RIGHTS-YUGOSLAVIA: Watching Your Neighbours

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric-Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Nov 6 1999 (IPS) - It is just like in cold-war times, when Yugoslavia had enemies on both sides of the Berlin Wall and people were expected to watch out for foreign saboteurs.

The habit was well described in a popular theatre piece, “The Spy of the Balkans,” one of the most popular theatre comedies in the former Yugoslavia, written almost two decades ago by Dusan Kovacevic.

The piece described a retired old-communist style policeman who kept informing his former colleagues of everything suspicious – from Russian or American tourists to young lovers, women who came home late or even his own son, who chose to go to university instead of a factory.

The expression “Spy of the Balkans” became a colloquial expression and is now frequently used to refer to an equally odd situation in one of Belgrade’s largest districts where a dubious anti-terrorist initiative is bordering with ethnic hatred, punished by Yugoslav law.

In New Belgrade, residents were warned earlier this month to “check in detail” all neighbours in apartment buildings, “report all non- familiar vehicles” in parking lots and watch “comings and goings of strangers”.

The list of instructions issued by the local authority in Block 70, a quarter of some 20,000, urges residents to keep a sharp eye on ethnic Albanian or Chinese neighbours and “promptly report suspicious gatherings to the police”.

The instructions also urge residents to watch for fake car licence plates, check visitors, and even look at the contents of their neighbours’ trash cans, “in case something is planted” by “Albanian terrorists” or others.

The controversial instruction was issued by Aleksandar Bozovic, Block 70’s local authority. He says precautions like this are “absolutely necessary in these nasty times”.

“The motive for this decision was what happened in Moscow with Chechen terrorists planting bombs…We thought that maybe ethnic Albanians, connected to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), could start planting bombs here,” he argued.

“Many of our Albanian neighbours went to Kosovo in March (when the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation air raids started). Who knows if they went through terrorist training and now plan to start terrorist activities here” Bozovic added.

As for the Chinese, who own more than 50 shops in Block 70 and New Belgrade, Bozovic says that “they are obliged to have proper residence papers, which must be checked”. “The law must be respected” he explains.

But according to legal experts in Belgrade, Bozovic’s demands and regulations are a clear breach of human rights.

“This is a clear ‘spy-your-neighbour’ move, a discriminatory measure against foreigners but also against non-Serbs (Yugoslav citizens)” says Vladan Joksimovic of Belgrade’s Centre for Human Rights.

“Besides, there is no way that ordinary people could take into their hands things that are a police job,” he adds.

“It is a case of inspiring and instigating hatred against people from other nations” says in turn Biljana Kovacevic Vuco, of the Yugoslav Committee of Lawyers for Human Rights.

The instruction “represents also a criminal act, which can be punished by one to five years in prison” she told IPS. She also announced that the Committee would start a legal action against the district officials.

Some legal experts believe that the ultimate responsibility lies higher up in the State apparatus. The inspiration, they say, came from the Serbian Interior ministry, which announced late September that policemen would start a door-to-door check up of residents’ documents.

Police general Obrad Stevanovic, an aide to the Interior minister announced at the time that the aim of such a move was to “improve the citizens’ security”. The intention was also, he said, for citizens and police to “exchange relevant security data.”

An additional advantage, he said, is that by such individual visits calls, “every citizen will get to know his own policeman”.

But police officials declined to comment on the New Belgrade security measures. Unofficially, one source admitted that “some people, like Mr. Bozovic, went too far in being concerned about a job that must be carried out by the police.”

A highly-placed police source, who insisted on anonymity, told IPS that “once there was a justified fear of possible terrorist attacks in Belgrade” by ethnic Albanians.

But such fear “grew out of proportions”, especially among retired policemen, security officials or state clerks, he said. Just like the old communist former policeman seeing spies everywhere.

But Yugoslavia is not the same. It’s not even the same as six months ago.

“Now, with Kosovo being looked over by KFOR (the NATO-led intervention force in Kosovo), ethnic Albanians have a place of their own and they have no reason to bother with Belgrade any more,” the police official said.