Global Voices » Serbia

Serbia: May 6 Elections Results

Veronica Khokhlova — Sat, 12 May 2012 23:14:26 +0000

Eric Gordy of East Ethnia sums up the results of the first round of the elections in Serbia and predicts what is to come after the May 20 runoff: “Assuming that Tadić defeats Nikolić by his usual narrow margin in two weeks, a government that looks a lot like the previous one, only less stable and more corrupt, and lots of signs that there is a good number of angry people in a system that remains pretty lopsided and pretty dysfunctional. No signs that things will get much better, but happily no signs that they will get a whole lot worse.”

Serbia: Monitoring the Elections Via Citizen Media

Rayna St. — Sun, 06 May 2012 23:06:37 +0000

Six countries in Europe have been voting on May 6, 2012, amongst which are France, electing its new President, Greece, voting for a new parliament, and Serbia. The latter is at “its most important election” since Slobodan Milosevic was demised in 2000: nearly 7 million of the Serbian citizens eligible to vote will elect the president, the parliament and various municipal and provincial governors, choosing amongst 18 lists [sr] for seats in the parliament and 12 candidates [sr] running for the head of state.

The preliminary polls in Serbia were showing low participation, and various blogs have echoed the bitter irony and disillusionment with the perspective of this crucial election taking place within the hammering pervasive austerity that has spead all over Europe. The May 6 elections will have a decisive say on Serbia's relations with the European Union, as well as with Kosovo, whose independence Serbia refuses to recognize.

A campaign flyer during the pre-electoral silence period. Image from user Zoltan Dognar on Twitter

The main fight seems to be between Tomislav Nikolic (the Serbian Progressive Party, or SNS, the opposition) and the current president Boris Tadic (the Democratic Party, DS). The political positions of the two candidates are quite similar regarding the EU, although the situation in the region would not be comfortable if Nikolic won: Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina still consider him the heir of his political mentor, Vojislav Seselj, an ultranationalist and the former president of the Serbian Radical Party, currently on trial for war crimes at The Hague.

With the recent flawed elections in other countries, Serbians were concerned for the transparency of their election process. In order to prevent fraud, an Ushahidi-based election crowdmap has been set up to allow abuse reports to be filled in. The initiative Digitalni Glas Srbije (”Digital Voice of Serbia”) [sr] was launched to monitor, aggregate and echo reactions prior to and on the election day.

Very few blogs have been publishing content on the election day itself, but Twitter was babbling with reactions, pictures and discussions, using the hashtags #izbori (”elections”), #izbori2012, #srbija (”Serbia”).

In an attempt to account for regularity, an initiative [sr] directed by the Serbian Medija Centar (”Media Center”) was aimed at monitoring how well the pre-electoral silence was observed. Political parties are prohibited from campaining during the two days immediately preceding the election day itself.

Thus, the pre-electoral silence started on Thursday, May 3, at midnight, and two reports [sr] were issued using various metrics. Their repeated calls to fellow citizens to report any infringements of this rule were followed by a number of pictures circulated through Twitter and showing illegal campaining.

Also on Twitter, youth disillusionment has been reflected:

@DunjaLazic:sutra su dakle prvi izbori na kojima mogu da glasam a baš i nemam neki izbor

So tomorrow will be held the first election where I can vote, but I just do not have any choice

Pro-SNS texts and irony. Image by user Bildi13 on Twitter

Such opinions were posted along with others [sr] discussing the relevance of the pre-electoral silence. Also, it turned out that various parties have been sending text messages to citizens' mobile phones during the pre-electoral silence:

Dragi sugrajdani, jedino sto je potrebno Srbiji so PROMENE. Srpska napredna stanka to moze doneti. Zajedno pokrenimo Srbiju. Izadji i glasaj!

Dear fellow citizens, the only thing Serbia needs are CHANGES. The Serbian Progressive Party can deliver that. Let's move Serbia together. Get out and vote!

This type of illegal campaining has been reported to be very frequent from SNS's side - and people reacted with sarcasm: one user replied to the invitation to vote for the SNS saying that “even Seselj got a text message from the progressives.”

Many Twitter users were also arguing about the respective candidates and their influence on politics if elected [ru]:

@VladMiskovic: Још само четири сата до пада ЕУ режима у Србији! Гласајте против ЕУ окупације Србије, гласајте за @srpski_radikali! #izbori #izbori2012

Only four more hours until the fall of the EU's regime in Serbia! Vote against the EU occupation of Serbia, vote for @srpski_radikali!

Global Voices Author Sasa Milosevic replied to this call to vote for the Serbian Radical Party [sr]:

@journalist92: @VladMiskovic @srpski_radikali . Srpski radikali ce da nas izvuku. Glas za njih znaci glas za oruzje, ratove, krvoprolice i Srbiju u mraku

@VladMiskovic @srpski_radikali Serbian Radicals that will get us out. A vote for them means a vote for guns, wars, bloodshed, and Serbia [drowned] in the dark

Numerous pictures on Twitter also showed a huge number of annulled ballots: very often, a small, rapidly penned Batman was indicated as the candidate of choice, but hand-written “Pirate Party” or “The Internets” have also been reported.

During the whole day, the levels of participation were announced [sr] by the Centre for Free Elections and Democracy (CeSID) and preliminary results from the diaspora were circulated on Twitter:

@NMojovic: rezultati iz toronta i čikaga: Tadić 48, Koštunica 37, Glišić 33, Nikolić 16, J. Šešelj 12, Dačić 8, Jovanović 7, Stanković 5 #izbori

Results from Toronto and Chicago: Tadic 48%, Kostunica 37, Glisic 33, Nikolic 16, J. Seselj 12, Dacic 8, Jovanovic 7, Stankovic 5 #izbori

So far, little is known about the preliminary results and even less information has been diffused regarding the voting in Kosovo. The OSCE mission was organizing the elections there and, even though the turnout was low at 2pm (only 17%), there seem to have been no problems:

@danielrhamilton: Just spoke to Serbia's State Secretary in #Kosovo Oliver Ivanovic. Election turnout light but no reported problems so far. #izbori2012

It is time to count now… and see what the outcome of the May 6 elections will be for Serbia and the region.

