"Safe House" project report on the perspectives of Amnesty Law for draft evaders and deserters in Serbia and Montenegro

This report is compiled from the press materials, interviews and personal observations and findings.

According to many unofficial sources there are more than 20000 court cases connected to military service and the punishments are usually extremely high. Colonel Ratko Korlat, president of the Military Court in Belgrade, declared that this court is dealing with 2400 charges and 1900 cases under investigation, taken over from all military courts, which worked in Serbia during the war time. Colonel Korlat stressed that minimal sentence for refusing the draft call was five years of imprisonment, but in the cases of absence more sever. Before delivering the sentence, court was taking into account earlier criminal files if existed, marital status, children if any, and the opinion about military service and the state of the prosecuted.

Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Montenegro declared that 14000 charges were raised against the citizens of Montenegro for evading draft calls. Committee's opinion about it is that this is the way to "frighten people and limit the freedom of movement." According to this source, "the regime of Slobodan Milosevic used mobilization to put pressure on its opponents in Montenegro, such were many journalists, among whom the founder of prominent independent weekly ' Monitor' Miodrag Perovic and the editor of radio 'Free Montenegro' Nebojsa Redzic."

Four reserve officers, Bratislav Debeljakovic, Miroslav Markovic, Sladjan Vidojevic and Dobrivoje Mladenovic from Krusevac, who organized the first massive rebellion of reservists who returned from Kosovo to their home town are being held in prison charged for abandoning military positions. The investigation is still under way for some organizers of the rebellion of reservists in Kraljevo too. Towards the end of the war these rebellions became massive and occurred in several garrison. Demands included payment for days spent in the army but also demobilisation and the cease of any new mobilisations. Protests were often joined by mothers and wives of reservists and after days of road blockades and tense situation some of their demands were fulfilled.

Trials for offences related to evading military service were often covered by state media in a "witch hunt" manner. One such example is announcements of charges which are presented as final judgements in "Politika" (major regime's daily). The emphasis was on the opposition party leaders which were accused as traitors, usually in connection to non fulfilment of military duties, even though their "guilt" was never proven.

Badly organised delivery of draft calls was the cause for thousands of charges. In this case it does not concern the people whose attitude towards this war was shown by evading draft calls, but the ones who did not even receive them in a legally correct manner. Lawyer Gradimir Nalic from the Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights in Belgrade is pointing out the case of a student (fourth year at the Art Academy ) who was sentenced to seven years of imprisonment. The chief evidence of his avoidance of draft call was the testimony of the call-up deliverer who wrote that "no one opened the door to take the call-up paper although some noise could be heard from the apartment." Lawyer Zoran M. Jovanovic reported on his case, a physician from Belgrade who was sentenced to three years. The verdict was brought upon the statement of deliverer who declared that he handed the call-up to physician's wife. Later it turned out it was a physician's mother and not wife. The mother never reported about the call up believing she could secure her son from danger in this way. In fact as Jovanovic warned many realized that they 'evaded the draft' only after they were sentenced to prison.

Precise number of young people, who left the country in order to evade possibility of taking part in the last war is impossible to know, but some speculations go as high as tens of thousands. On the other hand, a lot of young people who stayed in the country have the status of "internal emigrants". There are no signs so far of any interest on behalf of the regime for giving the opportunity to these people to live normal life or come back. Reasons for such attitude are their political beliefs and regime's continuing flirt with war options and internal conflicts. Younger men are still checked on the border to verify whether there are no charges raised against them.

Lawyer Slobodan Soskic thinks that the question of amnesty is a test for the opposition. "Regime proclaims the end of NATO aggression as a victory and opposition parties are competing with regime in patriotic statements instead of making a critical distance from the war. Common people are against the war, but they are constantly told that the war was inevitable. Priority is to explain to the people that this regime was leading wrong politics which caused this war. When the majority of people understand that this war was the defeat of politics and not fate - it is very likely to expect better approach towards this problem too," stressed Soskic. Even the Democratic party, whose leading functionaries were charged with offences related to avoiding military duties and some even sentenced, does not address the issue of amnesty in their campaign for resignation of Milosevic and radical political changes in Serbia. The only exception among political parties are minor parties such as Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians or Montenegrian Liberals (independentists) which both openly supported draft evaders and now demand an Amnesty Law.

As many of media are still banned and many others have not restarted broadcasting or publishing since they lost premises, equipment or personnel there is very little serious discussion in media over the issue of the war, responsibility for it, consequences and almost none on the amnesty. It is similar with the general public which is to a large extent critical of Milosevic and his regime but does not question the war as such, conscription nor it raises the need to amnesty those who opposed the war by avoiding the mobilization or deserting the army. It seem that hundreds of imprisoned deserters or draft evaders and thousands in exile or in hiding exist as problems only for their families.

The international community focuses only on war crimes committed in Kosovo which definitely needs attention. However, while condemning Milosevic and his regime one should not forget many of its victims in Serbia and Montenegro, including imprisoned draft evaders and deserters who should be granted amnesty.