09/18/00

Commentary about Veran Matic's interview to LA Times from September 10th

      Milosevic has sunk a year ago, Clinton's presidency is over, Serbian "democratic" opposition is ruined and George Soros recently admitted to NY Times that he was wrong all along. Federal elections in Serbia are less than a week away, Milosevic has sold most of Serbia, Clinton will leave his office in January, Soros has lost big money and Djindjic, real leader of "democratic" opposition is fighting for his political life. It's time for last minute jokers who will save the day. Their names are Vojislav Kostunica, national socialist presidential candidate and Veran Matic, man who works for infamous businessman who is banned from most of the world stock markets because of his business speculations. I will not discuss Kostunica, Djindjic or Milosevic here, you can check other commentaries to learn more about them but I will discuss more about Clinton's foreign policy, shadow businessman Soros and his Free World. Main topic is Veran Matic himself, man on Soros' payroll, man who wasted ten years on trying to bring down nationalism and ending supporting national socialism, true loser as his boss Soros and his failure of Free World.

Pay close attention to contradictions and nonsense from Veran Matic's interview to LA Times. Here we go:

Radio Free Serbia: Can the Truth Reconcile a Shattered Land?

      Although interviewer and Matic never mentioned once Free Serbia during interview, title of this interview clearly refers to nonexistent Free Serbia Radio. How did it all started and why Matic and Soros constantly hide the truth? As you all know, Free Serbia was launched as a web site FreeSerbia.net in February 1998 during the major crackdown of Milosevic's special police force on Albanians in Kosovo. Veran Matic and his B-92 were silent then and they didn't give a damn about mass executions of people who refused to serve dictator and his gangsters. For Matic it was OK to kill en masse hundreds of those who tried to fight Milosevic's repression. After more than a year of intense police terror in Kosovo, thousands of Albanians were murdered because they didn't want to be Milosevic's servants like Rugova and his peaceful movement that allowed Milosevic to keep Kosovo as a protectorate and use Albanians as his base for vote rigging. In order to stop upcoming genocide of Albanian population in Kosovo, Western leaders tried everything to persuade Milosevic to stop with repression and mass killings but Milosevic rejected all agreements and bombing was the only thing left to prevent genocide similar to the one that happened in Bosnia during nineties. Matic and his B-92, however, suddenly abandoned their noble principles and gave a full support to Milosevic's police to continue with ethnic cleansing and tried to convince West to stop bombing campaign to provide more time for Milosevic and let him accomplish his diabolical plans. Together with other Serbian "independent" media they started bashing West and lamenting about couple of Serbian civilian casualties while hundreds of thousands of Albanians were being deported, murdered, raped, their property looted and and their homes burned. Free Serbia Net received thousands of visitors who gave a huge support for our work as only Serbian web site who didn't abandon principles of democracy, objectivity, human rights and among all insisted on stopping ongoing genocide against Serbian citizens whose only crime was their national origin and demands for freedom.

      In order to preserve his deceptive work and continue to fool the world,, Veran Matic started his own Free Serbia web site, 18 months after Free Serbia Net was launched, claiming that he is behind our Free Serbia and his attempts to make complete confusion similar to those that Milosevic's secret police has done to Manojlo Vukotic and his papers Glas and Blic not to mention papers like Borba and Nasa Borba, Matic's own B-92 and B2-92, Radio Index etc. If he had any decency he would have contact us in order to cooperate but that never happened although we sure invited him to join our efforts in bringing down dictator Milosevic and promotion of democratic principles in Serbia. Whole web site design, concept, art were carefully copied but content was drastically changed. The site has become known as anti-NATO and anti-FreeSerbia, dedicating most of its efforts on stopping NATO and helping Milosevic to complete his dream of ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians. Matic's fake FreeSerbia was identical to pro-Milosevic run web sites like Beograd.com and Vreme.com, web site of weekly magazine Vreme that allowed state security to publish anti-NATO propaganda during bombing campaign. Until this day no one from Matic's gang ever responded to us or explained their motives and actions. You sure wonder why would editor of famous B-92 try to steal someone else's work and attempt to modify it in order to help Nazi forces in Serbia and Stalinist-Hitlerist leader Milosevic to achieve their dream of ethnically clean Kosovo. We have no idea and if someone has we urge you to write to us because this looks a lot like Microsoft theft of Java technology from Sun. Someone who received so many awards for his work, someone who claims to fight for democracy and human rights attempts to steal someone else's ideas and work in order to promote nationalism, chauvinism and ethnic cleansing. This really looks very strange. Couple of ideas why this happened:

1. Veran Matic is brainwashed by state security and some kind of radio transmitter has been implanted into his skull.

2. Veran Matic is working for Serbian state security from the beginning and he only pretends to be some kind of opposition to Milosevic and his Stalinist-Hiutlerist coalition similar to Stasi agents in former East Germany.

