No Life in Serbia

In English, in French
He woke at five in the morning with a gun in his hand. There is no life for us anymore, he said.

Then this man, sixty years old, an exemplary father and husband, “a hard and diligent worker, a citizen”, shot his son. He shot his sleepy and dumbfounded wife, who had scarcely understood his last declaration.

He continued his armed assault by opening the doors of the neighboring homes of his close relations. He shot them in their heads as they slept. All in all, he shot thirteen victims, including his mother and a child of two.

Ten Years Without Zoran Djindjic

In English, French
I met Djindic before he became “the” Djindic. He jumped over the office table and shook my hand when our mutual friend introduced me as a feminist, ironically. I remember, too, that afterwards, whenever he would meet me, he would shake my hand in a feminist leftist way — but not ironically, on the contrary, seriously amused.

Later on, when he became public domain, we no longer met privately — only randomly. He was the most important Serbian politician of the 20 century, who managed to step into the 21st, who toppled Milosevic, who was eventually killed by state mafia resisting his progressive steps toward a modern Serbia.

- History marches with big steps, he once said, when his daughter was just born and we sat at his place in his small apartment. He was regretting his lack of time for a private life.

The Likes of Me

The Suitcase
in English, French
A couple of days ago, the two former members of the Croatian military won a “not guilty” sentence in the Hague international war crime tribunal.

I was not present in the general headquarters of the Croatian army while they were deciding on their “Operation Storm” action of 1995. I don’t know if the telephone rang there. I also don’t know if President Bill Clinton personally told them to go ahead with the largest land offensive since World War II, because the CIA would help. That is what certain Serbian newspapers published recently.

I have a remarkable lack of knowledge about world paramilitary conspiracies, secret chambers in the Vatican, mysterious double-agents doing their jobs badly… Generally, the things I know are in the public domain, because people said these things publicly and I took notes, or because I was just personally standing there.

Consider those days in August 1995, when that “Operation Storm” took place. I stood at the border between Croatia and Serbia, watching the endless caravan of people fleeing on truckbeds, in their cars, on foot, in nightgowns, in torn Serbian uniforms, with guns and babies. I talked to those people. I took photos: I personally saw newborn refugees carried in shoe boxes, babies who were born during the exodus of ethnic Serbs fleeing the Croatian army.

I saw angry Serbian soldiers tearing off their military insignia because they were given orders by their military to abandon the region without fighting. I also saw people being given food and shelter by the local Serbian population. I heard the refugee stumbling towards an unknown destiny, since they had lost everything.

Operation Storm put a swift and sudden end in to four years of fighting for Serbian autonomy inside Croatia. The plans for a Greater Serbia torn from the fabric of Yugoslavia had been crushed by 150,000 Croatian Army troops. I heard the fleeing Serbs saying how rich and happy they had been in their rural homes. They had Croatian accents — if you ask me, that is, a woman with a Belgrade accent. They’d been born in Croatia of a people established there for centuries, but they were keenly aware of being Serbian Orthodox non-Catholic non-Croats.

They rejected a Croatian identity and passport, preferring their own rules and ideas. Their most important aspiration was to live within the Greater Serbia promised to them by Milosevic and his generals. Some were kissing the Serbian flag and the picture of Milosevic. Most of them were tearing the flag and swearing at the broken promises and the reeling military defeat of their beloved leader.

Later, I saw the endless caravan of Krajina refugees being routed by the Serbian police outside Belgrade. Only those Serbs who had relatives in the capital were allowed enter the city. Naturally scarcely any of them could prove that. People within Belgrade did not see or hear the refugees, except for what the official Milosevic tv or radio allowed. Of course that was a thoroughly censored version of events.

I don’t know where those people ended up. Their exact number is vague, it varies in the telling, from two hundred thousand to half a million displaced ethnic refugees.

The Decent People

Years ago during the reign of Milosevic in Serbia I wrote an essay called “Decent people”. It was about that 80 percent of Serbian people, the classic silent majority, who lived in denial of the genocide in Srebrenica, the snipers in Sarajevo, the shelling in Dubrovnik.

These so called decent people who could not grasp cruel political and military reality. Eventually the damage to daily life became impossible; the decent people could not go through with their charade of normality as postmen, engineers and dentists. On October 5th 2000 a million people took to the streets in Belgrade and physically deposed the tyrant.

However, time stopped then in Serbia. An October 6th never dawned for a bewildered Serbia, not even 12 years later, on the anniversary. Milosevic died behind the bars in the Hague, my Yugoslav-era parents are deceased, my postman is on pension but the inhabitants of the Serbian parliament today are the next generation of those decent people. No painful truths were admitted and confronted; there was a rebellion of the decent, but not a thorough change in the society.

