IPS-English MEDIA: Grenade Attack Shocks Serbia
 
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 14:56:30 -0700

 

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Apr 16 (IPS) - For five minutes from noon Monday, traffic stood 
still at mot places in all 165 municipalities
of Serbia, in protest against a hand grenade attack against leading 
investigative journalist
Dejan Anastasijevic.

Anastasijevic and his wife were not injured in the attack. The device went 
off under their
bedroom window in downtown Belgrade at 2.30am Saturday.

”Journalists are easy target,” Anastasijevic told IPS. ”I will not keep 
quiet, I've received
threats before, and I've been under pressure before. I will not give up.”

The traffic stoppage in protest was proposed by the Liberal Democratic 
Party (LDP) that
stands for a firm break with Serbia's wartime past of the 1990s.

Anastasijevic and the weekly Vreme (Time) he works for take a similar 
line.

”This is a protest against politics that turned Serbia into a society 
where it is not desirable
to think freely, where an individual fears for his own life for daring to 
do so,” the LDP said.

The police have not yet found those responsible for the bombing.

The attack on Anastasijevic, described by President Boris Tadic as ”an 
assassination
attempt that should strongly be condemned,” came two days after the 
journalist spoke as
a guest on the popular Radio B92 show Kaziprst (index finger).

Anastasijevic described as ”mild and shameful” the 20-year prison 
sentences handed to
the main killers of six Muslim men and boys after a massacre in Srebrenica 
in Bosnia in
1995. The sentence was pronounced in Belgrade Apr. 10.

The executors came from the paramilitary unit Scorpions, one of several 
such units set up
during the regime of former leader Slobodan Milosevic to wage war in 
Bosnia. These units
committed many war crimes against non-Serbs. Anastasijevic has 
investigated these units
for years, and written about them often.

The change of regime after Milosevic fell from power in 2000 saw many of 
these units
dismantled, but ”the brotherhood among them remains as strong as ever,” 
security expert
Dragomir Radovanovic told IPS.

Their role, as well as Serbia's role in the wars of the disintegration of 
former Yugoslavia in
the 1990s still remains controversial among Serbs.

A large part of the Serbian public lives in denial that any war crimes 
were committed by
Serbs. On the other hand, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia blame Serbia for 
all atrocities
through the wars.

Through the course of the wars, Serbian human rights activists or 
journalists who stood
against Milosevic were often dubbed ”traitors”.

Such times seem to have returned now, many say.

”It is the political elite that has to be blamed, as it did not take the 
course of distancing
itself with the Milosevic-era past and deal with all those who should have 
been sentenced
for what they did in the war,” Prof. Ratko Bozovic from the University of 
Belgrade told IPS.

Serbia is now ruled by the conservative government of Prime Minister 
Vojislav Kostunica,
which has been in power since 2003. It has brought back much of the 
nationalist
atmosphere of the 1990s, after a break under the government of Zoran 
Djindjic in
2000-2003.

Kostunica has also moved people known for their loyalty to Milosevic's 
regime back into
key positions in police and the judiciary.

Djindjic toppled Milosevic in 2000, but was assassinated in March 2003 by 
a former secret
police member. Djindjic was blamed by nationalists for handing over 
Milosevic to the
International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague 
in the
Netherlands in 2001. Milosevic died there in the course of a long trial 
last year.

Several Serb journalists testified against Milosevic, Anastasijevic among 
them. They were
all reporters in the field during the wars.

Major international and domestic journalist organisations expressed their 
dismay over the
attack on Anastasijevic, but local journalists know too well that support 
is not enough. The
cases of three journalists killed in recent years have not been solved.

”It is obvious that in many heads the wars have not ended,” Serbian 
culture minister and
former journalist Dragan Kojadinovic told local media. He admitted that 
”the state has not
properly dealt with war and post-war psychosis...this (the attack against 
Anastasijevic) was
an act of people who think they can annihilate their wrongdoings of the 
past in such a
manner.”

The attempt on Anastasijevic's life follows several cases of intimidation 
and threats in the
past few weeks. A brick was tossed into the window of the flat of LDP 
leader Vesna Pesic.
A relatively unknown website carried a death treat against another 
journalist, Dinko
Gruhonjic.

According to the Association of Independent Journalists of Serbia, about 
50 journalists
have reported receiving serious threats last year and this year.

”Our society is in big trouble,” political analyst Zoran Lutovac told B92 
Radio. ”The hand
grenade tossed against Anastasijevic was a hand grenade on what he wrote 
and spoke
about. And our institutions of the state either don't care, or lack 
political will or are too
feeble to act.” (END/IPS/EU/IP/HD/IC/VZ/SS/07) 


 
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