http://english.ruvr.ru/radio_broadcast/25298789/51725153.html
Voice of Russia - June 15, 2011
Human organ trafficking scandal unveils in Kosovo
Voice of Russia - June 15, 2011
Human organ trafficking scandal unveils in Kosovo
Yekaterina Kudashkina and Dan Moody
Today we shall talk about Kosovo and the investigation into the organ trafficking story dating back to the late 1990s.
Several people in Pristina have been charged with organ trafficking. “Similar offences,” the Council of Europe says, “have been committed in the late 1990s.” That was the subject of the report filed by Dick Marty, the reporter of the Council of Europe.
So, has there been any investigation into the facts unveiled in the Marty report? What consequences could the Kosovo leaders face and why?
We discussed these issues with some help from our guest speaker, Cedomir Antic, leading researcher with the Institute for Balkan Studies in Belgrade, Serbia.
In fact, we were reminded of the whole human organ trafficking scandal in Kosovo after today the news appeared that Kosovo's European Union justice mission has charged a Turk and an Israeli citizen with illegally trafficking organs at a clinic in Pristina which is the capital of Kosovo, a Balkan state which declared independence from Serbia in 2008.
Now, according to the report which was filed by the EU's police and justice mission EULEX, the District Court in Pristina has issued warrants for the arrest of a Turkish surgeon, called Yusuf Ercin Sonmez, and a citizen of Israel by the name of Moshe Harel.
So, now they are also subject to international wanted notices issued by Interpol.
These two people are charged with trafficking in persons, unlawful medical activity and organized crime, so it is like a full spectrum.
In fact, there is a whole group of people, and they are all Kosovo citizens, who have been charged by EULEX on the same case with similar offences, and they all are waiting for their trials to begin. But when I heard the news, my first thought was that those were the offences referred to by Dick Marty’s report.
You mean the one which actually made the news in December of last year?
That is right, but, however, it appeared that my impression was wrong, because these cases you have mentioned date back to the year 2008.
Which is obviously a different story.
We could remind our listeners of this report.
Back in December 2010 Swiss senator Dick Marty, who is also a reporter for the Council of Europe Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, presented a draft report which claimed that Prime Minister of Kosovo Mr. [Hashim] Thaçi had headed a mafia-style organized crime ring in the late 1990s that engaged in assassinations, beatings, organ trafficking and other crimes.
That are really serious offences.
This is an extremely serious offence, especially when we are talking about a head of state.
If we are talking about Dick Marty’s report, then things are moving quite slowly.
Now I suppose it is the right time to move to the Burning Point Press Desk.
Blic, which is a Serbian English-language daily, said that EULEX finally conducted “the tender for election of a seven-member team that shall investigate claims over body organ trade under the EULEX authority. The names of judges and prosecutors to investigate abductions, murders and organ trade as well as the involvement of the Kosovo Liberation Army leadership in those activities are still not known. However, as things are now, the former chief prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal, Carla Del Ponte, who recommended herself to lead the investigation and got support by Serbian prosecution, is not going to be a part of that team.” Which is quite strange, isn’t it?
It really takes them so long - almost six months after the facts have been made public.
This is not the first year that we have heard about these suspicious claims.
Then there were allegations, but I believe that Dick Marty has dug up some facts. So, he listed them in a report, and then it takes them almost six months to appoint judges.
According to Blic, this new team is going to have seven members including a special prosecutor. The special prosecutor is from one of the EU countries and has not been working within the EULEX until so far. That means that the prosecutor in question cannot be Del Ponte since Switzerland is not a member of the EU. The newly established team of prosecutors and judges would join the already formed EULEX team leading the preliminary investigation which has been going on since January.
This might actually mean that things are moving in the right direction, though slowly. But the reality is more complicated.
According to the same Blic, to its unofficial sources, “The investigation being led by the EULEX since January is stuck and is mainly focused on unsuccessful attempts of coming into possession of material pieces of evidence which would confirm doubts contained in the report by the Council of Europe. The success of the investigation depends on the testimony of eyewitnesses that Dick Marty talked with. That is why Marty insisted on several occasions that the EULEX should not lead the investigation because it does not have the capacity to protect witnesses. By the way, both Dick Marty and the Serbian side insisted on a team that should be capable of protecting witnesses in Kosovo.”
