UNMIK ON AIR

14^th October 2003

THE MAGIC WORD OF DIALOGUE

(By Zoran Culafic)

Ljubomir Djordjevic: I think the solution for Kosovo too is that one must start from the bottom and not try to start the process of reconciliation without rebuilding elementary human trust.

Ljubomir Djordjevic, a journalist working with Suboticke Novine, a local paper in Subotica, the multi-ethnic town par excellence in Vojvodina, close to the Serbian border with Hungary.

Hello and welcome to UNMIK ON AIR with Martin Redi and Sputnik Kilambi.

Elementary human trust – a term that needs to be revised in the countries of ex-Yugoslavia, which for decades lived according to Tito’s famous slogan - brotherhood and unity.

Many in Kosovo today, both K-Albanians and Serbs, fear that the efforts of the international community to introduce a multiethnic society could be understood as bringing back Tito’s model of brotherhood and unity. A slogan that sometimes brings nostalgia but which many still consider to be the seed which plunged the people in the Balkans into a decade of horrible bloodshed.

The Kosovo issue is on the world agenda again. The talks in Vienna have been scheduled and top EU and US officials are keen to get Serbs and Albanians to shake hands and sit together around the table and start talking to each other.

Ljubomir Djordjevic was in Pristina a few months ago at a meeting of non-governmental organizations. The main problem between the people in Kosovo, he feels, is the gap between them. If you don’t know your neighbor, he stresses, it’s easy to be afraid.

Ljubomir Djordjevic: It was a night in Pristina and I realized that young people are hardly different from young people in Subotica. They are dressed the same way; they sit in cafés, drink the same foreign drinks like coca cola etc, smoke the same cigarettes and listen to the same music. And if you didn’t know that that was a picture from Pristina, you could easily think you were in Subotica or in Belgrade. That’s actually rather encouraging.

Trust and reconciliation depends on the will of the people to accept each other as equal partners. It is a daunting task in the Balkans, given that during the past decade political elites have played games using nationalist feelings to pit one group against the other. But it’s not only the politicians who bear responsibility for what happened, says Gabor Kudlik, head of the Subotica based NGO “Open perspectives”, but the media as well.

Gabor Kudlik: The media and politicians did misuse the thesis, and the same applies to Kosovo, that national minorities are evil, they weaken the state; so the message is that any additional rights given to them will do the same. That’s the story that you can sell to an ordinary citizen throughout Serbia, because he had no contact with minorities. The closest representative of minorities here is the Roma, and everyone is aware that there are negative stereotypes about Romas.

Bosko Kovacevic is head of Open University in Subotica, dealing with minorities in very sufficient way.

He says that his formula for dialogue is not to arbitrate in most sensitive issues, but to postpone it for better times and in the meanwhile to offer many other issues to be discussed, which are of mutual interest for both sides.

Bosko Kovacevic: Our experience is that first there must be such a public activities, and preparing such a public atmosphere in which it mustn’t dominate an exclusive issues, it mustn’t dominate a crucial issues, but rather issues which are simply on the agenda of the ordinary people. Those exclusive and crucial issues one must postpone for some better times.

Journalist Ljubomir Djordjevic believes that things are going to change and that sooner or later, Kosovo too will have a normal environment in which every minority member will live without fear – working freely and speaking his/her mother tongue freely. The minorities certainly must do more to be fully accepted, he says, but the main responsibility lies with the K-Albanians. They are, after all, the majority community in Kosovo.

Ljubomir Djordjevic: The Kosovo problem is that the situation of minorities reflects on the majority. Of course I’m absolutely convinced that the majority of people there is normal, like here in Subotica, they too wish for jobs because of the huge unemployment, which is higher than here, factories are closed, as they are closed here, salaries are low, existence is totally uncertain, and people would like to work, send their kids to school, to have a good health system, the possibility to travel etc. All that is not possible for people in Kosovo today, for the vast majority in Kosovo.

Unfortunately, there is an aggressive minority and this must be dealt with, not in The Hague, but rather in Belgrade and in Pristina. And that’s my main point. But, as long as there are people like Nora Ahmetaj or Per Djokaj, Veton Suroi or Nenad Rikalo, or Besnik Tahiri or Mr. Fishenshlager, I really believe that there is hope that something can be done in this region.

If voices like this are heard more often, the next stage of dialogue will be less painful, and who knows, even fruitful.

And that brings us to the end of this edition of UNMIK ON AIR.

Thanks for listening.