3. Veran Matic is just a loser who got afraid of Milosevic and that's why he wants to destroy all others who are still fighting thus stomping over all his ideals and all his work behind him.

      People who work on this fake web site are foreigners from Netherlands and Denmark paid by Soros, people who claim to be behind all opposition protests for the past ten years, people who hide their identity and who claim to be some poor students with broadcast quality TV cameras that allow them to broadcast opposition protests from Serbia on the web. If you go ahead and check the dates of those broadcasts you will find out that TV Studio B was actually broadcasting them which implies that Veran Matic and his colleagues from B2-92, just one part of Studio B, were behind all of this. Why they are hiding, why not go with B2-92 instead of Free Serbia name? Are they ashamed of something, is boss Soros ashamed of being wrong with FreeTibet and FreeBurma web sites? Obviously, concept of passive resistance and empty talks are not working. That's why Soros' ideas failed and that's why US President Clinton now tries to help Soros while he can, while he is still president. That's why Clinton administration offered amnesty to military regime in Burma that despite economic sanctions and isolation and futile passive resistance of Suu Kyi is doing fine. There are no signs indicating their withdrawal from power soon.

      Ten years of B-92 efforts accomplished nothing. Situation in Serbia is far worse then it was ten years ago, democratic process went backwards and Serbia has ended as the worst human rights abuser in the world. Soros is still not ready to admit his defeat not to mention complete failure of Clinton's foreign policy. Thanks to Clinton, Dalai Lama and Tibetans are defeated and dreams of free Tibet are gone for a long time, maybe forever. Clinton administration tolerated massive abuse of human rights in China just because of huge money donations from Chinese communist generals and criminal business entrepreneurs to DNC. Clinton never did give a damn about Tibet, Burma, Serbia, Iraq, Middle East and other regions of the world where human rights abuse occurred. He was preoccupied with his scandals, his doomed socialist healthcare plan, his overambitious wife and various special interest groups. During his eight years in the White House, Clinton achieved absolutely nothing regarding human rights. He established business relationships with China and Vietnam letting their oppressive communist governments to continue exploiting and murdering their citizens. The only difference is that now many American companies and communist officials are making more money than ever. They are all very happy, spending millions while slave labor in those countries is worse than ever. It seems that Clinton mistook principles of democracy and human rights with business opportunism. He is acting more like some colonialist who exploits people in colonies. There is always some group of scoundrels who wants to cooperate with colonialists and they serve well their overseas masters for cold hard cash. What's the difference with US-Vietnam relationship today and French-Vietnam relationship 100 years ago? They are both pretending to help Vietnamese people while they are taking huge profits from their slave labor and take their resources while local thugs get their commission and live well.

It's time to get back to Matic's interview:

Matic is chairman of the Assn. of Independent Electronic Media, or ANEM, which provides programming and technical and legal assistance to 28 local radio stations and 20 TV stations in Yugoslavia and its former territories. He believes journalists can play an important role in defying a culture in which, as a short film produced by ANEM noted, "Censorship applies to everyone."

He used that to enforce self-censorship of independent media and help Milosevic to accomplish ethnic cleansing of Kosovo in 1999. Do you know of any country where independent media likes to self-censorship itself? This is ridiculous!

Matic promotes Serbia's growing youth movement, publishing music and organizing concerts; the radio station's Web site is part Rock the Vote, part Amnesty International. At 38, he is the oldest B2-92 staff member, and he delights in the student group Otpor, or Resistance, whose symbol, a clenched fist, tags Belgrade walls. With Yugoslav elections on Sept. 24, Matic calls that "creative energy" a greater challenge to President Slobodan Milosevic's government than Serbia's fractious opposition parties.

This only proves that Matic actually believes that he is behind all who are against Milosevic or should I say his boss Soros. Unfortunately for them, it seems that all the money Soros invested in Matic and other losers from Serbian "democratic" opposition is wasted. Once again, intelligence and creativity scored another victory over cold hard cash. That's the difference between winners and losers, that's the difference between FreeSerbia.net and FreeSerbia.org.