It is an important point, because if you cannot guarantee that witnesses are going to be protected even after the trial then you are not going to get people willing to testify.
If we remember the whole security situation in Kosovo is rather difficult and besides that some authorities at least used to belong to a mafia, do you think you could really protect witnesses in Kosovo?
I think if I was a witness in Kosovo I certainly would not be testifying.
It is interesting that Del Ponte was surprised at the whole issue because she actually publically brought the issue up in her book which was published three years ago. So, she is allegedly surprised by news that a competition was announced for the selection of a seven-member team which is obviously going to investigate the case within the UN mission in Kosovo. Mrs. Del Ponte said, “I know nothing about that but let us wait and see what is going to happen in the days to come.” She also added that she was ready to take part in that investigation at any time.
It is also interesting that she was not even aware of something that was going on in the case which she actually unveiled, [about which] she was the first one to ring the bell. It does seem a little bit inadequate. So, there is a whole series of inadequacies, something just does not fit. Besides there are also questions, as far as I know, related to EULEX.
There was something on Balkaninsight.com; they are saying that EULEX has not been efficient enough, particularly in the north. “The EULEX deputy head Andy Sparkes told Pristina daily newspaper Zeri that EULEX was not efficient enough, particularly in the north, but added that the biggest responsibility for success and failures falls on local institutions.”
“It’s not the job of the international community to achieve success or failure. This is the job that Kosovars have to do with our help,” Sparkes was quoted by Zeri as saying.
Again something is just not making sense.
It would seem logical that the international community should be a part of any investigation process.
Besides it is rather strange to me that the main responsibility should be assigend to local authorities. Responsibility in what? In investigating what the highest authorities actually did in 1990s?
It seems odd.
Serbian analysts actually talk of a double-standard policy that the international bodies have been applying to the Serbian region. And now we are joined by Cedomir Antic, researcher with the Institute for Balkan Studies in Belgrade.
I believe that international justice in the case of the latest Yugoslav wars is just perceived as some kind of war instrument, as regarding the parts in the war there was no understanding for punishing war crimes. I would say that in Serbia, in the former Yugoslavia, in Croatia, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, even though all governments were democratically elected they were not interested in prosecuting war crimes, especially those war crimes which were committed by their own national armies which were involved in those wars.
The international community was not inspired by some kind of universal Nuremberg justice, but they established a tribunal in the Hague which was only concentrated on the Yugoslav wars, and, as a matter of fact, it was obvious that the international court was actually involved in post-war efforts to reshape the outcome of the war.
And only the Serbian political leadership and Serbian high command was prosecuted. Ethnic Albanians and ethnic Bosnians were not prosecuted; there are only few of their people who were accused and later on sentenced for war crimes.
In Kosovo that situation was and actually is very obvious. Your audience might remember that at the beginning of NATO aggression against Serbia and the Serbian nation it was officially stated by high officials of the United States and its NATO allies that more than 100 thousand ethnic Albanians were killed and more than 500 thousand were banished from Serbia; later on it was revealed that out of 12 thousand people who were killed during the war more than 2600 were ethnic Serbs, which means that ethnic Serbs were victims twice more frequently according to total numbers than ethnic Albanians who were allegedly identified as the only victims.
When Carla Del Ponte revealed the affair related to internal organs [trafficking], she did it when she was no longer chief prosecutor; it was some kind of her last official address to the international public because she put it in her memoirs, and it was important for history but not for those victims and for the actual situation in Kosovo and in Serbia.
And then the Council of Europe asked Mr. Dick Marty to produce a report, that report was produced, and then Mr. Dick Marty was isolated, he was attacked from all sides, and now we are about to forget that report and EULEX would like to avoid greater instability in Kosovo region: Mr. Thaçi, who was mentioned in that report as someone who was involved, he is now the most influential person in Kosovo and he had full support from the United States and from the European Union.
