“An uneasy and treacherous road” – Serbian integration into EU

By: Stevan V. Nikolic

Belgrade, Dec. 25 2009 (Serbia Today) - In recent weeks we have witnessed three major events: on Dec. 19th EU visa liberalization for Serbian citizens; this past Tuesday official application for EU membership in Stockholm; on Monday adoption of a strict budget by Parliament, a major pre-condition for continued lMF support. From these remarkable events one might conclude that positive things are finally happening for Serbia. Yet is it everything so rosy?

The Serbian coalition government is certainly doing everything it can to satisfy the formalities required by the EU for integration. However, it is equally certain that little is being done to realize substantively the required changes.

Necessary laws are being adopted by the Parliament, but nothing is being done to enforce their implementation or to secure the independence of the courts. Recent reevaluation and reelection of the judges at different levels cast a deep shadow on the independence of the justice system from the political system.

The Anti-Corruption Agency has been established. But somehow its power fades out whenever the suspect in a corruption case is a member of one of the ruling political parties or is one of the so called “untouchable” Serbian business tycoons.

Sale of the state owned companies to the private investors is in process, but it is not going as expected. For one thing the amount of money collected by the Government from the sales is not what was hoped for. For another the restructuring of many of the privatized businesses by their new private owners has resulted in massive layoffs or delayed paychecks.

Bringing the last two remaining war criminals to the Hague Tribunal seems to be a no-win battle for the Government. If they don’t deliver Gen. Mladic to the Hague, they may lose their credibility with the EU. If they do, they may unleash the worst kind of nationalistic rage still existing among many Serbs.

The new budget was written in accordance with IMF requirements laid out as a condition for the continuation of its financial support. One of those conditions was the reduction of the public sector workforce. Despite promises and commitments by Government officials at all levels little is actually being done. Moreover, it appears that the only cuts in the public sector which will actually happen will be cuts in the socially sensitive areas of health and education. It seems easier to fire a nurse or a teacher than to fire a government clerk who is affiliated with a political party.

Similarly the budget freezes pensions at the level of last year. Considering that almost one third of the adult population of Serbia are retirees, this measure will certainly be unpopular. Should there be early general elections, the present ruling coalition may well be defeated, as was the case recently in the local election for the Municipality of Vozdovac, where the opposition Progressive party won.

This is not to say that Serbian Government is not doing a good job at all. Results from the efforts to make Serbia a modern, western democracy are evident everywhere. However, in the transition from a dysfunctional socialist system to a functioning free market system the necessary changes must be substantive, not mere formalities.

As it is now, Serbs can finally travel to EU countries, but can not afford to do so. Companies are private, but workers are not being paid and their rights are not being protected. Corruption is being prosecuted, but the major sources of corruption remain untouched. Children are being taught in larger classes by fewer teachers. Retirees are standing in line longer for medical care. For many standing in line at the soup kitchen has become a necessity for the first time since immediately after the Second World War. Social differences among very rich and very poor are more visible now than ever before.

So everything is not so rosy. In their effort to be elected and stay in power politicians often neglect to mention that the road to integration into the EU may be “uneasy and treacherous.”

Protection of Authenticity or Censorship?

