Yugoslav Authorities Research Articles

Boundaries and violence: Repertoires of state action along the Bosnia/Yugoslavia divide

Boundary-related inequalities are perhaps starkest during war, where one’s location vis-a' -vis a boundary can mean the diierence between life and death. Drawing on 1997 ¢eld interviews in the former Yugoslavia, I explore the impact of the newly-created Bosnia/Yugoslavia border on the lives of Muslim Slavs during the ¢rst year of the Bosnian war. 3 On what became the ‘‘Bosnian’’ side of the border, Yugoslav authorities helped ethnic Serb paramilitaries launch a wave of ethnic cleansing, forcing tens of thousands of Muslims from their homes. 4 Miles away in the Sandzak, however, a partially Muslim area on the Yugoslav side of the boundary, the same authorities blocked forced displacement, prompting Serbian paramilitaries to engage instead in ethnic harassment, a perverse but less lethal phenomenon involving nationalist threats, attacks on Muslim property, and occasional murders or kidnappings. Although Sandzak’s 200,000 Muslims feared the Serbian paramilitaries living in their midst, the irregular ¢ghters, many of whom were active in the Bosnian ¢ghting, did not launch systematic attacks insideYugoslavia. Sandzak’s Muslims, in other words, were spared the destruction visited upon their Bosnian co-nationals, many of whom often lived only miles away. 5 For Sandzak’s Muslims, the new Bosnia/Yugoslavia territorial marker was enormously signi¢cant. Ironically, Muslims along the Bosnia/Yugoslav divide were safer if they were inside rather than immediately outside Serbian-dominated

The Balkan conflict and respect for international humanitarian law

In view of the announcement by Javier Solana, Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), authorizing military action against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on 24 March 1999 sent a diplomatic note to NATO and the respective member States, as well as to the Yugoslav authorities, reminding them of their obligations under international humanitarian law, in particular the four Geneva Conventions of 1949.

Caring for ethnic Albanians in Macedonia's refugee camps

THE LANCET • Vol 353 • May 15, 1999 1701 Giota Koutsoukou is haunted by the memory of a 7-year-old boy. When I visited Macedonia in mid-April, 1999, the nurse had spent 5 days working in hellish circumstances treating refugees from Kosovo who were violently forced to leave their homes by Serbian police only to be kept waiting in a no-man’s land at the Macedonian border. About 45 000 traumatised people spent as long as a week interned in a freezing, muddy makeshift camp known as Blace with little food, water, or shelter and no proper sanitation. Koutsoukou tended to hundreds of people suffering from exhaustion, bruises inflicted by Serbian and/or Macedonian police, convulsions, hysteria, frostbite, and respiratory infections. People with diabetes went into shock from a lack of insulin. Others emerged needing to have stitches removed or dressings changed from previous operations. Dozens died. But it is the 7-year-old who dwells in Koutsoukou’s thoughts. “The 7-year-old was just hysterical. It was incredible”, says Koutsoukou, who works for Medecins Sans Frontieres. “It was an adult hysteria, and children just aren’t supposed to get that hysterical. I was shocked. The people were shocked. These people just couldn’t understand what was happening to them.” The ethnic Albanians who comprise the overwhelming majority of the population in the Serbian province of Kosovo are the victims of the worst ethnic cleansing in Europe since World War II. The Kosovo Liberation Army has been fighting for the province’s independence for over a year. The Yugoslav authorities have attempted to eradicate the rebels by burning villages and massacring civilians in its quest to keep Kosovo within Serbia. (Serbia and Montenegro are the two remaining republics in Yugoslavia.) About 800 000 Kosovars had been displaced within the province. But when NATO began bombing Yugoslavia in late March, the country began a systematic expulsion of ethnic Albanians which has created a humanitarian nightmare. More than 6 0 0 000 have fled into Macedonia, Montenegro, and Albania, catching humanitarian relief organisations by surprise. And there is little rest for the overworked aid agencies as refugees continue to flee. The situation is the worst in Albania, Europe’s poorest country, which is hosting more than 350 000 refugees. A combination of the vast number of refugees, poor infrastructure, and mountainous terrain has made delivering aid very d i f f i c u l t . The situation is better in Macedonia, which is hosting about 120 000 refugees. But reports that another 50 000 people could be heading for the Macedonian border are causing a panic in overcrowded refugee camps. Doctors say is nothing short of a miracle that the camps have escaped epidemics but now staff are concerned that their luck could run out. Brazda, the largest camp in

Is there a Legal Basis for the NATO Intervention in Kosovo?

