Prison Parties

The writer Vladimir Srebrov, one of the founders of the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), was imprisoned by the people who took over the leadership of that party. In the meantime, he briefly "remained" in another party and from a national activist became the champion of a civic Bosnia and Herzegovina. After 39 months spent in prison he returned to Sarajevo. For VREME, he talks about his former friends and jailers, his prison days, Sarajevo...

Mr. Srebrov, you are one of the founders of SDS of BIH. What were the party's goals at the time when it was founded?

I am not one of the founders of SDS, but the titular signatory of all the documents on the foundation of SDS in Bosnia and Herzegovina. SDS was envisioned as a national movement of the Serbian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina. As you are acquainted with, it was possible to assemble a nation in 1990 and 1991 only by using connotations - nation. Before us, the Democratic Action Party (SDA) and the Croatian Democratic Association (HDZ) of BIH were formed, and we waited to see how they would come forward with their programs, that is, how they would be accepted in Bosnia and Herzegovina as national parties.

At the time, I was too big an optimist, because I believed that the national connotations would last only briefly and that SDS will turn into a civic party which will strive for a Bosnia and Herzegovina as a civic state. At the end of the day, I was kept in prison in Kula for 39 months because of that ideal.

At one point, you distanced yourself from the party whose founder you were. Why?

At the time, pressure was exerted on me to accept something which was, as I found out later, not the concept of 1990, but the concept of the 80's. That was the famous plan "Ram". Mainly, the economic collapse of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the complete extermination of the Moslem people. For me, firstly, that was a shocking thing to hear, and I felt, without exaggeration, excruciating pain. I heard it from people who were my friends, who were my colleagues and with whom I had spent night upon night for 18-20 years. Already in the 80's in the general staff of the then existing Yugoslav Army, a certain paper was introduced in which there were reflections on the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina into two interest spheres, that is, what we called the creation of greater Croatia and greater Serbia, while the Moslem people were to be completely eradicated in three ways. The first way, which was the worst, was that 50% of the Moslems were to be killed, a smaller percentage were to be converted, and for an even lesser percentage, of course for the ones who had money, a corridor was to be open, a so-called Turkish one, towards Turkey.

According to what you are saying it can be deduced that war here did not break out spontaneously and that it did not occur, conditionally speaking, due to objective circumstances. How do you comment upon the causes of this war?

Of course it did not break out spontaneously. This war was thought up by the General Staff of the former Yugoslav National Army. One day even that document shall be found. It is, actually, a piece of paper, as far as I am informed, a draft typed out on approximately two cards, what to do with Bosnia and Herzegovina in the future. It was not stated when that future would occur, but it came about ten years later. That is the "Ram" plan. General Kukanjac talked briefly of it on television, and he also said that he would publish his memoirs. I would like to know why those memoirs have not been published, since General Kukanjac knows perfectly what it is all about and it would be interesting to see what the real military plan for the collapse of Bosnia and Herzegovina was.

How do you comment upon the responsibility of the Serbian intelligence for the fate of the Serbian people not only in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but in the whole of Croatia as well?

They have displayed a huge amount of cowardice, which extremely surprised me. Mainly, they have shown themselves to be worthless. Of course, we have to exclude from this group, for example, Mrs. Pesic and a small number of intellectuals from Serbia who have raised their voices and I am surprised that they have not been killed or jailed on account of their stands.

In any case, Radovan Karadzic is the figure who shall probably mark the very fate of the Serbian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

You are talking about the criminal Radovan Karadzic, the embezzler Radovan Karadzic.

I am talking about the Radovan Karadzic as he is treated by the international community.

I am surprised to hear you say Radovan Karadzic, instead of Dr. Radovan Karadzic. If you remember the year 1990, that is 1991, when he had already started to gain some recognition through certain circles from Serbia, especially from the high officials of the Serbian government and the Academy of Science and Arts, I said that we have before us a man who is an embezzler, together with Krajisnik, and that such people can in no way be leader of the Serbian people. And to prove that as a fact, it is enough to look through the files of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina's Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Radovan Karadzic is still a realistic political factor?

How do you mean realistic?

He definitely has authority over what is happening to the Serbian people today.

No, he is not the slightest realistic factor. You are gravely mistaken. The realistic factors are in Serbia. The realistic factor is President Slobodan Milosevic, who actually initiated that I be terminated from my position as the head of SDS, actually of the Steering Committee of the SDS, and Dobrica Cosic who was at one point the president and innkeeper of Yugoslavia.

Even as an instrument of the political will of Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic is still officially in power.

You constantly refer to him as if he has some power. Radovan Karadzic must be treated as an embezzler. Let us look, for example, who protects him. Mostly, he is protected by criminals. Who are his associates? Just look at the structure of the people that surround him. He is a crazy man, who has simply been taken by the government, I say this openly, the government of Serbia, as an instrument for destroying Bosnia and Herzegovina. Why did they choose Radovan Karadzic? Radovan Karadzic was known even before as a man who abhorred Bosnia and Herzegovina and the city of Sarajevo. He was a member of the Association of Writers of Bosnia and Herzegovina. We, as members of the Association of Writers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, knew that he worked for the State Security Police and Counter-Intelligence Service (KOS), that he was their man and that he reported everything that went on in the Association at the right place. Therefore, such a man, with such moral dignity, with a dignity that equals zero, you understand, was a suitable person for conducting the plan for the collapse of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Take Radovan Karadzic's speeches in their entirety, read them, and you will see that Hitler could be Radovan Karadzic's pupil.