I believe that this decision of EULEX to appoint some international judges to take this case it is a part of efforts to stop that course of events which was unintentionally published by Mrs. Del Ponte and which was in a very honest way presented to the international community by Mr. Dick Marty. I do not have much hope about EULEX justice because we have seen the deeds of EULEX in last three years. I do not believe that with Mrs. Del Ponte something would be better and would be different. Mr. Dick Marty was something of a bright spot of the European Union in the Kosovo situation, in the Kosovo crisis; Mrs. Del Ponte would not be, by my humble opinion, remembered as a good prosecutor and as a person who committed to reconciliation and justice in Serbia.
So, do I get you right that what we are witnessing now is again a case of double standards, because if we have sufficient evidence that the crime has been there and that some key officials, not only Hashim Thaçi, but also some of his closest allies, were involved in organ trafficking, and still the international bodies are just trying to cover it up? So, what is the point actually because what they are getting in a result is a small state run by criminals? So, what could be their logic?
That was an outcome of very narrow-minded policy of the United States in 1998-1999. They supported the extremists and semi-criminals in 1998.
...
Mr. Holbrooke was the one who negotiated with Milošević in those negotiations which led to bombing, and not only allies of Milošević were bombed but the entire nation was bombed, the nation which was against Milošević, which was involved possibly by support of the United States of America in elections which were forced. And what to say about those people? They established during the war the international court of law; only the main purpose of that court was political, not legal. And what now to say about their protégés? It was obvious even before they were involved in illegal activities.
Do I get you right now that you believe that no matter what the results could the investigation produce, the present team is likely to remain in power in Kosovo? Is my understanding correct?
By all means, because the entire nation is behind them, and you should know that in Kosovo during the last twelve years more than 940 Serbs have been killed while more than 250 Albanians, mostly political active, were killed as well. I believe that it was some kind of criminal engineering of political scene in Kosovo. The international community, especially the United States and some European states, even divided Serbs in Kosovo, and we now have one tiny minority, but this minority took part in parliamentary elections which attracted 20% of total lot among ethnic Serbs who support Thaçi. It was a great project, Mr. Thaçi and his party – they were a great project. We can see the same situation with Haradinaj, one of former Kosovo prime ministers, who was allegedly involved into war crimes, during his trial nine witnesses were killed, and he was released. When he was accused as a war criminal, he was prime minister, and then the international
representative in Kosovo received him, took a cup of coffee with him, said him farewell. Mrs. Del Ponte actually wrote it in her book that in Germany the federal government wanted even to make him reception of honor in the airport even though he was in his journey to The Hague. It was a part of political activity which is partially or even mainly aimed against vital interests of Republic of Serbia and the Serbian nation. It is obvious, and I do not say that ethnic Serbs were innocent; I do not say that the international community should not create international court of law, but this court of law is not the way. The nternational court of law which now exists for other countries which is financed by the United States while the United States decided not to hold its own citizens for that court, that court is not the way for international justice, because there is one great power which believes that it is above the international law.
But it is exceptional, right?
For me it is not.
It believes that it is exceptional?
Yes, it is exceptional.
Do you see that this strategy is still being applied to the region now?
I hope that the independence of Kosovo, the process which actually started in 1990, is stopped. However, it is obvious that in Northern and South-Western Serbia there are movements for autonomy and in future that would be the movements for independence which enjoy some kind of support of the international community. I would like to mention the region of Novi Pazar, so called Sanjak: there about 130 thousand ethnic Bosnians live, and they want to unite six municipalities in which more than 110 thousand ethnic Serbs live, and they would like to create some kind of autonomy and later on probably a federal republic inside of Serbia. They do not have an open support of the EU, but some European states and the USA created groups for Sanjak. And now I would ask why then for more than 110 thousand Serbs in Croatia who live in Krajina and who are much more threatened than Bosnians in Sanjak, why there is no group for Krajina, or group for Knin? It is the exact
truth that there are double standards. Not to mention Vojvodina. For example, in Vojvodina more than 70% of the population are ethnic Serbs, and there is a tiny group of ethnic Serbs predominantly who want autonomy because they want to have power, and they are supported by several institutions of the EU, even though they do not have support of people, but they use some kind of split which exists in ruling party of Serbia, Democratic Party, which was elected on the ground of some social and democratic issues, not national issues. In Vojvodina that tiny minority which represents maybe just 10% of electorate, when they want an independent electrical company for Vojvodina, when they want police, nobody said anything, while in Bosnia and Herzegovina where 90% of Serbs want to preserve the autonomy, when that autonomy is attacked by high representative of the United Nations, nobody with exceptions in some circles of Serbia and in Russia, nobody intervenes,
nobody reacts. Why? Because there are double standards, and we used to live with double standards, we do not want to accept that true is false.
