Good Serbs and Bad Serbs

“It is not us but Europe that needs to face reality” states Tomislav Nikolic, Serbian Radical Party leader, in a recent interview with Der Spiegel. He claims that the European Union has divided Serbia into two camps, “good Serbs, and bad Serbs.” The European Union is the one responsible for destabilizing Serbia. No, not ethnic diversity, centuries of history, not even jingoistic nationalism. It is the European Union’s fault. Of course, Nikolic still supports the European Union. According to Nikolic, the Serbian Radical Party believes the European Union is solely responsible for destabilising their country, and they want to be a part of this destabilizing influence. This is doublespeak at its best. War is peace, freedom is slavery.

Nikolic goes on to rant about decisions being made over the head of Serbia, and asks, hypothetically, why Serbia had Kosovo torn from it, rather than being offered the Cyprus solution for Kosovo. Nikolic seems to believe that some sort of similarity between the disvision of Cyprus between Greece and Turkey and Serbia controlling Kosovo exists. I won’t go into great detail here, but suffice to say that there are some serious differences…perhaps Nikolic should consider that the Greek controlled half is comprised of Greeks, and the Turkish controlled half is made up of Turks. Nikolic needs to face some serious facts, the first being that Kosovo held a referendum on independence. It passed. The people of Kosovo have spoken.

The Serbian Radical Party and Nikolic are trying to put on a better face for the international media and are hoping to make themselves appear more mainstream European in this interview, but I don’t buy it. Neither does the Spiegel reporter. When pressed, Nikolic reverts to the same stance that all nationalists do when pressed: he rattles his saber. When asked what would happen if Kosovo tried to join Albania, he responded, “there will be war in Europe.” Serbia has a historic right to Kosovo, regardless of what the population voted. When asked about Serbs in Bosnia, however, Nikolic stated that the population there should have a referendum on their status.

War is Peace.

Yes, Nikolic is right. There are good Serbs and there are bad Serbs.

Good Serbs are Bad Serbs.

More Bulgarian Corruption

On May 19th, Bulgaria’s chief of police, Veselin Petrov, tabled his resignation for unknown reasons. According to the Bulgarian News Network, it is unclear whether if the newly appointed Interior Minister, Mikhail Mikov, will accept Petrov’s resignation. I imagine this has to do with the ever widening scandal regarding the Bulgarian Interior Ministry’s involvement with organized crime. It seems that Bulgarian law enforcement officials are deeply involved with organized crime, and it is no telling just how many figures will fall due to the exposure of their illicit activities.

It would appear, however, that they will face light legal consequences, if any. The Sofia Echo reported today that the former chief of Sofia’s traffic police, Iliа Iliev, received only a suspended sentence from a Military Court of Appeal. Iliev was found guilty of “malfeasance in office” in his involvement of letting eleven intoxicated motorists escape prosecution during the first half of 2006. Iliev was dismissed from office in August of 2006, but in light of this suspended sentence, it looks as if his dismissal will be the only real consequence of his actions. Tomi Tomov, the head of the administrative service department of the traffic police in Sofia was also dismissed due to the scandal. Corruption appears to be a family business for Iliev, as his son, Nestor Nestorov, is reputed to run an organized crime group. The Nestorov group apparantly dealt in tax evasion and fake documentation, allegedly helping motorists register their vehicles by circumventing procedures.

While one hopes that criminal behavior does not go unpunished, at least the worst offenders are being shunted out of Bulgarian office posts. The only hope is that they will not be replaced with similarly corrupt officials. It may take a while to get Bulgarian corruption under control, but eventually the new transparency in Bulgarian government should get things into more normal parameters.

Italy Cracks Down in Balkan Immigrants

The election of another center-right government led by Silvio Berlusconi in Italy has led to a swift move against illegal immigrants, most of them coming from southeastern Europe. Der Spiegel reports that while the Italian government claims no specific immigrant groups have been targeted, most of those arrested in raids have been Roma (gypsies) from Romania.