Matic spoke with The Times late at night from a rented office in Belgrade. The conversation was translated by one of Matic's assistants.

Probably some Milosevic's agent who wants to be sure that everything goes as planned. Soros pays for interview and Milosevic's state security tells Matic what to say.

Question: How can a truth and reconciliation commission work in Yugoslavia?
Answer: It can be established only when this region is democratized. . . . Because crimes in this region have been going on for 10 years, if we wait for them to end to start the process, we will not achieve anything. It's important to start so we can preserve . . . evidence. Another thing: Reeducation of the local population is necessary, because many people believe that these crimes were committed for just reasons.

Too bad that he forgot to mention FS Net because we were the one advocating more radical approach to end Milosevic's reign of terror. We didn't advocate self-censorship like he did during NATO bombings. "Please help poor Slobo to exterminate Albanian terrorist."

Q: What are you doing to pave the way for a truth commission?
A: Investigative journalism should be applied in all media here to find out what happened, what really happened. That is exactly why our network, which includes 30 radio stations, introduced a show called "Catharsis." We are producing a TV version. . . . At present, almost all civic life in Yugoslavia is being conducted through the state-run media. The state-run media made a strong contribution to what happened in the past 10 years, and that is why a change of media is important now.

This is similar to Milosevic's real truth about Serbs and their fight for freedom, I mean ethnic cleansing and Greater Serbia. Don't bother, when state security documents become accessible to the public we will all know what were you doing.

For instance, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, there are at least five truths circulating around the country: There is Bosnian truth, Croatian truth, Serbian truth, truth as presented by international groups and truth as presented by the coalition government, which represents several parties. All these truths are separate. So first we must find mechanisms to ascertain the real numbers: How many people were killed, how many went missing, who committed the gravest crimes and for what main causes?

Exactly the same what Karadzic and Mladic were telling us during their ethnic cleansing campaign in Bosnia. FS Net knows only truth because there is only one truth, everything else is one big bright shiny lie.

In this region, local regimes . . . want to promote the notion of collective guilt, because they want to hide behind the collective responsibility of the whole nation. We want to prove that there is no such thing as collective responsibility. The only way we can do that is to discover individual responsibility for the crimes.
The most difficult part of the whole story is . . . the frame of mind that allowed the entire nation to support nationalistic forces. Individual responsibility would be decided in The Hague or in national courts in the region. Our task would be to deal with the frame of mind in people that led them to support nationalistic regimes.

Too bad that he supports Kostunica, man who doesn't recognize Hague tribunal and who will not extradite a single war criminal. Voting for Kostunica and giving him a support would actually promote collective guilt because Kostunica was and is a Nazi who overwhelmingly supported ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo. This statement is thus contradictory. He also mentions support among Serbs for crimes committed in the name of Fascist Republic of Yugoslavia and Greater Serbia but he actually forgets about stolen elections in 1990 that helped Milosevic to grab total power in Serbia. 80% of seats in parliament were taken by his Socialist Party of Serbia while voter turnout was very high.

Q: Do international groups, including The Hague tribunal, support or oppose your efforts?
A: The major opponent . . . is the prosecutorial office of The Hague tribunal. It cannot understand that punishments signed by someone in The Hague will not solve all our problems. Much wider efforts must be undertaken in things not directly linked to specific crimes. There is a group of major inspirers from intellectual circles who motivated ordinary people to commit crimes, and those inspirers will never be brought to light [by the tribunal].

The main reason for establishment of Hague tribunal was the lack of prosecution of war criminals in the countries who participated in Yugoslav civil war. War criminals are not tried in Serbia. If Serbs can trial Milosevic and all other who committed war crimes then there would be no need for Hague tribunal. Unfortunately, opposition presidential candidate doesn't have any intentions of doing such thing.

Q: Turning a mirror on government is supposed to be one of the functions of an independent press. What does an independent press mean in Yugoslavia, and what can it accomplish?
A: In the past 10 years, independent media are the only institutions that did not change their attitudes, their opinions, to reflect nationalistic policies.

Liar, liar, pants on fire! What happened in 1999 when you urged all independent media as president of ANEM to self-censorship itself? ANEM openly supported Milosevic's fight against Albanian "terrorists" and supported genocide against Kosovo Albanians.

Independent media actually guarantee the successful development of democracy, because it is absolutely clear that they will always oppose totalitarian regimes.