The atrocities committed by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia against the civilian population in Kosovo are clearly contrary to international law. They constitute grave violations of human rights and amount to crimes against humanity. Attempts by the Yugoslav authorities to characterize the events there as internal affairs and to hide behind the concept of sovereignty lack legal foundation. These events are of deep concern to the international community. Does it follow that a group of States or a military alliance has the right to use force in reaction to this Situation? The prohibition of the use of force, as embodied in Article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations, is one of the cornerstones of contemporary international law. The Charter provides for certain limited exceptions. One is the right to self-defence provided for in Article 51 of the Charter. But the application of Article 51 requires an attack . . . against a Member of the United Nations. Even the most generous interpretation of the right to collective self-defence cannot cover assistance to an ethnic minority that suffers repression at the hands of its government. Another exception to Article 2(4) of the Charter is enforcement action by the Security Council under Chapter VII, specifically Article 42. Before taking enforcement action, the Security Council has to determine the existence of a threat to the peace, a breach of the peace or an act of aggression under Article 39 of the Charter. The Security Council has repeatedly characterized massive human rights violations or grave humanitarian situations as threats to the peace. With regard to Kosovo, the Security Council already stated in Resolution 1160 (1998) of 31 March 1998 that it was acting under Chapter VII of the Charter. In Resolution 1199 (1998) of 23 September 1998 and in Resolution 1203 (1998) of 24 October 1998 it affirmed that the situation in Kosovo constitutes a threat to peace and security in the region. In this context, the Security Council imposed an embargo on military supplies in Resolution 1160 (1998) in accordance with Article 41 of the Charter. But it has not taken or authorized military enforcement action. A determination under Article 39 that the conditions for enforcement action exist does not authorize member States to use force to implement the Security Council's decision. The Council must take a separate decision under Article 42. The veto of one or several Permanent Members of the Security Council in a situation of this kind may well be in violation of article 55(c) of the Charter which enjoins the United Nations to promote universal respect for, and observance of, human rights. But the casting of a veto or the mere prospect of a veto in the Security Council does not free other member States to do individually or collectively what only the Security Council can do. In 1950, the General Assembly of the United Nations, in response to the prospect of continuing paralysis of the Security Council, adopted the so-called Uniting for Peace Resolution, 377(V). It foresees recommendations for collective measures, including the use of armed force when necessary, if the Security Council fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. No such recommendation was passed by the General Assembly in the present case. It is doubtful whether an attempt to do so would have attracted the necessary majority. The Security Council, by emphasizing at the end of

The Anatomy of a Myth: Serbian Hegemony

The old myth of Serbian hegemony has recently been resurrected following disturbances in Yugoslavia in last years of past decade. These protests were sparked by a variety of Serbian grievances, most immediate of which was seeming inability of Yugoslav authorities to protect Serbian minority in autonomous province of Kosovo from persecution by provincial Albanian majority. The myth, some would call it a canard, of Serbian hegemony has an old and interesting history. It bears examination, especially in view of recent events in Yugoslavia. Two English publicists were in main responsible for spreading myth. They are Wickham Steed and R. W. Seton-Watson, mainly latter. Both had been critics of AustroHungarian Empire and strong proponents of a south Slav state. They, however, had some preconceived notions of what that state should be, or perhaps what it should not be. Seton-Watson, writing in 1911, concluded, the triumph of Pan-Serb idea would mean triumph of Eastern over Western culture, and would be a fatal blow to progress and modern development throughout Balkans. ' Moreover, he even denied importance of Serbs in Croatia by quoting position of party of Pure Right, led by Joseph Frank, which saw Serbs in Croatia as not really Serbs but as merely Orthodox Croats. 2 After new state, first called Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, came into being in 1918, and especially when it became evident that it would not be an instant success, Steed and Seton-Watson began an assiduous search for reasons. The easiest solution was to settle on Serbs as culprits, that is of secking to dominate other south Slavs. The two

Yugoslav Human Rights

On 15 June this year an international conference opened in Belgrade with the aim of reviewing the progress made since September 1975 by the 35 signatories of the Helsinki Declaration on Détente and Cooperation in Europe, an important part of which is the so-called Basket Three dealing with human and civil rights. The Yugoslav authorities, who are playing hosts to the conference, continue to deny accusations of human rights infringements, such as the treatment - and indeed the very existence - of political prisoners in their country. Evidence of these infringements in Yugoslavia is provided in the three articles that follow. The first is an ‘Open Letter’ sent to the Yugoslav authorities before the Belgrade conference by Akim Djilas, a younger brother of the best-known Yugoslav dissident, Milovan Djilas. The section also includes an account of political trials and persecution in Slovenia, and finally some excerpts from a book by the Croatian poet Mirko Vidovic who spent five years in Yugoslav prisons before being released thanks to diplomatic representations by the French government. In his book, The Hidden Face of the Moon, Vidovic describes his treatment at the hands of the Yugoslav secret police and gives an interesting account of the hunger strike organised by himself and Mihailo Mihajlov.

