02. 08. 2004

Government “washing hands of minorities”

NOVI SAD, August 2, 2004 (Beta) – No political majority in Serbia is prepared to pursue a democratic policy on minorities, preferring to leave the issue to groups and individuals, the director of the Forum for Ethnic Relations, Dusan Janjic, said today. Commenting on the transfer of responsibility for minority-language media to national councils, Janjic told Novi Sad daily Dnevnik that many political parties saw the establishment of the national councils as signalling the end of their responsibility for ethnic minorities. “Just because operating rights have been transferred to the national councils it doesn’t mean that the state’s obligation to operate its own public services and state media in minority languages has ceased to exist,” he said. Janjic added that staff of the Romanian-language Libertate and the Ruthenian-language Ruske Slovo had had to resort to strikes after all agreements and promises came to nothing. After taking over the media operating rights from the Vojvodina Assembly, the Romanian and Ruthenian National Councils set out to elect new boards of management and dismiss the directors and editors-in-chief of the newspapers. However, he said, since the councils were established, “everything has been suspect from the legal, political and ethical points of view”. Janjic lays the blame for the problems in minority-language media on what he says is the “deliberately unregulated status of the national councils”. The forum director noted that he had resigned while federal legislation on minorities was being drafted because of the pressure group represented by League of Vojvodina Hungarians leader Jozsef Kasza and federal Human and Minority Rights Minister Rasim Ljajic. “Kasza and Ljajic didn’t want this whole matter to be completely clear, in order to pursue their own interests in the legal vacuum,” said Janjic. Most cynical of all, says Janjic, is that almost everyone is showing good will and everyone is advocating democracy and supporting minorities, yet the situation is developing in the worst possible direction.