A Blood Toll

Early Monday morning, men with Republic of Serb Krajina (RSK) draft notices knocked on the door of Drljaca's house in Hrtkovci. He refused to accept the notice since he's been a citizen of Serbia for a year. The policemen that later appeared weren't too interested in his citizenship. "Explain it to the people over there and they'll let you go," they said. The over there was the collection center in Sremska Mitrovica but the RSK police who met him there had no intention of letting him go.

"No one would speak to me normally," Drljaca said. "As if I was being taken to prison." When he realized that there was no use talking, Drljaca tried to escape on Tuesday morning. "I knew it was hard to escape. I actually wanted to draw attention, have someone listen. They shouted for me to stop and then they fired. I heard three rifle shots."

Two of those three shots hit Drljaca just above both knees. "I fell, I heard them say: "Tie him up, get him into the bus and across". I was scared they would kill me over there."

Luckily one of the Serbian police convinced the "deserter hunters" that the wounded man had to go to hospital. Doctor Bosko Lacarac, the man who operated on Drljaca, says it's lucky he was brought to him. "We had a lot of experience in treating war wounds during the Vukovar operation. Anywhere else and he'd have lost his legs. Here, we operated and put his legs in casts and we can now say the patient is in good condition." Asked when Drljaca, the only breadwinner in his family, will walk again Lacarac said: "If there's no secondary infection or other complications, at least a year."

Drljaca feels no guilt about what happened ("I love this state and I don't want to damage it.") but he does not feel he's a deserter. "While I thought we were defending Yugoslavia, I was an enthusiast. Now, no normal person wants to pick up a rifle." Asked whether anyone from the authorities talked to him he said: "there was a police inspector who asked me what happened. I told him I don't want to raise a fuss but he said they had to do their job." He doesn't want to press any charges for illegal detention and serious bodily harm. "One day this state will be ruled by law. Now I pray not to get killed," he said in resignation. The song on his radio says women love officers. His nurse said later that she finds him weeping softly sometimes, with a towel covering his face.

The center where Drljaca was wounded is on the outskirts of Sremska Mitrovica. At first glance you realize that it's operating at full capacity: there are 10 or more buses parked outside and a group of armed men; the united Serb police and Arkan's men in their trademark black uniforms and Heckler automatic weapons. There are some civilians mainly young men but there are some aged over 50. They are freshly caught "deserters" waiting for transport. Two of the young men we talked to are from Bosanski Samac. They were picked up in Belgrade the previous day in a police raid. So who arrested them? "The Serbians, and the Krajina police are guarding us."

They're not there voluntarily but they have no intention of trying to escape; there's a huge clearing leading nowhere and the guards have automatic rifles. No they weren't beaten, but they weren't allowed phone calls. They heard they'll go to Bijeljina like the other newcomers. "There are mainly Bosnians here. It seems they've finished with the Krajina men," they said.

A policeman appeared and politely but firmly (by the arms) led us away. Asked about the Drljaca wounding he said: "Nothing happened. I was there, nothing happened." What about the wounds and the doctors? "That's all a lie."

One of the questions serious analysts are preoccupied with now is why the mass sending of the Serbs from across the Drina started at the height of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's peace-mongering. At first glance, the timing seems to be wrong. Still, there's a number of elements that indicate that the forced mobilization has been planned for a long time in great detail and that is much more wide-spread than it seemed. First, it was preceded by wide- range administrative measures, such as the revising of refugee status which began in February 1994.

Reliable sources said a large number of Serbian police are involved in sending back able-bodied men who aren't refugees; including beat officers who even stopped city busses to take "deserters" off them and police dispatchers who made the final decisions. The mass hunt is reflected in the number of people who phoned VREME in the past few days as well as SOS telephone and others seeking news of husbands, sons and brothers.

A Serbian traffic police patrol stopped a car in Belgrade's Ustanicka street at around midnight on June 20 and asked the driver for ID. When he handed it over the policeman told him to sit in the car with his windows up while another policeman read out the information on the ID card over the radio: it was issued in Belgrade in 1992, the man was born in Mostar. He also had an army paybook which showed he was a reserve in the Yugoslav Army. When the policeman came back he told the young man they were taking him to the military-police facility in Volgina street and kept the ID. He allowed him to drive his car home under their escort. When he parked the car the young man asked to talk to his eight months pregnant wife and his mother. He's an only son and the family depends on his income. They refused.

Who that man is and why he was taken away was explained by Mira Markovic (Duga fortnightly, June 24-July 7). She is the wife of the Serbian president, a professor of sociology, chairman of the executive board at the Yugoslav United Left (JUL) and a Russian academician. She lives in a villa (Tolstojeva 33) and her husband recently got the use of the residence in Uzicka 15.

Markovic said Drljaca and the second man are part of "the fighters for the Serb cause in Bosnia and the Serb Krajina, living in Belgrade who haven't spent a single day at war and have no intention of going to war". People like that are now being taken from the streets, their apartments and jobs, and restaurants with some reports saying 5,000 of them have already been taken across the Drina. Markovic explained why they left their homes. They came to Belgrade and other cities in Serbia with their children, their money and their ambitions to take over economic, political and social positions in Serbia which would make them first class citizens."

"Why did they come here at all!", Markovic said and replied: "because they expected others to defend their homes. Their poor and honest neighbors in Bosnia and the Krajina who have nowhere to go and the youth from towns and villages in Serbia who are supposed to prove their patriotism by dying for the homes of the people who left them and came to Belgrade to open restaurants and companies."

She goes on to list war-mongers, cowards, hypocrites, the nouveau riche full of money and prepared to destroy Serbia for their narrow minded, dark goals.

According to Markovic, that certainly includes Ljubisa Stosic, a Serb from Belgrade, who happens to have been born in Duga Resa. He's a father of three and spent three years on the front. It also includes the refugees from the Zvezdani Gaj camp; most of them were either caught sleeping in the camp or later in the city's parks. It also includes everyone who isn't part of Radovan Karadzic's and Ratko Mladic's war machine unless they report to their units by July 5 to prevent court martial. That dark column probably includes doctors and medical staff who left the Bosnian Serb state and found jobs in Serbia. Karadzic has handed over lists to the Serbian authorities and expects their deportation for trial.

And finally it includes the Krajina men who came to Belgrade with money and ambitions to open companies and restaurants and are a minority of the Serbs from across the Drina who are in Serbia. Everything they achieved would not have happened without the help of the local authorities: the reward for the services they rendered were restaurants and companies. It's hard to believe Mira Markovic doesn't know that. And if she doesn't all she has to do is ask her neighbor, Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Marjanovic, originally from Knin.

Credits

Last week, VREME got a call from Slobodan Peric, RSK Internal Affairs Minister. He felt called to answer claims in last weeks article that he was the main organizer of the hunt for the deserters. Being modest, Peric wouldn't take all the credit: "It's clear that the operation cannot be implemented by one man alone. That can only be done by competent bodies, in this case the RSK parliament and defence ministry." Asked if that meant the RSK police were not involved in rounding up the deserters, Peric avoided a direct answer.