POLITICS-SERBIA: Arms Enough for an Army Found

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Apr 15 2003 (IPS) - The Serbian government has unearthed more than 35,000 guns and bombs in a massive campaign to sweep away illegal weapons hidden in homes.

The Serbian government distributed 2.3 million leaflets asking for surrender of illegal weapons following the assassination of former prime minister Zoran Djindjic last month.

Four wars in the Balkans saw people stockpiling huge amounts of weapons in their homes. The government has now offered amnesty and anonymity to owners of illegal weapons who give them up by April 23.

"The action was necessary after the police stumbled upon large caches of illegal firearms in hundreds of households all over the country," Svetlana Lukic from SEESAC told IPS. "There are no exact numbers, but the Interior Ministry had provided us with the estimate that there are more than 70,000 long barrel rifles."

Arms caches were discovered in one of the largest manhunts in Serbian history for members of organised crime gangs suspected in the assassination of Djindjic March 12.

"The surrender of illegal weapons should symbolically mean cutting the ties with the wars, violence and the politics of the nineties," Lukic said.

Most of the weapons are believed to have come from war fronts in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo in the nineties.

"Some 35,000 weapons and explosive devices, and about two million rounds of ammunition have been surrendered all over Serbia," says Sreten Lukic, assistant interior minister.

"There were 23,500 requests for legalising the weapons and a positive answer was given in 1,440 cases," he added.

The promise of amnesty did not convince many people. Sniper rifles, machine guns, hand grenades and automatic rifles have been found abandoned all over the place. Many were found by people and even children around garbage containers, by the banks of rivers and in the woods.

"We appeal to people not to leave this dangerous stuff at public places," Lukic said. "We don’t want victims among the innocent due to the irresponsibility of others."

The first lot of 4,000 surrendered weapons and more than 42,000 rounds of ammunition were melted over the weekend at a steel factory.

The first lot of surrendered weapons included automatic rifles like Kalashnikovs, Scorpions, Uzis, submachine and machine guns, hand grenades, mines, rocket-propelled grenades and launchers, explosives, and devices to trigger them.

"Such weapons were the trademark of paramilitaries that fought in the wars of the nineties and brought them back home," says legal expert Budimir Babovic. "The regime of Slobodan Milosevic did not punish people for illegal possession of arms."

A law that dates back to the seventies provides for five years imprisonment for the possession of illegal arms.

For years the streets of Serbian towns have been a battleground for settling accounts between criminal gangs, former paramilitaries or secret service members who ‘changed’ their line of work. The killings were carried out mostly with Scorpion or Heckler & Koch automatic rifles.

"The decade of Milosevic introduced wars and violence as part of the daily culture," says sociologist Ratko Bozovic from Belgrade University. "Besides surrender of the illegal weapons, the mind pattern of people has to be changed gradually. This was the safest country in the area in the past, but the young people have grown up in a completely different environment."

SEESAC is involved in similar programmes in other Balkans countries. "The programme of disarming the civilians starts in Montenegro in June, while a similar programme will be introduced in Kosovo province after we brief journalists, who can then explain the need for an environment without dangerous weapons," Lukic said.