Why did ANEM then gave full support to Milosevic and at the same time was against NATO, military alliance for protection of democracy?

It is not just important what happens in the current political situation, but also what will happen after this. . . . Independent media [are] the major mobilizers of . . . creative energy, which is the major opponent of Milosevic's regime.

Thanks to all of you, creative energy was wasted and only helped Milosevic to prolong his reign of terror.

Independent media are being fined every day. . . . Our own premises are occupied by the government, and we are not allowed to enter. The Milosevic regime has tried four times to ban Radio B2-92. . . . In all these situations, we managed to continue our broadcasts.

Why didn't they close B-92 in 1990 if you were so good? They didn't close B-92 because it was helpful to Milosevic and helped him improve his image. Keeping you was the same as keeping a dog to bark outside the house. People will say that Milosevic loves animals and let him live peacefully. When dog starts barking a bit more then master moves his dog into the doghouse and closes the door until disobedient dog stops barking. Eventually, master gets tired of his dog and poor dog finishes in the street, waiting to serve someone else.

Recently, a 14-year-old boy was arrested in a Serbian town because he played over a public loudspeaker a B2-92 broadcast he had received from a satellite.

That's really bad because Veran Matic himself was never arrested. Innocent people are in jail while Soros' thugs are out giving interviews to LA Times.

When I talk about creative energy, I mean the kind of energy that is created in Serbia within independent media, NGOs and the culture.

And since we all know who pays independent media, NGOs and culture we find out that creative energy stands for George Soros and about his creativity I would not even attempt to write. He only inspires snoring and boredom.

That kind of creative energy can be best articulated during great political events, such as the rallies in 1996 [when students protested election fraud]. . . .

Actually it was Dayton, coalition "Together" and election victory of opposition. Students were only one small part of huge crowd.

The police couldn't do anything about it, except use brutal force from time to time, which only caused people to gather in greater numbers on the streets.

That's what police is supposed to do, to beat up people and nothing else (Milosevic's vision). They did their part of the job well but Milosevic's propaganda machinery scored poorly.

That energy cannot be controlled by anyone, and it is mainly produced by student organizations such as Otpor, in cooperation with independent media.

Otpor never gathered more than a few thousands of people so this statement is ridiculous. It is obvious that Milosevic and moronic opposition are to blame that people are not in the streets.

In an election campaign, the opposition also undergoes a kind of renaissance and joins forces, which has already produced good results, at least according to polls. All the polls show Serbia's democratic opposition and Vojislav Kostunica doing better than Milosevic and his coalition.

Opposition is not united because Vuk Draskovic and his party SPO are not running together with DOS and Kostunica. They have their own presidential candidate, Vojislav Mihajlovic not to mention boycott of Djukanovic's party in Montenegro. Vuk Draskovic and his party represent Serbian right and conservatives. Victory of left coalition DOS and their Nazi presidential candidate would severely damage Serbian political scene. It looks like Clinton and Soros want to score big and try to annihilate conservatives and right wing in Serbia which is very dangerous thing that could lead to civil war in Serbia.

Q: Images of Belgrade protests show many young people. Yet, many Serbian youth are disaffected by politics. How do you appeal to them?
A: Since most who abstain in elections are young people, according to our surveys, we decided to produce a series of concerts this year all over Serbia to motivate young people to take responsibility and vote. The first 10 concerts were very successful: Polls show that there will be fewer abstainers this election than before. And a great number of voters also decreases the possibility for election fraud. . . .

      Clinton and his American socialist party known as Democratic Party of USA always benefit from younger voters and immigrants. That's the reason why they promote voting on MTV and why they forcefully and illegally naturalized almost 2 million immigrants. Most young people from Serbia are immigrants in foreign countries. They do not see any future perspectives for them in Serbia and they only want to get the hell out of Serbia, not to waste time on casting ballots in rigged elections where winners are known before elections even start. Small turnout would more likely help opposition because conservatives and rightists vote regularly. Seselj, president of ultra-nationalist SRS won presidential race against SPS candidate Lilic but Milosevic annulled elections because of poor turnout. High turnout helps Milosevic more because Serbian refugees vote for him as well as poor working class not because they like him but because they depend on him. Most of big factories and companies are controlled by Milosevic not to mention refugees who can get kicked out of Serbia any day if Milosevic decides to do so. This reminds me of Mengistu and his attempt to import Stalinism and communism into Ethiopia that ended up with millions of people dead. Furthermore, this illustrates that Clinton is a total amateur regarding foreign policy. He wants to export his party strategy to other countries where different rules and strategies apply. That's why his foreign policy is a total failure and he will be remembered as the worst American president regarding foreign policy. Carter will maybe score lower but yet again he was president for only 4 years. I would also add that greater number of police officers will reduce public protests and complaints about vote rigging.