What is your forecast? How do you see the security situation is going to develop in the region?
I hope that it will be better in future. As you know, we are now in the process of negotiating of technical issues between the government of Kosovo, so-called Republic of Kosovo, and Republic of Serbia. On the other hand, I believe that the majority of people in Serbia are firmly concentrated to our constitution of 2006. In Bosnia, even though the situation is fragile now, there is some kind of balance of power between Republic of Serbska and, on the other hand, higher representative of Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I hope that the European Union would keep that balance of power, would not try to challenge it, because we should be a part of the European Union but with knowing the truth about the situation in this region. It is not only impossible, it is injustice to resolve Serbia as a state and, on the other hand, to establish some kind of unitary Bosnia - artificially and against the will of majority of its people. I believe that the European
Union and the United States of America should recognize and approve the situation which was established when the peace was established in this region, because even though this peace came after the wars, after heavy negotiations, after bitter compromise, I hope that this peace agreement and this peaceful period of 10 years and even 15 had some good points, had some good angles which should be preserved.
Right, let us hope that they finally abandoned their double standard approach.
It would be very nice, and I hope that now their attention would be attracted by Africa and Middle East, and that we would not be so interested for them.
Mr. Antic, thank you very much!
To sum up what we have been talking about in this program, it really looks like the international community is still pursuing a double-standard policy in regards to Serbia and other former Yugoslavian regions.
Their approach is not new, and it usually back fires. The famous saying “Somoza may be a son of a bitch but he is our son of the bitch” has been attributed to a number of US presidents but the message it sends is clear. We have seen that in Latin America, in Africa, in Iraq, in Afghanistan – just to name a few; we have seen some of that in the Middle East which is now scorching in the hit of Arab Spring revolutions.
However, Mr. Antic said that in a long-run security situation in former Yugoslavia might turn for the better for the simple reason that the US is now taking more interest in Africa than in the Balkans.
But could security situation really improve in countries ruled by former mafia leaders? I have my doubts, but time will tell.
Today we shall talk about Kosovo and the investigation into the organ trafficking story dating back to the late 1990s.
Several people in Pristina have been charged with organ trafficking. “Similar offences,” the Council of Europe says, “have been committed in the late 1990s.” That was the subject of the report filed by Dick Marty, the reporter of the Council of Europe.
So, has there been any investigation into the facts unveiled in the Marty report? What consequences could the Kosovo leaders face and why?
We discussed these issues with some help from our guest speaker, Cedomir Antic, leading researcher with the Institute for Balkan Studies in Belgrade, Serbia.
In fact, we were reminded of the whole human organ trafficking scandal in Kosovo after today the news appeared that Kosovo's European Union justice mission has charged a Turk and an Israeli citizen with illegally trafficking organs at a clinic in Pristina which is the capital of Kosovo, a Balkan state which declared independence from Serbia in 2008.
Now, according to the report which was filed by the EU's police and justice mission EULEX, the District Court in Pristina has issued warrants for the arrest of a Turkish surgeon, called Yusuf Ercin Sonmez, and a citizen of Israel by the name of Moshe Harel.
So, now they are also subject to international wanted notices issued by Interpol.
These two people are charged with trafficking in persons, unlawful medical activity and organized crime, so it is like a full spectrum.
In fact, there is a whole group of people, and they are all Kosovo citizens, who have been charged by EULEX on the same case with similar offences, and they all are waiting for their trials to begin. But when I heard the news, my first thought was that those were the offences referred to by Dick Marty’s report.
You mean the one which actually made the news in December of last year?
That is right, but, however, it appeared that my impression was wrong, because these cases you have mentioned date back to the year 2008.
Which is obviously a different story.
We could remind our listeners of this report.
Back in December 2010 Swiss senator Dick Marty, who is also a reporter for the Council of Europe Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, presented a draft report which claimed that Prime Minister of Kosovo Mr. [Hashim] Thaçi had headed a mafia-style organized crime ring in the late 1990s that engaged in assassinations, beatings, organ trafficking and other crimes.
