The Evil Policy Of Ugljanin

The self-proclaimed Muslim leader Sulejman Ugljanin and his apprentice Rasim Ljajic have been working on ethnically cleansing Sandzak of the Muslims almost with as much zeal as their enemies, ever since their accession to the head of the Democratic Action Party (SDA).

Not a soul from SDA addressed the Muslim emigrants from Sandzak, or called on them to stop and think, to be patient and share the fate of those who have been left behind. On the contrary, everything was done to promote emigration: by inducing fear, rejecting talks, setting unreal demands, threatening to form "parallel authorities", demanding "the unhindered and safe departure of Muslims from Pljevlja", urging the governments of European and Asian countries to take in the emigrants, without realizing that they were contributing toward ethnically cleansing Sandzak of the Muslims.

The leaders, however, did not forget to give themselves credit for "succeeding in internationalizing the Sandzak Muslim issue".

At this moment, the self-proclaimed Muslim leaders are organizing another form of ethnic cleansing in Sandzak - of the Muslims. They have "succeeded" in "securing" a place and, they say, scholarships for one and a half thousand Muslim youths in Egypt and Turkey without realizing that this too promotes ethnic cleansing in Sandzak.

Most students of Serbian nationality who studied in colleges in Serbia went on living in those towns after graduating. Their parents, in most cases, joined them. Then Serbian nationalists and firebrands went about saying that the Serbs were moving under pressure from the Muslims, forgetting and hiding the fact that there is not one college in the region of Sandzak and that the structure of secondary schools was unsuited to the needs of the economy, and that the structure of the economy was not suited to the population and natural resources, which was a "credit" not to the Muslims but to them, and that they in fact exerted pressure on the Serbs to move out.

Mr. Ugljanin and his followers will, in a few years, exploit the fact that Muslim youths went off to Egypt and Turkey to study, to prove that the Muslims were forced to move out, and will forget and hide the truth that they organized the emigration. Even the Muslims who "consider themselves aware" are not aware how pernicious the policy pursued by Mr. Sulejman Ugljanin and Mr. Rasim Ljajic is. On the contrary, in their awareness and understanding of freedom and democracy - that our leader leads us - they give credit to Mr. Ugljanin for inciting fear by rejecting talks with the present authorities, for writing letters to the government of Montenegro to "provide buses for the safe departure of Muslims from Pljevlja", for "internationalizing the Sandzak Muslim issue" and now for pushing 1,500 Muslim youths into exile who will, in most cases, be lost forever to Sandzak, to the Muslims, to their parents and to themselves.

Unlike the mentioned reasons why Serbian youths from Sandzak who studied in Serbia remained in that republic, Muslim youths have an even better excuse for settling in the countries in which they studied: the problem of validating their diplomas and finding employment. And that is a much stronger reason for not answering the call of the SDA leader: those countries are foreign and far away, and even those who are propagating voluntary exile must agree with this. They probably see Sandzak as their homeland.

One does not contest that young men and women find it attractive to study abroad and that their parents are relieved that their children are in college on scholarships, but the loss if much greater than the "gain", all the more so as everything could and should (!) have been done here to offer these young men the same conditions for enrolling in colleges in Serbia and Montenegro. And this certainly could have been done with the assistance of the ministry and the university president, but the SDA leaders found their acts to be much more in their interest, and that is why they reject dialogue with anybody who does not think on the same lines as they, which includes the regime. Rejecting dialogue and doing nothing to launch it with the current regime, regardless of whether they "recognize" and respect it or not (the fact remains that the regime exists and is active), not negotiating to the extent and in the same manner as the opposition and democratic forces in Serbia - is more useful to the regime than to the Muslims. The regime's disinterest in the a wave of Muslim emigrants, its indifference to the departure of Muslim youths to study abroad have the same motives and values as the tepid reaction to the events in Pljevlja and Priboj.