By Ljilja Cvekic

Belgrade, Aug. 6, 2009 ( Serbia Today) - Giving a statement or an interview to a journalist or not – a dilemma always present not only among politicians but also among many ordinary people who can suffer consequences of something they would make public. Would their trust be misused?
A state official, a party leader or a celebrity might demand authorization of the interview to confirm the words put in their mouth are authentic; a worker revealing abuse of power in his factory may not. Still, not objective and not well thought and well intended reporting and lies have ruined much more ordinary people lives than political careers.
There are two sides of this topic – on one side, an eternal wish of any politician in any, even the most democratic country to control media whenever possible, hide information and always look great in public; on the other, a wish of journalists to publish an exclusive quote, a sensational story showing themselves as fearless government critics even if it takes to change someone’s words to fit their own theses or even to invent the entire interview.
Unfortunately, offering truth and objective information to public is for either of them of the least importance.
Serbia’s public information law says nothing about the authorization; it says only “a journalist and an editor-in-chief are obliged to publish other people’s information, ideas and opinions trustworthy and fully” and also to publish a denial of a person or an institution if their rights and interests were damaged by an article and “false, wrong or incomplete information”.
Croatian media law is defining the authorization as a confirmation that a statement or an interview are authentic, “an approval of publishing giving in written form or on a tape”, without specifying the circumstances or an obligation of a journalist to allow it.
Montenegrin journalists’ code explains that “an interview might be considered fully correct from the journalist’s point of view if it is authorized by the interviewed person or his/her representative or there is an obvious consent by the person with publishing an unauthorized interview.”
An unwritten rule everywhere is that the authorization should be agreed upon in advance and a reporter might refuse it if it was not promised before the interview took place. Some media, however, such as the Reuters news agency, have made their policy to reject any request for an authorization. For such policy, of course, an agency, paper or station has to have a credit as being reliable and trustworthy.
German journalists, considered to be among the most objective and responsible in the world, launched few years ago a broad campaign to abolish any right to authorization after two thirds of an interview a politician gave to a prominent daily was changed in the authorization process. In reply to such an act, the daily published both versions.
Some 25 years ago, in times of socialism and media control, journalism students at the Belgrade University were taught objectivity, responsibility for own words and respect for an interviewed person and sentences said off the record, but nothing about the authorization and any possibility that anyone except their editor might correct their articles.
Why is then that my every conversation with an official now, in much more democratic times, ends with words: “And please send the article for an authorization when you finish!” even when the answers were send to me in written?
True enough, the idea of freedom of media has been degraded in the last two decades, especially in the former socialist countries – sudden opening of a possibility to write openly against the Government, after long time of writing any critic extremely carefully to be read between the lines, has pushed media into the opposite direction, but not the least the more objective one.
The media is full of unchecked information, wrong statistics, libelous commentaries, false interviews, never-given quotes or statements by invented anonymous sources. It is not revealing truth what counts, but sensationalism creating rage, fear and confusion among readers, listeners and viewers. “Fear sells media nowadays,” a friend of mine said recently.
Again, the authorization of an article is not really protecting a person involved – it would be enough to publish in the same issue another article denying some of the quotes and making the person look like an idiot.
Besides, there are much more elegant ways than misquoting to make politicians responsible for their deeds – if we agree that it is one of the major journalists’ jobs; to make them responsible for their words first. By allowing them to intervene, conceptualize our articles and change their own words afterwards, we are just going back to the times of censorship.
We can also blame the insistence on authorization and on provision of written answers for great number of boring interviews published by media, with no introduction or background information and based on poorly formulated questions and too long, unselected answers.
However, the most important skill a journalist should have is a wish and ability to understand an interviewed person and to look for the moment at the things from his or her point of view. Rudeness, disrespect and an effort to make the person look bad in the article, chasing stupid sentences and inconsequence the journalist was not fair enough to clear immediately during the conversation – is not the objective journalism.
An interview is a two-way street; respect and fairness on both sides are necessary and even easy if providing true information and wellbeing of a society is the common and most important job for both – the authorities and the media.

THE FORGOTTEN 500

By Jelica Tapuskovic

Belgrade, Aug. 5, 2009,(Serbia Today) - At the end of July, publisher Euro – Giunti from Belgrade released a non-fiction book “The forgotten 500” by American publicist and journalist Gregory Freeman. This book is a true story about saving the American pilots, during the biggest rescue operation in Second World War, called Halyard. When the book was released, publisher brought as a special guest the author Gregory Freeman, who made promotion in village Pranjani, near Cacak, where this operation took place. Mission Halyard started in 1944 in August, and lasted until December.
During that time peasants of village Pranjani showed remarkable courage by risking their own lives to save and help the American pilots in reaching allied localities in Italy. This, maybe the last untold story from The Second World war, is a story about almost 512 pilots who were rescued, when the Germans struck their airplanes, after bombing Nazis oil fields in Romania.
American agents from the OSS, the precursor of the CIA, who worked with a Serbian leader, General Draza Mihailovich, to carry out the huge, ultra-secret rescue mission, organized operation Halyard.
When OSS agents in Italy heard of the stranded airmen, they began planning rescue – and they decided to send C-47 cargo planes to land in the hills of Yugoslavia, only 30 km far from enemy lines, to save those 500 airmen. They had many challenges there - the pilots had to stay hidden until the rescue could be organized, they had to build an airstrip large enough for C-47s without any tools and without the Germans finding out, and then the planes had to make it in and out without being shot down.
„The forgotten 500 weaves together the tales of a dozen young airmen shot down in the hills of Yugoslavia during bombing runs, and the five secret agents who conducted their amazing rescue in conjunction with Mihailovich and the local Serbian people who cared for the shut down airmen.
These are the stories of young men who were eager to join the war and fight the Germans, even finding excitement in the often deadly trips from Italy to bomb German oil fields in Romania, but who found themselves parachuting out of crippled planes and into the arms of villagers in a country they knew nothing about.
They soon found out that the local Serbs were willing to sacrifice their own lives to keep the downed airmen out of German hands, but they still wondered if anyone was coming for them or if they would spend the rest of the war hiding from German patrols and barely surviving on goat’s milk and bread made with hay to make it more filling“, said Gregory Freeman for Serbia Today.
Freeman found material for this book by tracking down long forgotten Government documents, some Serbian accounts of the rescue, along with histories of Mihailovich and the Chetniks, but as he said most important part was to find surviving pilots and Chetniks who could tell their stories. He also said that this story was Top secret so long probably because of politic situation after World War II.
„Once Tito emerged victorious in Yugoslavia, the American State Department did not want to offend him by praising Mihailovich in any way or even acknowledging what he had done to help U.S. airmen during the war. It was an approach that clearly was wrong in retrospect, but the State Department was more concerned with maintaining smooth relations with Tito than giving Mihailovich credit“, said Freeman for Serbia Today.
Promotion was held in village Pranjani, and got a big attention of local people, some of them villagers who helped to American pilots.
Many Serbians stayed in contact with pilots after rescue, and municipality is planning to build Memorial home to honor that event.
The book was published in USA two years ago and it has been very popular there, not just among Serbians, but general public, as a true human story. There are reports that some filmmakers are interested in making movie out of this book, the movie that will include some big Hollywood celebrities.
Freemen sent one book to the American president Barak Obama, and as he says, he is hoping that he will learn more about Serbian – American relations if he reads the book.

