From Decontamination to Execution

Almost everyone who had a chance last Thursday to hear and see the Vice-President of the Serbian Government and leader of the Radical Party, Vojislav Seselj threatening the journalists of certain media that, 'owing to their traitor-like activities', 'receiving American money', 'collaboration' in the murder of the Minister of Military Affairs, Pavle Bulatovic and other subversive activities, they will be next on the list of execution, claimed the next day that they had felt something strange in Seselj's appearance. While he was mentioning executions at his regular press conferences, his voice was becoming kind of false. It seemed that he, who always possesses the unbelievable power of rhetoric, somehow lacked words and that, perhaps stunned with his own vocabulary, he started tangling the remainder of his speech, which is not quite characteristic of him. At one moment he seemed as someone who expressed his own condolences to himself, after what he suddenly changed his course and started attacking all his enemies, oscillating
between some kind of pathetic tone (totally atypical of him) and arrogance (his very distinctive feature). All in all, it was quite contrasting with the man who has, only several weeks ago, rhetorically moved the western Serbian borders on the line Karlobag-Karlovac-Virovitica and has spoken of temporarily occupied territories or when he, somewhat later, at the post-congress reception of the Radical Party, adorned with a red ribbon, walked in his old fashion - as if his feet were surrounded by water.

President of the Social-Democratic Union, Dr. Zarko Korac, a psychologist, claimed that Seselj's speech was 'an expression of terrible fear'. 'When someone is frightened, it causes the so-called decompensation, i.e. the release of fear by attacking the others. In that way, he seems more powerful to himself and has a need to impose his own fear on his audience. That is exactly what we saw yesterday at Seselj's press conference, and I am afraid that we shall see more of that', Korac observed. A few days afterwards, in the Media Centre, psychologist Zarko Trebjesanin claimed something similar - that we are approaching a chaotic era in which even those who had caused the greatest fear now cannot cut short the series of violence. At the same time, Trebjesanin warned about the fact that the government is terrified too: 'Seselj's speech is disclosing an enormous fear, the feeling of helplessness and life jeopardy.'

AMASSED FEAR: The psychologists, therefore, remark that the Vice-President of the Serbian Government seem as if he somehow amassed a considerable amount of fear. Truly speaking, the journalists are not indifferent. Especially when they are told that they would be punished at a proper time. It remains unclear whether the mentioned assassination of journalists is the official policy of the Government of Serbia, his personal attitude, or something completely different. For example, the inclination of the regime, which more often resembles an executing administrator of one state, is to use the expression 'execution' so easily.

Seselj's superior, President of the Serbian Government Mirko Marjanovic, has not uttered a word, although certain parties (the Democratic Party of Serbia) required to hear from him what was actually going on. When asked to give an explanation of these threats, Minister of Justice, Dragoljub Jankovic, claimed that he had not read Seselj's statement and added that he generally did not like to comment other people's statements. Minister of Science in the Government of Serbia, Branislav Ivkovic noticed that something like that must have been Seselj's 'personal standpoint'. Minister of Information, Aleksandar Vucic explained later that Ivkovic must have been totally unaware of what he was asked by the journalists. He said about his party leader that he 'had pointed to the essence of the attempts of American clashes with everything of Serbian origin, with everything national and patriotic in Serbia and FRY'. Because of that, according to Minister Vucic, the entire campaign of pro-Western and pro-American media in Serbia was launched against the Radicals. During his first speech on this subject, Vucic accused some opposition parties and some independent media of being responsible for the murder of Pavle Bulatovic ('It was not enough that they had Pavle Bulatovic assassinated at the instigation of foreign information services, those who support the same media financially. His life, his sacrifice was not satisfactory.') The second time he spoke on the subject, Vucic mainly mentioned foreign information services as executioners and even said that there would be no extinguishing of independent media. The Federal Minister of Information, Goran Matic, who appears to be employed as a free-lancer with the federal police, has agreed with almost all Vojislav Seselj's attitudes and deduced that 'certain domestic media are working oh behalf of those who bombed us.' A very similar viewpoint is held by the Minister of Telecommunications, Ivan Markovic.

When all these public discourses of both authorised and unauthorised ministers are compared and contrasted, it immediately comes to mind that the culmination of repression, fear, violence, hatred and the overall insecurity is finally approaching. After a series of unsolved murders which even reached the top of the regime administration, each new threat, as our colleague Aleksandar Tijanic has noticed these days, becomes 'deadly serious'. Ever since Seselj launched his threat, Tijanic happens to be the first journalist whom the state press blamed directly. First of all, Tanjug, then 'Borba', accused him of 'knowing' the details of preparation of the murder of Pavle Bulatovic. To those journalists who are not used to believe their own eyes, to pose questions or notice any form of social pathology around us (such as that 'twenty families, three political parties, two banks and one television' conduct the destiny of the whole Serbia), Tijanic became suspicious because, after the murder of Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan, he indicated that there was more to come, i.e. that the Belgrade spiral of death began moving forward. In the same way, in April this year, the courageous comment in 'Politka Express' mentioned the journalist Slavko Curuvija. Several days later, Curuvija was assassinated in the middle of the day, in front of his own house.

