POLITICS-YUGOSLAVIA: Government Turns Up The Heat On Opposition

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Apr 27 2000 (IPS) - Political analysts here say they are worried by the increased vitriol emanating from the Slobodan Milosevic regime.

“The war atmosphere (that existed during the NATO bombing campaign) is being continued, this time with words,” says political analyst Ivan Torov. “Only this time the target of hatred are Serbs who think differently. This propaganda effort is dangerous, as it’s well known how the hate speech preceded and accompanied wars in former Yugoslavia in the past decade.”

The state-owned Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) is leading the attack, allowing top government officials to denounce anyone and all who may hold views that the government does not share.

Only days after the massive Apr. 14 opposition rally in Belgrade, Speaker of the Serbian Parliament and close associate of President Milosevic, Dragan Tomic, publicly denounced the gathering as “a scene of darkest fascism”. He dubbed the opposition leaders and their sympathisers “scum of the earth” and “the long hand of NATO aggression”.

“The opposition can come into power only with the help of the bayonets of foreign powers,” Tomic added. In front of millions of RTS viewers, he described Zoran Djindjic, one of the opposition leaders as the “son of a Croat mother, raised by an ustashi uncle.”

During the WW II Croatia was run by a notorious nazi-puppet ustashi regime, which engaged in exterminations of Serbs and Jews.

Retired Rear-Admiral in the Yugoslav military Milun Nikolic was given space in a recent issue of the pro-government daily Politika to describe the country’s future under an opposition regime.

“Yugoslavia will be occupied by NATO and the United States, with atrocities worse than those of the Nazis in WW II,” he said. “It will become a NATO military camp, with nuclear rocket bases and will be a constant target of nuclear response from NATO and US adversaries.”

“It does not matter what is true or false,” Torov says, “the regime is now scared and desperate, aware that its time is running out. It is willing to use any and all means now.”

“The offensive in the official media, including all these hate speeches, shows how panic-stricken the regime is now, after all the failures of its isolationist, counter-cultural politics,” Desimir Tosic of the Democratic Centre opposition party told IPS.

A recent poll by the Belgrade Institute for Social Studies shows that 71 percent of Serbia’s population is deeply dissatisfied with the government.

Yugoslavia has effectively been ostracised because of its government’s policies. Its membership in many international organisations has been suspended, bodies such as the United Nations, Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Due to economic sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States and its shunning by the WB and IMF, the country has no access to international financial resources and the economy is at the standstill.

“The regime has now embarked upon a festival of primitivism, unprecedented smearing campaign against the opposition, but also against its own people who sympathise with the opposition. For them, it’s like playing with a double-edged knife – more and more people will turn away from them,” Tosic predicts.

Tosic may be right. Already there is dissatisfaction with the level of hate and hysteria in the speeches of government officials.

“We’re so tired of such talk, we listened to it endlessly in 1991, 1992 and last year,” says 43-yeear old Belgrade housewife Ivana Tomanic. “You simply get sick and stop listening to it. They seem dangerous, but they are empty words,” she adds.

Not so, says 30-something engineer Marko Savovic.

“You have to listen to these words, as they announce in advance what will happen. These are not just harmless words, they are threats, part of a campaign. They are meant to scare us (ordinary people). But those who sympathise with the opposition will certainly not stop sympathising just because of the blatant hatred spread all over our TV screens,” Savovic says.