Human Rights: Hostage To the State's Regression - Helsinki ...

Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia
into a mosaic of lies, deceits, and self -illusions, still cherished in regard to the
90's. The action takes place in the occupied Vukovar. It is a story of a peasant
from village Veliki Krčmar journeying to the Vukovar battlefield to look for his
son, who, as it turned out in the later sequences had perished in Jankovci. The
director, in the true vein of Milosevic propaganda, tries to ideologically
connect the fates of Serb soldiers who perished in that area in the years 1914,
1944, and 1991, against the narrative backdrop portraying the hero-style burial
of officers who had taken part in the Vukovar siege.
Though any of those war-themed films had the opportunity to touch
on the issue responsibility for all factors contributing to war crimes in Croatia,
Bosnia and Kosovo, their authors, including Siniša Kovačević, instead opted
for doctoring of events. The foregoing would be a private problem of those
authors, if their films were not so attractive for the wide audiences and
influential too. In view of such character of feature films, the total 2006 film
production was saved from a total shame by documentaries, notably “Vukovar
– the Last Cut” by authors Janko Baljak and Drago Hedl, which revealed things
which that Slavonija town experienced as the true apocalypse, and
“Deportation – an Award for Loyalty” directed by Vlada Mareš, the film which
speaks about banishment of over one thousand Bosniaks from Kozluk, and
their terrible exile, across Serbia, to Hungary, in mid-1992.
Though an educational role cannot be expected from the moviemaking
art, there is no doubt that war films also have an extra-artistic,
cognitive dimension, affecting notably viewers on the other bank of river
Drina, since locals in Bosnia and Croatia have already directly felt the terror of
the 90's. In view of the foregoing, films from Croatia and Bosnia have more
impact on the topics of responsibility and reconciliation than any related panel
discussion, which are, by the way, avoided as a plague by the majority Serbia
or, as the most boring lesson. The latter stance is most probably related to the
general aversion to facing up to the recent past, that is, atrocities, war crimes
and consequences cum results thereof. Hence such film production represents
a kind of extra-curricular education for those refusing to believe that such
terrible things had happened in Bosnia and Croatia. It is obviously unpleasant
to watch how members of a nation are treated as children, but even that is
more palatable then the finger-poking into closed eyes, the phenomenon
commonplace at panel discussions with participants and audience, allegedly
mature enough to realize and admit their mistakes, in order to move forward
at all.
Situation is equally bad in other creative spheres. It is a fact that the
Serb literature during the 90's was indelibly marked by the war experience,
and that the character and brutality of the conflict in former Yugoslavia,
largely determined the sensibility of such-themed literary work, oft investing it
with the surplus of patriotism. However, as of late writers have been turning
their attention to mundane topics. The same holds true of the last year's
Human Rights: Hostage To the State's Regression
literary output. A look at the novels which were shortlisted for the prestigious
NIN Award - “The Bridge” by Zoran Zivkovic, “Four Walls and the City” by
Zvonko Karanović, “Emilija Leta” by Mirjana Mitrović, “Komo” by Srñan
Valjarević and “Rise and Fall of Parkinson's Disease” by Svetislav Basara,
shows that only Karanović's heroes walk through the maze of recent
developments. Namely his lead protagonist, Vladan Mitić – Tatula, onetime
student of the prestigious Amsterdam Art Academy, returns to Serbia in 1991
only to become a victim of the Balkans war, as the film's end sees him as a war
invalid. War and post-war scenes lurk between passages of the novel
“Through Desert and Dust”, by Srñan Tešin, in which the 90's blood-bath cum
slaughterhouse becomes a kind of counterpoint to the sheltered youth of the
main protagonist. 90's are also dealt with in an artistically impressive way in
the novel “Collection” by Mileta Prodanović, dominated by “the 10-day war”
memories and reminiscences of a heroine, daughter of a Slovenian woman and
the Serb officer. It is noteworthy that the personality of a journalist, one of the
novel's heroes, is based on a real-life persona, the one of a tragically perished
editor-in-chief of “Telegraf”, Slavko Ćuruvija. Thus Prodanovic turned the
shadow of death into a symbol of an era, which is still awaits a more serious
literary treatment and re-appraisal.
While many important writers are waiting for the dust to settle in
order to tackle in a cold-headed way themes related to the war and recent past,
writing was taken up, even professionally, in 2006 by some notorious public
figures, who until recently in their hands held only arms. After “The Iron
Trench” and “The Legionary” the man indicted for assassination of Prime
Minister Zoran ðinñić, Milorad Ulemek Legija, who added to everything else,
was immortalized in a film showing him and his fellow-fighters agreeing to
kill Bosniaks imprisoned near Velika Kladuša, presented in 2006 to his fans
even two, new novels, – “The Boys from Brazil” and “Judas: A Novel of
Friendship”. The byline Ulemek is just a cover-up or a sham, it serves to attract
the wide readership, while the name of the real author of this novels is in fact
unknown. It was possible to pull such a publicity stunt only in Serbia, where
the third-rate writers were the top informers of various secret services and the
Interior Ministry employees treated as stars in panel discussions staged by the
notorious Writers' Association in Francuska 7 Street, in Belgrade. Hot on the
heels of “Narodna Knjiga” success-that publishing house which in recent years
established itself as the top publisher earned over 100,000 Euros from the sellout
of “The Iron Trench” novel, depicting the Bosnian war experience of a
volunteer from Belgrade-“Spina” publishing house, ran by Ulemek's wife,
Aleksandra Ivanović, published 10,000 copies of “The Boys from Brazil”, a
somewhat smaller circulation in regard to the one of “The Iron Trench”
(70,000) and “The Legionary” (25,000). The aforementioned collection of short
stories, purporting to show the writer's or Ulemek's literary versatility,
describes war developments in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia, with a
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