Protests in Serbia Archive
Society for Threatened Peoples warns for Dzindzic

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Gesellschaft fuer bedrohte Voelker
Society for Threatened Peoples
NGO in consultative status (category II) with the Economic and
Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations
P.O. Box  20 24
D - 37010 Gttingen
Phone: +49/551/49906-0
Fax:  +49/551/58028
E-mail: GfbV-Germany@OLN.COMLINK.APC.ORG
homepage: http://www.gwdg.de/~mfritz/gfbv.htm
Translation: Owen Beith

Press Release

Gesellschaft fuer bedrohte Voelker issues warning about Serbian opposition leader - Zoran Dzindzic bears share of responsibility for war crimes in Bosnia.

Gesellschaft fuer bedrohte Voelker (GfbV) has warned the GermanFederal Government against cooperating too closely with Serbian opposition leader Zoran Dzindzic. "Dzindzic bears his share of responsibility for the war crimes committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in the past, like the anted war criminal Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, advocated the cause of a 'Greater Serbia'", declared GfbV national chairperson Tilman Zuelch, speaking in Goettingen on Monday.

What is important now is to support those opposition groups in Belgrade who have a serious commitment to democracy, like the student movement and the Helsinki Committee, instead of concentrating on one suspect politician. Zuelch likewise urged the German media not to treat Dzindzic, with his excellent command of German, as the chief spokesman for the opposition.

During the course of his meeting with Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel in Bonn on Sunday Dzindzic stressed that "a good relationship between Belgrade and the 'Serb Republic' in Bosnia" was "conducive to stability". Coming from a man who has openly advocated the annexation of the so-called "Serb sector" and hence the destruction of Bosnia- Herzegovina as a single entity these words should make the Federal Government stop and take notice, said Zuelch.

The programme of Dzindzic's 'Democratic Party', which has remained unaltered since it was drawn up in 1993, clearly demonstrates his ideological proximity to Karadzic. In it Dzindzic issues a nationalistic call for the "Union of all Serbs within a single State", recommends a government- organised birth control programme for the Albanian opulation of Serbian-controlled Kosovo and calls for the estoration of the monarchy in the new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

During the war in Bosnia Dzindizic showed his true character. In February 1994 he went skiing on Mount Jahorina, arranging to have the slopes floodlit. Zuelch pointed out that Sarajevo was under artillery bombardment from Mount Jahorina. A week before Dzindzic's arrival 68 people were killed in the lower part of Sarajevo by a Serbian artillery shell. During the first NATO ultimatum to the Bosnian Serbs Dzindzic travelled to Pale "to express his solidarity with the people of the Bosnian Serb Republic". By his own account he engaged in intensive discussions with Radovan Karadzic lasting eight hours. By the beginning of 1992 Dzindzic had already aligned himself with the emerging Serbian Nationalist movement and he remained openly committed to Karadzic's SDS Party until September 1996.