POLITICS-YUGOSLAVIA: Emigrants Gather Around their Prince

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric-Zimonjic

SZENTANDER, Hungary, Nov 16 1999 (IPS) - Several hundred Serbian emigres and opposition representatives gathered this weekend in this Hungarian village around an unusual character – the English-born heir to the Yugoslav throne.

Attendants claimed to represent the Serbian diaspora of some three million, and expressed their will to help the 6,5 million people now living in Serbia.

They concluded that their country’s main problem was its current government, so financial help was promised first to political parties willing to work for the ousting of president Slobodan Milosevic’s government.

Most of Serbia’s numerous opposition groups were present in the meeting, which was ignored by Serbian official media.

Serbia and Montenegro, which together form the Yugoslav federation, “must have and deserve the democratic government that would respect the rights of all its citizens, disregarding their ethnic origin or religion,” the meeting, which ended Monday, declared.

For this purpose, they pledged unspecified amounts of money – “a few million dollars” – to be raised through organised voluntary contributions of Serbs living abroad.

The first meeting of representatives of the Serb diaspora was held under the patronage of prince Alexander Karadjordjevic, heir to the long defunct throne of the former Yugoslavia, with the approval of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Karadjordjevic was born in London in 1943, after his family fled the German occupation in 1941. They could never reclaim the crown, as -president Jozip Broz Tito’s guerrillas established a socialist republic in 1945, after expelling the German invaders.

Monarchists in Serbia are in a large part represented by Vuk Draskovic’s nationalist Serbian Renewal Movement, the country’s main opposition party, but the Alliance for Change, a rival coalition, has not ruled out a return to the monarchic system.

The meeting was sponsored by several large expatriate Serbs’ organisations from the United States and France. The largest is the U.S.-based Council for Democratic Change of Michael (Miroslav) Djordjevic.

Apart from Djordjevic’s group, the largest participating Serbian organisations abroad were the Serbian Unity Congress (U.S.) and the Foundation for Peace and Crises (France). From Serbia came Draskovic’s Serbian Renewal Movement and almost all leaders of the Alliance for Change, the Church, independent economists and others

Szentander a picturesque neighbourhood 15 kilometres from the Hungarian capital of Budapest, was not chosen by chance. The village has a Serbian name -Sentandreja (Saint Andrew)-, Orthodox churches, schools and a small community of people of Serbian origin.

It was a village designed by the Austro-Hungarian empire back in the 18th century to host the thousands of Serbs who sought refugee from invading Turkish troops.

The Orthodox Church’s Patriarch sent an appeal of “help to Serbia, which has suffered in the last ten years as a humiliated, weak and friendless country”.

According to Yugoslavia’s official statistics, of Serbia’s 6,5 million people about a million are refugees or displaced people from Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, formerly part of the federation.

Three emigration waves since 1941 have created a large emigre community. The first wave started with the German occupation and remained during and after the war, when the Communist party seized power.

The second wave came in 1965-1975, when the former Yugoslavia allowed free travel abroad. Many Serbs went then to Western countries especially Germany, as so-called “guest workers”. Statistics say that out of three million Serbs living abroad, two million belong to this group.

The last wave started in 1991, when the former Yugoslav federation collapsed by the secession of Slovenia and Croatia, followed later by Bosnia-Herzegovina. A bloody ethnic strife erupted and Serbia was subjected to international sanctions.

Some 300,000 people, mostly young and educated were the core of this latest emigration wave.

Serb organisations abroad should “try to have some influence on the public opinion and the governments of (their host) countries (for them) to understand the situation in Serbia, ” Radoslav Stojanovic of the Serbian Renewal Movement told journalists.

“The strict sanctions against Serbia should be lifted, as they hit only the people and their everyday lives” Stojanovic said.

The congress concluded that “centuries of Serb heritage had been desecrated by the current regime (of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic)”.

“All democratic traditions of Serbia were destroyed by those in power now, and the ten-year-long history of their rule is only the history of endless political, economic and social catastrophes,” they stated.

“With all democratic means at their disposal, Serbs must change the people in power in their country now” the declaration said.

The emigres representatives demanded the restoration of their right to vote abroad. They said that neighbouring Croatia allows not only citizens abroad but also ethnic Croatians around the world to vote at embassies or consular offices.

Many Serbs have opted to keep their Yugoslav citizenship, even when they have also taken a foreign one, due to the complicated and uncertain future of their property in Serbia. But many are unable to travel to Serbia just to vote.

Vladan Batic, of Alliance for Change, defended the opposition’s right to receive financial help from Serbian communities abroad. “It would be very hard now to call the opposition ‘foreign mercenaries.’ It will be Serbs abroad helping Serbs in Serbia.”

Yugoslavia’s ruling coalition of leftaand nationalist parties has condemned opposition groups and media for allegedly receiving financial help from official funds allocated by the U.S. and Britain to support them.

One important issue of the meeting was a potential private- sector financial commitment to invest and rebuild Serbia. But businessman present argued that they could not pledge any funds.

They said there was no way of investing a dime in Serbia now, not only because of international sanctions. “Serb businessmen living abroad are afraid that the money they would invest would go into the wrong hands” economist Milena Davidovic said.

The total collapse of Serbia’s banking system since 1992, was followed by the freezing of the equivalent of four billion dollars in private savings, which has allegedly been used to finance the country’s military or just stolen by high officials.