Veran Matic

Yugoslavia’s slide into murder and war in 1991 was precipitous, but the nationalism that touched it off emerged during communism’s last days. Independent Serbian journalist Veran Matic, one of the Yugoslav government’s most vocal critics and most frequent victims, watched in the late 1980s as his country’s state-run media created a culture of fear. Now he has joined the call for a truth and reconciliation commission for the Balkans. Such commissions have eased South Africa’s transition to multiracial government and uncovered military crimes in Guatemala by offering amnesty to people who confess their crimes--a controversial idea in a region known for its retributive politics. Although the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague has indicted 94 people since 1993, Matic believes such crimes are only part of the story of Yugoslavia’s traumatic past 10 years.

Matic is chairman of the Assn. of Independent Electronic Media, or ANEM, which provides programming and technical and legal assistance to 28 local radio stations and 20 TV stations in Yugoslavia and its former territories. He believes journalists can play an important role in defying a culture in which, as a short film produced by ANEM noted, “Censorship applies to everyone.”

Censorship occasionally turns to violence. Earlier this year, the government shut down Matic’s radio station, B2-92, and a TV station owned by opposition leader Vuk Draskovic. One month later, gunmen shot Draskovic twice; he survived. Radio B2-92 was the successor to B-92, Belgrade’s leading independent radio station, which Matic helped start in 1989. Hours before the North Atlantic Treaty Organization began bombing Yugoslavia last March, Serbian officials took over the station; the entire staff resigned in protest. Matic wrote an article for the New York Times condemning NATO’s bombing, but his opposition sandwiched him between Serbian officials and Western governments. “During the bombing, almost everyone around us was against us,” Matic says.

Matic promotes Serbia’s growing youth movement, publishing music and organizing concerts; the radio station’s Web site is part Rock the Vote, part Amnesty International. At 38, he is the oldest B2-92 staff member, and he delights in the student group Otpor, or Resistance, whose symbol, a clenched fist, tags Belgrade walls. With Yugoslav elections on Sept. 24, Matic calls that “creative energy” a greater challenge to President Slobodan Milosevic’s government than Serbia’s fractious opposition parties.

Matic spoke with The Times late at night from a rented office in Belgrade. His wife, Lola, worked for a pharmaceutical company owned by former Prime Minister Milan Panic until two years ago, when Serbia’s government took over the company. They have two children, Ana, 14, and Djordje, 8. The conversation was translated by one of Matic’s assistants.

*

Question: How can a truth and reconciliation commission work in Yugoslavia?

Answer: It can be established only when this region is democratized. . . . Because crimes in this region have been going on for 10 years, if we wait for them to end to start the process, we will not achieve anything. It’s important to start so we can preserve . . . evidence. Another thing: Reeducation of the local population is necessary, because many people believe that these crimes were committed for just reasons.

Q: What are you doing to pave the way for a truth commission?

A: Investigative journalism should be applied in all media here to find out what happened, what really happened. That is exactly why our network, which includes 30 radio stations, introduced a show called “Catharsis.” We are producing a TV version. . . . At present, almost all civic life in Yugoslavia is being conducted through the state-run media. The state-run media made a strong contribution to what happened in the past 10 years, and that is why a change of media is important now.

Q: Truth and reconciliation commissions have mixed records around the world. South Africa’s commission helped create a multiracial government, but the country faces spiraling crime and disease rates. What kind of barriers would a truth commission face in Yugoslavia?

A: Unlike other commissions around the world, a Yugoslav commission would already have the presence of The Hague war crimes tribunal. That’s the strong difference, though the negative image of The Hague tribunal here could be an obstacle. But a Yugoslav truth commission, unlike the commission in South Africa, would not have to think about things such as an amnesty [for perpetrators].

Further, unlike all other commissions, this commission would have a major difficulty establishing the hard facts of crimes committed around the region. For instance, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, there are at least five truths circulating around the country: There is Bosnian truth, Croatian truth, Serbian truth, truth as presented by international groups and truth as presented by the coalition government, which represents several parties. All these truths are separate. So first we must find mechanisms to ascertain the real numbers: How many people were killed, how many went missing, who committed the gravest crimes and for what main causes?

In this region, local regimes . . . want to promote the notion of collective guilt, because they want to hide behind the collective responsibility of the whole nation. We want to prove that there is no such thing as collective responsibility. The only way we can do that is to discover individual responsibility for the crimes.

The most difficult part of the whole story is . . . the frame of mind that allowed the entire nation to support nationalistic forces. Individual responsibility would be decided in The Hague or in national courts in the region. Our task would be to deal with the frame of mind in people that led them to support nationalistic regimes.

Q: Do international groups, including The Hague tribunal, support or oppose your efforts?