Serbia: Upcoming Elections Offer Few Choices, Inspire Apathy and Humor

Danica Radisic — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 00:37:09 +0000

Much unbeknownst to most people in the world, Serbia is, in many ways, looking at its most important election since the 2000 revolutionary elections that toppled the government of Slobodan Milosevic. For months now, the quiet before yet another political storm in the Balkans has been present on the streets and in homes throughout the country. The lack of will among voters to put up with more promises of reform and progress is now almost palpable, since state, provincial and municipal elections were announced for May 6 [en] just weeks ago.

As politicians and their parties have started campaigning avidly, so have many bloggers broken their silence on this issue. What most seem to express is one form or another of apathy and whom not to vote for.

These political opinions, or lack thereof, are most often expressed on social networks these days, with many taking to Facebook and posting public notes on the subject. A young man from Novi Sad posted one such note, titled ELECTIONS. Why NOT to vote for the current government [sr], with a list of facts, including debt, inflation, unemployment, and activities of several Serbian ministries since 2008, that the current government is responsible for:

- Debt in 2008, 20.53 billion Euros, in 2012, 25.14 billion Euros
- Exchange rate in 2008, 80.3788RSD = 1€, in 2012, 111.634RSD = 1€
- Average [net] salary in 2008, 47,883RSD, in 2012, 36,639RSD (both are unrealistic amounts as average salaries of all employed citizens are counted, without those who are unemployed, while it is common knowledge that outside major cities people work for a minimum wage of 24,000RSD)
- There are 200,000 people employed by this government, while over 400,000 others have lost their jobs, although one should take into account that employment rates have been pumped up by temporary jobs, such as newsstands that employ and fire some 40 people annually, making it questionable how many jobs are actually permanently retained. […]

The list goes on and is only one of many like it that mention the factual amounts spent by the current government and their political counterparts in the name of reform and betterment. Serbs have a tendency, due to the country’s turbulent past, to be well aware of political and economic matters and many are just as well informed when it comes to the European and global economies and political situations.

One of Serbia’s most popular bloggers, whom we have quoted here before, also calls attention to unemployment and other political and economic failures of the past four years in a text titled Jobs Are Out There Waiting, Just As Soon As Elections Are Over [sr]. Mahlat bases this particular blog post on the campaign promises of over a dozen political parties taking part in the upcoming elections that are all highly focused on raising employment and lowering national debt, but also includes comparison and contrast to EU countries:

During this pre-election time, we could open hundreds of topics related to the hundreds of issues that this country is realistically faced with, but I am most touched, irritated and flabbergasted by the matter of employment, the large number of those unemployed, the rising unemployment rate and, of course, the de-partisation of that.

Serbia has the same problem that all the countries in Europe have - lowered number of jobs, large unemployment rates among young people that is on the rise each year, pregnant women losing their jobs, the problem of mothers with small children finding employment…

The crisis that began in 2008 is still current. The unemployment rate in the Euro Zone is at 21%… The Institute for Statistics of the Republic of Serbia reported in January that the unemployment rate in Serbia was at 23.7% at the end of November of 2011. […]

What we are battling is equal to the battle in EU countries - with rising unemployment trends. And everyone claims that they have issues with inadequate training among employees, that there should be reforms in the education system, that there are no real programs for employing the young. […]

After a set of comparisons and contrasts to European statistics and mentions of campaign employment promises, Mahlat concludes:

If you’ve come this far [in reading], it must be clear to you by now that we have the same issues and that jobs won’t appear even with the help of a magic trick, so I ask those comrades who are promising them to turn to stabilizing the nation so that they can then speak of creating jobs. And to come out with a plan. How? When? They must have some idea of this?

Because if they keep promising to give what they don’t have, we won’t budge from this dead spot. Serbia has to work.

Serbia shares the fate of Europe, to which it territorially belongs, is economically bound, so don’t go hollering about handing out gifts that you don’t have to give.

In conclusion - according to the Institute for Statistics of the Republic of Serbia, in November 2011 there were 691,841 unemployed older that 15, 2,224,508 employed, as well as 3,377,510 inactive.

I’m supposing I belong to those 3,377,510.

I want to be active. I don’t expect gifts, but rather an opportunity.

Who’s offering?

Although many of the political parties running in this year’s election and their candidates have become active on social networks in recent months and, particularly, weeks - those writing online independently of any party or campaign don’t seem to be showing support for any of the choices on the ballots. In fact, most are writing against voting for someone. Many, as Mahlat mentions in her blog post, note the uncanny similarities of all the parties’ campaigns, platforms and promises. One blogger puts it all in one short blog post titled Promises, promises… [sr]:

You’ll be better off voting for us…

Said the representatives of every single party in Serbia in the past few days…

I don’t want it to be better for me… Having it good would be quite enough… You know the gradation - Good - Better - Best… Since I have it BAD now, I want it to be good. Better is the next step after that… I can’t recall if there’s anything they haven’t promised.

How are they not ashamed, they themselves know how much they’re lying and I’m sure the people are aware of all this…

[…]

The voter apathy is as apparent in other texts as it is in this one. On the other hand, Serbs have often shown in the past that they have a good sense of humor, even in the darkest of times, and seem to be showing it again. Many blogs jest with the upcoming elections, while some ridicule the candidates. One blogger has written a series of posts titled Elections 2012 [sr], in which he describes some of the candidates and their parties in a satirical tone, then adorns his texts with photos to boot:

"And the third little piggy… made his house from concrete" - feat. Ivica Dacic, current Minister of Internal Affairs and presidential candidate. Image courtesy of Vujaklija.com, Serbia's premier user-generated online dictionary of slang (used with permission).

