The Official Web Presentation of the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Yugoslav Daily Survey - Special Issue

BELGRADE, 2 October 2000 YUGOSLAV PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC ADDRESSES THE ATION
(Tanjug).- Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic addressed on Monday the
nation over the Serbian radio and television. "Dear citizens, In the
expectation of the second round of the election, I take the opportunity to
explain to you my views on the electoral and political situation in our
country, especially in Serbia. As you know, efforts have been underway for
a whole decade to place the entire Balkan peninsula under the control of
some western powers. A big part of that job was done by establishing puppet
governments in some countries, by transforming them into countries with
limited sovereignty or even deprived of any sovereignty at all. Due to our
resistance to such a fate for our country, we were subjected to all forms
of pressure to which people in the contemporary world can be subjected. The
number and intensity of the pressures multiplied as time went by.

All experience the big powers gained in the second half of the 20th century
in overthrowing governments, causing unrest, instigating civil wars,
disparaging or liquidating national freedom fighters, bringing states and
nations to the brink of poverty - all this was applied to our country and
our people. The developments organized for our elections are also a part of
the organized persecution of our country and our people, because our
country and our people constitute a barrier to the establishment of full
domination in the Balkan peninsula. A grouping has for a long time now been
present in our midst which, under the guise of opposition political parties
of democratic orientation, represents the interests of governments which
are the protagonists of pressures against Yugoslavia, and especially
against Serbia. That grouping appeared in these elections under the name
Democratic Opposition of Serbia.

Its true head is not its presidential candidate. Its head for many years
has been the president of the Democratic Party and collaborator of the
military alliance which waged a war against our country. He could not even
conceal his collaboration with that alliance. In fact, our entire public
knows of his appeal to NATO to bomb Serbia for as many weeks as necessary
to break its resistance. The grouping organized in this manner for these
elections therefore represents the armies and governments which recently
waged war against Yugoslavia. In representing their interests, the grouping
launched messages to our public that with them at the head, Yugoslavia
would be out of any danger of war or violence, that economic prosperity
would come, the standard of living would improve visibly and rapidly, that
Yugoslavia would allegedly reintegrate in international institutions, and
so forth. Distinguished citizens, It is my duty to warn you publicly and in
time that such promises are false and that the situation is quite
different. It is precisely our policy which guarantees peace and theirs
only lasting conflicts and violence, and I shall tell you why.

With the establishment of an administration supported or installed by a
community of countries gathered within NATO, Yugoslavia would inevitably
become a country whose territory would quickly be dismembered. These are
not only NATO's intentions. These are the pre-election promises of the
Democratic Opposition of Serbia. We have heard from its representatives
that Sandzak would get the autonomy that a member of its coalition and
leader of a separatist Muslim organization Sulejman Ugljanin has been
advocating for ten years, and which would in fact mean a definite
separation of Sandzak from Serbia. Their promises also include giving to
Vojvodina an autonomy that would not only separate it from Serbia and
Yugoslavia but would in fact make it an integral part of neighbouring
Hungary. In a similar manner other areas would be separated from Serbia and
some other border areas. Their annexation by neighbouring states has for a
long time been a hot issue in those states, which keep inciting their
minorities in Yugoslavia to make a contribution to an integration of parts
of our country with neighbouring states.

Within this policy of dismembering Yugoslavia, Kosovo would be the first
victim. Its present status would be proclaimed legal and final. It is the
first part of its territory to which Serbia would have to bid farewell,
without even voicing hope that this part of its land could once be returned
to it. The remaining territory that would bear the name Serbia would be
occupied by international, US or some third military forces, which would
treat this territory as their military training ground and as their
property to be controlled in line with the interests of the power whose
army is present there. We have been looking at cases of such control and
consequences thereof for decades, and especially in this decade in many
countries around the world, unfortunately lately even in Europe, for
instance in Kosovo, Republika Srpska and Macedonia, in our immediate
neighbourhood.

The people of Serbia would know the fate of the Kurds, with a prospect of
being exterminated more speedily than the Kurds since they are less
numerous, and since their movements would be limited to a much smaller area
than the one in which Kurds have been present for decades. As for
Montenegro, its fate would be left in the hands of the mafia, whose rules
of the game should be made well known to the citizens: any breach of
discipline and especially any opposition to mafia interests is punishable
by death without any right to appeal. I have presented to you the fate of
Yugoslavia in case of acceptance of the NATO option for our country, in
order to warn you that, in addition to a loss of land and humiliation of
the people, all would live under ceaseless violence. The new owners of
former Yugoslavia's state territory and occupiers of the remaining Serbian
territory would, as is the nature of things, terrorize the population whose
territory they will have occupied. The Serb people itself would at the same
time fight continuously for the re-establishment of a Serb state in which
it could reassemble. They do not want peace or prosperity in the Balkans.
They want this to be a zone of permanent conflicts and wars which would
provide them with an alibi for their lasting presence. "A puppet government
therefore guarantees violence, possibly many years of war, anything but
peace.

Only our own administration guarantees peace. Moreover, all countries
finding themselves with a status of limited sovereignty and with
governments under the influence of foreign powers, have speedily become
impoverished in a manner destroying all hope for more just and humane
social relations. A great division into a poor majority and a rich minority
- this has been the picture of eastern Europe for some years now that we
can all see. That picture would also include us. We, too, would under the
command and control of the owners of our country quickly have a tremendous
majority of the very poor, whose prospects of coming out of their poverty
would be very, very uncertain and far away. The rich minority would be
constituted by the black marketeering elite, which would be allowed to be
rich only on condition that it be fully loyal to the command which decides
the fate of their country.

