Shorts

Rules

It has been a long time since one of my Friday commentaries on Radio Free Europe drew so much attention, at least judging from the reactions in Belgrade, after the comment that Arkan, or rather his party, got some 300,000 DEM for the Bosnian elections from international election offices. It was an opportunity to remind people that VREME faced a lot of problems from peace advocates at home and the international community when we ran ads for Arkan’s party during the last elections in Serbia. We pointed out that the ads conformed to the rules of electoral advertising which we published and that Arkan’s ad read as if Mother Theresa had written it. Nonetheless, we still came under suspicion. Now we can say we took Arkan’s money while they are giving him more.

The subcontext is more complex and has to do with rules. Any game, even politics, has rules. Anything else is like a football game where some rules apply and other don’t at different times. The orderly world rests on the respect for rules as do orderly publications. And finally, the rules should be the same for the Serbs and the rest of the world.

Dragoljub Zarkovic, VREME editor-in-chief

Week Three in Kragujevac

Workers at the Zastava munitions and automobile plants who protested in front of Kragujevac city hall on September 18, the 23rd day of their strike, just repeated that their demands have not been met and that company managers are misinforming the public on the state media. They escalated their demands and now want Kragujevac local officials and their company managers ousted and the establishment of responsibility for the situation in Kragujevac as a whole (the town ranks 163 in Serbia in terms of salaries). Munitions plant strike leaders Zoran Nedeljkovic and Dragutin Stanojlovic are making sure the strike is peaceful.

They told director Branko Smigic that workers won’t talk until their demands are met. Automobile plant workers ousted their union leaders and elected temporary leaders headed by Milija Pavlovic.

Smigic, the acting director, said if the strike continues he will have to set in motion a decision to secure continued production at the munitions factory to protect property, production and factory security while automobile plant director Miodrag Bogdanovic said "the protest hampers negotiations with foreign partners" and called his employees to go to back to work. Later the factory gates were ordered closed and the strikers passes were taken away while additional security staff were brought in.

Media pressure on the strikers is growing and there is an increasing number of statements by officials that the munitions plant has things to do and that the strike is political.

SPS general secretary Gorica Gajevic told BETA news agency that the strikers social demands are justified but have been turned into political demands. She said the opposition tried but failed to profit from the strike. Vuk Draskovic accused the Serbian authorities of violating the constitution by hiding the truth about the Kragujevac protest and called upon Serbian citizens to join the workers. The strikers sent a letter to former National Bank Governor Dragoslav Avramovic calling him to come in and address them.

While the authorities are trying to end the strike some reports are indicating the strike will spread. On Monday, September 16, nine IMT Belgrade workers began a hunger strike demanding back pay for March, April, May, June, July, August and September. In Leskovac, Valjevo and Belgrade last week workers threatened to strike unless they get their back pay. Also, the Nezavisnost union announced a general strike among metal workers in Serbia.

Arkan Letter to the Guardian

Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan responded in anger to a report by London Guardian correspondent Julian Borger who called him a war criminal and warlord. In the September 14 issue of the Guardian, Raznatovic wrote that "because of American hostility towards his activities in defending the Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia" he came under investigation by the Hague war crimes tribunal but was not charged because there is no proof of his crimes. Arkan also analyzed Franjo Tudjman and Alija Izetbegovic recalling Croatian crimes against the Serbs, ethnic cleansing of Krajina and the Bosnian president’s Islamic Declaration. He said the Bosnian Serbs feared the fundamentalist Islamic state Izetbegovic wanted to set up and rebelled to defend their lives and identity while Arkan was there just to help them.

He said Borger was wrong to call him an extreme nationalist and added that he was a Serb and proud of it. "Contrary to the wide-spread opinion in the West, the Bosnian Serb Republic still has non-Serb ethnic minorities and many of them are sympathizers or members of my party which shows they do not see me as an extreme nationalist. Those people support the idea of the old multi-ethnic Yugoslavia in which they lived alongside their Serb neighbors. They understand that the main parties in Bosnia (the SDA, SDS and HDZ) are nationalist parties which do not reflect their views. They support my party’s efforts to obtain stronger links with Serbia because it is the only multi-ethnic state left in the former Yugoslavia."

Arkan said Borger did not see the obvious; that his party platform abides by the spirit of the Dayton agreement much more than the leading nationalist parties in Bosnia and deserves OSCE subsidies. He concluded by saying that the division of Bosnia is necessary and anyone who thinks differently is naive but that is not his own fault by the logical conclusion of the fact that the Serbs do not want to live under the rule of Moslem and Croat nationalists.

Belgrade’s Bathhouse

Belgrade’s only remaining bathhouse recently resumed work after a summer break. The opening was not attended by the Mayor since the bathhouse needs repair work. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays about 30 people shower, bathe or use the sauna. Bathing costs 15 dinars (including towels, soap and shampoo), a shower costs 10 and the sauna costs 20 dinars. Refugees are exempt from paying.

Tourism

The Montenegrin home affairs ministry recently pressured the resort of Becici into releasing some 50 Macedonian hostages and their bus.

The Macedonian independent unions and police had a contract for 19,700 nights in the resort with the Meastral company and the Mediteran hotel. The Macedonians stayed in the hotel but paid only a fourth of the agreed price (200,000 DEM and they owe another 600,000). The Montenegrins realized the payment wasn’t coming and held the last group of tourists and their bus for a day threatening to hold them until the debt is paid.

The hostages were released quickly. It wasn’t their fault that the unions and police allowed the debt to grow that high and the hotel would have had to house and feed them.

The tourist hostages stayed a day longer and the FRY embassy and Montenegrin tourism ministry promised a payment of the debt.

Parties

A League of Communists election pamphlet called the electorate "the working class and inhabitants" but did not say of where since the party is obviously not reconciled to the fact that the country is smaller.

Things really have changed. A while back everyone had to know who headed the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. Does anyone know who the current party chief is? (Branko Lozo).