Serbian Bohemia on a Deathbed

Belgrade, July 22, (Serbia Today) - Romantic bohemian living style has passed away, destroyed by steady rush, lack of time, consumer mentality, money-making – altogether, by material, success-oriented world. Who can afford to waste hours and hours, nights and mornings, in philosophical talks on the sense of life, sitting with friends at an inn’s table over a bottle of plum brandy, dipping pieces of bread in roasted meat juice and writing rimes or drawing portraits on a white table cloth?
Bohemians are now called alcoholics and considered a superfluous, useless and unwanted part of a decent society. Somehow, it seams that art, poetry and philosophy have also become unnecessary in the modern world that always has one question in mind – is it cost-effective? Once published, poetry books end up very soon in front of the bookstores sold by humiliating prices. Is it cost-effective? Definitely not.
Although the first European city to set, in early 16th century, an institution of a coffee house, public places where trade took place, politics was discussed, governments ousted, poetry wrote, where the first electric light bulb shined and the first telephone rung – Belgrade is about to close doors of its last traditional “kafanas”, leaving just a few for tourists to see what a wonderful bohemian life it had once.
It is not easy to find a proper word to explain “kafana” – a Turkish word that initially meant coffee house, and by time became a place to eat and drink, meet friends and enemies, make business deals and create art, to see and be seen; the Serbian kafana is a stage, each with its own atmosphere, a place where you can act or be yourself. Just one thing is impossible there – to stay anonymous.
“Belgrade inns used to be once centers of the public life in the capital. People met there to close a deal, do a business, lawyers consulted their clients, and a matchmaker met with a girl’s father; a debtor signed a note, a partner an agreement, almost all public and court documents, except the last will, had been dealt with in a kafana. Societies held their meetings, politicians created conspiracies and plots, and very often a sick man would come there to seek an advice from a doctor,” Serbian writer Branislav Nusic wrote in early 20th century.
Many of those cult places have disappeared; old-fashioned taverns have been destroyed to give space to shopping malls, banks or business centers or turned into impersonal modern cafes, bars, sneak-bars, fast food places or snobbish, high-profile restaurants built of glass, metal and plastic, same as anywhere in the world.
“Kafanas here are dying out. No, they are not dying out, they are murdered,” says one of the rare regular guests at the oldest Belgrade restaurant, “?” (Questionmark), that recently managed to fight back a privatization attack and remain protected by the city. It was built in early 19th century in a Turkish style, and has kept the initial looks, with small round wooden tables and little three-lag chairs. It got its name more than hundred years ago, when the church authorities demanded change of the name “At the Orthodox Cathedral”, considering it insulting, and the owner put temporary a questionmark instead until some interesting name pops up. It never happened and the sign “?” remained forever.
However, even places protected by the state as cultural monuments are sometimes destroyed, such as the famous “Tri Lista Duvana” (Three Tobacco Leaves), close to the parliament building, built 130 years ago, where the first phone line in the city was installed in 1883. The modern office building will be finished on its place soon, carrying with honor the old name, the only what have remained.
Turks opened the first coffee house in Belgrade, when they arrived in 1521. At that time, Serbs considered coffee a poison and resisted it for a while, but very soon it became a national drink, still inevitable at every Serb home; and while Turks have shifted in meanwhile to strong tee, Serbs remained eternally faithful to Turkish coffee.
Istanbul got the first coffee house thirty years later, London and Vienna more than hundred years after Belgrade. At that time, part of catholic priests declared coffee a devils drink.
Serbia’s capital had an inn owners guild in early 19th century and in 1859 Prince Milos Obrenovic passed a decree regulating work of public places where drinks or food and accommodation was provided, saying they have to be built of solid material, have an entrance from a front and not from a backyard, and in order to prevent prostitution, limited to two the number of girls that might be employed. The owners had to pay taxes to the state. Few years later, the Belgrade mayor issued an order that all kafanas had to be closed by 11 in the evening, and lanterns lightened in front of them an hour earlier.
At the end of 19th century, the city had one kafana on 50 inhabitants – there were 11 on Terazije, nine on the Slavija square, and in today’s Makedonska street there were 41 houses and 21 kafanas. Each of them had their own customers; Radicals, Liberals, Socialists – each had their own meeting place, writers and musicians, merchants and lawyers, farmers who were selling their goods on the city markets.
The first electric light was installed in “Prolece”, later named “Hamburg”, at the very spot where the power company has built its main customer services. The first book fair was held and the first film shown in a restaurant, and even the parliament held its session for a while after the World War I in one of them. In “Zlatna Moruna”, later “Triglav”, the place across the street from the Zeleni Venac market that only recently turned into a casino, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, that triggered WWI, was planned.
Taverns continued through 20th century to provide hospitality to homeless, dissidents, students, bohemians. One of them, “Domovina” (Homeland), hosted many generations of engineering students and professors.
“We used to go there after lectures, chronically penniless and hungry, shared few drinks between ourselves while a waiter would bring a baking pan with the roasted meat juice and a loaf of bread,” says 80-year old Mirjana Lazarevic.
Silently, over the night, “Domovina” turned into the modern and sterile “Speak Easy” cafeteria.
Even the famous Bermuda Triangle, where journalists and writers used to disappear sometimes for three days after entering one of three kafanas surrounding Politika house, has been destroyed when “Pod Lipom”, “Grmec” and “Sumatovac” were turned into the Pizza Hut, local grill chain Perper and a posh restaurant.
The oldest place in Skadarlija, the old bohemian city quarter, “Tri Sesira”, built in 1864 and named after a hat workshop that used to be there before and a drawing of three hats hanging over a door, with its law ceilings and small windows, plans to adapt to new times by installing a wireless internet, so that businessmen can enjoy good food, live music and time wasting of the 19th century without missing anything in the business world.
And although the few remaining traditional restaurants are trying to survive the crisis by cutting in two the prices of drinks and offering old specialties, they have fewer and fewer guests. The old bohemians either died or have no money, and the new generations, grown up in the period of the deepest both economic and social crises, had no one to teach them something about the unique spirit of a kafana where each guest had a name and unique personality.

