Punching fists

Last week, the Constitutional Court of Serbia concluded the preparatory session regarding the request of the deputy public prosecutor Slobodan Radovanović to ban 14 extreme fan subgroups. On October 16, 2009, after the rampage of Serbian fans in Genoa, Radovanović submitted a proposal to the Constitutional Court to ban the activities of 14 extreme fan groups of Partizan, Crvena zvezda and Rada. In his request to the Constitutional Court, he stated that the actions of these groups "are aimed at the violent overthrow of the constitutional order, the violation of guaranteed human and minority rights, and the incitement of racial, national and religious hatred." Emphasizing that they are club fans in name only, Radovanović added that they are fans of crime and have nothing in common with sports. Consideration of disputed issues, which were opened in the report of the judge reporter for the preparatory session, lasted a total of nearly eight hours. As explained to the Tanjug reporter, it is now up to the judge reporter, after listening to the opinions of the judges, to propose further court action based on the prosecution's proposal to ban fan groups. Preparatory sessions of the Constitutional Court are closed to the public, and according to the Rules of Procedure for its work, the rapporteur judge could propose, if he deems it necessary, to hold a public hearing, i.e. a consultative meeting or to continue work on the report for decision-making in this case.

Exactly one year ago, the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Serbia submitted to the Constitutional Court a request to ban the extreme right-wing organizations Nacionalni stroj, Obraz and Srpski narodni pokret Naši 1389. The quick reaction of the Constitutional Court to the request to ban fan groups caused the anger of a part of the public due to the long wait for consideration requests to ban ultra-right organizations. Unlike fan groups, in the case of ultra-right organizations, at least at first glance, it seems difficult to establish actions "aimed at the violent overthrow of the constitutional order, violation of guaranteed human and minority rights, and incitement of racial, national and religious hatred." The leaders of these organizations almost never openly call for violence, in public appearances they will never explicitly say what exactly they mean when, for example, they tell the participants of the Pride Parade: "We are waiting for you" or "It's over."

However, any connection between ultra-right organizations and the peaceful policy of protection of national, Orthodox, traditional and other values ​​ends at public appearances in front of television cameras. In numerous incidents with elements of violence during the last decade, the perpetrators often wore the insignia of these organizations (see box). After all, after the arrest of Mladen Obradović from Obraz, the police announced that they had material evidence that Obradović was one of the organizers of the violence that broke out in Belgrade on October 10, the day of the Pride Parade. The President of the Constitutional Court, Bosa Nenadić, recently stated that the cases concerning the request to ban ultra-right organizations are among the most important and that "the judge rapporteurs, in accordance with the work plan, will soon propose further action by the court".

In this sense, it is not a bad idea to look at what kind of organizations they are and who they are and what the people who lead them and represent in public do.

MLAJA AND MISHA: At the moment, the biggest "heroes" of young ultra-rightists, beyond all doubt, are Mladen Obradović from Obraz and Miša Vacić from the Serbian People's Movement "Our 1389". The reason for their popularity is, what else but - arrests. Both were arrested for the first time on September 20, 2009, after the cancellation of the Pride Parade and after the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia issued a ban on public gatherings in Belgrade, which both ignored.

Mladen Obradović (30) has been a member of Obraz since 1999. Legend has it that an "effective" performance by Obraz founder Nebojsa M. Krstić on BK television inspired a large number of students from the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy to join this organization, among whom was Obradović, who is currently in his third year of studying History and second year of the seminary. The pause in his studies is due to his obligations in Obraz, but this year he continued his education. After the death of Nebojša M. Krstić in a traffic accident, Obradović became the secretary of this movement, which, by the way, is the highest position in the hierarchy of Obraz. Obradović's mother, Jasminka, after the last arrest, described her son as a pure and blameless boy who does not drink, smoke, coffee, "not even sour water": "Before he went to school, he read 'Golgotha ​​and Resurrection of Serbia', which has almost 1300 pages. When he started school, the teacher called us and asked if we were forcing him to read and study. She suggested to us that after the first grade, she immediately enrolls in the third." Obradović works in graphic design in his spare time. Although his mother describes him as peaceful, a careful observer will spot him in the footage of the 2001 gay parade smash. Before this year's Pride Parade, just like last year, he told the LGBT population to wait for them, and told the police that Obraz should not call for a fratricidal war, but: "I underline that if someone attacks the people, it will not go unpunished." is true that all the slingshots in the Chinese shopping center were sold out before the Parade (daily newspaper "Alo", October 10), the peaceful Obradović replied: "It was sold out and many more After his arrest and hearing before an investigating judge, he denied his involvement in organizing the riots and decided to defend himself by remaining silent.