PIT BULLS: Those stories about executions grew so vociferous that, at one moment, the president of Social-Democracy, Vuk Obradovic invited Slobodan Milosevic to calm down his pit bulls. Those who occupy places in the government, and they are well aware of the presence of foreign information services on our territory and their freedom to kill anyone they want, Obradovic asked quite a logical question - why did they let them wander around freely?! President of FRY Slobodan Milosevic, in the meantime, gathered the representatives of the highest judicial organs in the country and invited them to apply the laws consistently and contribute to the affirmation of justice. Then, several days have passed and no one of the invited uttered a single word about Vojislav Seselj's appearance, though they were all quite aware that the last week's manifestation of the Vice-President and the newly appointed professor of law comprises everything - the misuse of facts, the elements of slander and threats to personal and material safety, the imperiling of public safety of the entire country...

This time, as in many previous situations, it happened that the representatives of JUL (the Yugoslav Left) have utterly agreed to what Seselj spoke, while the Socialists are pretending to be incompetent. They have noticed nothing. The concord between JUL and the Radicals is quite expected and understandable if we have in mind that they are all carrying slide rules in their pockets for weighing patriotism, courage, good intentions or loyalty to their politics of the local media. In December last year, some JUL representatives have announced that they would have to carry a 'Geiger counter' with them because there should follow an urgent and inevitable decontamination of 'national traitors'. There was also some mention about the 'unification and co-ordination of informative activities'. From the decontamination in December, we have already arrived to the execution in February. All the time, the Socialists are still behaving as mercenary policemen which do not check upon their allocated regions until the local bullies beat up those whom they intended to beat up. From time to time, they seem as if they wanted to let us know how this country would look like were it ruled by their coalition partners. Recalling the sources of RTS (the Radio Television of Serbia), Nebojsa Covic's Democratic Alternative claimed in a public notification that nothing had happened without the knowledge of the Socialists. Allegedly, the first release of Seselj's press conference was rather meager, as usual (the Radicals have complained many times about their unpopularity on RTS and demanded from Milanovic to draw more attention to them). Only after the intervention of Somebody, the first man in 10 Takovska Street decided to play the entire Seselj's appearance which brought about the 'quake of the whole Serbia'. The same notification also reveals that the leader of the Radicals was used again, this time in panic, due to the indication that Slobodan Milosevic might let him go downstream.

OH, MOTHER SERBIA: Frankly speaking, the possibility that Milosevic is preparing to get rid of Seselj is not too discernible. But it is evident that last Thursday, Seselj was not the old and the same. Those who are convinced that the leader of the Radicals got scared of something are trying to discover the cause and nature of that 'fear'. The evil ones claim that Seselj must have heard on RTS that the alliance between Russia and Belorussia was just about to come true, so he became worried that the alliance would probably have to share the same democratic standards. President of Belorussia, Lukashenko has recently permitted the local opposition to appear on the TV headlines every day, in the duration of 1,5 minutes + 10 minutes on two biggest radio stations, on the condition that the programs be recorded one day before. Another, no less wicked, interpretation says that Seselj was a little bit out of concentration, since at the recent congress of his party in the 'Sava Centre' he exaggerated by playing his favourite radical tune 'Oh, Mother Serbia, I just blurted out this cry - Vojo Seselj shall become your president', which his coalition partners did not like very much. Another opinion is that Seselj is not pleased at all that his recent bodyguard got shot in Surcin (whatever might have stood behind that). It is a quite convincing hypothesis that the Vice-President of the Serbian Government, a man famous for his easy, fast and sudden solutions, after the murder of Pavle Bulatovic, unexpectedly found himself incapable of explaining what is actually going on in a country in which newspaper covers also include some other stories apart from constant murders. Describing what is currently going on, professor Dragor Hiber has a very precise insight into the fusion of para-politics, para-economy and criminal in a grey zone, the casualties of which are also those who take part in that economic and political life while they do not belong to the mafia. 'It all commenced with housing co-operatives, the directors of which had been killed, wine plants in Slavonija and war profits, ending with not a single distinction between a boss of a criminal band, a statesmen and a businessman. Serious criminals have already stopped wearing gold chains over their shirts', claims Hiber for 'Glas Javnosti' daily.

Seselj could be nervous because of the more common belief that he had transformed himself from the most 'consistent' politician into a politician who has mostly abandoned his previous convictions. Ever since he got hold of power, Seselj has somehow forgotten everything he had supported before. He, however, still talks about Great Serbia, but rarely about the free press, the old foreign currency savings or the financial elite created in the last ten years. It appears that the Radicals, the party of the 'dissatisfied avengers' are not that dissatisfied. They allegedly do not accept the Kumanovo agreement which, as they say, collides with their promise that no foreign soldier will ever step on the territory of Kosovo, after which they still remain within the ruling coalition, even if there are 50.000 armed soldiers in Kosovo.

Milan St. Protic from the Alliance for Changes claims that what Seselj said last week represents only an introduction to the pre-election campaign, and that the regime has evidently started settling accounts with everyone who things in any other way. If we take this supposition for granted, and it seems that there are reasons for that, the leader of the Radicals certainly knows well that at this very moment at least 40% of voters are indecisive or even reluctant to go the elections. Seselj also knows that the election victory of the opposition is only possible in case of a vast response of voters. Thus the story about the execution of 'journalists traitors' became suitable to divert the indecisive voters from the elections.

Aleksandar Tijanic writes these days that the regime in Serbia is panic-stricken because they realise that their careers are not going to last perpetually.
Not that long ago, Vojislav Seselj threatened to bomb Rome and London, and he somehow planned to reach Washington too. Then it was Zhirinovsky who was late with those promised secret weapons, and everyone got away with it. Only Belgrade was bombed. The threat is now getting directed towards the journalists. The author of this text knows one of them who has recently written a lot about the mysterious assassinations. Several days ago, he received a SMS to his mobile phone: 'Beware what you write, we know where you live.' It is not funny.