By Ljilja Cvekic

Unlike Allies, on the Anniversary of Srebrenica

By Stevan V. Nikolic

New York, July 11 (Serbia Today) - It seems that Dutch are making again the very same mistake they made in Srebrenica years ago. Then, by standing aside and doing nothing they allowed terrible crimes to happen. Today, with the cancellation of the visit to the Serbian Government that is under enormous pressure from the radical nationalistic opposition, Mr. Verhagen took side of the very same political forces that made Srebrenica happen.

Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen has informed Belgrade that he has canceled a scheduled visit to Serbia on July 21.The reason for the postponement, according to most of the sources, were the formal and informal announcements by Serbian officials that the sole talking points with Verhagen would be unblocking the European integration process and cooperation with the Hague Tribunal.
The Dutch claim that neither of those two themes was on the agreed agenda. Reportedly, the Dutch Minister had only been due to discuss enhancing economic and commercial relations between the two countries, as well as technical aspects of the visa regime.

It is clear to everybody that statements by Serbian officials were in the service of the domestic political maneuvering. The present Serbian Government is far from perfect, walking on the very thin line of the public confidence, but EU leaders should stop for a minute and think of the options to a present ruling coalition in Serbia. The only argument that this Government still has with those that voted for them is a possibility to get closer to EU.

Everybody who is diminishing that argument plays straight into the hands of those political forces in Serbia that still see General Mladic a hero, not a criminal., - and that is exactly what Minister Verhagen did with the cancellation of his visit.

In the midst of the economic crisis more and more Serbs perceive EU as a “cow that gives milk and then kicks the bucket”. Srebrenica is not to be forgotten, but NATO bombing of Belgrade is still in vivid memory for Serbs. It is just possible that in some future elections we will see radical nationalists back in power. Then, Minister Verhagen will not have to worry about his visit, since most likely he will be “persona non grata”.