What Are All The Things That Serbia Can Prohibit?

"Not all human rights are purely political, but a state can go to ruin because of a lack of human rights.  That is one of the reasons why the USSR fell apart.  A state cannot survive with unmotivated citizens, with citizens who are in a state of uncertainty because laws are not respected.  The function of law is to provide you with some degree of certainty in life, including what you can and what you cannot do.  Regimes which want to survive or to transform in peace, as for instance the regimes in China and Vietnam, are presently introducing human rights education into their police forces?  What need do they have for a police force made up of clans and sadists?  No one has any use for such a police force," states Ph.D. Vojin Dimitrijevic, Director of Belgrade's Human Rights Center which just celebrated five years of its existence.

VREME:  How many people in Serbia know that there are human rights which historically predate state law?

DIMITIRJEVIC:  Awareness of human rights has been systematically stifled in the past 55 years here.  The terms used were so-called human rights, or simply human rights in quotation marks.  And a few days ago I read an article somewhere where quotation marks were not emphatic enough and the author also used the expression "so-called" to amplify his suspicions.  Conviction has been created here that human rights are against the state, that they are subversive and that they are synonymous with the West.  In this sense we share a lot with certain countries with which we are otherwise friends - i.e. Miamar, North Korea, etc.

Law faculties in the whole of Yugoslavia never taught a subject such as human rights, and if there was any mention of this subject, it was always in the sense that human rights are something that is given by the state and which can be taken away at any time.  In Belgrade's Faculty of Law the subject of human rights was only introduced three to four years ago, and will most likely be discontinued given the professorial staff which is presently holding positions at that Faculty.  At our Center we calculated that there are at least 15,000 lawyers in this country who are deficient in their knowledge of human rights.

VREME:  Can our citizens enumerate their basic rights?

DIMITRIJEVIC:  I personally know professors of law who think that rights are only those things guaranteed by the constitution and by law, and if the constitution and the law are duly changed - the rights disappear.  Here's an example of the extent to which we re lagging behind: the Serbian constitution from 1990 includes a phrase which initially appears excellent - everything in this country which is not prohibited by law is permitted.  However, that is the nineteenth century; it has been copied from the constitution drawn up by the radicals over a century ago.  Of course, the question is what are all the things that Serbia can prohibit?  The legislator is given the discretion to prohibit anything at will.  We had opportunity to see this during the NATO intervention.  In terms of derogation of human rights "at times of exceptional public danger," it is not stipulated that derogation "must be kept within strictly defined exigencies of the situation."  The Serbian Constitution stipulates that during a state of war, all rights can be annulled, while the FRY Constitution, with regard to non-derogatable rights, fails to mention a right that cannot be derogated - namely, the right to life.

VREME:  To which extent has the situation become worse since the NATO intervention?

DIMITRIJEVIC:  Already in anticipation of the intervention, by 1998 the Serbian legislature entered into open conflict with human rights, with the Serbian Constitution, with the Federal Constitution, and not to mention international agreements which we are bound by.  That fall the Law on the University was adopted, followed by the Law on Information, which in its entirety clearly and consciously denies not only the right to free expression, but also the right to a just trial.  The presumption of innocence is denied in this law along with one of the fundamental tenets of law - the principle of lawfulness.

Measures adopted during the state of war led to the legalization of concentration camps because the police got the right to arrest anyone for 60 days in a procedure that had nothing remotely resembling court procedure, and when you read the decree on the basis of which such this was done, you see that following 60 days a subject was not set free but was handed over to court officials...

On March 26 our Center addressed the international public with a letter in which it was stated that the biggest collateral victim in the entire bombing will be the little that remains of a civil society here.  Many people did not like this, but we sadly think that we are right.  The regime got one more argument on its side - that all citizens who incline toward western values are members of the fifth estate and are NATO agents.  This should not be underestimated as an argument with the common voter.

VREME:  Isn't the fight for human rights a Quixotic quest at a time when political murders have become an everyday method of political action?

DIMITRIJEVIC:  The international community keeps telling us - get rid of this regime, get rid of Milosevic and then you will get money and will get this and that.  No one asks what we will look like in the event of such a happy ending.  The issue is not only when a new government will come to power, but what are we to do in the interim?  That is why at the Center we came up with the idea of reviewing our legislation and we have already arrived at an inventory of laws which are bad.  When a new government comes to power, it cannot just begin work.  We need to be ready.  If we only wait, we will look like people who are constantly waiting to win a lottery but finally go bankrupt...

VREME:  How much attention are opposition parties devoting to human rights?