photo: Masanori Yoshida

Obradović's colleague Miša Vacić (26), spokesperson of SNP Naši 1389, despite being a few years younger, can boast of a longer prison term. He is a student at the Faculty of Law in Belgrade and editor of the student newspaper Pravnik. Last year, after he was arrested following the cancellation of the Pride Parade, police found a gun, slingshots and several phantom masks in his apartment. Even today, Vacić claims that these cases were planted against him. On September 22, 2009, for disobeying the police ban on public gatherings, Vacić was sentenced to 30 days in prison, which he served in Padinska Skela, from where he made statements to tabloids via text messages. Only a month after his release from prison, he was stopped by two policemen near the Novi Beograd prison building while he was sticking a sticker "They don't like Serbia" on which the characters of Boris Tadić, Ivica Dačić and Mlađan Dinkić were shown. What exactly happened has never been established, until two months later he was detained again on charges of assaulting police officers. SNP 1389 published a video of the incident that someone managed to record with a mobile phone. In the video, which can also be found on YouTube, it can be seen that two policemen are trying to push Vacić into the official car, while he breaks away, screams and kicks them. The policemen's violence against Vacić is not visible on the video. According to the current laws of Serbia, resisting arrest is considered an attack on an official.

RELIGIOUS TEACHER AGAINST B92: Vacić's SNP 1389 recently integrated with the association "Naši" from Arandjelovac. The leader of this association, Ivan M. Ivanović, became famous after he and his supporters in December 2007 violently prevented the panel of the show "Peščanik" in Arandjelovac. He also stirred up the public in December 2009 when, participating in the "Insider" show of Television B92, he stated that he was teaching Religious Studies in five elementary schools in Arandjelovac. On this occasion, the Ministry of Education announced that it asked the Serbian Orthodox Church to review Ivanović's work and take appropriate measures in this regard. The topics through which Ivanovic advocates patriotic values ​​are always the same, and there are a total of three of them: Television B92, President of Serbia Boris Tadić and the Center for the Promotion of the Culture of Nonviolence and Equality Queer from Belgrade. Ivanovic is the author of two books: Boris Tadic the man with a thousand faces i The Quiri file, both published by the Association of Citizens "Naši". The content of the books is rather disappointing, because, for example, in the case The Quiri Dossier it boils down to the transmitted texts from the blog of this organization, which, by the way, are freely available on the Internet.

photo: beta

By uniting SNP 1389 and the "Naš" Association, Serbian ultra-rightists broke the previous tradition of one man representing one organization in public. Apart from Vacić and Ivanović, Boris Bratina, an assistant in the Philosophy of Science, Ontology and Contemporary Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Pristina and a member of the board of directors of SNP Naši 1389, also appears in public. Regardless of his academic background, in an interview for the weekly "Pečat" On September 16 of this year, Bratina showed that he does not hesitate to go out on the street and oppose the Pride Parade: "Like last year, we will participate in its prevention. We especially repeat the invitation to the citizens to take photos of all the participants of this parade, and then we will buy the photos and put up the whole city, so that everyone can be proud and look at the 'image of their character'."

The Serbian ultra-right also has its own sophisticated current, mostly gathered around the editorial office of the magazine "Dveri srpska", founded first as a specialized magazine for students of the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade, which later grew into an organization called the Serbian Assembly of Dveri. Unlike other organizations of the extreme right, which decided to express their protest against the Pride Parade on the day of its holding, the team from Dvera was the main organizer of the Family Walk, a gathering held on October 9 on the Plateau in front of the Faculty of Philosophy, both this year and last year. In public, they are most often represented by Vladan Glišić, by profession the deputy public prosecutor in the Municipality of Rakovica, a permanent member of the editorial staff of the magazine "Dveri" and the main advocate of the theory of "decency society" as a value that can oppose the "ideology of homosexuality". As part of that theory, Glišić also develops the famous thesis about sexuality in general as something that should remain strictly guarded in the private sphere, and that it must never be found in public or on the street, in any form. However, nowhere does he explain how the Family Walk, an unquestionable public manifestation of heterosexuality, fits into this.

photo: reuters