You’ve probably read the news about the human safaris allegedly organized by the Serbian troops during the war in Bosnia.
El País writes that “the Milan Attorney General’s Office has opened an investigation into a case that recalls the infamous Sniper Alley of Sarajevo — the city besieged from 1992 to 1996 by Serb-Bosnian militias during the Bosnian War. From the surrounding hills, they shot at passersby who had no choice but to cross that street and expose themselves to being killed. It is estimated that more than 11,000 civilians were murdered in this way.
The investigation, revealed by Italian media, concerns an alleged crime of intentional homicide aggravated by cruelty and vile motives. Its central thesis is that some Italians paid to go to Sarajevo for the weekend and shoot at people, as if it were a hunting trip.”
On Tuesday, thousands of protesters gathered before the ruins of the General Staff building in downtown Belgrade to protest against the plans to hand it over for development by Jared Kushner’s company.
“Today we have performatively shown what we will do in the coming days,” student Valentina Moravčević told Mašina. “We will be a living wall between all those who are trying to demolish these buildings. Cultural heritage is now defended exclusively on the streets, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
The “cultural heritage” in question was the place from which the supreme military command of the Yugoslav army operated. The same Yugoslav army was heavily involved in Serbia’s wars against its neighbours, Bosnia included.
This uncultured heritage got an explosive makeover during the NATO intervention against Serbia in 1999. that stopped the war in Kosovo, which was the final stage of the Serbian leadership’s decade of warfare.
That is the heritage that these people are defending.
People’s Dispatch reports, “Because the site remains a concrete reminder of the NATO bombing, the redevelopment plan has also provoked accusations against the authorities of national humiliation. Critics of President Aleksandar Vučić and the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) warned that the plan is one of many signs that those in power are ready to sell off public goods for political and private gain. Similarly, cultural and preservation workers have described the passing of the special law as an act of treason. They wrote in a public appeal that support for the bill should be read as a sign of a lack of self-respect. “It is a crime against previous generations who created this heritage, and a sin against future generations who will be deprived of it,” the workers added.“
Exactly. No Serbian national humiliation in hunting humans for sport or in the Srebrenica genocide, oh no.
The best opponents Vučić’s political organization could ever hope for – superstitious idiots protesting against demolishing a bombed-out ruin, that wouldn’t be a ruin in the first place if there hadn’t been a decade of Yugoslav Wars initiated by – get this – Vučić’s former political organization.
Opposition lawmakers also lashed out at the government over its decision made last Friday, when Serbian lawmakers approved a luxury Trump-branded high-rise in Belgrade, with center-left MP Marinika Tepić claiming Belgrade was sacrificing the country’s history simply “to please Donald Trump.”
“In a place where bombs once fell, you now plan to pour champagne,” she said.
Well, I sure hope so. The “historic landmark” is a bombed-out ruin and an “unofficial memorial” for nationalists to gather there once a year, applauded by foreign cheerleaders of Russia and China, to reinforce revanchist, anti-democratic, and anti-Western narratives. Even a Trump-made tacky yuckiness of a hotel will be an improvement. Bring on the wrecking crews.
There’s a thing called “a brain” and Serbian moderate parties should use it sometimes.
Yes, the constant contrarianism to everything Vučić does is a tactical move by the opposition, but a useless one. You know how many nationalist votes she’ll get from this? Zero. You know how many non-nationalist votes she’ll lose? Battalions.
It’s as if Vučić would say, “You know, folks, I really like wearing clothes,” and the supposedly rational, democratic parties would start screaming from the top of their lungs, “NUDISM IS THE WAY! EVERYONE GET NAKED RIGHT NOW!”.
I like Marinika, she’s one of our cooler politicians, would still vote for her, but come on, seriously, they need to get a grip on reality.
Vučić gave an interview with the German Cicero about the possibility of selling Serbian stockpiles of ammunition to European customers, and the fact that the ammunition might end up in Ukraine doesn’t bother the Serbian authorities. The comments that followed were nothing short of a barrage of nonsense.
“The Vučić regime avoids conflicts with Brussels and Washington at all costs. The export of artillery ammunition from Serbia, whose final destination is Ukraine, is a kind of compensation that the domestic regime pays in order not to impose sanctions on Russia.” – Aleksandar Đokić, political scientist, N1 television.
“Serbia is also facing the consequences of a wrong policy regarding the development of certain capacities of the dedicated military industry. In the last 20 years, the production of ammunition was forced as a labor-intensive part of the industry, where there was no need for particularly large investments.
Ammunition is a highly sought-after item on the market, but at the same time the most sensitive of the other products of the military industry because there are a number of international conventions that prohibit the export of weapons and military equipment to war-torn regions. Serbia would have to issue a use permit for the end user,” – the former ambassador of Serbia to Belarus, Srećko Đukić, N1 television.
We had Zdravko Ponoš (another opposition politician and a retired general) shilling for poor betrayed Putin last summer, and now former ambassadors making up imaginary conventions forbidding arms exports to conflict zones on supposedly independent N1 TV. Too much production capacity, he says.
Rest assured that when defense and construction companies’ employees see and hear this, they tell Ponoš, ambassadors, N1, and Maria Zakharova to bite them and will vote for the ruling party out of spite. They know full well that they need food on the table – they don’t care about privileged people on TV and are not fans of hunger.
So the epidemic of hunger strikes in Serbia will most likely not move them much.
Dijana Hrka, mother of one of the victims of the canopy collapse, Uglješa Mrdić, a ruling party MP, and transport operator Milomir Jaćimović and his son are all on hunger strikes.
The only person in Serbian political history who had a “successful” hunger strike was Tomislav Nikolić, Vučić’s party comrade, who was elected as the president of Serbia in 2012.
Dijana Hrka is being “taken care of” by war veterans who circle both opposing camps of Serbian protests.
Here’s one of them.
Mrs. Hrka’s participation in student rallies has raised a few eyebrows amongst the onlookers when she joined the crowd in chanting homophobic and racist slurs aimed at Aleksandar Vučić, the obscene behavior that has been the trademark of the protests.
Both camps need more and more buses to drag “supporters” to faint massiveness, and more and more likers and clickers on X and Facebook. More and more hunger strikers to elicit sympathy, and more and more “student friends from Serbia” to sugarcoat themselves before foreigners.
The “neutrals” have come to the conclusion that this is all an internal matter between the two factions of the same right-wing electorate, and that those two factions are two giant pigsties. No wonder they use the same tactics to get to power. So there is no need to get involved.
Serbianism 