The Locomotive Is Out of Order

The apparently illogical idea that conflict between the different nationalities inside Serbia is likely to break out first in Vojvodina before Kosovo because ethnic cleansing of "non-Serbs" can be more easily carried out in the north than the south, almost seems to be happening.

Even though not a single political group has explicitly spoken about this, the essence of the "Vojvodina question" inexorably floats to the top. Either a true autonomy, or ethnic cleansing of the "northern province" - these are key political options being maneuvered about for almost four years. Conflict could not be delayed when in the last year a wave of 140,000 refugees broke on Vojvodina. These people, with nothing and nobody, who have lost their homes in Western Slavonia (but also in Vukovar) and throughout Croatia, who have fled from the war-ravaged Bosnia-Herzegovina, have been placed along the southern edge of Backa and in Srem, where the Serbian majority is irrefutable, and where the minorities are truly minorities, which, objectively speaking, could be quickly "extinguished". No-one knows yet who it was who was responsible for the distribution, but certain facts stick out. If there are really 10,118 refugees in Ruma, this is arithmetically the same as if in a few months 800,000 people who have nothing left to lose were placed in Belgrade (there are at present 139,918 in Belgrade, which, from the point of view of the authorities and radical nationalists, probably improves the blood count of the voting body). It is difficult to suppose, with regard to the Ruma municipality, that the decision to place 10,000 unfortunate Serbs in the area, Hrtkovci, Golubinci and on the Ruma "Breg", which is mainly inhabited by Croats, was merely the result of the fact that the president of the Association of Emigrants, Mr Brana Crncevic, was kicked out of high school just there. Because for the municipal officials in Vojvodina today, to be sent refugees is experienced more and more as somebody's vengeance.

This fear of refugees and their needs for ethnic cleansing was obviously what two weeks ago forced a mixed delegation (Croats and Serbs) from the infamous Hrtkovci, to seek protection from Panic's government, because a local leader, Ostoja Sibincic, with a group of refugees, had already "cleansed" the village of 2,000 indigenous Croats. Ostoja Sibincic was arrested last week-end after a lot of trouble.

The ethnic cleansing which is being offered to Vojvodina, in no way accidently brought back to the front door of politics the problem of the true autonomy of the province, and it certainly was not accidental that it happened on the eve of the London Conference. Apparently DEPOS,Democratic Movement of Serbia, was first motivated by London when at the beginning of August it went public with its document on the creation of four regions which would "satisfy the legitimate interests of minorities not to be artificially divided into a lot of territorial units". Trying to avoid the autonomy of provinces in Serbia, the DEPOS council divided the Albanians in Serbia into two regions (Kosovo and Metohija), it placed the Moslems in South Raska, and for the Hungarians foresaw "Northern Backa" (nine municipalities with a Hungarian majority of around 60 percent). If the idea is rejected as impossible that the DEPOS council knows nothing about either European regions or Vojvodina and Kosovo, then, in a political sense, it is a matter of DEPOS also looking for a strategy of ethnic cleansing in Serbia, except that expulsion from Serbia is not talked about, but instead "national cantonization".

It is interesting that DEPOS' idea is actually nothing more than an elaboration of the already old demands of the Democratic Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians (DZNM) on territorial autonomy. In Novi Sad it is said that Mr. Agoston, leader of the Alliance, would "sacrifice" even half of his 350,000 compatriots in order to "encircle" some territory. Some Hungarian intellectuals from Novi Sad say that DEPOS' Hungarian enclave would "legitimize" the persecution of Hungarians from all the other territories in Vojvodina with the comment: "Here you have Northern Backa, what do you want Novi Sad for!". Is it possible that DEPOS is for a "final solution" in Vojvodina in order to definitely extinguish the autonomy of the province - this can once again be heard amongst the indigenous population.

As is known, this initiative of DEPOS forced the Reform Democrat party of Vojvodina to urgently launch the "Declaration on Vojvodina" as a proposal (with the possibility of certain deviations). The Declaration says that the autonomy of Vojvodina is "the most important condition for the acceptance and resocialization of innocent people who will, in these restless times, have to look for long-term refuge here for themselves and their families". It didn't help: all the national parties immediately raised an outcry against Vojvodina moving into autonomy with a "constitutive position" in the new Yugoslavia.

That the ethnic cleansing of Vojvodina in Serbian Vojvodina is in question can be shown by the fact that all attacks on the Declaration on Vojvodina are tied into the resistance to the law on amnesty for refugee conscripts. The party in power, SPS (The Socialist Party Of Serbia), which has already called the action of the Vojvodina Reformists "perfidious political provocation" and apologized to Seselj's Radicals by rejecting their charge that they are not taking all possible measures against the "autonomizers", discards with disgust the possibility of amnesty and says that it is "impermissible to build a legal state on the affirmation of treason and disloyalty". The connection between amnesty and the ethnic cleansing of Vojvodina is clear for all to see. If 100,000 refugee conscripts (mainly Hungarian) are prevented from returning to the country, in time they will be followed by their families. This simple fact has brought together in Vojvodina Socialists, Radicals, the League of Communists, the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), the Alliance of Workers, etc.

All national seething and political insecurity this autumn will dramatize in Vojvodina the consequences of the terrible drought that threatens to halve the production of the province. If it happens that someone takes over Vojvodina by force, it may be found that the "locomotive of Serbian development" (as Vojvodina used to be called) has long been out of order and that it was good only as long as it was someone else's.