The Constitution of Serbia guarantees equality to all Serbian female and male citizens regardless of their national, religious, sexual or any other conviction or affiliation. In Serbia there are approximately 66% citizens of Serbian nationality and 34% of citizens of other nationalities. However, since Slobodan Milosevic came to power, nationalism has become the state ideology of Serbia. Particularly since the war started, the basic human rights of all citizens are threatened, especially those ethnically non-Serbian citizens. Their rights are being violated institutionally and extra-institutionally, just as the president himself proclaimed at the height of the "anti-bureaucratic revolution." Both methods of repression are interwoven and justified by various instructions, decrees, legal acts and various amendments.
Discrimination on an ethnic basis is primarily the outcome of the long-term and permanent regime propaganda of hate and exclusion of the "others" because of their ethnic, religious, ideological and/or sexual inclinations. It permeates every layer of life: economy, state government and administration, culture, the military.
In Kosovo even elementary human rights, both collective and individual, are threatened. Repression against Albanian people is carried out by the force of law and by the raw police and military power.
Human rights violations of citizens of non-Serbian nationalities in Serbia, especially those of Muslim nationality, have become more and more manifest.
Below are listed examples of the most frequent forms of ethnic discrimination:
- Verbal threats, anonymous telephone calls or letters to people with "questionable" names. The victims of such violence are very frightened and want to remain anonymous, often changing their "disparate" surnames to "appropriate" names of the majority nation.
- Persuasion, even by force, by "unknown parties" against persons of non-Serbian nationality to move out or "swap" their houses through specialized agencies for "human resettlement," i.e. ethnic cleansing. This is particularly evident in Sandzak and Western Srem.
- The planting of explosive devices into the religious non-Orthodox Christian and Muslim buildings in order to frighten non-Serbian citizens or force them to move out
- Pressure on local authorities or administration not to employ, or to discharge, non- Serbian employees, most often by "spontaneous" petitions and demands, through explanations that the presence of these persons "irritates and disturbs" those of the majority nation.
- Stigmatization, abuse and marginalization of non- Serbian persons in numerous other situations (in educational establishments of all levels, public services, in public transport).
- Mistreatment, abuse, and even forced questioning of non- Serbian people by the police, customs officers and traffic regulation patrols.
- Particular difficulties for non-Serbian people or those from mixed marriages and families when applying for a passport. The officials apply arbitrary rulings, refusing to issue a passport to a Serbian woman married to a Muslim or to persons with a Croatian mother and Serbian father. The decisive criteria is most often the ethnic origin of the father.
- The abuse and mishandling of non-Serbians' property rights. For instance, the local authorities frequently refuse to register real estate ownership, even with the explanation that it could ethnically "destabilize" the national configuration of the local community.
The authorities are silent about all of the aforementioned cases or diminish their relevancy, and in many occasions such injustice was directly assisted or supported by those in power.
We are expressing a great concern that the international community, in spite of the more drastic violations of human rights in Serbia, still supports Slobodan Milosevic by accepting him as the principal negotiator and "guarantor of Balkan peace".
Belgrade, June 25, 1995
Women in Black
