Zombie In The Snow

On Wednesday, February 21, as soft snow was giving Belgrade an entirely new look, news about refugees seeking for shelter seemed to be melting on an hourly basis. The clearest and most comprehensible version said that a convoy consisting of 200 war-time volunteers whose families had taken refuge in Serbia would leave for Sarajevo on February 22.

All other details - how many people they represent, how long they will stay, where will they find accomodation, who will guarantee their safety and did they live in Sarajevo before the war broke out - were lost in a conflict of political trends.

When this article was being written, on Wednesday afternoon, the entire operation was postponed. The trip was delayed due to heavy snowfall in Bosnia which, so they said, made the roads impassable. However, the entire affair dates three weeks back. It started when an association of refugees visited the Serbian High Comissioner and expressed the desire of 400 families to return to Sarajevo. The list was reduced to 200 volunteers by the end of the campaign. How many will there be on the actual day of the departure ?

The war, as we all know, has finished. A few little details remain to be sorted out. For example, to justify the war and its unaccomplished objectives as well as peace which is in discord with the promised ending. There are enough civilians left for that purpose. Sarajevo's Serbs are forced to flee their homes to justify the theory that war was inevitable and satisfy the champions of the idea that coexistence is impossible. Their descision is rooted in their justified fear of reprisals by forces of the Bosnian Moslem-Croat federation taking over the authority in Sarajevo's Serb-held suburbs. It is also politically acceptable for the Bosnian Serb authorities, and prompted by earlier threats voiced by Bosnian prime minister Hasan Muratovic.

On the other side, we have converts who all of a sudden believe in coexistence. Refugees going back to Sarajevo could, God forbid, come across those fleeing the city and get stuck together should the snow-engulfed hill of Trebevic prove insurmountable. No problem, there must be someone who will be able to separate them and direct them to the desired destinations. The snow came just in time for a breather.

 

Exodus From Sarajevo

Last week in Rome, representatives of Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia invested every effort to show their adherence to the implementation of the Dayton agreement and signed a statement on Sarajevo.

The weightiest signatures were Slobodan Milosevic's and Alija Izetbegovic's.

The statement says explicitly that the Serbs will have the possibility of taking part in running the city.

It says Sarajevo is an open city with the free movement of people, goods and capital. In the areas that will be handed over to the Federation, from March 19 till the elections later this year, the federal authorities will operate in cooperation with Serb representatives who were elected in the area in 1990. If the local mayor is a Federation man, the local council chief will be a Serb.

Bosnian Serb Parliament Speaker Momcilo Krajisnik said after the Rome meeting that "isn't what the Sarajevo Serbs expect". He warned that the RS leadership won't agree to Federation police in Serb Sarajevo with Serb police. He added that the announcements by Federation officials that their police will enter Serb suburbs scared the local population and made them move out of the areas.

News agency reports said that 800 Serbs moved out of Hadzici alone in single day. The RS refugee bureau said residents of Hadzici will be moved to Bratunac, residents of Ilijas to Srebrenica, Zvornik, Milice and Brcko; from Ilidza to Trnovo, Rudo, Foca. The bureau expects some 30,000 families to leave Sarajevo.

Ilidza Mayor Nedeljko Prstojevic blamed Krajisnik and his associates for the latest, post-war exodus. "The people expected agreements over all this, and especially insisted on creating secure conditions for them to live in Serb Sarajevo," he said. "No one has the right to make 80,000 people homeless," he warned in a Radio Kragujevac interview.

 

The Cyprus Flight

A senior Montenegrin police officer was recently retired, allegedly because of indiscipline and heavy drinking. In a testimony to the weekly Vreme, officer Vlado Popovic, 38, claims that he was sacked because he had tried to stop some of his colleagues at the Podgorica airport from smuggling six million Deutchmarks to Cyprus.

Popovic was in charge of his shift at the airport from January 15 to 17. Little did he expect to find a bag containing six million German marks in one of the planes. The civilians escorting the bag identified themselves as police officers, and "explained" to Popovic that they were taking state-owned money to Cyprus. A dispute emerged and a number of ranking police officers flocked to the airport, but Popovic remained adamant. His persistency eventually cost him the job; Vlado Popovic had to retire at the age of 38, following a decision by Montenegrin interior minister, Filip Vujanovic.

