BALKANS: REHABILITATION COMES, TOO LATE FOR MOST
Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE - The Serbian parliament has finally adopted a law to restore the reputation of thousands of victims of political and ideological injustice since the days of the Second World War.
The victims included people condemned as German collaborators or those later seen as too rich or too liberal by the communist regime that ran former Yugoslavia after the end of the World War.
"This law is of historical importance," Serbian minister Milan Parivodic told reporters after the law was adopted last week.
"It paves the way to set right numerous injustices that have fallen on many people who respected the values of modern civilisation, the right of free choice and free will, and other basic principles of democratic life," Parivodic said.
Rehabilitation under the new law means restoration of reputation, honour, and civil and property rights for people who were "due to political and ideological reasons, with or without any court decisions, deprived of their right to live, of their freedom, property and other basic rights since April 6, 1941."
That date marks the beginning of World War II in Serbia, when Germans occupied the country. It was liberated by communist-led partisans in 1945, who later ruled under the firm hand of former leader Josip Broz Tito. Tito died in 1980 and his six-member Yugoslavia disintegrated 11 years later. Serbia was one of its six republics.
Although Tito's rule was proclaimed as 'neither (communist) East nor (capitalist) West', and former Yugoslavia enjoyed freedom incomparable to other communist countries, the era hid many skeletons in the closet.
These were primarily the "enemies of state", those suspected of collaborating with Germans during the occupation, or people too rich for communist tastes and dubbed "dirty capitalists" after the end of the War.
After 1948 many people opposed to Tito in one way or another ended up on Goli Otok (Naked Island), a Gulag created on the northern part of the Adriatic Croatian coast.
Then came the liberals in the 1960s and 1970s, usually intellectuals asking for democratic change. They were not sent to Goli Otok, but were banned from participating in public life or finding regular jobs. Some were imprisoned.
"The exact number of victims of political or ideological purges was never established, neither in Serbia nor in former Yugoslavia," prominent Serbian writer Svetlana Velmar Jankovic told IPS. "There are only estimates which say 'dozens of thousands'."
Jankovic has been fighting for decades now to clear the name of her father Vladimir, pre-War mayor of Belgrade. He fled Serbia after the partisans entered Belgrade in 1944, and died in exile in Spain in 1976.
Svetlana and her sister Gordana lived with the label 'daughters of an enemy of the state' for decades. Their mother, who spoke two foreign languages, could never find a job.
"But my father was lucky he stayed alive," Jankovic said.
Others were less lucky after the communists entered Belgrade. With no court hearings, immediate mass executions of prominent intellectuals, doctors, actors and lawyers began.
On one single day 105 men were killed by firing squads outside the capital. Their names appeared in the papers days later. They were described as enemies of the state, and notice was given that their property was being confiscated.
The new law provides for restoration of property rights by the district court at Belgrade and restoration of "civil dignity" on the basis of requests from victims or their descendants. Rehabilitated individuals will be declared to have had no trouble with the law in the past.
"We have waited for this for more than 50 years," Mojsije Milacic, head of the union of Goli Otok survivors told local media. But, he added, "justice can hardly be done after such a long time, because the lives of Goli Otok convicts and of their family members were ruined."
The union says some 65,000 people spent between fiv (END)