(Other images in this post include this one of the “Preokret” coalition partners Vuk Draskovic (SPO) and Cedomir Jovanovic (LDP) in Jedi mode, and this one of Vojislav Kostunica, once hailed as the revolutionary of the decade, now often compared to Hans Moleman from The Simpsons.

While most have taken to serious criticism or outright ridicule of the candidates and elections in general, some have started calling for an organized and obvious boycott of the May 6 elections. Horizont blog [sr] and others have reposted and written about a Facebook group called “Project: Citizens have the power - 99% of Serbia” [sr], which is openly calling for boycott, even recommending options that voters have for boycotting:

[…] 1. Empty ballot
2. Invalid ballot
3. Abstinence

Option 1 can easily be abused as politically affiliated members can fill empty ballots in while counting ballots.

Options 2 and 3 are solid choices. If voter turn-out is very low, then this low turn-out and a large number of “creative drawings” logic and common sense would suggest that after the elections we question whether or not the existing political options have any LEGITIMACY in the eyes of the people. We remind you that the election laws and the Constitution allow for elections to be LEGAL even if a mere 100,000 voters vote.

A new option for those who are sick of all the existing political options is the following:

TAKE YOUR BALLOT FROM YOUR POLLING STATION WITH YOU

Serbia: May 6 Parliamentary Vote Roundup

Veronica Khokhlova — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:49:40 +0000

Bill Kralovec posts a short roundup on the upcoming parliamentary elections in Serbia, scheduled for May 6, and shares his “political platform,” asking Serbian readers to help him “match which party most resonates with [his] opinions.”

The Balkans: Remembering the Bosnian War, 20 Years On

Veronica Khokhlova — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 10:43:52 +0000

A red plastic chair for each person killed in Sarajevo in the war that began 20 years ago. A whole street lined up with red chairs, all empty but for some flowers on some of them. Those who could have sat in these chairs - 11,541 people - are long gone.

On April 6, 2012, thousands of people came to this stunning makeshift memorial stretching along Sarajevo's main street, in order to honor the memory of the victims of the Siege of Sarajevo, which lasted from April 5, 1992, to February 29, 1996 (some of the photos of the memorial are here, here, and here).

Red chairs are displayed along Sarajevo's main street as the city marks the 20th anniversary of the start of the Bosnian War. 11541 red chairs represent the 11,541 Sarajevans who were killed in the 1992-1995 siege of Sarajevo. Photo by SULEJMAN OMERBASIC, copyright © Demotix (04/06/12)

Online, numerous texts have appeared around the time of the sad anniversary; memories, photos and thoughts on the meaning of what went on in Bosnia in the 1990s abound (e.g., here, here, here, here, and here).

On April 5, Damir Šagolj, a Bosnian photojournalist and a survivor of the siege - who, in October 2011, posted a powerful photo report on his visit to the detention facility for war criminals in the Hague, aka “the Hague Hilton - wrote this about his wartime memories and work:

[…] I don’t have any of my pictures from the 92-95 anymore. I shot many – mostly of dead people, of destruction. Very few had any life in them. Then, just as killings stopped and a different war continued in November 1995 I abandoned my photos; I didn’t want to have them anymore.

Not a smart move, but it was what I wanted at the moment – to forget, to put behind. To move forward.

All I have now are the cracks in my memory to peek through and imagine lives before we became just numbers. Only the weed grows around ruins, just like nails and hair on the dead bodies – the reminder.

I had all my photos in one room, at my former army unit in Vrazova street. I would walk past that building every day and all I had to do is to use the key I kept for many years after and pick up my films. I didn’t. Then a rich man bought the building and my archive went where I wanted it to go – into trash.

No matter how hard I try to explain what I did, it doesn’t work. Then, just a moment after, it all makes perfect sense again.

Soon after, it all became very abstract – the faces faded into shapes, names into numbers, lives into bones… I don’t trust my memory any more, it is selective and dazed.

That’s why it was important in Sarajevo to have people from outside who were stronger and more sober. They meet these days in Sarajevo for the big anniversary re-union. Probably only very few really understand how important was what they were doing 92-95.

Without them, the history would be written by same those who killed the man.

Thank you.

A Facebook page - Sarajevo 2012: A Meeting of War Reporters & Sarajevo Friends - was set up for the journalists' reunion; it contains the schedule of events, photos and notes from some of those who were able to attend. Edward Serotta, journalist, photographer and the director of Centropa.org, wrote this:

[…] Last weekend was one long emotional charge–it was like holding on to an electrical current and as soon as I let go of it, I felt everything drain away. Being together with so many people I respect, and who gave their all to bring this story to the world twenty years ago, was, at least for me, ennobling. […]

We all shared the same cause back then (those who came to Sarajevo for the reunion and those who didn't): to bear witness–photograph, record, document the events that proved the so-called civilized world was eating itself alive. We risked life and limb to do it, and lived very much on the edge–and we lived very intensely. […]

All that intensity we put into our work and all that commitment to document the horrors and the bravery, the big stories and the small, are way behind us now. […] But for one blustery April weekend in 2012, a few of us gathered together and remembered what we shared, what we covered, how we lived, and how we tried to help–in that limited way that each of us could.

Photojournalist Gary Knight posted this note:

Sitting in my studio in Boston reflecting on the last four days in Sarajevo - one of the most emotional experiences I think I have ever had. A bitter sweet embrace with a city and cherished friends with whom I shared so many defining experiences during the utter despair of the siege. As wonderful as it was to see you all I left wondering how peace could have gone so badly wrong. Bosnia deserved a better peace than the one Dayton gave it. I have travelled far and wide since the war in Bosnia ended but rarely to a place as utterly depressing. There is much we can still do there………..