That are really serious offences.
This is an extremely serious offence, especially when we are talking about a head of state.
If we are talking about Dick Marty’s report, then things are moving quite slowly.
Now I suppose it is the right time to move to the Burning Point Press Desk.
Blic, which is a Serbian English-language daily, said that EULEX finally conducted “the tender for election of a seven-member team that shall investigate claims over body organ trade under the EULEX authority. The names of judges and prosecutors to investigate abductions, murders and organ trade as well as the involvement of the Kosovo Liberation Army leadership in those activities are still not known. However, as things are now, the former chief prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal, Carla Del Ponte, who recommended herself to lead the investigation and got support by Serbian prosecution, is not going to be a part of that team.” Which is quite strange, isn’t it?
It really takes them so long - almost six months after the facts have been made public.
This is not the first year that we have heard about these suspicious claims.
Then there were allegations, but I believe that Dick Marty has dug up some facts. So, he listed them in a report, and then it takes them almost six months to appoint judges.
According to Blic, this new team is going to have seven members including a special prosecutor. The special prosecutor is from one of the EU countries and has not been working within the EULEX until so far. That means that the prosecutor in question cannot be Del Ponte since Switzerland is not a member of the EU. The newly established team of prosecutors and judges would join the already formed EULEX team leading the preliminary investigation which has been going on since January.
This might actually mean that things are moving in the right direction, though slowly. But the reality is more complicated.
According to the same Blic, to its unofficial sources, “The investigation being led by the EULEX since January is stuck and is mainly focused on unsuccessful attempts of coming into possession of material pieces of evidence which would confirm doubts contained in the report by the Council of Europe. The success of the investigation depends on the testimony of eyewitnesses that Dick Marty talked with. That is why Marty insisted on several occasions that the EULEX should not lead the investigation because it does not have the capacity to protect witnesses. By the way, both Dick Marty and the Serbian side insisted on a team that should be capable of protecting witnesses in Kosovo.”
It is an important point, because if you cannot guarantee that witnesses are going to be protected even after the trial then you are not going to get people willing to testify.
If we remember the whole security situation in Kosovo is rather difficult and besides that some authorities at least used to belong to a mafia, do you think you could really protect witnesses in Kosovo?
I think if I was a witness in Kosovo I certainly would not be testifying.
It is interesting that Del Ponte was surprised at the whole issue because she actually publically brought the issue up in her book which was published three years ago. So, she is allegedly surprised by news that a competition was announced for the selection of a seven-member team which is obviously going to investigate the case within the UN mission in Kosovo. Mrs. Del Ponte said, “I know nothing about that but let us wait and see what is going to happen in the days to come.” She also added that she was ready to take part in that investigation at any time.
It is also interesting that she was not even aware of something that was going on in the case which she actually unveiled, [about which] she was the first one to ring the bell. It does seem a little bit inadequate. So, there is a whole series of inadequacies, something just does not fit. Besides there are also questions, as far as I know, related to EULEX.
There was something on Balkaninsight.com; they are saying that EULEX has not been efficient enough, particularly in the north. “The EULEX deputy head Andy Sparkes told Pristina daily newspaper Zeri that EULEX was not efficient enough, particularly in the north, but added that the biggest responsibility for success and failures falls on local institutions.”
“It’s not the job of the international community to achieve success or failure. This is the job that Kosovars have to do with our help,” Sparkes was quoted by Zeri as saying.
Again something is just not making sense.
It would seem logical that the international community should be a part of any investigation process.
Besides it is rather strange to me that the main responsibility should be assigend to local authorities. Responsibility in what? In investigating what the highest authorities actually did in 1990s?
It seems odd.
Serbian analysts actually talk of a double-standard policy that the international bodies have been applying to the Serbian region. And now we are joined by Cedomir Antic, researcher with the Institute for Balkan Studies in Belgrade.
I believe that international justice in the case of the latest Yugoslav wars is just perceived as some kind of war instrument, as regarding the parts in the war there was no understanding for punishing war crimes. I would say that in Serbia, in the former Yugoslavia, in Croatia, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, even though all governments were democratically elected they were not interested in prosecuting war crimes, especially those war crimes which were committed by their own national armies which were involved in those wars.
