July is the month of scorpions. Not the astrological kind, but the real ones who live their particular way of life, hunting with pincers and killing their victims with poison from their tails. The night is their favored time, but there are days when they emerge from their shadowy hiding places to hunt. Then the day is no different from the night and their prey is quickly paralyzed and killed. There are over 150 species in the world; their sting is generally not fatal, but there are also dangerous ones, such as the Mexican kind, whose poison, a neurotoxin, can kill a person within an hour. They can survive without food for a long time, and they live an average of eight years. The Balkan land scorpion is special, it cannot go without food for a long time and lives for over thirty years. It was described for the first time after March 2003, when it turned out that it was most active between 1991 and 1999. In 2005, we even saw a documentary film about them. It was a recording of the execution of prisoners from Srebrenica, not far from Trnovo in July 1995.
The Scorpions unit, in the legal sense, has long been part of the gray zone of the wars of the 1990s, something like a group of outlaws that, like so many others – Caymans, Blues, Tigers, Jackals, Šešelj’s volunteers and others – operated ostensibly at their own discretion during the entire Yugoslav war, from Croatia, through Bosnia and Herzegovina to Kosovo. However, the members of this unit never denied the connection with the State Security Service of Serbia and the Ministry of Interior. They were actually integrated into the system of military units that were trained for lethal field work in some of the 26 training centers run by members of the Red Berets. The Scorpions had military ID cards, and later issued red identification cards to their members with the symbol of this unit, which was also on their emblem: a yellow scorpion on a black background under the Serbian flag.
This auxiliary unit of the Red Berets was formed in the late 1991, when they were given their first task – to secure the oil facilities in Đeletovci, with a radius of movement and killing in the triangle between Tovarnik, Vinkovci and Vukovar. Their bloody trail makes a big arc from Eastern Slavonia, through Bosnia and Herzegovina, all the way to Podujevo, where they executed a mass shooting of 14 women and children from the Bogujevci family. The brutality of the Scorpions was certainly a consequence of the protection they enjoyed with the leaders of the SDB – Jovica Stanišić and Frenki Simatović, who were tried in The Hague for two decades, among other things, for organizing and arming such death squads. The highest level of protection and guaranteed invisibility in the military-security system of Serbia gave such units the power to commit the most terrible crimes and participate in the genocide on the territory of Srebrenica. The documentary film made by the Scorpions themselves in July 1995 was part of their archive which they intended to show off after the war – when such criminals would be promoted to national heroes. Thanks to the fact that the Humanitarian Law Center from Belgrade discovered and published this film, five Scorpions were put on trial, among them their commander Slobodan Medić, but it all ended with a pathetic sentence and a vague statement that they were only a “paramilitary” formation that was in charge of guarding the oil wells in Djeletovci. Nevertheless, that film, as a pars pro toto, showed the citizens of Serbia how the large military mechanism under the command of Slobodan Milošević and his generals functioned in the field. Until then, almost no one believed that the Serbian side had committed any war crimes, but that evening, many were convinced of what they saw on the television screens: kneeling in the grass, with their hands tied behind their backs, five Bosniaks were shot. The remains of some of them have never been found. The Scorpions are accused of killing at least 50 Bosniaks from Srebrenica.
This event could have been a turning point in the attitude of the Serbian public towards the wartime past and the genocide in Srebrenica. But it wasn’t. Serbia sank even deeper into denial, which was briefly slowed down by the adoption of the Declaration on Srebrenica in the Parliament in 2010. The biggest opponents of this document were the Radicals, Progressives, and leaders of the DSS. It is the same today, except that many who were then in the Democratic Party have found their place in the Progressive establishment and their narrative about the wartime past. Now, when we are approaching the Day of Remembrance of the Genocide in Srebrenica, which was included in the official calendar of the United Nations earlier this year, representatives of the majority of the opposition in Serbia are firm deniers of this event. The most extreme among them are the representatives of the New DSS who came out with a proposal that the Serbian Parliament adopt their declaration that a genocide was not committed in Srebrenica in July 1995. The New DSS president, following the trail of Vojislav Koštunica and Slobodan Samardžić, who were the main obstacle to transitional justice in Serbia together with Šešelj’s Radicals, held a press conference and offered the Parliament this document, one could say – a party program.
The declaration on Srebrenica, as imagined by the leaders of the New DSS, represents an anti-civilizational act that could easily be accepted by the Progressives, if only Vučić would be allowed to say as openly as Jovanović what lies in his Radical heart. This way, Jovanović is saying in public what Vučić does without words: he sends military cadets to Prijedor, undermines the Dayton Agreement, makes secret plans with Dodik, sends Ana Brnabić to Banja Luka to tell fairy tales about her boss. In connection with this, the tabloid media’s propaganda has intensified on the eve of July 11 this year, which supposedly creates a shield against “attacks on President Vučić coming from Bosnia and Herzegovina”.
Scorpion venom, as a dangerous neurotoxin, works in Serbia in reduced doses. It doesn’t kill immediately. It only interferes with motor skills and memory. It causes occasional epileptic seizures, and eventually leads to dementia. In early 2008, The Hague psychiatrist Joseph De Man diagnosed serious psychotic disorders in Jovica Stanišić, the former head of the SDB. Back then, he submitted a report on Stanišić’s mental state before the Tribunal. Among other things, Stanišić complained of nightmarish hallucinations, including the appearance of fluorescent scorpions that would overwhelm him at night from the black cell walls. It was a suppressed reality, which he, like his boss Slobodan Milošević, consistently denied in the courtroom. Something similar happens with citizens who are exposed to the transformed venom of scorpions from Vučić’s media. Due to its effect, no truth can survive. And it all boils down to the president’s vulnerability, which is at its peak in the days around July 11. All that, just like the Declaration of Koštunica’s successor, has only one function, to divert the attention of the citizens of Serbia from the events that are now being commemorated all over the world, except in Belgrade, Moscow and Pyongyang.
Created in cooperation with ForumZFD.
Translated by Marijana Simić
Peščanik.net, 16.07.2024.
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