Zdenka Pregelj (@CountessBezuhov), a Sarajevo native who has been photographing the city since 2005, posted Nic Robertson's CNN report from the journalists' reunion and wrote:

This is very emotional for me. At that time I worked for Television in Sarajevo and was meeting Nic and Chris day in day out. Thank you Nic for coming back after 20 years.

A Bosnian woman, Berina Hodzic, lays a flower on one of the red chairs that were installed along Sarajevo's main street to mark the 20th anniversary of the start of the Bosnian War. Photo by SULEJMAN OMERBASIC, copyright © Demotix (04/06/12).

For the past few weeks, YakimaGulagLiteraryGazett and Sarajevo Seyahatname have been posting links to media and blog coverage of the 20th anniversary of the Bosnian War. The latter posted a link to this short item from Pictures of War, a Tumblr blog, about “some unsung heroes of the Sarajevo Siege” - James Mason's 1992 photo of Sarajevo's garbage collectors, accompanied by this note:

Being a trashman in Sarajevo was probably as dangerous as being a frontline soldier. A lot of them died in the course of their work, either shot dead by snipers or killed by artillery. Without trash pickup the city would have descended into a middle-ages like morass of filth and disease.

Another photo by James Mason has been used to illustrate an article about the anniversary [sr] that appeared in the Serbian online newspaper e-novine.com. The links to this and several other related articles (including the one [sr] on the memorial rally organized by Žene u crnom (”Women in Black”) in Belgrade) were provided by Belgrade-based Pedja Popovic, in a comment to the BalkanInsight report stating that “[n]o one from the Serbian government will attend the April 6 commemoration of the start of the Bosnian Serb siege [of Sarajevo].

Popovic wrote:

Not all of media in Serbia ignored sad anniversary. […]

James Mason's photo, taken in winter 1993, is of a girl holding a few loaves of bread, with a breadline in the background - and here is the photographer's description:

Distribution of bread
Sarajevo

This girl had just received her family's bread ration. I had hooked up with a kid about 11 and he was guiding me around the city, showing me where it was safe to walk. The girl was a friend of his from school and was glad to see him. It's amazing how fast the kids in Sarajevo adapted to the war.

Reader lalos posted this comment [sr] about the photo in the comments section at e-novine.com:

Rasplaka me ona slika sa devojčicom koja je puna sreće jer drži nekoliko vekni hleba u naručju.

Prokleti ratovi i oni koji su bombardovali Sarajevo.

This photo of the girl who is very happy because she's got a few loaves of bread in her hands has made me cry.

Damn wars and those who bombed Sarajevo.

Serbia: Controversy Over Draža Mihailović's Rehabilitation

Sinisa Boljanovic — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 22:47:19 +0000

Dragoljub Draža Mihailović was a commander of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, also known as the Chetnik movement, during World War II. In 1946, he was captured by the communist Yugoslav authorities, convicted of high treason and war crimes, sentenced to death and executed.

The tribunal for his rehabilitation, which began in June 2010 on the request by Draža's grandson Vojislav Mihailović, is nearing the end now. Although the request has been supported by some academicians, professors and politicians, the public in Serbia is divided. For some, Draža Mihailović is an innocent victim, for others, he is a justly convicted collaborator of the occupiers, who committed crimes not only in Serbia, but in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia as well.

Some politicians, NGOs and citizens from these countries have also reacted to the news. They have a more or less unified view of Draža Mihailović, considering him a criminal and a nationalist who had the idea to establish the so-called Greater Serbia.

Draža Mihailović. Photo: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Muzej Revolucije Narodnosti Jugoslavije, in the public domain.

Ivo Josipović, the President of Croatia, said to the Croatian daily Jutarnji List:

Draža Mihailović was a war criminal… I could remember a lot of cases where [Chetniks] collaborated, not being anti-fascists, but collaborated with the Germans, Italians and [Ustaše] fighting against the [partisans]… If the trial is finished as the media are announcing – but wait for the end of it -
it will be a bad step in regard to the Second World War and anti-fascism.

The Movement of War Victims from Bosnia issued a statement, in which they said this, among other things:

Bosnia and Herzegovina paid dearly for the Greater Serbia ideology, one of whose trademarks Draža Mihailović is. On the occasion of his rehabilitation we are seriously worried about sovereignty and peace in our country and we are afraid because we don’t know whether the atrocities and deaths which we experienced 20 years ago are behind us forever. Equaling the fascist and anti-fascist movements is the same as equaling victims and criminals from the period of aggression on our country.

However, Vuk Jeremić, Serbia's minister of foreign affairs, thinks the rehabilitation of Draža Mihailović is an internal issue of Serbia.

Serbian blogger Filip Mladenović wrote in his post:

[…] However, I am particularly irritated with the revision of history. It’s not clear to me who is in favor of relativizing our ancestors’ anti-fascist fight during the Second World War now by attempting to rehabilitate the Ravnogorski movement and its leader Draža Mihailović. Why does Serbia throw itself out of the winning anti-fascist coalition by these auto-goals? Why does it disown so many victims who perished honorably and courageously during the fight against Hitler’s Nazi regime? […]

There are more than 350 comments on Mladenović's post. Below are some of them.

Johnnyt wrote:

You are spitting at the man who was a genuine fighter against fascists and communists, while criminal [Tito], the president of the genocidal country of SFR Yugoslavia, is loafing in the House of Flowers […]

Dextera said:

Filip, you don’t know a lot of things. You have exclusively read and cited official history created by Tito’s regime. You don’t know that the trial of Draža Mihailović was a fixed [political] trial, you don’t know what kind of documents there are, you don’t know the role of the [Comintern], you don’t know who Dragić Joksimović was, you don’t know that Draža’s sister was killed by the Soviet soldiers when they entered Belgrade in 1944, etc. You would like to make things to be black and white, just the way Tito was doing.