It is an indisputable fact that in this war in Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnian Moslems were killed the most, Croats were killed as well, yet it is rarely said that Serbs, the Serbian people, too, were killed. What are your comments on that?

When talking about the genocide of the Moslem people, we should at the same time be talking about the genocide of the Serbian people. The genocide of the Serbian people was conducted by no one else but the ruling circles of SDS, that is, what they now call the Presidency of the so-called Republic of Serbia. It is a public fact that 150,000 Serbs were killed between the ages of 18-30, which means that the Serbian nation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is biologically destroyed. We shall actually have, age-wise, an extremely old nation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

I asked that it be noted that the entire Serbian nation did not become a victim of genocide politics. Before the war, as stated in the census, there were 1,350,000 of us, and the nucleus which went off to murder in Bosnia and Herzegovina amounted to 20-30 thousand people. They were joined by approximately an additional 270,000. Therefore, around 1,000,000 Serbs absolutely did not participate in this war. Imagine an army of 1,300,000 people which the Serbian nation could have formed if they had wanted the collapse of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In that case, there would not have been a Bosnia and Herzegovina, absolutely. It must be said that we lacked political experience, because we allowed the weapons of the Yugoslav National Army to be driven out of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And they were later returned to the war zones in Bosnia and Herzegovina and were used to incite war.

39 months ago, in the midst of Sarajevo's true cataclysm, you made a suicidal gesture by starting off on a mission, if we can call it that, of good will, probably thinking that you could make those who were firing guns all over this city in an organized way, come to their senses. How do you look upon such an action today?

There are different versions of that. By radio and TV broadcasts, I asked for a meeting with the leadership of SDS a couple of times, because I believed that we could sit down and talk about this. So that I could tell them: "People, stop, do you really know what you are doing?" The reason I left was because we had previously arranged a meeting on Jahorina. Simply, that was our agreement, and I started off keeping in mind three elements which I could talk to them about. One was feeding the Serbian population which had remained in Sarajevo. It was known that around 60-80 thousand Serbs had remained in Sarajevo. It was also known that they were fed thanks to the charities Merhamet and Caritas. The Dobrotvor charity had no real power, it was alive only on paper. The second element was the formation of the Ilidza corridor, which was supposed to be the corridor of life for Bosnia, for Sarajevo. We should have agreed upon an exit route from Sarajevo for all those who wanted to leave, or wished to return to Sarajevo. Believe me, I did not know that they de facto wanted to plow over Sarajevo, to kill all of its population, to ruin the city, to turn Sarajevo into a field on which they would sow wheat, because that is exactly what they wanted to do. And the third interesting thing was to tell them simply: "People, stop shelling the city. The ones that are killed the most are children".

Instead of being met there, you were arrested. What can you tell us of your prison days?

I would rather not talk much about my prison days. It is something that cannot be described, nor talked about. It is a fact that I was sentenced to death by a firing squad, then the sentence was altered to 10 years in prison, then to 5, which finally went down to 3 years of prison. When that sentence expired, they refused to let me out - like, it was the wrong political moment, etc. Why wasn't I killed? That was a question I often asked myself and I believe that I know the answer: because of the public.

During your stay in prison, did you have any visitors, someone you were expecting, or someone you weren't expecting?

Personally, I did not believe that those who had put me in prison would come to visit me, but they came. For a while in the prison they organized fine parties. Imagine: on one side, you have people who don't have anything to eat, those being prisoners and POW's, and on the other, you have people who don't know what to eat first. There was a room in Kula which could be seen from behind bars. That was the so-called reception room, where Nikola Koljevic was a frequent guest. A very frequent guest, who came to the parties. Of course, then they played music, they drank, they ate, they conducted orgies. However, Nikola Koljevic, being only 50 meters away from me, never appeared. Ljubomir Zukovic appeared once, and his first sentence was: "You know how it is. I come here secretly". Imagine a minister of culture saying such a thing. Isn't that absurd? But I must mention my good professor Dr. Josip Besic, who visited me, looking like a ghost. He came to visit me, and I must say that, by doing so, he had endangered his own life.

We talked for about half an hour, of course, in the presence of the police and it was then that he told me that he was going to Novi Sad for Sterijino Theatrical Festival. A month later, I heard that two days after our meeting, he had a heart attack at a table in the Park Hotel in Novi Sad and was dead. They did not allow his wife Rava to see me, but I somehow received a message and present from her, extremely precious to me. Since I still have no way of contacting Rava, I wish to use this opportunity to give her my regards and to wish her all the best.

Looking at it objectively, you would be granted political asylum in any country in the world. Instead, you chose Sarajevo. Why?

What would I do with political asylum in another country? What good would it do me? To become a lecturer at some university abroad. I don't need that. In Kula they told me to take my card, the ID of the Republic of Serbia, they promised me this and that through their various emissaries. The main actors, such as Radovan Karadzic, Nikola Koljevic and others never showed up, but their emissaries delivered their messages, like, I should join them. I told them from the first day: "You know what. I only want to go to Sarajevo. My only route leads to Sarajevo". That's that. I have my country, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the city where I wish to live is Sarajevo. As for Sarajevo being demolished, why, we'll rebuild it. It will be the cultural and political and economic center of the Balkans. That is inevitable. That is evident.