Public and social property would quickly be transformed into private
property, but its owners, as demonstrated by the experience of our
neighbours, would as a rule be foreigners. Among few exceptions would be
only those who would purchase their right to ownership by their loyalty and
submission, which would lead to the elimination of elementary national and
human dignity. The greatest national assets in such circumstances become
the property of foreigners, and the people who used to manage them would
continue to do so in these changed circumstances but as employees of
foreign companies in their own country. National humiliation, state
fragmentation and social poverty would necessarily lead to many forms of
social pathology, of which crime would be the first. This is not just an
assumption, this is the experience of all countries which have taken the
path that we are trying to avoid at any cost. The centres of European crime
are no longer in the west, they were moved to eastern Europe a decade ago.

Our people find it hard to bear already the present crime incidence, as we
lived for a long time - from World War II to the 1990s - in a society which
hardly knew any crime at all. Any large-scale crime, such as cannot be
avoided in a society that we would become with the loss of sovereignty and
a large part of territory, such large-scale crime would be as dangerous for
our small and unused to crime people as war is dangerous for the society
and its citizens. One of the essential tasks of a puppet government in any
country, including ours were we to have such a government, is loss of
identity. Countries under foreign command relatively quickly part with
their history, their past, their tradition, their national symbols, their
way of living, often their own literary language. Invisible at first, but
very efficient and merciless selection of national identity would reduce it
to a few local dishes, a few songs and folk dances, the names of national
heroes used as brand names for food products or cosmetics. One of the
really obvious consequences of the takeover of territories of countries by
the big powers in the 20th century is the annihilation of the identity of
the people of those countries.

Experience of other countries shows that people can hardly come to terms
with the speed with which they are starting to use a foreign language as
their own, to identify with foreign historic figures forgetting their own,
to be better acquainted with the literature of their occupiers than their
own, to glorify the history of others while mocking their own, to resemble
others instead of themselves. The loss of a national identity is the
greatest defeat a nation can know, which is inevitable in the contemporary
form of colonization. Besides, that new form of colonization by its very
nature rules out any possibility of free speech or free will, and
especially rules out any creativity of any kind. Countries which are not
free deny to the people who live in them the right to freely express their
opinion, as that opinion would be in collision with the absence of freedom.
This is why torture over thought is the most consistent and essential form
of torture in a country that has lost its freedom.

As for exercising free will, it is, naturally, out of the question. Free
will is allowed only as a farce. It is allowed only to the lackeys of
foreign masters, whose simulated free will is used by the occupiers as a
justification for establishing democracy in whose name they have taken
possession of another people's country. I would like to stress particularly
because of young people, intellectuals, scientists, that countries deprived
of sovereignty are as a rule deprived of the right to creative work, and
especially creative work in the field of science. Large centers and large
powers finance scientific work, control its attainments and decide about
the application of its results. Dependent states, if they have scientific
laboratories and scientific institutes, are not independent ones but
operate as branches controlled by one center. Their attainments must remain
within bounds that will not introduce in occupied countries and occupied
peoples the seed of rebellion and emancipation. At this moment ahead of the
run-off elections, because the Democratic Opposition of Serbia doubts it
can achieve the result it needs, leaders of the Democratic Opposition of
Serbia with money introduced into the country are bribing, blackmailing and
harassing citizens and organizing strikes, unrest and violence in order to
stop production, all work and every activity.

All that, of course, with the aim of stopping life in Serbia and with the
explanation that life can start again and go on successfully and well, when
it is organized by those who represent here the intentions, plans and
interests of occupiers. Our country is a sovereign state. It has its laws,
its Constitution, its institutions. Serbia is duty bound, and it deserves
to defend itself from invasion which has been prepared against it through
different forms of subversion. And the citizens should know, that by
participating in subversion whose objective is foreign domination over
their country or the occupation of their country, they bear the historical
responsibility of denying to their country the right to exist and also the
responsibility of losing control over their own lives.

By giving up their country to others, to foreign will they also surrender
to foreign will their own life and the life of their children and of many
other people. I considered it my duty, to warn the citizens of our country
about the consequences of the activities financed and supported by the
governments of NATO countries. Citizens can trust me but they do not have
to. My wish is only that they do not realize this when it is too late, that
they do not realize this when it will be difficult to redress mistakes that
citizens naively, superficially or erroneously made, as those mistakes will
be difficult to rectify and some will never be rectified. My motive to
express my opinion in this way is not, at all, of personal nature. I was
elected twice President of Serbia and once President of Yugoslavia. It
should be clear to all, after these ten years, that they are not attacking
Serbia because of Milosevic, but Milosevic because of Serbia.

My conscience in that respect is absolutely clear. My conscience, however,
would not at all be clear if I would not tell my people, after all these
years at their head, what I think about their fate if that fate is imposed
by someone else, even if it means to explain to the people that they have
chosen that fate themselves. The misjudgment that they are choosing what
has been chosen by someone else, is the most dangerous misjudgment and the
main reason of my decision to address publicly the citizens of Yugoslavia.
Thank you."

©1999 Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia


Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/





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