The Untouchables

Last week the Belgrade police reacted surprisingly quickly when fireing inspector Goran Petrovic and policeman Rade Radosavljevic on December 11 for assaulting a seven year old girl. The girl was suspected of stealing 200 dollars on November 30. The neighbor who reported the theft and pointed her finger at the little girl later found out she had miscounted the amount but it was too late for the girl.

"One of them beat me with a baton, radio antenna and wire on the head, hands, feet and bottom while the other one just watched," she said.

Former police minister Radmilo Bogdanovic was an advocate of beatings in his time. "If someone admits he has a machine-gun, it's normal to beat him until he admits he has another," he told once in an interview to Vecernje Novosti daily.

Official figures (several months old) show that Serbia has an active police force of 80,000 and reserves of another 50,000. Jobs are always available in the police and everyone seems to be welcome. However, the applicants do not go through extensive checks and there are criminals among them such as the four members of the police in Pozarevac who were recently charged with robbery. They robbed people at gunpoint in Golubac and wounded one person in a cafe there.

Anniversary

The traffic in front of Belgrade's Intercontinental Hotel looked like Manhattan on Tuesday night: that number of cars hasn't been seen in one place in Belgrade since the sanctions were imposed. The crowd was there to celebrate the first anniversary of the BK TV. The Karic Brothers, owners of the TV, organized a high-tech cocktail party for about 1,000 who were addressed by BK TV director Aleksandar Tijanic. Journalists and editors were introduced, there was music and plenty to drink but most of the guests were former politicians turned into businessmen.

The ruling party, the SPS, was represented by former police minister Radmilo Bogdanovic, spokesman Ivica Dacic, Serbian ministers Vladimir Cvetkovic and Zarko Jokanovic; Danica and Vuk Draskovic were there as well as "Politika" daily boss Hadzi Dragan Antic. There were also some foreign press attaches alongside guests from Vecernje Novosti, Studio B and Tijanic's former company TV Politika.

Everything was in place but the photographers. The organizers banned photojournalists to take pictures explaining that "this is just a gathering of friends and there's no need to turn it into a sensation."

Wife

The one week private visit by Belgrade university professor Mira Markovic to Russia was crowned with the promotion of her two books in Moscow's Hall of Scientists. A year after her Answers was translated, the Karic brothers company and Moscow publishers released her Sociology and a collection of her writing for Duga fortnightly titled "Night and Day".

Markovic's fellow members of the Russian Academy of Social Sciences spoke of her and her work.

Former TV Serbia director, now a businessman Dusan Mitevic noted that Ms Markovic had two loves and two homelands; Yugoslavia and Russia, especially its winter.

Markovic informed the gathering that mankind was going through great changes and voiced the wish for the 21st century to be a time of science which would not be controlled by politics. Science, she said, which politics used for its own causes and needs should be freed of politics in a reversal of roles.

Withdrawal

Just prior to the session of the Holy Archiepiscopal assembly, on December 21, rumors are circulating that Patriarch Pavle intends to withdraw as head of the Serbian Orthodox Church to a monastery. The Church constitution does not envisage that possibility but the decision would not be a precedent especially if it was forced.

The Patriarch never hid his wish to return to the peace of monastery life. Possibly the rumors of his withdrawal come from high Church circles who spent the past few years not pushing their flocks into catastrophe but staying with the people. The war has ended and the Patriarch could be an obstacle to showing dirty laundry.