RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 4, No. 217, Part II, 8 November 2000
END NOTE
SERBIAN PRISON UNREST SPREADS
By Jolyon Naegele
Serbia's three main prisons--Sremska Mitrovica, Nis, and
Pozarevac--are currently in the hands of rebellious inmates,
with the first fatality being reported after nearly 48 hours
of unrest.
The uprisings represent a major challenge to plans by
the fledgling government of Yugoslav President Vojislav
Kostunica to amnesty some 800 Kosovar Albanians, whom Serbian
forces seized as hostages during NATO air strikes last year.
The inmates at the three prisons are demanding an end to poor
treatment and the expansion of the proposed amnesty bill for
Kosovar Albanian political prisoners in Serbia to include
Serbian common criminals.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on 7 November called on
Kostunica's administration to "take all necessary measures to
ensure the security and well-being of all prisoners, and in
particular the Kosovar Albanian detainees."
The unrest started in Sremska Mitrovica, 75 kilometers
west of Belgrade, late on 5 November, before spreading east
and south to Nis and Pozarevac.
At least four buildings at Pozarevac prison were on fire
on the afternoon of 7 November. Prison warden Stipe Marusic
says guards shot in the air to calm down the rioters. But
inmates contacted by telephone say the guards shot at them,
injuring several prisoners.
At Nis, a prisoner slipped off the roof of a building,
suffered serious head injuries, and later died in hospital.
Several hundred riot police armed with sub-machine guns have
since surrounded the prison.
Unrest at Sremska Mitrovica prison, where before the
uprising some 1,300 inmates were incarcerated, including 50
foreigners and six prisoners on death row, resulted in three
injuries. But Sremska Mitrovica was reported calm on 7
November.
An RFE/RL correspondent in Sremska Mitrovica spoke with
several prisoners, including one who said the inmates are
demanding that former prison warden Trifun Nivkovic be tried
for torturing prisoners and forcing the prisoners to live in
"impossible conditions." "We also want an amnesty. Thirty-
three percent are political prisoners and 33 percent are
first-time offenders, so they should all be covered in an
amnesty," the inmate said.
At Nis prison, some 300 Albanian prisoners declined an
invitation by Serbian inmates to join the revolt. At Sremska
Mitrovica, Albanians joined the uprising, but late last night
police evacuated several bus-loads of Albanians from the
prison.
Kosovar Albanian inmate Mehmet Shabani says Albanians
joined the Sremska Mitrovica protest as equals with the
Serbs: "We have a common goal--Serbs, Albanians, and the
others--we are all together. We fully support what our
colleagues are demanding. We are political prisoners. There
are 167 Albanians here. I don't think we are hurting anyone
with our frustration. But even without this amnesty bill, we
have expected more from this new government than the little
it has offered up to now."
One of Serbia's three co-ministers of justice, Dragan
Subasic, told RFE/RL that the Justice Ministry considers the
prisoners' demands "fully justified," including the demand
for extending amnesty to non-Albanians. Subasic is a member
of Kostunica's Democratic Opposition of Serbia coalition.
"Above all, it is clear these protests are the result of long
years of bad and abnormal measures in this prison... This
[included] very bad treatment of condemned persons who don't
even get health care."
Meanwhile, relatives of the prisoners have gathered
outside the prisons awaiting news of their family members.
The prison revolts in Serbia have a recent historical
parallel in Eastern Europe. Shortly after being inaugurated
as the first post-communist president of Czechoslovakia in
late December 1989, Vaclav Havel issued a sweeping amnesty.
Havel himself had spent more than five years in Czechoslovak
prisons as a dissident playwright and was convinced that with
communism gone, many inmates should be given a second chance.
The release of all political prisoners was a key demand
of the leaders of the Velvet Revolution, and the communist
authorities, which had consistently maintained that there
were no political prisoners, finally released all those
demanded by the opposition. Weeks before, Havel had been
elected by the largely communist parliament.
Havel's amnesty did not only cover political prisoners
but those who were jailed for non-violent crimes. The
amnesty, however, provoked riots among more hard-core
criminals not affected by the amnesty, who proceeded to trash
and set several Czech and Slovak prisons ablaze. Many of the
prisoners released under Havel's amnesty went back to crime
and were soon behind bars again.
The amnesty permanently damaged Havel's reputation. More
than a decade later, it is still perceived by many Czechs and
Slovaks as having been Havel's greatest mistake.
The author is an RFE/RL senior correspondent based in Prague.
Copyright (c) 2000. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
http://www.rferl.org
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