Dumb and dumber

Posted in Uncategorized - March 29, 2012 - 9 Comments

Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dačić yesterday announced the arrest of two Kosovo Albanians in retaliation for the arrest of four Serbs by Kosovo authorities:

The reciprocal measures are not in Serbia’s interests and the Serbian police does not wish to do this….[but] this type of situation (arrests of Serbs) can obviously no longer happen without reciprocal measures.

I hardly need mention that “reciprocal” or retaliatory arrests have no place in a rule of law lexicon. Nor need I mention that doing things not in your country’s interest is dumb.  With this singular act of hubris, Dačić has likely done more to tarnish Serbia’s European credentials than anyone else in recent months.

The problem goes deeper.  The arrests were made under a warrant issued by a Serbian court, one that is no longer resident in Kosovo.  This illustrates how little Belgrade respects UN Security Council resolution 1244, to which it appeals regularly and mistakenly as the basis for claims to Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo.  That resolution, if it did nothing else, put Kosovo–including its judicial system–under temporary UN administration, pending a decision on final status.  Serbia does not accept the proposition that the decision has been made, which is its right.  But under 1244 it has no right to be administering law in Kosovo.

The law under which the arrest was made includes, according to Balkan Insight, the following:

Whoever attempts to unconstitutionally bring Serbia or SaM[Serbia and Montenegro] into a position of subjugation or dependence in respect of another state, shall be punished by imprisonment of three to fifteen years.

So we are not talking small beans here.  And the impact of the arrests will be much broader than on the two people arrested.  It will curtail travel by Kosovo Albanians in Serbia, which the recent EU-brokered agreement between Belgrade and Pristina on travel documents and border regime was supposed to encourage.

Dačić is no fool.  He knows full well that his move will bring him nationalist votes and embarrass President Tadić, who has sought to burnish Serbia’s European credentials as he tries to convince Brussels to give Serbia a date on which to start accession talks.  Tadić is going to have a hard time explaining to Brussels why it should bend over backwards for Serbia when Belgrade is busy undoing an agreement the EU brokered.

What about the arrest of the four Serbs by the Pristina authorities?  According to the press, they were carrying election materials for the May 6 Serbian elections, which Belgrade wants to conduct in Serb communities in Kosovo and Pristina wants to prevent.

I am sympathetic with those Kosovars who want to establish full sovereignty on the entire territory of Kosovo, but I still need to ask why it was necessary to arrest the four Serbs.   Surely there are more nefarious activities going on than carrying election materials.  I suspect the answer is that it will be a politically popular move for Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, who faces strong pressure from more nationalist Albanians to stop Serbia’s many activities inside Kosovo. But he also expects to visit Washington next week, where a provocative move like the arrests is unlikely to be welcome.

I’d call this dumb and dumber.  I’ll let you decide which is which.

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9 thoughts on “Dumb and dumber”

  1. It is rather dishonest to criticise someone and then refrain from proposing an alternative. You claim to be against Serbian local elections in Kosovo and then again to call the Kosovars dumb when they attempt to stop them. That’s doesn’t really make sense.

    Equating the two arrests is also dishonest : while the Kosovo authorities have placed the 4 Serbs under arrest for only 48 hours(i.e. they’ll be out before you post your next article after the one on Syria), enough for an interrogation with the scope of gathering information, the Serbian authorities arrested people on ethniical basis. Does the US arrest people on “retaliate” and “to compete” as per Ivica Dacic’s words? Cause I call that pure state sponsored terrorism.

  2. The four have been released by the court to home confinement for 30 days. Unusually, their (Serbian) defense attorney has said that they were fine and had been treated “correctly.” The Serb press routinely reports any Serb taken into custody by the Kosovo Police as being “brutally beaten” in the process. Perhaps the KP have gotten smart and started taking dated photographs as soon as they bring a suspect in? Or perhaps calmer heads realize that routine unsubstantiated charges of brutality and torture are beginning to sound ridiculous.

    The papers are being coy about what the Albanians are being charged with. For one of them, it’s apparently “espionage and drugs” – the other may have been picked up for “anti-constitutional activity” under Milosevic.

