutionality of the law on wire-tapping). Those proposals got no reaction.

The recent changes in the criminal code gave the police more powers (longer detention, stricter punishment for resistance).

Budimir Babovic (Interpol advisor for Yugoslavia) said there is a longer and more roundabout way. He believes that a professional code should be introduced for the police.

The code for people involved in implementing laws, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979, says all services working on implementing laws must impose discipline on their members. It adds that there have to be official controls such as commissions, ministries and public prosecutors or other bodies.

A code for people who can use force is one of the more important guarantees for the protection of everyone's rights. The people responsible for implementing the law "must represent society as a whole and be accountable to it".

The code says that "the norms have no practical value until their content and meaning is implanted in the spirit of the people who implement the law through education and control".