Yugoslav philosophers under fire

About a dozen professors and an unknown number of students at Belgrade University have been affected by a new political purge directed mainly at the faculties of Law and Philosophy. This has evoked widespread concern among professional colleagues abroad and fears for Yugoslavia's previous policy of allowing a wide measure of intellectual and academic freedom to its writers, scholars and creative artists. We reprint below the slightly shortened texts of two memoranda on the subject, followed by the text of an open letter recently sent to President Tito by members of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association. Since the eight philosophers at the centre of the crisis in Belgrade are well‐known abroad, it was hoped that expressions of concern from colleagues might alert the Yugoslav authorities to the grave harm they were causing to intellectual freedom in their country.

Le problème de l'organisation dans l'agriculture yougoslave

The Problem of Organization of Yugoslav Agriculture. After the second World War, the Yugoslav Government took a number of steps to reorganize agriculture. The first, was enactment of the Law of August 23, 1945 concerning land reform. This act introduced the partition of land, by which 47 % was attributed to individual peasants and 53 % to the socialist sector which the Government intented to establish. The socialist sector encompassed two organizational forms : State farms and agricultural cooperatives; the latter were divided into general agricultural cooperatives and peasant working cooperatives. However, limitating of private ownership of land to 10 ha introduced in 1953, led to the excessive fragmentation of farms with all its negative side effects. Further, due to lack of experience, the socialist sector proved to be very inefficient. New reforms were therefore introduced by Yugoslav authorities in the fifties. Selfmanagement, already introduced into industry, was now extended to State farms and cooperatives. They were reorganized on the principle of free association and free determination of relationships between the cooperative and its members. Consequently many peasant cooperatives were dissolved and the entire socialist sector of agriculture was weakened. The problem of reinforcing and ensuring the existence of the socialist sector in agriculture, became henceforth a very major problem for Yugoslav leaders. Today Yugoslav cooperatives are very flexible and the government is trying to make the socialist sector more attractive while at the same time respecting private ownership of land, the market economy and so forth. In practice, the most frequent forms of cooperation are technical assistance and services furnished to the private producers, cultivation of land in common, production according to contracts and the renting of land.

ARCHBISHOP STEPINAC, THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF CROATIA AND WESTERN ALLIES

There are various doubts and ambiguities regarding the dispatch of the memorandum by the Government of the Independent State of Croatia (ISC) to the Western Allies asking for military intervention in early May 1945, giving rise to different interpretations in historiography. These varying interpretations are related to the circumstances of the dispatch of the memorandum, its text, the actions of prominent representatives of the Ustasha government, relations between the new Yugoslav authorities and Western allies, especially the British and the role of Archbishop Stepinac and the Holy See in the ISC. In order to understand the memorandum, it is necessary to consider the most important political and military circumstances at the end of World War II in Yugoslavia, especially the politics of the new Yugoslavia and the Western powers, primarily the British. The representatives of the Holy See in the ISC and the Archbishop of Zagreb, Alojzije Stepinac, played an important role in efforts to preserve the Ustasha state. This paper was written based on unpublished and published archival sources and relevant historiographical literature.

The Yugoslav Economic System and Instruments of Yugoslav Economic Policy: A Note

T HE FUNDAMENTAL OBJECTIVES of Yugoslav economic policy are to increase the national income and the volume of production in all branches of the economy by means of rapid economic development and a rise in labor productivity, which will provide a basis for improvement in the standard of living of the population. The achievement of these objectives is sought partly through government action and partly through the operation of the market mechanism. This combination, as such, is not unique. It exists in all countries where a government exercises some but not complete control over the economy. The peculiar features of the Yugoslav economic system derive from the fact that it limits private ownership of the means of production to small-scale production and trade (employing no more than five people plus the owner's family) and to farms normally not exceeding 10 hectares in size, without for that reason resorting to government management. Under these conditions, some of the moving forces that shape the course of economic events in other market economies are either missing or largely inoperative, and government planning, being of the global type, does not provide the alternative that would allow the market mechanism to be superseded. The Yugoslav authorities are thus faced with the task of constructing a pattern of economic management that will be able to fill the gaps which would otherwise remain in the absence of detailed planning on the one hand and the nonexistence of certain free market forces on the other.