    1. Unusually, their (Serbian) defense attorney has said that they were fine and had been treated “correctly.” The Serb press routinely reports any Serb taken into custody by the Kosovo Police as being “brutally beaten” in the process.

      What would that mean in your opinion, Amer? That the Serbs, when arrested in Kosovo, are usually beaten or that the Serbs are usually liars?

      And since I ask for your opinion, here I am with mine: the level of basic human rights (not) enjoyed by the Serbian minority in Kosovo is, for me, shockingly low.

      1. From what I have read, the claims of brutality made by third parties have not been backed up. In fact, detainees have stated, after being released, that they were treated properly. Since the Kosovo Police are being overseen by EULEX, it’s hard to imagine they would take the chance of losing international support for the momentary pleasure of roughing up a trouble-maker. “Lie” is excessively emotional; Serbs do seem to have a fondness for the dramatic, though.

        One problem here is that Serbian and English have different meanings for some Latin-derived words – and translators don’t always bother to distinguish the differences. For example, what looks like “demolish” in Serbian doesn’t necessarily mean to destroy, but to make a mess of (as when the police toss a place looking for evidence). “Torture” usually actually means only “harass” (workplace laws in Serbia outlaw it, and there’s no implication that they’re referring to electric shocks or waterboarding). As for “brutal beatings,” one would think that the person involved would show some visible signs of mistreatment, and that his lawyer would demand medical care for him. It’s not as though they lack access to Serbian-language newspapers that could make their concerns public if this were denied.

    1. Who did the translation? “Hapšsenje” is used for both “arrest” and “seizing.”

      1. Well, “hapšenje” is, anyway. (Sorry, I thought I managed to cancel that post.)

  4. “Amnesty International deeply concerned by the apparently politically motivated arrest by the Serbian authorities on 28 March of Hasan Abazi, a 65-year-old Kosovo Albanian trade unionist, who was on his way to an international conference in Croatia.

    Hasan Abazi was arrested in Končulj in Bujanovac municipality in southern Serbia, apparently on an arrest warrant issued in 1995 for “crimes against [the] constitution and security of Republic of Serbia”.

    Hasan Abazi was arrested in Končulj in Bujanovac municipality in southern Serbia, apparently on an arrest warrant issued in 1995 for “crimes against [the] constitution and security of Republic of Serbia”.

    …

    According to his son, Haki Abazi, his father has not been allowed to see his lawyer. …”

    http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/EUR70/008/2012/en/738fb737-40aa-4fe0-96ab-414f49a9e240/eur700082012en.html

  5. It’s getting even dumber.

    The four policemen have been released and will report to a police station each day until the trial starts, one of those taken into custody on the election-materials charges claimed the lists and seal were hers alone and the others in the car have been released, but Dacic has just announced – with the requisite rhetorical flourishes – the capture of two Kosovar policeman by Serb gendarmes near the Merdare border crossing. (His Kosovar counterpart says they were within their area of responsibility at all times and were kidnapped.) One Serb poster says this reminds him of the Serbian special forces that kidnapped the Americans on patrol in Macedonia during the war – crossing a border and denying it. (Considering what later happened to the Bytyci boys, people were right to be worried about them.) Also today the Serbian border police at a Hungarian crossing into Serbia have been holding up buses and cars with Albanians for 10 hours or more, asking for “evidence” and “state papers.” This was of course one of the things supposed to be eliminated by the border agreement, but Serbia (according to the EP debate) hasn’t signed and returned their copy, and perhaps doesn’t consider itself bound by it yet.

    Another possibility, beyond campaign grandstanding, is that there may be a problem for Serbia with the trial of the policemen and they are trying to pressure Prishtina into scrapping it. The policemen worked in the offices that issue passport and driving licenses at a police office inside Serbia but live in Kosovo. The issuing of Serbian driving licenses for Serbians living in Kosovo is a Belgrade-Prishtina problem, but in order to obtain the white Schengen visa, Serbia had to promise not to issue passports to people in Kosovo unless they traveled to Belgrade to get them. If the police have been ignoring this requirement, it’s a Belgrade-Brussels problem, and with the number of false asylum seekers from Serbia that Brussels has already complained about, evidence of official collusion in getting around the requirement could cause at least unpleasantness.

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