A: The major opponent . . . is the prosecutorial office of The Hague tribunal. It cannot understand that punishments signed by someone in The Hague will not solve all our problems. Much wider efforts must be undertaken in things not directly linked to specific crimes. There is a group of major inspirers from intellectual circles who motivated ordinary people to commit crimes, and those inspirers will never be brought to light [by the tribunal].

On the other hand, members of similar commissions in other parts of the world support us. South African commission members have visited Serbia. Groups from South America, including Chile and Argentina, have also visited.

Q: Turning a mirror on government is supposed to be one of the functions of an independent press. What does an independent press mean in Yugoslavia, and what can it accomplish?

A: In the past 10 years, independent media are the only institutions that did not change their attitudes, their opinions, to reflect nationalistic policies. Independent media actually guarantee the successful development of democracy, because it is absolutely clear that they will always oppose totalitarian regimes. It is not just important what happens in the current political situation, but also what will happen after this. . . . Independent media [are] the major mobilizers of . . . creative energy, which is the major opponent of Milosevic’s regime. This energy is more threatening to the government than the opposition parties. And it is obvious that the creative energy of younger people is the most threatening.

Independent media are being fined every day. . . . Our own premises are occupied by the government, and we are not allowed to enter. The Milosevic regime has tried four times to ban Radio B2-92. . . . In all these situations, we managed to continue our broadcasts. At the same time, it means a higher degree of danger for all of us working here. In the past 10 years, the danger to our private lives has become a part of our daily lives, so we got used to it. . . . Recently, a 14-year-old boy was arrested in a Serbian town because he played over a public loudspeaker a B2-92 broadcast he had received from a satellite.

Q: What do you mean by “creative energy”? How is that more threatening to the government than the presidential challenge of Vojislav Kostunica?

A: When I talk about creative energy, I mean the kind of energy that is created in Serbia within independent media, NGOs and the culture. That kind of creative energy can be best articulated during great political events, such as the rallies in 1996 [when students protested election fraud]. . . . The police couldn’t do anything about it, except use brutal force from time to time, which only caused people to gather in greater numbers on the streets. That energy cannot be controlled by anyone, and it is mainly produced by student organizations such as Otpor, in cooperation with independent media. In an election campaign, the opposition also undergoes a kind of renaissance and joins forces, which has already produced good results, at least according to polls. All the polls show Serbia’s democratic opposition and Vojislav Kostunica doing better than Milosevic and his coalition.

Q: Images of Belgrade protests show many young people. Yet, many Serbian youth are disaffected by politics. How do you appeal to them?

A: Since most who abstain in elections are young people, according to our surveys, we decided to produce a series of concerts this year all over Serbia to motivate young people to take responsibility and vote. The first 10 concerts were very successful: Polls show that there will be fewer abstainers this election than before. And a great number of voters also decreases the possibility for election fraud. . . .

We have extremely good connections with student movements and youth movements. In this campaign, what helps us is that we received MTV Europe’s Free Your Mind award for free speech [in 1998]. We also have contacts with War Child [an English relief organization that collaborates with artists and musicians] and with members of well-known rock bands, such as REM, and famous club deejays. We are also a record label; we are releasing CDs of local bands that are very popular; we do videos.

Q: You opposed NATO’s bombing campaign in Kosovo. How did that affect the way people viewed you in Yugoslavia and in the West?

A: It’s absurd that [my opposition to] the bombing is used as criticism against me even here. That was one of the major criticisms of the people now managing Radio B2-92. Because [the New York Times article] was very clearly an argument against Milosevic, too. But in extreme situations, things are always viewed in black and white. So those who highlighted the point that I am against Milosevic at the same time concluded I cannot be against the bombing. The same thing happened at the international level: That “I am against the bombing” means “I can’t be against Milosevic.” I am proud of that article, because all reactions to that article speak to our independence. One of our former directors used to have a saying that, “You are really independent when everyone hates you.” During the bombing, almost everyone around us was against us. . . .

One of the main problems with the reporting on events in the former Yugoslavia in the past 10 years was its superficiality. Bombing was a radical event, but everything that preceded it was also radical and important. The whole thing deserves deep, profound and careful analysis and reporting. All NATO’s mistakes [planes bombed a convoy of refugees and destroyed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade] proved to be helpful to Milosevic. We [in the independent media] are all absolutely helpless about those mistakes. All we can do is condemn them. One of the hard facts that contributed to this is that nothing has been done in Kosovo, so far, to calm the situation. Murders of Serbians, Romany and Albanians happen on a daily basis. There is no system that functions there.

Q: What are the important lessons of past 10 years?

A: It’s easy to establish what kind of responsibility the politicians and the military had at the time. But it’s very difficult to define the responsibility of those whose . . . articles, works of art and speeches influenced crimes and brutality. It is impossible to establish a new cultural model for the younger population, a new system of values, without defining and revealing the mistakes of past cultural models.

In the past 10 years, we have had another kind of black-and-white picture: Serbs were always villains, and all others were good. We need balance on that issue. *