Cult said:

It has to banned by law to falsify history and rehabilitate national traitors and collaborators with the occupiers.

niccolo said:

It’s futile to discuss again who killed more civilians – the Chetniks or the Partisans. However, does any of the participants in the discussion realize that the procedure of rehabilitation is not related to the question of whether someone committed a crime or not, but to the question of whether the accused one had a fair trial or had no trial at all?

A Belgrade-based historian Ljubinka Trgovčević said this to the Slobodna Evropa (Free Europe) web site:

If it was only about the reconstruction of the court trial, then the problem would be much less anyway. In this way, it goes without saying that he was acquitted, as well as his movement, of everything that he did or did not do.

Mirko Kovač, a well-known novelist from Croatia, said this to the same source:

Super. People could hardly wait for it to be done, so they could rehabilitate their own ones. This region is the same as Serbia. People here dream of rehabilitating [Ante Pavelić].

Dušan Stefanović from Chicago left this comment to the Slobodna Evropa article:

I don't see who was betrayed by Draža in the war. He was fighting against Tito's communists, Pavelić's soldiers [the Ustaše], Hitler's fascists… all enemies of the Serbian people during the war. He saved thousands of American pilots, more than 500 of them were evacuated only from the village of Pranjani in 1943. De Gaulle and Truman decorated him with the highest medals for his role in the war. Above all, General Mihailović did not betray Serbia.

The Balkans: Debating Angelina Jolie's Film and the Legacy of War

Veronica Khokhlova — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 00:50:15 +0000

Angelina Jolie’s In the Land of Blood and Honey, a film set in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War, has received much publicity, both positive and negative, in the Balkans, adding fuel to the ongoing debate on the legacy of the bloodshed that took place in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

It appears that many of those participating in the discussion of the film haven't had a chance to actually watch it.

Belgrade-based blogger Viktor Markovic wrote this on his Belgraded blog:

For starters, I have to say that even though it was labeled as “a propaganda movie” I must say that the propaganda failed on the very first step as it was extremely difficult to even find the movie to see it in the first place. It’s like it’s being shown in just a couple of cinemas in the world – one could say that because of this poor marketing, the movie is a disgrace to proper propaganda movies. […]

Angelina Jolie received a Person of the Year award from the Bosnian newspaper Dnevni Avaz, prior to attending the premiere of 'In the Land of Blood and Honey' at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Photo by EUROPA NEWSWIRE, copyright © Demotix (10/01/12).

UK-based Marko Attila Hoare wrote this on his Greater Surbiton blog:

Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut, In the Land of Blood and Honey, is difficult to watch. Difficult to watch in the sense that, here in the UK, it hasn’t been released, and there doesn’t appear to be any information about when or where it will be – certainly not on the movie’s official website, nor in any of the reviews that have appeared in UK newspapers. I spent the first three days of this week in Washington DC, where I found that the film was no longer playing in that city either, and that Amazon.com would not sell me the download since my debit card had a UK address. I have now managed to see the film – unfortunately, only the English-language version – via a link posted by a friend on Facebook.

In the Land of Blood and Honey‘s unavailability for viewing is odd, considering the widespread publicity it has received, the controversy that has surrounded it and the fame and popularity of the director. […]

For UK-based Alan Jaksic of Balkan Anarchist, who has blogged at length about In the Land of Blood and Honey, not watching the film in its entirety was a conscious choice:

[…] I haven't seen the film myself; I've only seen clips of it on YouTube. And I'm not really sure I want to watch it — not because I'm afraid that I'll be deeply offended by it, but because I'm not that keen to see such an emotionally-charged war movie wherever it's set on the planet! […]

Markovic wrote this about Jolie's depiction of the war:

[…] There are some really disturbing scenes in the movie. This was one of the things that upset the public opinion in Serbia most, because the public opinion doesn’t accept that anyone on Serbian side was that cruel. Unfortunately, I believe real war was even more cruel and disturbing than any movie can describe. […]

And here is Hoare's take on the same aspect of the film:

[…] Nor, however, are the horrors and violence portrayed here of the comic-book, caricatured variety. Inevitably, this film has come under fire from the Great Serb, genocide-denying lobby for supposedly being ‘anti-Serb’, and portraying ‘the Serbs’ as monsters. Well, it is ‘anti-Serb’ in the same way that films like Schindler’s List or The Pianist are ‘anti-German’. […]

Australia-based Ina Vukic wrote this in her post about Jolie's film:

[…] In all its history, movie making has been about bringing to the world portrayals of factual as well as fictional events. Jolie has brought a factual story of horror told by fictional characters. There’s no propaganda in that. But even if it were propaganda then it’s high time for more of it because justice has not yet been served to all the innocent victims, and especially not to rape victims in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. […]

Jaksic explains why Jolie's film is considered “offensive” by many in Serbia:

[…] Many of us Serbs feel that the film revamps that deeply negative, media image about our people, which Western viewers had become accustomed to during the '90s, that we are a nation of cruel, sadistic, war criminals, hell-bent on ethnic cleansing, and as such, we were as bad as the Nazis of World War Two! Now, I don't deny the seriousness and the gravity of all those allegations of war crimes etc. against a whole host of Serb leaders, both political and military, all of which has coloured people's negative views on us as a people. However, it must be borne in mind that all this negative press from that time left us Serbs, both back home and in the diaspora, feeling dehumanised and demonised, but most of all, misunderstood by the world. […]

However, what really offends and frustrates a lot of us Serbs about Jolie's film, whether we've seen it in full or just clips of it, is how it mainly depicts the suffering of one side of the war, i.e. the Bosniak side. This doesn't mean that we object to the production of any film that may portray the Bosniaks as the main victims; after all, they did suffer greatly during that war from 1992 to 1995, and we shouldn't deny that at all. However, what bothers a lot of us Serbs is how very little is known about the suffering of our own people during that conflict and others in the '90s. […] Of course, we Serbs are aware of war crimes committed by our own against others, and many of us do feel ashamed of all that. But we are also concerned about the fate of our own victims from those conflicts too, and it displeases us how even now very little is known about them. […]

