Read Central! Europe

Read Central! Europe is an informal association of four publishing houses from Central Europe: Magveto from Budapest, Hungary, Arhipelag from Belgrade, Serbia, Studentska zalozba from Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Fraktura from Zapresic, Croatia.

The common trait of all is the concern to publich literary works speaking to readers around the world and to offer a common basis of understanding in an area where disagreements were more often than the common perspectives.

Eastern Europe's Muppies

or how the transition in Eastern Europe is nothing but waiting. The aim of this waiting is usually called "change" but by now it is hard to understand if it is a slim common understanding of the content of this great, great word.

Minorities and the economic crisis. The Hungarian case

The current economic crisis will not affect the support of the Hungarian state for minorities.
"The government has duties and moral obligations to Hungarians living beyond the borders which it has to fulfill even under difficult circumstances", said the Hungarian prime-minister, Gordon Bajnai, on the occasion of a meeting with Hungarian representatives from Romania, Slovakia, Serbia and Ukraine. In the same time, the new 41 year-old billionaire prime-minister should fight the economic crisis and the worrying rise of the extreme right.

Panel Seeks Solutions To Albanian-Serb Divide In Kosovo

Over a year after independence was declared, Kosovo's Serbs and Albanians are no closer to coexistence.

Nikola Krastev
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
April 27

Three panels were brought together by the U.S.-based Association for the Studies of Nationalities to examine the challenges facing Kosovo one year after it declared independence from Serbia.

But as the debates intensified, it because clear there were no simple answers.

Panelists had sharp disagreements about the best way for Pristina to deal with its sizable Serbian majority in Kosovo's north, the majority of whom remain deeply loyal to Belgrade.

Some discussion participants suggested a federalist system of government might prove the best fit for Kosovo.

Nebojsa Vladislavjevic, a Serbian analyst who has written extensively on Kosovo, suggested a model close to the 1995 Dayton accord that divided power between Bosnia's Serbs, Croats, and Muslims might bring lasting peace to Kosovo's Serbs and Albanians.

"You need substantial territorial solutions, very radical territorial autonomy for a minority which is essentially under existential threat. And you also need some sort of overlapping sovereignties," Vladislavjevic said.

"That's why I said that the Bosnian-Dayton model is applicable to the Kosovo conflict as it stands right now, because it will provide security to the minority, self-rule, and also extensive links with Serbia. And at the same time you will have power-sharing between the Serbian and Albanian entities."

Others suggested a formal partition was a more practical solution. That would reunite northern Kosovo, where Serbs make up 90 percent of the population, with Serbia proper -- and leave the remaining territory as an undisputed, independent state that even Belgrade would willingly recognize.

But Shinasi Rama, a Kosovo expert and professor of political science at New York University, said such a partition could prove destablizing to the entire Balkan Peninsula, still grappling with the ethnic divisions resulting from the Yugoslav breakup.

While Kosovar Serbs have a natural patron in their fellow Serbs in Belgrade, Kosovar Albanians are far less reliant on their ethnic kin in Albania. A formal partition, Rama said, could hand the Serbs an unfair advantage.

"Serbs [in Kosovo] are being used by Belgrade because they are fully funded, financially supported, structurally organized," Rama said. "The Serbian elite provides leadership to them at the local level, etc. So, in a sense they see themselves as Serbs living in Kosovo."

Social Collapse

Adding to Kosovo's ethnic tensions is its rampant poverty. Unemployment hovers at a staggering 45 percent, suicide rates and criminal activity are rising, and corruption is widespread. Social services like garbage collection are largely defunct, leaving growing piles of refuse piling alongside village roads.

Hundreds of Albanians have had their electricity cut off during the past year for failing to pay their utility bills. But Kosovar authorities have been far more reluctant to cut off services to delinquent Serbian consumers, some of whom have reportedly gone years without paying for electricity.

In another notorious case, ethnic Serbs employed by Kosovo's police force failed to show up for work for over a year but continued to receive their salaries of 200 euros ($260) a month.

Such a situation, said Anna Di Lellio, a sociologist and journalist who has worked for years as a UN consultant in Kosovo, has left many Kosovar Albanians with a sense of deep distrust toward the central government in Pristina.

Anytime the majority feels the minority is enjoying special privilege, Di Lellio said, it's dangerous. "If a minority is not happy, we may solve the problem. But if the majority is not happy, it becomes dangerous for the minority," she said.

"So, actually my concern is for the Serb minority; that they not be presented as special, privileged. Nobody in Kosovo can not show up for work for a year and still receive a salary. But Serbs can do it, and these [Albanian] guys are going to think that they are privileged," Di Lellio. "But they're not. I'm not saying that."


See also:
Joe Biden started the Balkan tour

Slavenka Drakulic, on past and present in Serbia

"Why I Haven't Returned to Belgrade"

Sports, race and geopolitics

Here is another Central European story. A Romanian handball player, Marian Cozma, was stabbed to death at the end of the last week in a club, in the Hungarian city of Veszprem. The perpetrators were portrayed in the Hungarian and Romanian media as part of a "Roma gang", an ethnic group being the target of strong resentments in both countries. Thousands of people gathered and light candles in Veszprem in the memory of the player. Among them, supporters of the Magyar Garda, an organization pledging for a ethnically pure Hungary, asking for retaliation against the Roma. These claims were supported by the media in Hungary, as well as by local political parties, as FIDESz. The Hungarian newspaper Magyar Hirlap risks closure after one of its journalists, Zsolt Bayer, wrote an editorial about the death of Romanian handball player Marian Cozma arguing that the "Gypsies are animals and murderers". The manager of the newspaper took the side of the journalist.

In Romania, they were media reports outlining the solidarity of Hungarians with the family of the handball players, insisting as well on the ethnic origin of the perpetrators and reprints from the Hungarian media regarding the situation of the "Roma gangs". The local TVs presented for hours the travel of the coffin of the player from Veszprem to Bucharest, with stops in towns, were hundreds of people waited for sharing its compassion with the family.

Two other mates of Cozma, Croatian Ivan Pesic and Serbian player Zarko Sesum, were seriously injured and hospitalized during the altercation. Stevan Sesum, the father of the Serbian handball player, owns the largest security agency in Serbia among which former members of Arkan's paramilitary troops. The Romanian media wrote Sesum is intending to send "his men" to Hungary and find the perpetrators - information immediately published in the Hungarian media and forums -, but he denied the purported intentions. Vuk Jeremic, the Serbian Foreign Minister, stated in his recent visit to Budapest they are no information about such attempts.

In this part of the world, sport is a matter of pride and is fuelling the national feelings. The sport players are country brands and often they are playing politics as well. The solidarity with the Romanian player across Hungary was a strong deterrent to a possible interpretation of this incident from the point of view of the old historical disputes between the two countries. But, the focus on the ethnic origin of the perpetrators is a warning equally important. At any time, the stories of dissent could be built and as the story with the "Arkan fighters" - who benefited of extended media features in the Romanian media at the time of the wars in the former Yugoslavia - is offering a slight idea about how far this irresponsabile media reporting could go.

Dealing with the Past in the Balkans

A case study of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia, a study by Ivana Franovic, published by the Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management, in october 2008.

Political graffiti - Paris, Rive Gauche, April 2008

Reconciliation in the Balkans. Still a long way ahead.

In the Balkans, the reconciliation is a desired project, still difficult to tackle on the ground. Serbia is an example where the political myths about the past are blocking a normal future.