Vučić and Dodik's declaration: Who is threatening Serbs and what will they be defended from?

By Haris Ljevo

The President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, and the President of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, announced the adoption of a national declaration on the position of Serbs in the region for the autumn.

They announced in Novi Sad, where the 22nd anniversary of the expulsion of Serbs from Croatia in the Operation Storm was marked at the FK Veternik stadium last weekend, that the declaration on the position of Serbs in the region will be published on November 25 or 26, when the hundredth anniversary of the unification of Srem, Banat and Bačka with the Kingdom of Serbia will be marked, or on December 1, on the occasion of the formation of the Kingdom of SHS. Serbia and Republika Srpska are tasked with drafting the programmatic declaration.

The talks in Novi Sad, which were held without the presence of the media, were also attended by Serbian Patriarch Irinej, President of Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik and Prime Minister of Serbia Ana Brnabić, First Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia Ivica Dačić, President of the Provincial Government Igor Mirović, Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia and Minister of Internal Affairs Nebojša Stefanović, Minister of Defense Aleksandar Vulin, President of Matica Srpska Dragan Stanić and Mayor of Novi Sad Miloš Vučević.

Also present was the President of the Democratic Party of Serbs in Macedonia, Ivan Stoilković, whose name has been well known to the public since April, when riots broke out in the Macedonian Sobranie in Skopje. The Belgrade portal Krik published an article at the time stating that the Serbian intelligence agency BIA, through Stoilković, influenced the riots in the Sobranie in which the new Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev was also injured.

The President of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, told reporters in Novi Sad that Serbs are harassed everywhere in the former Yugoslavia and that they need protection.

After all the inflammatory messages sent by Serbian and Serb political representatives from the region in the preceding days, the announcement of the declaration represents only the tip of the iceberg.

Aleksandar Vučić, it is now completely clear, has never abandoned his real policy and dream of a Greater Serbia. In the last few years, Vučić has slightly changed his rhetoric to gain the trust of the international community, but after completely overpowering the opposition and all media in Serbia, and seizing absolute power for himself, he has begun to rapidly return to his old habits of lecturing his neighbors.

The rise to power of Zoran Zaev in Macedonia, who is slowly gaining all the attention of the international community unlike in previous years when Vučić was the one presenting himself as the leader of the region with the support of the international community, has also greatly influenced Vučić's increasingly frequent outbursts of nationalism.

The Adriatic Charter Summit, held recently in Podgorica, which was also attended by US Vice President Mike Pence, only confirmed that Vučić is no longer the number one politician in the region. In order to remain at the political top, Vučić is ready to return to the rhetoric of the darkest days of the nineties. 

Although after announcing the adoption of the national declaration, he emphasized that it is not a war-mongering declaration, but only a declaration on the protection of the cultural and linguistic identity of Serbs in the region, history teaches us that such resolutions must be taken very seriously.

All declarations and memorandums in the past have resulted in thousands of dead and displaced persons. The SANU Memorandum resulted in crimes in Prijedor, genocide in Srebrenica, crimes in Vukovar and other places, and Serbs themselves paid the price of the criminal policy from the beginning of the nineties with their expulsion from Croatia.

Today, Vučić and Dodik want to defend them by adopting some declaration. It is clearly still not realized that their policy has led to a situation where there is increasingly nothing left to protect.