Wikileaks, Горан Давидовић у депешама

¶5. (SBU) Police responded; some say appropriately, others not, and
some changed their assessment, depending on the audience. One
counter-demonstrator, speaking to poloff from the hospital, said
that the neo-Nazis had hurled rocks and bottles and the
counter-demonstrators had retaliated. The police responded,
rounding up the National Front, breaking up fights, and arresting 56
of the neo-Nazi demonstrators including their leader, Goran Davidovic

¶8. (U) This was not the first time Nacionalni Stroj had run afoul of
the law. In March 2005, the group sprayed anti-Semitic graffiti in
Jewish cemeteries and news agency B92’s property in Belgrade. In
July 2005, during the tenth anniversary of the Srebrenica Massacre,
the group put up posters reading, „Noz, zica, Srebrenica“ („knife,
wire, Srebrenica“) and „Mladicu, hvala ti za srpsku Srebrenicu“
(„Mladic, thank you for Serbian Srebrenica“). In January 2006, the
group’s leader, Davidovic, was sentenced to one year in jail for
assaulting students in November 2005 at a Novi Sad university who
were attending a lecture on the threat of fascism.

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SIPDIS
SENSITIVE

E.O. 12958:N/A
TAGS: PHUM PGOV PREL KPAO SR KV

SUBJECT: NAZIS AND VOJVODINA

Summary
——-

¶1. (SBU) Leaders from Serbia’s Vojvodina told the Ambassador that
the appearance Of a Nazi Movement in the province was a reflection
of the changes in the delicate balance of the multi-ethnic,
autonomous province as a result of the population migrations in the
1990s. Demographic changes enabled extremists on both sides of the
political spectrum to undermine tolerance and support for democratic
values, they said, suggesting that local groups were subject to
infiltration and manipulation of outsiders. They also raised
concerns that alleged efforts of the Serbian Government to
centralize authority threatened both Vojvodina’s autonomy and
democracy in Serbia, as a whole. Officials dismissed press
speculation of a rift between Novi Sad’s mayor and the Radical
Party, which she helped found. For now, Vojvodina’s democratic
forces are hanging on. End Summary.

Nationalists, Extremists, and Neo-Nazis
—————————————

¶2. (U) The Ambassador visited Vojvodina province October 7 where he
met with the democratic spectrum of the province’s politicians. The
most dire development was an emergence and growing popularity of a
Nazi Party. The Nazi Party is scheduled to hold a demonstration
October 7.

¶3. (SBU) Nenad Canak, LSV founder and National Assembly MP, said
nationalists in the Serbian Government, particularly within the
Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), used Vojvodina extremists as a
tool to consolidate their power. He noted that this was not a new
phenomenon and that he had observed the rise of extremism throughout
Serbia prior to every election. Canak said the GOS nationalists
secretly supported local neo-Nazi groups planning a rally on October

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7 in Vojvodina’s capital, Novi Sad. (Although the police denied
permission for the event, the organizer has announced his intention
to hold the rally in a different location in the city, and a second
neo-Nazi group is seeking permission to hold a similar rally on the
same day.)

¶4. (SBU) Putting local events into a broader context, Canak said
outsiders hoped to portray Vojvodina as a contest between fascists
and separatists in order to justify greater central control or,
worse, to destabilize the country. Neo-Nazis targeted Novi Sad
because of its tradition of multi-culturalism. Nationalists
manipulated the neo-Nazis, in the name of Serb national unity, to
counter the province’s purported anti-Serb autonomy. Canak told the
Ambassador that he would hold an anti-fascist rally the same day as
the neo-Nazi rally, to counter this image and to demonstrate that
most citizens in Vojvodina supported tolerance and autonomy, not
separatism or fascism, and that people could peacefully coexist in
multi-ethnic areas.