DIMITRIJEVIC:  There is a problem with our opposition leaders, and this is not judgmental.  They are already behaving like ministers, unable to read more than three pages of text.  They are torn between pressing, current problems.  Secondly, in some sort of self glorification, opposition parties only pay attention when the rights of their members or their leaders are injured, and do not have the necessary patience to pay attention to other rights.  Their lack of tolerance in their behavior is also part of the problem.
Furthermore, opposition parties spook whenever a problem that touches on a political taboo crops up.  For instance, it was never possible to raise the issue of Kosovo in its entirety because there was fear that anyone who showed any understanding for the Albanian position will disappear into never, never land.  There is no real discussion of the Hague Tribunal, and there are always reservations in every mention of it because the regime media managed to create a picture of this Tribunal as anti-Serbian.  The fact that in Croatia they think it is an anti-Croatian Tribunal because General Blaskic got 45 years imprison is of little help.  A special problem which has been created by the international community's approach is the impression that only the rights of non-Serbs are threatened in this county.  Little attention is being paid to the trampling on the human rights of the ethnic majority.

VREME:  How much time is realistically needed for a system of human rights to be implemented in a country?

DIMITRIJEVIC:  There are different experiences in this regard.  According to reports by the UN Committee for Human Rights, by the Council of Europe, somewhere this happens very quickly - for instance in Hungary and Poland.  In the Czech Republic this takes place a lot slower, but is happening all the same.  Slovenia no longer has any problems with this.  It is toughest in countries where ethnic conflicts exist and where there is no sentiment in the majority of the population to give all the rights to others.  Regardless of Chechnya, Russia came into conflict because of this in the Council of Europe.  Some freedoms, for instance the freedom of the press, have become part of the Russian tradition, but despite this there they have procurators who act both as the police and judge and jury, and hence traveling is prohibited.  Sometimes all this depends on tradition which is hard to change.  We are still far off from dealing with issues which are being dealt with in the Czech Republic and in Poland regarding what should be done with the people who in committed criminal acts during the previous regime, people who broke human rights, and how to open all those records...

VREME:  What can your center and other NGO's do to make a difference?

DIMITRIJEVIC:  Our Center along with other NGO's has been working on the education of the young for five years already, because the younger generations, especially now that they are aware of the downfall of the university as an institution, are very hungry for knowledge.  Even the habit of going to school just to get a diploma is being abandoned.  Belgrade's open school and the alternative academic network is being attended by people who will not get any slip of paper.  People who submitted the report of the Belgrade Human Rights Center, people who appeared at the press conference - Vlada Joksimovic, who reported on the state of law and Thea Gorjanc, who reported on the state of legal practice here - are merely young people who represent a great number of students who have been working on the same project, all of who attended our schools.

We held our first seminar in 1995 in Belgrade, and our first school was held in Kotor.  It was by no means easy.  The Red Cross was supposed to act as a co-organizer in Kotor, got scared and passed on the job to the Montenegrin Red Cross.  And when the Montenegrin Red Cross began to dither, I wrote a letter to Svetozar Marovic who was President of the Parliament of Montenegro five years ago.  I have not met Marovic, but he is the first government official who responded to my letter.  He said very modestly that there is little that he can do in this matter, however, with the wave of the magic wand one of the most successful seminars we had was organized.

We try to organize informal mingling between lecturers and listeners.  In this way the horrible passiveness of our university education is shattered (at our big universities there is no contact between students and professors, for instance).  This allows even for taboo themes to be initiated and something unthinkable for our conditions occurr7es - students don't want to let you leave the lecture hall, they don't merely wait for the bell to ring.  One such themes was abortion, another one was the Hague Tribuna.

We also had some very unpleasant experiences.  We organized a seminar in Leskovac, sometime in 1997, when it appeared that we would have no chance.  Of the 25 registered students, only 13 showed up.  Some of the nurses there who have access to an emergency phone number were warned that they are under contract and are not full time employees of the Center and that the whole situation needs to be reviewed.  The worst thing is that only one professor came from the Faculty of Technology.  Four were supposed to come, but their superior said "heck, they have no business at those anti-Serbian gatherings."  Human rights were the only topic discussed.

Case of Velja Ilic

"Hundred of bad laws can be enumerated.  Someone asked me - why is the law on elementary schools included on our list?  Because, among other things, it represents a complete breach of minority rights; also included is the law on signs on highways and in settlements.  In the first wave of Serbian superiority, Hungarians were permitted to write Novi Sad, but they are not allowed to use the Hungarian name for that city and are forced to write the Serbian name in Hungarian.  That means they can write Novi Sad, but cannot write Ujvidek.  It anyone is interested in what constitutes a criminal act here, it is not sufficient to read up on Criminal Law, because there is a host of criminal acts which are included under various decrees.

Here, not even police files from the past have been opened or destroyed.  This cop-sycophant-spy-Balkan mentality which cherishes the police and gives it many volunteers is one of the fundamental problems with human rights here, dating back to the Serbia of Milos Karadjordjevic (nineteenth century).  For instance just note the discussion on Velja Ilic which has been taking place recently.  He assumes that certain parties are collaborating with the regime and then the reaction from New Democracy where they say that it's not nice to accuse each other, and in any case - he adds - let us take a closer look at Velja Ilic's file..."