Blaming the Other to Hide the Guilt – Another Model of Serbian Politics

The other working model of Serbian politics has traditionally been to hide one’s own guilt by blaming others. After the wars on the territory of former Yugoslavia, instigated and initiated by the ideological, political and state apparatus of Serbia, the aim and goal of the official policy in Belgrade was not to distance and turn away from this approach, but to hide it guilt, minimization of the criminal act, relativism and weighing of criminal acts. It was practiced to disguise guilt by blaming the other for the crime, even though it was known that this model would not work in the long run. The irony arose when it was accepted by the modeler.

During the Kosovo war, the state apparatus of Serbia, taking advantage of the power of the remaining Yugoslavia, committed crimes and massacres in Kosovo, as seen in Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, in December 1998, masked men entered the “Panda” café in the town of Peja, completely controlled by the Serbian military and paramilitary forces, and opened fire with automatic weapons, killing five schoolboys and one student of Serbian descent.

The authorities, who controlled everything in Kosovo without adequate transparency and did not respect the right of the accused to explain themselves, accused the Albanians and the Kosovo Liberation Army as perpetrators of the crime. The crime was considered terrorist. Everything was closed. The case was considered closed. Five Albanians were imprisoned!

This was a multiple crime of the Serbian state. Well planned, carried out with the consent of the Serbian state authorities at the time, orchestrated to find the real hidden culprit. The mistake was there, it was the Albanians. Although the town was controlled by the Special Forces of Serbia, then by other Serbian military and paramilitary forces present in the town of Peja, there was no possibility that the Albanians were the ones throwing bullets. However, there could be no change in the approach of the state authorities at that time.

A few years later, that is in 2013, Aleksandar Vučić was the head of the Office for Coordination with the Security Service and the first vice-president of the Serbian government, he had declared, with or without intention, what was known but had to be proven before the judicial authorities. “The crime in “Panda” was not committed by Albanians, as we have assumed so far. “The public will be horrified when the truth comes out,” said the current President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić. However, he never appeared in court to reveal the truth about the multiple horrors.

The parents, whose sons were killed in the cafe “Panda” in Peja, have constantly asked for a meeting with the President of Serbia, Vucic, but he has never received them. The legal representative of the parents, Ivan Ninic, has filed a request with the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime to question President Aleksandër Vucic as a witness. Whether he is ready to testify about the truth known to him is not yet confirmed.

The title of this event emphasizes the functioning of Serbian politics, which does not change from the inside and does not see any obstacles from the outside to continue as usual. The model as in the case of the murder of Serbian youth, where the crime was committed by the Serbian state apparatus and served to increase the hatred and hostility of the Serbian population towards others, is a crime in itself. Allowing and transgressing without recognizing and exposing these political models is not only frightening for the future, but also a possibility of their repetition. /The Geopost/