The international community was not inspired by some kind of universal Nuremberg justice, but they established a tribunal in the Hague which was only concentrated on the Yugoslav wars, and, as a matter of fact, it was obvious that the international court was actually involved in post-war efforts to reshape the outcome of the war.
And only the Serbian political leadership and Serbian high command was prosecuted. Ethnic Albanians and ethnic Bosnians were not prosecuted; there are only few of their people who were accused and later on sentenced for war crimes.
In Kosovo that situation was and actually is very obvious. Your audience might remember that at the beginning of NATO aggression against Serbia and the Serbian nation it was officially stated by high officials of the United States and its NATO allies that more than 100 thousand ethnic Albanians were killed and more than 500 thousand were banished from Serbia; later on it was revealed that out of 12 thousand people who were killed during the war more than 2600 were ethnic Serbs, which means that ethnic Serbs were victims twice more frequently according to total numbers than ethnic Albanians who were allegedly identified as the only victims.
When Carla Del Ponte revealed the affair related to internal organs [trafficking], she did it when she was no longer chief prosecutor; it was some kind of her last official address to the international public because she put it in her memoirs, and it was important for history but not for those victims and for the actual situation in Kosovo and in Serbia.
And then the Council of Europe asked Mr. Dick Marty to produce a report, that report was produced, and then Mr. Dick Marty was isolated, he was attacked from all sides, and now we are about to forget that report and EULEX would like to avoid greater instability in Kosovo region: Mr. Thaçi, who was mentioned in that report as someone who was involved, he is now the most influential person in Kosovo and he had full support from the United States and from the European Union.
I believe that this decision of EULEX to appoint some international judges to take this case it is a part of efforts to stop that course of events which was unintentionally published by Mrs. Del Ponte and which was in a very honest way presented to the international community by Mr. Dick Marty. I do not have much hope about EULEX justice because we have seen the deeds of EULEX in last three years. I do not believe that with Mrs. Del Ponte something would be better and would be different. Mr. Dick Marty was something of a bright spot of the European Union in the Kosovo situation, in the Kosovo crisis; Mrs. Del Ponte would not be, by my humble opinion, remembered as a good prosecutor and as a person who committed to reconciliation and justice in Serbia.
So, do I get you right that what we are witnessing now is again a case of double standards, because if we have sufficient evidence that the crime has been there and that some key officials, not only Hashim Thaçi, but also some of his closest allies, were involved in organ trafficking, and still the international bodies are just trying to cover it up? So, what is the point actually because what they are getting in a result is a small state run by criminals? So, what could be their logic?
That was an outcome of very narrow-minded policy of the United States in 1998-1999. They supported the extremists and semi-criminals in 1998.
...
Mr. Holbrooke was the one who negotiated with Milošević in those negotiations which led to bombing, and not only allies of Milošević were bombed but the entire nation was bombed, the nation which was against Milošević, which was involved possibly by support of the United States of America in elections which were forced. And what to say about those people? They established during the war the international court of law; only the main purpose of that court was political, not legal. And what now to say about their protégés? It was obvious even before they were involved in illegal activities.
Do I get you right now that you believe that no matter what the results could the investigation produce, the present team is likely to remain in power in Kosovo? Is my understanding correct?
By all means, because the entire nation is behind them, and you should know that in Kosovo during the last twelve years more than 940 Serbs have been killed while more than 250 Albanians, mostly political active, were killed as well. I believe that it was some kind of criminal engineering of political scene in Kosovo. The international community, especially the United States and some European states, even divided Serbs in Kosovo, and we now have one tiny minority, but this minority took part in parliamentary elections which attracted 20% of total lot among ethnic Serbs who support Thaçi. It was a great project, Mr. Thaçi and his party – they were a great project. We can see the same situation with Haradinaj, one of former Kosovo prime ministers, who was allegedly involved into war crimes, during his trial nine witnesses were killed, and he was released. When he was accused as a war criminal, he was prime minister, and then the international
representative in Kosovo received him, took a cup of coffee with him, said him farewell. Mrs. Del Ponte actually wrote it in her book that in Germany the federal government wanted even to make him reception of honor in the airport even though he was in his journey to The Hague. It was a part of political activity which is partially or even mainly aimed against vital interests of Republic of Serbia and the Serbian nation. It is obvious, and I do not say that ethnic Serbs were innocent; I do not say that the international community should not create international court of law, but this court of law is not the way. The nternational court of law which now exists for other countries which is financed by the United States while the United States decided not to hold its own citizens for that court, that court is not the way for international justice, because there is one great power which believes that it is above the international law.