Hanging on to Multi-Ethnic Principles
————————————-

¶5. (SBU) Bojan Kostres, President of the Vojvodina Assembly and a
Vice-President of the League of Vojvodina Social Democrats (LSV),
said that Vojvodina remained multi-ethnic, but he worried about the
changing political values of the local population. Kostres
attributed the growth of extreme nationalism in part to the influx
of Serb refugees from the republics of the former Yugoslavia who had
settled in the province since the 1990s. He estimated between
150,000 and 300,000 urban, educated people had left the province
during the same period. The current population was, he said, less
civic-minded and, with few opportunities to travel outside Serbia,
isolated from foreign democratic influences. Despite these
challenges, Vojvodina maintained its strong tradition of democracy
and tolerance, Kostres and others assured the Ambassador. Tamas
Korhecz, a member of the Vojvodina Executive Council and a senior
party official in the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians (SVM), said
Vojvodina’s multi-culturalism and adherence to rule of law were
advantages for the province and provided a model for the rest of the
country. As an example of the province’s progressiveness, he
described an Executive Council project to educate Vojvodina youth,
the aim of which was to present multi-culturalism as excellence.

Centralization Threatening Vojvodina’s Autonomy
——————————————— —

¶6. (SBU) Kostres, Korhecz, and Canak commented on Belgrade’s
stranglehold on local government, highlighting specifically central
control of all public land, taxation authority, and judicial
appointments. Kostres said Vojvodina’s leaders were trying to
regain elements of autonomy that the province had lost during the
Milosevic era and had only a short window of opportunity to do so.
He worried that nationalists would react to Kosovo independence by
limiting or even eliminating Vojvodina’s autonomy, to head off any
independence movement in the North. Korhecz said that such
restrictions would be anti-democratic. Vojvodina’s autonomy was

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currently unique in the country, but municipalities everywhere could
benefit from increased local authority, he said.

Novi Sad’s Radical Mayor still Radical
————————————–

¶7. (SBU) Countering recent media portrayal of Novi Sad’s Mayor Maja
Gojkovic as something of a maverick Radical Party (SRS) member,
Canak told the Ambassador that the ambitious SRS founder remained a
party faithful, despite attempts by Canak and others to drive a
wedge between her and the SRS. He said Gojkovic had only spoken out
against the neo-Nazi rally because the SRS did not want to be
identified with fascism.

Comment
——-

¶8. (SBU) Assurances from the province’s leaders that Vojvodina’s
unique atmosphere of tolerance and multi-culturalism persists was
reassuring. However, the province clearly faces challenges that do
not bode well for the country as a whole, particularly after the
resolution of Kosovo, when the electorate will be most susceptible
to messages of hate in the name of Serbian unity. End Comment.

BRUSH

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 BELGRADE 001400

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SENSITIVE

E.O. 12958:N/A
TAGS: PHUM PGOV PREL KPAO SR KV
SUBJECT: SERBIA: ANTI-FASCISTS CLASH WITH NEO-NAZIS

Summary
——-

¶1. (U) An unauthorized neo-Nazi rally on October 7 in Novi Sad,
Serbia, ended with police arrests, after fighting broke out with
counter-demonstrators. Parliament took up the battle in overheated
debate. The rally was relatively well-contained and not likely
indicative of rising Serbian extremism. The turnout, particularly
of the counter-protestors, illustrates Serbians’ willingness to
demonstrate political conviction and displeasure, in the streets.
End Summary.

Neo-Nazis Fight with Anti-Fascists
———————————-

¶2. (U) Demonstrators clashed with a Serbian neo-Nazi group,
Nacionalni Stroj (National Front), that marched through the streets
of Novi Sad, Vojvodina, October 7, in defiance of a police ban. The
group had scheduled their rally to coincide with the birthday of SS
leader Heinrich Himmler.