We have extremely good connections with student movements and youth movements. In this campaign, what helps us is that we received MTV Europe's Free Your Mind award for free speech [in 1998]. We also have contacts with War Child [an English relief organization that collaborates with artists and musicians] and with members of well-known rock bands, such as REM, and famous club deejays. We are also a record label; we are releasing CDs of local bands that are very popular; we do videos.

All these awards, all that money behind you Veran and you are still a loser. That's why your men visit everyday our site in order to steal ideas and creative energy. Knock off is still a knock off so don't bother, you just look stupid.

Q: You opposed NATO's bombing campaign in Kosovo. How did that affect the way people viewed you in Yugoslavia and in the West?
A: It's absurd that [my opposition to] the bombing is used as criticism against me even here. That was one of the major criticisms of the people now managing Radio B2-92. Because [the New York Times article] was very clearly an argument against Milosevic, too. But in extreme situations, things are always viewed in black and white. So those who highlighted the point that I am against Milosevic at the same time concluded I cannot be against the bombing. The same thing happened at the international level: That "I am against the bombing" means "I can't be against Milosevic."

NATO bombing campaign was about stopping genocide against Kosovo Albanians not about who is for or against Milosevic. This only proves that Matic was supporting ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo.

I am proud of that article, because all reactions to that article speak to our independence. One of our former directors used to have a saying that, "You are really independent when everyone hates you." During the bombing, almost everyone around us was against us. . . .

Similar to Saddam's and Milosevic's popularity all around the world. Why don't you analyze reasons for hate? Maybe they hate you because of that MTV award?

All NATO's mistakes [planes bombed a convoy of refugees and destroyed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade] proved to be helpful to Milosevic.

While other bombs helped bringing down Milosevic and stopping his ethnic cleansing. Albanians were able to return to their looted and burned homes and to start new life in freedom.

We [in the independent media] are all absolutely helpless about those mistakes. All we can do is condemn them.

What about condemning genocide against Albanians? Why were you and the rest of "independent" media so silent about it? Why don't you mention Miroslav Filipovic who can't give any interviews for LA Times because he is in jail fighting for his life.

One of the hard facts that contributed to this is that nothing has been done in Kosovo, so far, to calm the situation. Murders of Serbians, Romany and Albanians happen on a daily basis. There is no system that functions there.

That's how Milosevic explained ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo. Everyone is equally guilty, numbers are irrelevant, who started is not important. "Independent" media is very concerned when couple of Milosevic's agents are gunned down in Kosovo rather than thousands of innocent civilians that were massacred by those same men. This is a hypocrisy at its best."What about that poor German guard in concentration camp that got killed by prisoners during WWII. Germans killed, Jews killed, we are all equally guilty."

Q: What are the important lessons of past 10 years?
A: It's easy to establish what kind of responsibility the politicians and the military had at the time. But it's very difficult to define the responsibility of those whose . . . articles, works of art and speeches influenced crimes and brutality.

It seems that Matic is concern about his future.

It is impossible to establish a new cultural model for the younger population, a new system of values, without defining and revealing the mistakes of past cultural models.

That's why Kostunica promotes the same things as Milosevic. He is a democrat but in order not to stir things it is the best thing to continue spreading nationalism, chauvinism and hatred against non-Serbs. That is the reason why Kostunica will never allow Montenegro to become independent. His policy is that there must be some referendum in both republics before one of republics can leave federation. Just make you wonder why would Serbs vote for Montenegrin independence? Why lose Montenegrin riviera?

In the past 10 years, we have had another kind of black-and-white picture: Serbs were always villains, and all others were good. We need balance on that issue.

Exactly what Milosevic, Karadzic, Mladic and the rest of war criminals were telling us for years. Bravo Veran, you are truly independent supporter of Milosevic and his Fascist Republic of Yugoslavia.

There is only one truth, everything else is lies. Truth is that Free Serbia is FS Net and all other Free Serbias are fake. One and only, truly independent, forever fighting against totalitarianism and for democracy, Free Serbia Net.

FS Net Editor