But it is exceptional, right?
For me it is not.
It believes that it is exceptional?
Yes, it is exceptional.
Do you see that this strategy is still being applied to the region now?
I hope that the independence of Kosovo, the process which actually started in 1990, is stopped. However, it is obvious that in Northern and South-Western Serbia there are movements for autonomy and in future that would be the movements for independence which enjoy some kind of support of the international community. I would like to mention the region of Novi Pazar, so called Sanjak: there about 130 thousand ethnic Bosnians live, and they want to unite six municipalities in which more than 110 thousand ethnic Serbs live, and they would like to create some kind of autonomy and later on probably a federal republic inside of Serbia. They do not have an open support of the EU, but some European states and the USA created groups for Sanjak. And now I would ask why then for more than 110 thousand Serbs in Croatia who live in Krajina and who are much more threatened than Bosnians in Sanjak, why there is no group for Krajina, or group for Knin? It is the exact
truth that there are double standards. Not to mention Vojvodina. For example, in Vojvodina more than 70% of the population are ethnic Serbs, and there is a tiny group of ethnic Serbs predominantly who want autonomy because they want to have power, and they are supported by several institutions of the EU, even though they do not have support of people, but they use some kind of split which exists in ruling party of Serbia, Democratic Party, which was elected on the ground of some social and democratic issues, not national issues. In Vojvodina that tiny minority which represents maybe just 10% of electorate, when they want an independent electrical company for Vojvodina, when they want police, nobody said anything, while in Bosnia and Herzegovina where 90% of Serbs want to preserve the autonomy, when that autonomy is attacked by high representative of the United Nations, nobody with exceptions in some circles of Serbia and in Russia, nobody intervenes,
nobody reacts. Why? Because there are double standards, and we used to live with double standards, we do not want to accept that true is false.
What is your forecast? How do you see the security situation is going to develop in the region?
I hope that it will be better in future. As you know, we are now in the process of negotiating of technical issues between the government of Kosovo, so-called Republic of Kosovo, and Republic of Serbia. On the other hand, I believe that the majority of people in Serbia are firmly concentrated to our constitution of 2006. In Bosnia, even though the situation is fragile now, there is some kind of balance of power between Republic of Serbska and, on the other hand, higher representative of Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I hope that the European Union would keep that balance of power, would not try to challenge it, because we should be a part of the European Union but with knowing the truth about the situation in this region. It is not only impossible, it is injustice to resolve Serbia as a state and, on the other hand, to establish some kind of unitary Bosnia - artificially and against the will of majority of its people. I believe that the European
Union and the United States of America should recognize and approve the situation which was established when the peace was established in this region, because even though this peace came after the wars, after heavy negotiations, after bitter compromise, I hope that this peace agreement and this peaceful period of 10 years and even 15 had some good points, had some good angles which should be preserved.
Right, let us hope that they finally abandoned their double standard approach.
It would be very nice, and I hope that now their attention would be attracted by Africa and Middle East, and that we would not be so interested for them.
Mr. Antic, thank you very much!
To sum up what we have been talking about in this program, it really looks like the international community is still pursuing a double-standard policy in regards to Serbia and other former Yugoslavian regions.
Their approach is not new, and it usually back fires. The famous saying “Somoza may be a son of a bitch but he is our son of the bitch” has been attributed to a number of US presidents but the message it sends is clear. We have seen that in Latin America, in Africa, in Iraq, in Afghanistan – just to name a few; we have seen some of that in the Middle East which is now scorching in the hit of Arab Spring revolutions.
However, Mr. Antic said that in a long-run security situation in former Yugoslavia might turn for the better for the simple reason that the US is now taking more interest in Africa than in the Balkans.
But could security situation really improve in countries ruled by former mafia leaders? I have my doubts, but time will tell.
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