¶3. (U) The National Front’s plan attracted international and
national attention to shut it down. On September 20, the World
Jewish Congress condemned the neo-Nazi rally in letters to Serbia’s
President Boris Tadic and Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and
urged Serbia’s leaders to „take whatever action is necessary to
ensure that Nacionalni Stroj does not continue its repugnant
incitement.“

¶4. (U) The National Front’s plan also provoked a response from local
activists. Nenad Canak, leader of the League of Social Democrats of
Vojvodina (LSV), on September 26, urged „anti-fascists“ to rally in
Novi Sad against a „neo-Nazi revival.“ On September 27, Serbian
police banned the National Front’s march. Canak told poloff that,
even should the Nazis not march, his interest was to mobilize people
now to prepare them to respond to anti-democratic actions that he
anticipated radical extremists and others would organize post Kosovo
status determination. Over 4,000 counter-protestors held a service,
October 7, commemorating the victims of fascism, in particular the
1200 Serbs and Jews whom Novi Sad’s Nazi occupiers massacred in
¶1942. Following the service the counter-demonstrators marched
through the streets of Novi Sad, where, according to news reports,
approximately 130 neo-Nazis, brandishing swastikas and chanting
„Vojvodina Serbia“ and „Serbia for the Serbs,“ attacked them.

¶5. (SBU) Police responded; some say appropriately, others not, and
some changed their assessment, depending on the audience. One
counter-demonstrator, speaking to poloff from the hospital, said
that the neo-Nazis had hurled rocks and bottles and the
counter-demonstrators had retaliated. The police responded,
rounding up the National Front, breaking up fights, and arresting 56
of the neo-Nazi demonstrators including their leader, Goran
„Fuehrer“ Davidovic, and a few Slovak and Bulgarian nationals.
Television broadcasts of the scene focused on the fray, which
resulted in four lightly injured counter-protestors.

¶6. (SBU) Nenad Canak, who had called the anti-fascist
demonstration, told poloff, late on October 7, that the police had
been entirely professional in managing the confrontation. In a
press conference, minutes later, however, Canak and others from the
anti-fascist march called upon Interior Minister Dragan Jocic (DSS)
to resign for failing to prevent the banned neo-Nazi rally and for
the police’s inability to protect the demonstrators. LDP leader
Cedomir Jovanovic told the press that he was „angry that the
citizens were attacked for no reason whatsoever,“ and condemned the
GOS for failing to „prevent neo-Nazis [from stirring] even greater
tension and disrupt[ing] order.“

MPs Cast Their Own „Stones“
—————————

¶7. (U) Members of Parliament (MPs) traded attacks across the aisle,
October 8, over the Novi Sad incident. Canak and other opposition
MPs suggested that the government and police were soft on neo-Nazism
for not enforcing the ban on the rally and for not intervening to
break up the fight until stones flew. The Democratic Party of
Serbia Caucus chair, Milos Aligrudic, defended the police and
accused Canak of extremism as reprehensible as the Nazis’. The
exchange was heated enough for parliamentary speaker Oliver Dulic
(DS) to suspend the session for an hour.

Note on Nacionalni Stroj
————————

¶8. (U) This was not the first time Nacionalni Stroj had run afoul of
the law. In March 2005, the group sprayed anti-Semitic graffiti in
Jewish cemeteries and news agency B92’s property in Belgrade. In
July 2005, during the tenth anniversary of the Srebrenica Massacre,
the group put up posters reading, „Noz, zica, Srebrenica“ („knife,
wire, Srebrenica“) and „Mladicu, hvala ti za srpsku Srebrenicu“
(„Mladic, thank you for Serbian Srebrenica“). In January 2006, the
group’s leader, Davidovic, was sentenced to one year in jail for

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assaulting students in November 2005 at a Novi Sad university who
were attending a lecture on the threat of fascism.

Comment
——-

¶9. (SBU) Trampled rights to free speech and assembly aside, Serbia
kept the lid on a potentially much more explosive situation in Novi
Sad. Nacionalni Stroj is vocal but small, and neither poses a
threat to political stability nor heralds a rising political force
in Serbia. Post has no reason to believe that there is a growing
movement in Serbia of neo-Nazis. The presence of these groups in
Serbia allows democratic forces to galvanize support to oppose them.
We note, however, the readiness with which Serbians took to the
streets to express their convictions — and do so forcefully. End
Comment

MUNTER