Progressive social justice while a Serb

Written for Kosovo Online by Srdjan Garcevic, founder of The Nutshell Times

If you want to have a strange experience of mental dissonance, do try reading reactions in most of the English-language commentariat (as well as many diplomats) to the physical attacks on Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija, side by side with coverage of various identity-related incidents, especially within the West itself.

Reading the New York Times, the Guardian and similar publications these days gives would make you believe that the educated Western public and their governments are extremely attuned to how people of various identities (ethnic, class,  gender, sexual, as well as others) can be harmed by behaviours of others previously thought to be harmless or even friendly. Questions about where somebody comes from or somewhat awkward compliments are often debated as “micro-aggressions” and are considered problematic. Considerations of social privilege and discrimination now take account of things such as height and bodyshape, with many movements seeking redresses. 

However, these fights for social justice are no longer lone crusades of activist movements and academics: corporations and governments are increasingly taking the banner in fights against all varieties of discrimination and violence. Not referring to someone the way they want to be known is violence, let alone all the ways people can be aggressive to one another over the internet, which have recently come into focus of various governments to the point of helping other countries deal with these issues. 

Indeed, thanks to such initiatives, a few days ago, an activist group in Belgrade managed to block a feminist discussion on gender-related issues, as they considered it transphobic and thus potentially endangering a minority. 

Almost at the same time as this allegedly, harmful discussion was avoided, a few kilometres down south, Milan Jovanović, an ethnic Serb, was faced with a different, more concrete form of discrimination. He was shot in the back, while driving, by the members of the “Kosovo police”. Jovanović managed to survive thanks to the fact that he could drive himself to seek medical assistance, afraid that he may be attacked once again by those who claim they are there to protect.

Relating to this attack, the official Twitter account of the EU delegation in Priština expressed concern about a “security incident in which a Kosovo Serb was shot and injured”, with no indication of who may have caused the “incident”. The German Ambassador, also worried about the “incident”, even complimented the “Kosovo police” for investigating the case, while wishing the (nameless) victim a speedy recovery. As of yet, the Priština “authorities” were silent about the attack, but did take the time to celebrate the UCK militia, some of whose leaders are now being tried for war crimes against Albanians. 

The deafening silence of the international community,  and euphemising of (very physical) violence in this case alone, would be shocking, were it not par for the course in almost all instances when Serbs are attacked. 

Indeed, using the new, progressive social justice standards on these diplomats’ statements alone would have them “cancelled”. The use of passive, obfuscating language to cover up systemic violence has long been critiqued in the US, where police brutality against minority populations was similarly euphemised by the media until, tragically, high-profile murders, such as that of George Floyd, brought the whole world’s attention to these awful practices. 

Similarly, the un-personing of victims of systemic violence by the omission of their names, as it happened with statements surrounding the shooting of Milan Jovanović, was also in the focus of the social justice movement against police violence. 

The systemic discrimination against Serbs, however, does not seem to be on the radar of organisations and governments that champion progressive social justice in the Balkans. 

That is not because the cases are few and far between. Indeed, the opposite is the case. Only three months ago, Miloš and Stefan Stojanović, the latter of whom is eleven, were shot by an Albanian member of the “Kosovo Security Force” on Orthodox Christmas Eve. Even though Stojanovićs were unarmed and rather plausibly targeted due to their ethnicity and religion, the shooter only received house arrest. 

This “macroaggression” against the Stojanovićs was followed by another common „microaggression”: the Serb identity of the victims was obfuscated. They were referred to as “citizens of Kosovo”, which, even if they identify that way, side-steps that they were probably shot at because they were Serbs, not because of their citizenship. This is especially egregious given that the ethnic character of various “incidents” in Kosovo and Metohija, whether real or made up, is very much foregrounded by Priština authorities as well as the members of the Balkan commentariat and diplomatic corps. Indeed, it would be obviously tasteless (as well as uninformative) to explain the Yugoslav conflicts of the 1990s (or any of them before) as a series of incidents between Yugoslav citizens. 

This nevertheless does not stop many from erasing Serbs as victims: last year the Italian Ambassador to Croatia went so far as to completely omit them from his message when commemorating the liberation of the Jasenovac death camp, which was primarily focused on eradicating Serbs in the WWII Independent State of Croatia. Similarly, the monument to Serbs who were targeted because of their ethnicity in Sarajevo during the recent war, side-steps this uncomfortable fact entirely (other monuments to the victims of the era in Bosnia, are very explicit in terms of ethnicities of victims and perpetrators). 

The fact that all of these “macro”- and “microaggressions” are so routinely tolerated by people who normally come first in fighting for all the varied forms of social justice in the Balkans, does make one wonder if all these efforts are  more than skin deep or indeed, just repetition of fancy verbiage. Maybe, on top from all of these new concerns, we should still keep an eye on people not being shot by the police in the back because of their ethnicity.