Markovic, in his turn, explains why it is wrong to treat In the Land of Blood and Honey as “an anti-Serbian movie”:

[…] Yes, the movie has only the Serbian military as bad guys. But, and this seems to be hard to grasp for great majority of Serbs: this fact doesn’t make the movie anti-Serbian. This is because – are you ready for this – one Serbian military squadron does not represent even the entire Serbian army, let alone the entire Serb population. But it’s the trap majority of Serb population tends to fall into: we defend ourselves even if no one is really attacking us, and by doing so we end up defending the real bad guys – the war criminals. […]

Jaksic also writes on the “tendency among all Balkan nations to feel offended by another nation's sense of victimhood”:

[…] On many occasions while surfing the net, reading messages on various Ex-Yu forums, comments under YouTube videos and discussion pages of Wikipedia articles, I've seen how easily offended, for instance, my fellow Serbs can feel when they hear Croats accusing them of war crimes against them, and unsurprisingly, the same is the case the other way round! And it's not just the recent conflicts that cause heated disputes; even different interpretations of distant periods of history can rouse offense, such as the Serbian and Bosniak view of Ottoman rule in the Balkans! And as we can see with the reception of Jolie's In the land of blood and honey, even films by outsiders can offend local nations, and not just some YouTube comments!

Vukic hopes that “Jolie’s movie will trigger more investigations and prosecution of all rapists from the war in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina”:

[…] So, I say: “good on you, Angelina! Now make a movie on the thousands upon thousands of rape victims in Croatia because Croatian women who were raped by the Serbs during the 1990’s war still await their justice. […]

Markovic points out that the film isn't likely to serve as the closing argument in the painful post-war debate:

[…] the thing that puzzles me the most, and I know I am not the only one is – how is this movie supposed to contribute to reconciliation? Which is, according to Jolie’s statements, her goal with this. […]

For an overview of some of the online Serbian reactions to Jolie's film, please see this GV text by Sasa Milosevic, who has also written about the film on his Huffington Post blog, here.

Serbia: First Conviction for Online Hate Speech

Jasmina Babic — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 23:37:16 +0000

The High Court in Belgrade has recently brought its first conviction for online hate speech, sentencing Simo Vladičić to three months in prison and two years of probation for threatening members of the LGBT community via the Facebook group 500.000 Srba protiv gej parade/500,000 Serbs against gay parade in September 2011, when the gay pride parade in Belgrade was canceled due to security reasons. In a similar case, the European Court of Human Rights has recently ruled that hate speech against members of the LGBT community cannot be justified by the right to freedom of speech.

Global Voices Podcast: Remembering Our School Days

Jamillah Knowles — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 23:55:48 +0000

Hello World!

Welcome to the Global Voices podcast. In this edition we’re going to school. From extreme teaching on the Niger River, to hearing truths from our younger friends, and thinking back to some of the fondest or most memorable educational moments of Global Voices contributors.

So, what were school days like for Global Voices people?

An explosive memory

Paula Goes from Brazil is our multilingual editor. Here is one of her funnier memories from journalism school, where a “glow in the dark” potato-mayonnaise salad served at a superhero costume party caused a frenetic rush of students to the hospital, to the great amusement of doctors and passersby.

Everyone survived to laugh at the story years later.

Teaching the internet from a boat

In this episode we also have an amazing tale of teaching, boats and the river.

Eddie Avila, director of Rising Voices talks with Boukary Konaté in Mali about the Segou Villages Project that brought Internet to villages along the Niger River by boat. Read more about the journey that brought internet to 800 villagers and see Boukary's photos shared on Flickr.

An unforgettable teacher

Memories of school days may be closely linked to friends or enemies but they may also be related to places and of course teachers. Some say that it is both the best and the worst teachers that stay in your mind years after you have left school. Veroniki Krikoni in Greece shares a beautiful tribute to a time, place and a teacher.

Playground politics

These times of learning in our childhood can help to make us who we are today. Cyrus Farivar is a journalist, producer and author. He describes an impulsive moment in the playground that landed him in the most trouble he's ever experienced in school… after biting his friend.

Also recalling a formative moment on the playground, Juliana Rincón Parra from Colombia describes how she was forced to negotiate a minefield of gender politics in order to play a simple game of “house” with her friends.

How Ethan learned to type so fast

School can be a time where you realise where you may want to go later in life. But getting there is not always easy.

A boy named Ethan Zuckerman, who grew up to be the co-founder of Global Voices, tells how his struggles with handwriting in the 4th grade almost caused him to lose hope… until he learned to type. Fast!

Standing up to bullies

Having a hard time at school with teachers can lead to smart solutions as Ethan’s story proves. Unfortunately, some of us grew up surrounded with few friends and more enemies. Bullying at school is an international problem and finding the right answer is not easy.

One person who has suffered at the hand of bullies is Vuk. He’s a 12-year old blogger and son of Danica Radisic in Serbia. Together they explained what happened and what school is like under this type of pressure. If you’re facing a bully, don’t go through it alone and find someone you can talk to, he says.

Studying abroad

Francois-Xavier Ada-Affana is a writer and translator and describes himself on his blog as “a nice Cameroonian finding his way in the world.”

He tells us how studying international relations in Cyprus, Greece has helped shape his views on history and education, opening his mind to new cultures and people.

The long walk to school

For our final story we have a journey. A trip into the past, and the 3 kilometre path that Victor Kaonga walked to school each day in Malawi as an 8-year old boy, often in rain with banana leaves as umbrellas. Today, Victor is a broadcast journalist. Driving past the place where he used to go to school, he says, “The distance remains the same, it's only that now it appears much shorter.”

