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

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Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia Human Rights: Hostage To the State's Regression IV SOCIOECONOMIC PROCESSES • “Pre-Election” Economy ……………………………………………… 231 • Economic and Social Rights ……………………….............................. 243 • Healthcare System Bypasses Social Needs ......................................... 255 • People on Social Margins ...................................................................... 275 • Education: Excesses Instead of Reform …………………………… 292 V DECENTRALIZATION: A DEVELOPMENTAL IMPERATIVE • Vojvodina – From High Hopes to Boycott .......................................... 309 • Sandzak in a Trap ……………………………………………………... 339 VI KOSOVO STATUS: THE FINAL STAGE • The Attempt to Postpone Resolution Fails ……………..................... 363 VII MINORITIES ON THE MARGINS OF THE SOCIETY • Minorities Anxious About Dissolution of the State Union .............. 383 VIII FOREIGN POLICY STAGNATES • Between East and West ………………….............................................. 425 • Serbia and Croatia: Rivalrous Relations .............................................. 436 • Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina: Denied Crimes Weight Mutual Relations ………………………………………………………………... 444 • Slovenia Mediates in Regional Stabilization ………………………... 449 • Montenegro Becomes Independent …………………………………. 452 ANNEX • Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia – Press Releases . 477 • Documentary Serial ................................................................................ 497 • Publishing ................................................................................................ 501 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS All segments of Serbia’s political, economic and social life stagnated in 2006. Serbia’s overall situation is rather to be ascribed to the fact that her institutions have been devastated and her social tissue destroyed over the past 20 years. This major dimension of Serbia’s reality was neither appreciated nor objectively assessed at the time of Slobodan Milosevic’s ouster. Besides, the criminal legacy of the 1990s wars that nowadays hinder the society’s democratic transition and facing the recent past was disregarded. All this resulted in self-isolation and fueled the concept of “a neutral” Serbia with reliance on Russia. Today’s concept of transitional justice has been exhausted when it comes to present-day Serbia and her poor potential. Objective limitations also condition Serbia’s movement towards European integrations, the European Union in the first place. As a failed transitional country facing numerous demands, Serbia is incapable of meeting European standards and criteria. Her new political and financial class (tycoons) would not let go yet the positions acquired over the past 20 years. As it turned out, pressures and the policy of conditioning are no longer effective in Serbia’s case as her political elite is not truly willing to join Europe but ready to sacrifice Serbia’s future place in it instead. Serbia was totally deinstitutionalized in early 2007 after the parliamentary election. In spite of the clear-cut electoral outcome and popular vote, the lowest-ranking of the three leading political parties, the Democratic Party of Serbia – presently without legality and legitimacy – still holds the reins of political and social developments with the support of informal centers of power. This at the same time testifies that Serbia functions as a “façade democracy.” The media still play a problematic role in Serbia. The matrix of their reporting has not changed. None of the issues that had brought about the 1990s wars – and today dominate Serbia’s politics (the Serbian national program, borders, Kosovo, neighbors, etc.) have been opened to question. The media keep deluding the general public that the Serbian national program of early 1990s is still alive. Maintenance of such public opinion stands in the way of regional normalization. Serbia’s disintegration nears the dangerous point at which she would be left without a mainstay for social and institutional consolidation. Once the 6 7
Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia Kosovo status is resolved, Serbia’s political class will, to all appearances, continue looking for new enemies (such as Vehabits in Sandzak, Vojvodina’s minorities, etc.). And that might endlessly postpone Serbia’s constitution as a state. Besides, to properly understand Serbia’s true potential for democratization and Europeanization many other factors – such as dying out of the old system, impoverishment, internal turmoil, undefined identity, and different cultural paradigms – should be taken into account. Living in a bubble, Serbia has opted for a value model that further takes her away from European civilization. Accordingly, intolerance to any otherness, particularly to the EU’s concept of multiculturalism is being promoted. This, at the same time, fuels radicalism in Serbia proper. The targets are political opponents and non-governmental organizations advocating European values. One cannot but be concerned with the system disinterested in efficient protection of Serbian citizens’ human rights before domestic courts. Numerous international and domestic non-governmental organizations endeavor to acquaint judges, prosecutors and public servants with international human rights standards by organizing a variety of seminars and courses of training but such work is still sporadic and unsystematic. The international community – the EU and the US in the first place – should develop a new strategy for Serbia: a strategy that intensifies the “inner” pressure for modernization and Europeanization, and thus restricts the government’s monopoly on the communication with the European Union and misinterpretation of its messages and intentions. That would help Serbia’s citizens be more acceptant to European values and see them as a mean for attaining the interests of every individual. Recommendations to the International Community: Bearing in mind the government’s unwillingness to meet necessary preconditions for the continuation of the Stabilization and Association Agreement, we appeal to the European Union to launch a new form of dialogue with the Serbian society and officials. • The European Union should grasp the context that exceeds technical issues dominating the negotiations on stabilization and association. Only a truly transformed Serbia could secure full cooperation with The Hague Tribunal. • The above-mentioned dialogue should insist on the society’s democratic dimension and meeting the political criteria of the Europeanization process. This is the only way to encourage the presently stalled reform processes and to strengthen and democratize Serbia’s institutions. Human Rights: Hostage To the State's Regression • Representatives of the civil society, the youth, small and mediumsized enterprises, pro-European political parties (including those that have recently entered the Serbian Parliament) and professional associations should be included in the dialogue between the European Union and Serbia. • International institutions, the Council of Europe in particular, should insist that governmental institutions, leading officials and most responsible public figures adequately – and in keeping with relevant international documents - react at all manifestations of anti-Semitism, hatred and intolerance to any otherness. Recommendations to a Future Government, Parliament, Governmental Institutions and General Public: • Deconstruction of the prevalent cultural model deriving from everyday life preconditions all other political and social reforms. • Serbia should renounce nationalistic policy, the one promoted by the present government, the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the one mirroring the mindset that generates intolerance, xenophobia, fascism and anti-Semitism. • Full cooperation with The Hague Tribunal should be resumed, and the obligations the verdict of the International Court of Justice entails met. • The 1990s wars, the role the former Yugoslav People’s Army played in ex-Yugoslavia’s disintegration, war crimes and the genocide committed in Srebrenica should be interpreted and incorporated into regular school curricula, including those of military schools. This implies courses in the sentences passed by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia at military academies. • Curricula at all levels of education should be amended, particularly the sections that apologetically interpret collaborationism in the World War II, Serbia’s role in ex-Yugoslavia’s disintegration and all anti- Semitic ideologists and authors. • Educational reform is not only an imperative need but also the only way for Serbia to develop a new value system and turn into a democratic society. The entire educational system should be get off the ground, primarily through modernized classes and new textbooks that would not imbue students’ minds with quasi-national values, hatred for others and false perception of world realities. • Bearing in mind the region’s security problems, a throughout educational reform should be based on European values that would, in the long run, give rise to regional liberal elites, military elites included. 8 9
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