Or is some element of class dictatorship justified on the grounds of the more socialist and anti-imperialist nature of the Yugoslav Serbian state?
Chris Burford
London
___________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SERBIA: ELECTIONS NOT FREE AND FAIR
(New York, September 15, 2000)—The September 24 elections in Yugoslavia
and Serbia will not be free, and probably will not be fair, Human Rights
Watch said today. In a 10-page press backgrounder, Human Rights Watch
detailed the Yugoslav government's campaign of intimidation and violence
against the opposition, and the fraudulent techniques it has used to
steal past elections.
"The stakes could not be higher for Slobodan Milosevic," said Rachel
Denber, Acting Executive Director of the Europe and Central Asia
Division of Human Rights Watch. "The government has transformed the
election campaign into a siege against the opposition." Ms. Denber
noted that as a war crimes indictee before the International Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Milosevic needs a victory to lower
the risk of being arrested and brought to trial.
During the September 24 elections Yugoslav citizens will simultaneously
vote for a new president, federal parliament, and municipal assemblies.
August polls indicate that only 20 to 25 percent of voters favor
President Milosevic, with 35 to 40 percent supporting his challenger,
Vojislav Kostunica.
The Yugoslav government utterly dominates the media, providing only
meager access to the opposition. In a characteristic example, Politika,
the main government-controlled newspaper, published an editorial
calling leaders of the opposition "well-fed dogs," "a hodge-podge of
nothingness," and "the garbage to throw out."
Police have interrogated high-ranking opposition activists, prevented
them from holding town meetings, and even beaten some low-profile
opposition candidates for municipal assemblies. Some 250 members of
Otpor, a student-led group of Milosevic's opponents, were detained at
the end of August and beginning of September.
Pro-government parties dominate election commissions and polling boards,
which conduct the elections. In the Federal Electoral Commission and
district electoral commissions, the pro-government members outnumber
opposition by six to one. All polling boards, which run the voting at
polling stations, are dominated by members of Milosevic's coalition.
Yugoslav election law facilitates fraud. It bans comprehensive
opposition vetting of the printing of ballots at the state-owned
printing house, Politika. Watermarks on all ballots are identical,
rather than specific to each polling station, which increases the
possibility of the accumulation of ballots that are unaccounted for.
There is no exhaustive list of voters' names and I.D. numbers, making it
virtually impossible to identify persons registered in more than one
polling station or election district. Voters do not countersign the
voting register; instead, a polling board member simply circles the
number next to the name of the voter casting his or her ballot, which
facilitates ballot stuffing. Voting results are expressed only in
digits, not in words; in well-documented cases during the 1996 and 1997
elections, digits were simply added to the numbers indicating the vote
for the ruling Socialist Party of Serbia, after the polling board had
counted the votes.
According to reasonable accounts about 200,000 Kosovo non-Albanians are
eligible voters. Serbian authorities are inflating the number to at
least 350,000. Displaced persons and other Kosovo non-Albanians will
vote at special polling stations throughout Serbia, apparently without
the presence of the opposition at many of them. Voting by
soldiers—whose number is estimated at between 100,000 and 300,000—
remains under the exclusive discretion of the Yugoslav Army, and the
opposition cannot vet for potential fraud.
Yugoslav authorities have turned down a request from the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe for monitoring of the September
24 elections. They also launched a vehement campaign against CESID, a
well-trained and professional election-monitoring organization in
Serbia, accusing it of being a NATO mouthpiece and carrying out police
raids in CESID offices.
The backgrounder is available at:
http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/eca/serbia0915.htm