Thanks for listening

That’s all we have for this edition. School and educational stories are a reminder of the things that make us so similar no matter where we are in the world. The thing that brings us together are those years when we were all inexperienced. Now we can look back and wonder at what we have become.

Huge thanks to all of our contributors who took us back in their lives as well as those who shared a picture of education today. I think we all learned something!

Music Credits

In the podcast you can hear lots of lovely Creative Commons music. Thanks to Mark Cotton for his fantastic creations and thanks also to all of the wonderful voice over performances and clips that help to glue the podcast together. The Global Voices Podcast, the world is talking, we hope you’re listening!

Balkans: Online Platform Tracks Reports From Areas Hit by Record Snowfall

Danica Radisic — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:12:22 +0000

Since last week, the Balkans have been hit by massive snow storms, the likes of which have not been seen in over a decade, if not longer. After an unusually long period of nearly no real signs of a typical Balkan winter, last week brought what seems to be non-stop snowfall throughout the region, including the seaside areas around the Adriatic that seldom get any snow.

Men shoveling snow from a street in Sarajevo. Record snowfall has paralyzed transportation in the Bosnian capital, where a state of emergency has now been declared. Photo by Sulejman Omerbasic, copyright © Demotix (5/02/12).

Serbia's national television network, RTS, and other media reported on Friday 3 February, 2012, that a state of emergency has been declared by the government, while citizens have been reporting critical situations throughout the country and that municipal services have been doing a poor job of tackling the snowfall in many urban areas.

In an article titled “Serbia Blocked by Snow, State of Emergency in 27 Municipalities, Recommendation to Call Off School Attendance” [sr], the Head of the State of Emergency Sector of the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Predrag Maric, is reported to have stated on Friday:

27 municipalities in Serbia have declared a state of emergency due to heavy snowfall. Maric has told Beta news agency that the most difficult situations are in Sjenica, Ivanjica, Prijepolje, Crna Trava and Surdulica, where the height of snow has reached approximately 2 meters. According to him, power supply is “relatively good,” outages are being fixed quickly and there have been no long power outages.

Maric also announced the possibility of declaring a full state of emergency nationwide, which the Government did on Sunday evening, cancelling school throughout Serbia at least until Friday, February 10, among other things.

Several actions have been organized by the online community in Serbia and the region to fend off the snow and to attempt to regain a functional state in urban areas at least, such as a #lopataup (”#shovelup”), organized by one online community leader, Zoran Torbica, and other local Twitter users.

In the meantime, Al Jazeera Balkans, the recently established regional office of Al Jazeera news network in the region, has joined forces with the team from Ushahidi to set up a platform for tracking verified information on everything from road blocks, power outages to other critical points and information in the entire region.

Ushahidi is an open-source platform for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping, which was also used in Serbia just after the earthquake in Kraljevo in November 2010 to map and track damage in the area.

Haris Alisic, who heads the New Media team for Al Jazeera Balkans, launched the platform on Sunday evening, and many members of the online community, including some of the region's GV authors, have joined the Al Jazeera-Ushahidi team in curating, tracking and verifying reports from the region.

The adapted Ushahidi platform can be located on Al Jazeera's official site, while reports can be sent in by anyone using the following channels:

- via SMS to +387644218661
- via Twitter by using the hashtags #kolaps #sneg #snijeg #lopataup #iskljucenje
- via email to oluja2012@aljazeera.net
- or by entering information directly into the form on the”pošaljite izvještaj” tab on the Al Jazeera page

If you would like to volunteer your time to help map critical areas and are familiar with using online tools, please contact the author of this article, or Haris Alisic via Twitter, or leave a comment here on Global Voices, and we will contact you for more information on what you can do to help. We also ask that you all begin reporting from your area on Twitter and using the above-mentioned hashtags on Twitter, which are automatically collected by the platform and then reviewed and verified by Al Jazeera and volunteers.

Serbia: The Media War Against Angelina Jolie

Sasa Milosevic — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:15:37 +0000

Not so long ago Angelina Jolie was “more concerned” about the reception of her directorial debut movie, ‘In the Land of Blood and Honey‘, in Bosnia and Serbia than in the United States. She was eagerly awating the reactions of local audiences, whom she had portrayed in her war drama, and some of her fears turned out to be justified.

While the Bosnian public has warmly welcomed this war love story of a Serbian policeman and a Bosnian Muslim woman, the Serbian media have launched a war on the American actress, accussing her of spreading hatred toward Serbs.

Serbian daily Kurir initiated a series of articles [sr] that have seriously harmed Jolie's good reputation in Serbia:

Angelina claims in the movie that 300,000 Muslims were killed in the Bosnian war and 50,000 Muslim women were raped. The actress intends to seek the abolition of Republika Srpska as a genocidal creation. All of this was commissioned by the extreme Islamic policies, presenting Serbs as criminals, killers, murderers and rapists, and Muslims as the only victims.

Explaining the reason for Jolie's alleged pro-Muslim bias, the newspaper claimed [sr] that the movie was financially supported by Saudi direct investments of $10 million:

It is generally known that Jolie is very close to politicians in Washington. Maybe she would like the public to think it is an art film, but it is actually pure anti-Serbian propaganda. The director sends a message to the audience that Serbs are crazy wild beasts, while Muslims are innocent victims.

Momir Stojanovic, former director of the Serbian Military Intelligence Agency, also supported Kurir's claim that Muslim extremists had funded Angelina's project, saying “it is very close to the truth.”

The Serbian newspaper has triggered thousands of negative, pro-Serbian votes on imdb.com, one of the most reputable film rating sites, causing the film's score to drop drastically to 3.3 from an average of 5.4.

A screenshot of Jolie's film page on imdb.com.

Very quickly the page of Jolie's film at imdb.com turned into a virtual battlefield between Serbs and Muslims. (In the past few days, however, 11 pages of comments have somehow been reduced to five).

