Arrests Without Limits

Ever since the Pozarevac case, citizens are getting arrested or interrogated on the regular basis. The activists of the Resistance are particularly favourite, along with the opposition orientated citizens. According to the Resistance records, since May 2nd until today, about 1,000 participants of that movement were taken into temporary custody. Several days ago, about fourteen activists of the Resistance in Priboj were arrested while putting up posters. Among them there were six adolescents. An adolescent from Sabac was subject to a police treatment from the complete search of his school bag and taking finger prints to the question 'whom is he supposed to kill'. All that only because he was wearing the Resistance T-shirt. He was told at the police station that he was not under arrest and that he needed no lawyer...

The Yugoslav Centre of Children's Rights reacted against these frequent temporary arrests and maltreatments, demanding that 'all illegal activities of the police which have children as victims be halted at once'. This non-governmental organisation calls attention to those obligations of the state which derive from the Children's Rights Convention, which was ratified by FRY.  Particularly article 37 of that Convention, which refers to the right of protection of each child from torment and illegal or unfounded deprivation of freedom. The Centre further reminds the authorised organs that 'the Children's Rights Convention, according to the Constitution of FRY, is a constituent part of the internal legal order of the country, the disregarding of which is treated as an illegal act'.

Apart from interrogations, intimidating and even one case of serious beat up (in Belgrade, two months ago, due to the possession of a badge bearing the image of a fist), according to the information given by the lawyers and non-governmental organisations, which grouped themselves in order to offer protection to all young people and everyone exposed to repression, so far the police is taking the adolescents only into short-term custody.

HEADQUARTERS FOR CRISES: The situation is different with those aged 18 and older. The interrogations are somewhat longer, and temporary arrests are more frequent. Fighting against repression, the whole Serbia is transforming into headquarters for crises engaged to promote human rights and protect those behind the bars owing to political reasons. These days even the youth of the Alliance for Changes created its headquarter for crisis for helping the arrested and the maltreated. They are currently gathering data about the number of temporarily arrested and convicted.

Vukasin Petrovic from the Resistance says for VREME that their headquarters function perfectly: 'Such headquarters exist at 84 points inside Serbia. They are supposed to protect the activists during the arrests, and they consist of teams of lawyers, journalists and famous personalities. Now they are even arresting us at random. Anyone whom they choose. In Cacak, for example, they arrested a man just because he was wearing the Resistance

T-shirt. So far, of our people, only Radojko Lukovic and Momcilo Veljkovic are serving their sentences. However, many cases of criminal charges are initiated against members of our movement. They are mainly defending themselves in liberty. That is called intimidation.

Igor Olujic, lawyer of the Humanitarian Right Fund, an organisation which invited all the victims of repression in order to offer them help after the latest events in the streets of Belgrade, says that the latest wave of repression is much more brutal than that demonstrated in 1997 or 1999: 'We used to receive direct calls from the victims of repression, who talked about what had happened to them and insisted on initiating accusations in order to identify the personalities which misused their authority in behaviour towards them.

Now the maltreated citizens are calling us less frequently, and even when they do so, they are asking to remain anonymous. They are afraid that they might be victims of additional repression. According to the information I gathered, among those who were temporarily deprived of freedom or were subject to some kind of violence, there were mainly quiet participants in the demonstrations or even accidental passengers.'

Together with the other lawyers of the non-governmental organisations, even the lawyers of the Fund are currently writing complaints on behalf of those who were sentenced and are lying in the Padinska Skela prison as sentenced according to article 12, point 1 of the Law on Public Order and Peace: 'Whoever endangers peace among the citizens and interrupts the public order by means of any kind of audacious performance will be penalised with the fine of 700 dinars and 30 days prison sentence...'

As we managed to find out, the majority of thirty one citizens were sentenced without the presence of their lawyers and without the knowledge of their families of their whereabouts. So brutally and without selection, anyone who happened to be on the way of the police cordon, was 'granted' a strike of a club or a heavy boot.