Počelo je!

Kampanja difamiranja prof. dr Dragane Dulić

saopštenje za javnost

Sistematska klevetnička kampanja koja se već izvesno vreme vodi protiv bivše dekanke Fakulteta za bezbednost Univerziteta u Beogradu prof. dr Dragane Dulić postigla je svoj prvi efekat: Senat Univerziteta doneo je sramotnu odluku da joj onemogući nastavak rada na Univerzitetu, iako je ona i formalno i naučno u potpunosti zadovoljila uslove za produženje radnog odnosa (time je Univerzitet dokazao vernost sramnoj tradiciji, koja seže od izbacivanja Ksenije Atanasijević sa Filozofskog fakulteta pa do dodeljivanja počasnog doktorata Vladimiru Putinu). Sledi i drugi efekat: Naučno-nastavno veće Fakulteta za bezbednost podvrgnuto je pritiscima da se iz ispitne literature i upotrebe u nastavi uklone udžbenici i priručnici čija je autorka prof. Dulić. Prof. Dulić se difamira istrgutim citatima. U ulozi cenzora i interpretatora citata nalaze se nesvršeni studenti Fakulteta za bezbednost, koji naučnu vrednost stručne literature čija je autorka profesorka Dulić, nositeljka najvišeg naučnog zvanja, ocenjuju na osnovu svojih političkih afiniteta.
Nije nipošto slučajno da kampanju predvode organizacije i grupe koje su se afirmisale svojim zalaganjem da se Ratko Mladić i Radovan Karadžić smatraju srpskim herojima. Jasno je da glorifikacija pomenute dvojice zločinaca nije kompatibilna s pozitivnim vrednovanjem lika i dela vodeće srpske (i istaknute svetske) stručnjakinje za ljudsku bezbednost prof. Dragane Dulić. Stoga zagovornicima povratka Srbije u srednjevekovni mrak nije preostalo ništa drugo nego da na osnovu iskonstruisanih monstruoznih optužbi (posredstvom citata koji su istrgnuti iz konteksta i sličnih nečasnih i nenaučnih metoda argumentacije) oblate profesorku Dulić – i postigli su svoj cilj.
Oni ujedno pokušavaju da ospore i sudski dokazanu činjenicu da su masovna sistematska silovanja žena (seksualni terorizam) tokom agresije na Bosnu i Hercegovinu bila ne samo akti muškog nasilja nad ženama, nego i metodi kojima se vršilo etničko čišćenje i sprovodila teritorijalna ekspanzija. Podsećamo da je tokom srpske agresije na Bosnu i Hercegovinu silovano više od 20.000 žena: od devojčica do starica. Žene su najviše silovane u Foči (na više mesta u gradu), u Višegradu (u motelu Vilina vlas), u prijedorskim logorima smrti… Dragana Dulić je jedna od retkih profesora na Fakultetu bezbednosti koja studentima daje tekstove različitih autora kako bi ih pokrenula da kritički misle i vide van granica doktrine nacionalizma koja je odgovorna za ratove i silovanja u bivšoj Jugoslaviji. I zato njoj ni ne može da bude mesta na univerzitetu koji se nikada nije čak ni ogradio od genocida, u čijoj su pripremi učestvovali i mnogi njegovi istaknuti profesori.
Osuđujući kako sramotnu odluku Senata Univerziteta tako i dugogodišnje tolerisanje i podržavanje neofašističkih organizacija i ideologije krvi i tla na Beogradskom univerzitetu, Žene u crnom smatraju svojom dužnošću da iskažu javno priznanje Dragani Dulić, svojoj dugogodišnjoj saradnici, od koje je na stotine aktivistkinja širom Srbije (bilo direktno bilo indirektno) steklo prva saznanja o konceptu humane bezbednosti, a neke od nas su se, zahvaljujući njenom nesebičnom angažovanju u našim edukativnim aktivnostima, osposobile za kompetentan rad na problematici ljudske bezbednosti. Odgovornoj građanki i naučnici svetskog ranga prof. dr Dragani Dulić nema mesta na Beogradskom univerzitetu. A Beogradskom univerzitetu nema mesta u međunarodnoj naučnoj zajednici, kao što ni Srbiji koja ima takav univerzitet uskoro neće biti mesta u civilizovanom svetu.

U Beogradu, 29. 6. 2012.

Žene u crnom