Sanja_Cancar says:

Angelina needs to stick to the topics she knows about, ei: ruining marriages, stealing husbands, adopting children from around the world, wearing blood. Instead, she chose the ironic path of a “peace-ambassador” that gets involved in politics she knows nothing about and creates movies that will only create more hatred… […]

Vitezbg observes:

Movie is full of political manipulations, lies, false informations etc.[…] Also 50.000 raped Muslim women is very disputed. It is famous case when ‘raped Sarajevo woman', gave birth of African child. Actually the father in this case was member of UN personal. […]

Johnny NT concludes:

Well done Angie, Goebbels and Hitler would be proud of you and your fascinating work on this movie. […]

rudeedee2 asks:

How could these people dare think to make a movie (”entertainment”) of such a horribly devastating situation ??? Seems only money is important. […] Would Angelina Jolie want to think her family has gone through hell and lost every semblance of normalcy, experienced fear, heartbreak, death and devastation only to find a so-called movie producer sees it as an artistic capital?

psysd3 reminds Angelina of the crimes of her own people:

[…] From the very beginning, by coming to America's soil on which it is estimated that, in 1500s, there were about 12 000 000 Native Americans whose number is reduced to nearly 237 000 by 1900s […]

Alex_Michael writes:

I guess I expected too much of Angelina. She might have black hair, but the movie sure look like put together by a blonde. Serbian Nazis who don't have problem killing anything from pets to babies on one side, and good Muslims on the other side… Example is Srebrenica where Serbs committed crimes by taking revenge after number of Serbian villages around Srebrenica were completely wiped out, and their inhabitants killed by Muslims from Srebrenica. This was well described in Norwegian documentary “Srebrenica a Town Betrayed”.

The Bosnian Muslim online community opposes the Serbian comments and supports Jolie's movie.

f_s is grateful to Angelina:

[…] Thank you Ms. Jolie for being the voice of the women depraved, humiliated and tortured. I recommend to everyone to see the movie especially women around the globe, to hear the unspoken, to witness the hidden. […]

Sibaak adds:

[…] We, the Bosnians do not hate. We are the most peaceful nation in the world, and thats why the facts of that war are so brutal! Because we didn't believe it could happen. We didn't believe that our friends would turn against us, rape us, kill our children, take over our houses. But they did. We that lived to tell, still, just like me, believe there are good Serbs. But what really hurts is to see how many people, just like on here, people that do not have even slightest idea of the truth, are so blind, and so hateful, because it tells me that they would do it all over again. In a way I feel its good that they are showing their real faces. Showing how ignorant they are. […]

Mela Fatkic expresses gratitude to Jolie on the movie's Facebook page. She writes:

Angelina thank you for this film, but we can not forget what it was. Thank you for the truth which not many people to reconcile, and nobody believes until they see…

Dino Gligic shares this opinion:

Angelina, thank you so much for telling the torld the truth about what Serbs did. It was worse than in that movie…

Nat Taschetti Garcia Angie admits ignorance and asks :

I just graduate on high school and i never learned about Bosnian war as i never learned about refugee camps. Do you feel like something has to be done in education, as a mom and as an activist?

Frustrated by the Serbian furious reaction, Jolie responded on Twitter:

Is it possible that the entire nation believes a concocted story from trash @KurirVesti magazine based on fake email from imaginary person?”

However, a few days later this tweet was deleted, and a new one appeared:

Don't express your love for own nation, race, religion, etc… by hating others.

On other side, Kurir pulled off the article of threatining tone: “Serbs declared war on the actress: you do not know what awaits for you Angelina” from the newspaper official site published as respond on Jolie's offensive tweet.

Jolie also tweeted this appeal:

Don't believe everything you read… “They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers.”

In an interview with Slobodna Evropa, Jolie expressed her affection for Bosnia, saying that “it is easy to be in love with Bosnia”:

I would not have created this film if Bosnikas hadn't agreed with the screenplay. I would have burned it…

Zeljko Mitrovic, the owner of Pink TV, is one of the most influental Serbs who had initially condemned Jolie because of her anti-Serbian prejudices and had even withdrawn from the movie project. Now, however, he has changed his mind:

It is wrong to attack Angelina now when the movie is finished. We could have changed something before they started making the film. Now it is pointless to generate hostility. That thing cannot be changed by additional antagonisms. She should be invited to Belgrade because people like her can help us in the future to improve the image of ourselves in the world. I invite Angelina to come to Serbia and to be a guest of TV Pink.

The Balkans: Potential Reactions to Angelina Jolie's Film

Veronica Khokhlova — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 03:12:16 +0000

Back in Dec. 2011, Belgraded wrote on how Angelina Jolie’s In the Land of Blood and Honey is likely to be received in Serbia.

CEE: “Spotted by Locals”

Veronica Khokhlova — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 01:08:32 +0000

Spotted by Locals: Experience cities like a local features a few dozen locations, including CEE cities of Belgrade, Bucharest, Budapest, Krakow, Ljubljana, Prague, Riga, Sofia, Tallinn, Vilnius, Warsaw, and Zagreb. A random sample post from Zagreb, Croatia: Hrelić Flea Market – The Aleph of Zagreb; from Bucharest, Romania: The Haunted House – Armenian Neighbourhood; from Sofia, Bulgaria: Nissim – A True Old-School Bookstore.

Macedonia: Ajvar, Glorified

Filip Stojanovski — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:03:54 +0000

Jovana Tozija wrote lovingly about making ajvar, a traditional favorite winter provision in Macedonia and some other post-Ottoman countries.

Serbia: Belgrade's Modernism

Veronica Khokhlova — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:58:18 +0000

Nothing Against Serbia writes about the 1933 building by Branislav Kojic, which is “regarded as one of the most successful examples of modernism in Belgrade.”