The raids are really just a typical hysterical reaction against ethnic immigrant groups seen around the world today. Whether hispanics in the United States, Turks in Germany, or Algerians in France (to name a few) ethnic groups, especially those that enter these wealthy nations illegally, are often targets for mass hysteria and deportation. In Italy’s case, the deportations are a reaction to mass hysteria and attacks on Roma in Naples, where Italians burned many Roma immigrants out of their shacks by throwing molotov cocktails into them. Italians were angered of reports that a teenage Roma girl tried to kidnap an Italian baby. Personally, I think the story of a gypsy kidnapping a baby is a rumor and a false one at that, but the Der Spiegel article gives no detail as to the validity of the claim. The whole “gypsy stealing babies” story has been around Europe for a few centuries now, and the gypsy story has also been substituted with “Jew” whenever it suited the situation. The Italian government is responding by honoring its pledge to fight growing concerns over immigrant crime in true populist fashion.

The sweeps began on May 7th and have continued through last week. On Thursday, Italian authorities detained 50 Bosnian and Romanian immigrants without proper papers in Rome. Also on Thursday, Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni met with Romanian Interior Minister Cristian David to discuss cooperation on the crime issue. Romanian Prime Minister Calin Popescu-Tariceanu expressed his concerns about the raids and Italian xenophobia towards Romanian immigrants, and rightfully so. Xenophobia is still endemic in all of Europe (though Europe is not alone) and in my opinion the Italians should be taking a harsh stance towards their own racial prejudice.

The Roma are still the persona non grata of Europe. It may be taboo to express anti-semetic views today (though becoming less so) anti-Roma opinions are still very much a part of mainstream European society. In addition, people of the Balkan region are discriminated against. I am very much a Europhile, but the xenophobia and racism of Europe makes me sick. Xenophobia and racism make me sick in general, no matter where I see it, but Europe’s attitude towards ethnic minorities is the area where Europeans need the most improvement on.

In addition to this, the rich countries of the world, Italy included, need to adopt different strategies towards immigrant workers. People are immigrating from the Balkan region to western Europe because there is a demand for their labor, and immigrants will continue to move from east to west regardless of new vigilance or “cracking down” against illegal immigration. If Italy doesn’t want so many illegal immigrants, it needs to improve on its system for admitting foreign workers legally and legitimately. Like Mexicans who continually cross into the United States regardless of how many times they are deported, I imagine these Balkan immigrants will be back in the future, because there will be a job waiting for them when they arrive.

A Bit of Humor

I was reading an essay at The Media Times Review, a Bulgarian website, that included a hilarious annectdote. In all the madness and destruction that came out of the civil war in Bosnia (can it be called a civil war?) it is refreshing to find something humorous for a change.

It read:

In the early days of the siege of Sarajevo in the mid-1990s, a photo of a half-ruined post office with three items of graffiti written on its wall captured the imagination of the world. The first graffito read “This is Serbia!”; the second stated “This is Bosnia”. And someone scrawled underneath, “No, you idiots, it’s a post office!

More Organized Crime

A cynic might consider southeastern Europe to be synonymous with organized crime. The news headlines in Albania do little to counter this. In a headline worthy of a Bulgarian newspaper these days, the Tirana Times reports that Albania’s tax chief as well as a secret policeman were arrested for the 1995 murder of a businessman. If that headline isn’t bad enough, last week the Albanian Interior Ministry had to publicly fight charges that Albania authorities had assisted in the illegal trafficking of women to Britain, where the women were sold as prostitutes.

Macedonian news agencies are piling it on as well. Makfax Vesnik ran a story about two weeks ago regarding the smuggling of weapons out of Kosovo and into Albania. While this might be a good sign that Kosovo’s worst days are over, it certainly doesn’t bode well for Albanians living in Tirana, where the weapons had been smuggled to. Those involved in the smuggling operation were from Tropoja, a town in northern Albania, but police suspect there is a larger weapons-smuggling organization involved. This was no ordinary arms seizure, either. Police seized 120 hand grenades and 6 anti-tank missles in addition to 74 handguns. This is not exactly the type of news that makes one confident in the stability of the region.