Popovic never faced disciplinary sanctions, not even on that occassion. He completed his education in Sremska Kamenica back in 1977, and was transferred to special forces as a model police officer. He guarded the Yugoslav embassy in Sweden for five years after which he was told to choose a post to his liking upon returning to Yugoslavia.

When asked why Vlado Popovic was sent to retirement, Vujanovic said we should talk to Milan Paunovic, deputy chief of the Podgorica police force. Paunovic, for his part, said he was only authorized to release three documents and that any statements were out of the question. "All the answers to your questions are in the official note I had issued" Paunovic said.

This is why we are able to publish only the testimony of the suspended police officer, which goes as follows: "I was in charge of the shift at the Golubovci airport. A large Antonov jet which ususally transports up to 40 tons of foreign-made cigarettes from Rotterdam was on the runway. A guard informed me about 18.00 hours that a red Volkswagen-Golf passenger vehicle had arrived under the plane and that someone was taking something into it.

I saw the number of the vehicle's licence plates, BD 91-07, two civilians who identified themselves as police officers and another one carrying the baggage. They had Heckler-Koch automatic hand-guns concealed under their jackets. I told the former two to step away immediately before taking the third individual into custody, where he said he had to fly to Cyprus.

I informed the customs officers of the case and stepped with one of them into the plane. We found a bag, weighing about 20 kilogarms, opened it, and checked what was inside. We did not bother to count the money, we just followed the standard procedure and sealed the bag. Meanwhile, I was called by chief of the Podgorica task force Goran Zugic, who asked me: "Who do you think you are to delay a flight, arrest people and confiscate money"? My reply was that I was just doing my job properly. "I order you", he said raising his voice, "to let that person go, return the money and allow the jet to take off". My answer was no.

Milan Paunovic, Zugic's assistant, commander of the border police Slavko Vojinovic and chief of the airport dorce Milan Scekic soon showed up. Paunovic said I had acted according to the law, adding the money was state-owned and that it had to be taken to Cyprus that night. He asked me to exercize my authority with the customs officers to have the money returned without the proper procedure. I agreed only to let them sort out the mess any way they regarded appropriate."

The driver of the passeneger vehicle, Dejan Boljevic, said in an official statement he had warned Popovic that one of the three was Vukasin Maras, assistant state security minister. Boljevic said Popovic had refused to shake hands with Maras, and that he was under a heavy influence of alcohol. He said Popovic had accused the state security service of framing him when sending its supervisors to inspect security at the airport.

Popovic denied the claims and said he doesn't drink alcohol. His colleagues organized a farewell party and gave him a colt hand-gun as a token of their respect. Popovic was retired, and his unit was transferred from the airport to the Bocaj border crossing. The competent authorities declined to comment why that was done. The destination of all those cigarettes, beside the point in this story, will remain a mystery for the time being.

 

New Ordains

Matija Beckovic, one of our most prominent writers, once said that so many ordains had been dished in the former Yugoslavia, there was no need to hand out any more in the next 100 or 200 years.

The facts are as follows: Over two million decorations were given out in the former Yugoslavia - 36 types of ordains and six kinds of medals. Some 50,000 pieces of rubin, 30,000 diamonds and an unmeasurable quantity of noble metals were used for this purpose. According to the draft federal law on decorations, quantity will in future make a significant difference between old and new medals.

The federal government formed a committee to prepare a draft law on decorations in the fall of 1994. The operative group has completed the working version of the draft, currently with the ministry of justice.

Mr. Zoran Zivkovic, an advisor to prime minister Radoje Kontic and member of the committee, said the group had followed the logic "the less decorations are given the more valuable they are". He pointed out the decorations will be suited to the state and time we live in, with the desire to promote all values of the Serb and Montenegrin tradition.

The working version was prepared in such a way that - according to Zivkovic - it should be adopted the same way the national emblem was back in 1993. According to some optimistic expectations, the federal authorities should adopt the law on decorations in time for the new Yugoslavia's fourth birthday.

Yugoslavia would thus acquire the only state symbol it still misses, having adopted an emblem, a flag and the national anthem. The voting on the new emblem in the federal assembly reminds of the fact that Serbia still doesn't have its own.

The official explanation of the Serbian government says that Serbia does have its own amblem according to article 5 of the republican Constitution - which says that the emblem is adopted along with a new Constitution. In other words, a new emblem will be adopted when a new Constitution is passed.

Until then Serbia will boast of an emblem bearing the five-star, the sun and a cog-wheel.