Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/01/09/milosevic-2-0.html
…
Serbia erupts in nationwide protests after assassination attempts prompt fears of fascist resurgence
2 Likes
Shit…
[ETA] How long before Kosova is blamed for this and the Serbian government tries to use this as a pretext to invade…
13 Likes
Serbia has too many unsolved internal problems to contemplate such action. All the foreign aid comes from the West, partly to deter such thinking. Kosovo has a NATO base, so… This will likely remain a frozen conflict, much like Northern Cyprus, Nagorno-Karabakh, Gibraltar, Donetsk etc, convenient for both sides to exploit for domestic purposes. But back to the topic, Vucic has shut down virtually all media criticising him (except for Twitter), his brother has bought a number of former public corporations for a fraction of the real valuation. In general, corruption, quality of life, political and human rights have gone downhill, especially in the seven years of the government ruled by nationalist parties. The following term is often used as the main motivation for the protests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_selection_(politics)
2 Likes
You DO know that the independence of Kosova is literally one of those, right? Because some of the Serbs in the north of that country very much wish to make their region part of Serbia. Serbian demogogues have a LONG history of using Kosova as a means of deflecting attention from their power grabs.
Except for the actual on going violence that has happened in that region.
They never recovered from the wars of aggression that Serb (and Croatian) Nationalists wages on the country. The only country that managed to dig itself out and stay out of it from the former Yugoslavia was Slovenia, which was always the most wealth republic in the country.
3 Likes
And if Serbia ever wants to join the EU starting another war will not help. They’re serious about joining, they recently advanced in the process and are projected to join in 2025, give or take a few years. Seeing that freshly joined eastern countries get showered in billions of EU structural funds in the years after joining, a war with anyone would be insanely stupid.
5 Likes
Croatia is an EU member, you don’t become a member without doing lots of things right.
5 Likes
They came into the EU later than Slovenia though. But a fair enough point.
[ETA] Point still stands about Serbia, though.
2 Likes
“Serbia, Is there anything about that country which isn’t terrifying”
-Tim Olyphant, Santa Clarita Diet
Jasmina Teseanovic?
6 Likes
1 Like
Did they ask about religious difference or ethnicity, because that might be a different answer? And given the authoritarian past (and present) how much does public opinion really shape policy, especially war time policy…
[ETA] Also, demographics wise, there is likely not a significant number of people of African descent IN Serbia… The largest racial minority groups are Chinese and Arabs. We DO know that they were one of the countries to shut their borders to Arabs during the height of the migrant crisis (an “honor” they share with other European countries, so hardly a Serbia only problem), though, and we know that for quite a LONG time, even prior to the war, many Kosovar Albanians were strip of citizenship and deported as “Turks” to Turkey, simply for being Muslims.
4 Likes
The wars in the 90s ensured that the populations of the various successor states of Yugoslavia aren’t very ethnically diverse (except Bosnia, a mess of a state really). Genocide tends to have that effect.
1 Like
Yes, I’m aware. I wrote my master’s thesis in part on Yugoslavia, so…
It was MADE a mess precisely because it had a long and storied history of ethnic and religious diversity and intermarriage. Nowhere else in Yugoslavia put lie to the various nationalists narratives like Bosnia. That’s also why some of the most violent acts of ethnic cleansing happened there (and would have happened in Kosova, had we not bombed Serbia to put an end to that part of the war).
Also, NONE of this is about the PEOPLE of serbia (although certainly many do back and support the current government and Serbian nationalism more generally). It’s about the government which keeps doubling down on ethnic exclusive nationalist rhetoric in order to further authoritarian policies.
3 Likes
The same as in Hungary and Poland, which makes me think the Serbian government looks at them and thinks “they get away with it in the EU, there’s no reason for us to change”. Which is both infuriating and true.
5 Likes
Indeed. Poland seems especially worrisome. A friend of mine is married to a Polish woman, and they go visiting her family there a couple times a year. He said that this past year you could feel the tension in the air.
Serbia, though, has stronger ties to Moscow, I think than either Poland or Hungary, too. Having a powerful ally helps.
For Poland and Hungary, neither will get kicked out of the EU, because they’re backing each other.
2 Likes
What a pile of bullshit. 
As Bosniak from Mostar I can tell that no muslims have been deported to Turkey after Balkan wars. Truth is that many Bosniaks decided to leave because we felt that we’ll be more secure there although many still stayed in Serbia. Albanians on Kosovo at that time were still minority. They basically invaded Kosovo arter Second great war as part of Tito - Hodza deal of opening borders to Albanian immigrants which led further on to destabilization of the Kosovo, exile of indigenous Serbian people and war by the end of '90s.
Beside that, absolute non-sense is that Serbia shut-down door to Arabian immigrants - Serbia was only country which kept them open while all their neighbors except for Bosnia were closing them (Croatia, Hungary, Macedonia) which led to concentration of the immigrants on the Serbian and Bosnian borders.
And one more thing, Bosniaks and Serbs have lived in peace for centuries until the 1990s. We are basically the same people divided by religion only. We didn’t fight each other until last civil war and for that one we have to thank as much to foreign powers as to out nationalistic leaders (Izetbegovic, Milosevic or Croatian leader Tudjman). People today are getting over it but in Bosnia tensions are still high - not because of Belgrade, but because of Bosnian media which are brainwashing peoples minds with the same after war rethoric as in '90s. Media in Serbia and life there is much more normal, except for Kosovo, where tensions are still too high because Albanian ex-UCK leaders and war criminals are on power in that southern Serbian province.
Either way, I’m following an American in Serbia, Charles Cather, so if you want to learn more about that country outside of Western bullsh*t propaganda created during '90s to justify their intervention in ex-Yugoslavia, you should start think by your head and watch with eyes wide open instead of narrow view imposed by malicious Pulitzer price hunters or ambicious politicians who don’t care about truth at all:
2 Likes
The Balkans really should have their own national anthem:
My dude… I was talking about prior to the war… But I do KNOW for a fact that Kosovar Muslims were indeed deported by Tito, because I know someone whose FATHER was in fact deported BY Tito… Note this is the TITO government, which included some Serb nationalists, which Tito worked to keep in check (purging when a threat arose). So, while some Serb nationalists likely advocated for deportations to get rid of Albanians, it was indeed the Yugoslav government who carried it out. Then Kosova got autonomy, which some factions there had been advocating for in the 70s… which Milosevic attempted to roll back.
You know what, you’re correct on that. I was misremembering. My bad.
Again, I’m well aware of that and did not say otherwise. Clearly, the region was stable and there was much intermarriage for quite a while, until nationalists got into the fray during the periods of liberalization and the regional, more nationally oriented party members became stronger as a result. Then the rise of Milosevic, etc. I do not subscribe to the bullshit around ancient ethnic hatreds, because the roots of the wars are very recent and were shaped by how the government post-Tito decided to deal with the economic problems of the country.
You mean Kosova, which is an independent country now. That region has been Albanian majority for quite a while, actually. Serbia itself (and Croatia) has harbored many war criminals of their own and some sympathetic to the aims of the nationalist governments are still in power. There was plenty of evidence to suggest that a similar fate was in store for Albanians in Kosova as had happened to Bosniaks.
If you think I’m blaming Serbs as a people for all this, then you’re just flat out wrong. But to think that the Serbian government or that Serb nationalists didn’t play a major role in the wars in the 90s… that’s just naive.
Why am I not surprised that there is a trump connection in the region?
1 Like
Have you visited the gift shop comrade?
3 Likes
