700 Days of Terror, Fear, and Hope
by Radisav Rodic, founder of GLAS JAVNOSTI daily
1) Testimony of Persecution
This text was being written at the time when men like the journalist Slavko Curuvja, Defense Minister, Pavle Bulatovic, Zeljko Raznatovic were killed...
I could never have dreamt that I could be the key witness to the persecution of Serbian media and nightmarish and dangerous events, which took place in GLAS JAVNOSTI and around it. Terror, fear, and hope, which lasted for 700 days and 700 nights in the very center of the Serbian capital, Belgrade, just around the corner from the Federal Government building in 8, Vlajkovic Street in the triangle formed by media houses: RTV of Serbia, POLITIKA and BORBA newspapers, and Radio Belgrade, just down the street.
What I have suffered I wouldn't wish to happen to anyone or anywhere else in Serbia.
There have been days, months, even years that were hard before. As long ago as March of 1968, I started my first private business. I struggled and fought in Serbia, together with my family, for full thirty-three years. Finally, via Italy and Germany, I reached America. I climbed the ladder of success in the true American fashion.
I love my country.
The patriot that I am, I returned to Serbia in 1988, willing to invest the money I have earned far away, in my country's development.
I returned with great hopes...
And then...
...This is my testimony, not only of the hardships encountered by myself and my family, but by GLAS JAVNOSTI, my associates, and the whole of ABC PRODUKT Business System, which the governing coalition SPS-YL-Radical Party, tried to destroy for the sole reason that we owned a printing company and a daily paper called GLAS JAVNOSTI, which informed the public objectively, under the slogan: "We don't doll up the reality." The ruling coalition believed that I had to hand over to them the printing company and the paper. With that aim, using ABC PRODUKT Business System, the printing company, and GLAS JAVNOSTI newspaper as a lever, they tried to extort, rob, and destroy all that I, and my family have made in more than three decades.
I found myself in a situation I have never been before, not through my own wish, by through a series of equivocal circumstances. My company became the owner of GLAS JAVNOSTI daily. As the owner of ABC PRODUKT and the most promising privately owned printing company, I decided to put down to paper all that has happened to me, as testimony to be presented to all the relevant institutions in Serbia. It was written under great pressure and in fear of being liquidated – myself, or someone from my family, or all of us. Such were the threats that people I was dealing with, made.
It was not ordinary fear, or fear of chaos, or feeling that I was living out a nightmare.
Lives at Stake
The lives of myself, my family and my associates were at stake. ABC PRODUKT, the mother Company, and other daughter companies at the head of which I was, comprising our Business System were at stake. I noted down everything that was happening, with the aim to publish it all one day, despite the concern of what might happen: I wanted it to be a truthful, though incredible document, a testimony of those times, of the ruling elite and the country in which we were living.
This is a testimony of ourselves as we were.
This text was being written at the time when killings have become an everyday occurrence. This is the time when men like the journalist Slavko Curuvja, Defense Minister, Pavle Bulatovic, and Zeljko Raznatovic were killed...
I kept track of the events, but I could not but marvel at the times in which we were living, wondering what was happening around me, what was the value of my company, of myself as a human being and of my family in that context; what was the price of my life to my persecutors, because I, my printing company and my newspaper GLAS JAVNOSTI stood in their way. It all intimated that we were of great value to them; that is, we presented a great obstacle for them. I pondered over it, but I could not find the answers.
No one, neither I myself, nor my family, nor my associates deserved to be subjected to that kind of persecution. However, it seemed that everyone and everything was against us.
Therefore, using the diary I have kept, I decided to write down all I had been through during 700 days of terror, fear, and hope, but especially the events that followed the demise of my mother, who had died of worry on September 27, 1999, having witnessed my tribulations with my persecutors. I was not allowed to bury my mother properly. At the very time my mother's funeral service was being held, Radmila Visic from Ministry of Information had sent a threatening message through Kacarevic's secretary, while the financial police had stormed the premises of my company on that same day. I was not allowed to mourn properly my mother's death, or to carry out all the customs according to Christian Orthodox Church, but had to be present, together with all the heads of departments, confronting financial and regular police units. I still keep wondering why I was not allowed to hold Memorial Service for my mother's death according to our customs. They prevented that too, and I still don't know why.
Our persecutors had no feeling for human tragedy. I am convinced that they wanted just that: to take advantage of my personal tragedy to break me. Feelings of compassion and sympathy were far away from them. I am sure now that they did not have those positive human traits. That is the only possible explanation for their behavior.
YL Brings the Verdict
What was it all about? High state officials, members of the Yugoslav Left Party leadership invited me for talks at which they informed me that they wanted to take over my newspaper GLAS JAVNOSTI.
Knowing what force I was confronting, and bearing in mind what has happened to those who had tried to stand up to them, I gave them the account of all my investments in founding and getting the newspaper GLAS JAVNOSTI to move smoothly. I told them that after I have been paid ifull, I would hand them the newspaper.
After hearing me out they threatened directly and indirectly to liquidate me unless I handed over the newspaper to them immediately, without any financial compensation. Truth be it, they offered me rather vaguely, to take over some of my companies that were bankrupt and to compensate me through some import deals.
I demanded clear and clean, legally binding solution. I was told directly that the verdict has been passed! Unless I handed over the newspaper, I would be liquidated. Although in a stalemate situation, I refused to hand them the newspaper. I was persistently, not knowing what else to do, demanding adequate financial compensation for my investments.
Why didn't I give in? Simply because those people from YL gave out that they were working for the benefit of some higher state interests, but it was apparent that those "higher state interests" were in fact their personal interests and interests of their party. I was told that later, in no uncertain terms. I was told that all power: political, executive, and legislative was in their hands.
Notwithstanding the threats, I tried through constant postponements to hold on to the newspaper. I didn't want them to have their own way. They tried, in the manner of highwaymen and bandits, to rob me, and all of us, of the capital we had worked hard to accumulate. Through the robbery, they tried to obtain political and financial gain, at the expense of my People, my public, my children, and the children of my associates, my friends, and relatives.
I couldn't allow disgracing myself. I wouldn't have been able to look in the eye: my associates, friends, relatives, my children, or my People if I were to take part in that dirty game. They tried through compulsion and extortion to force me to play their game, threatening to liquidate not only my family, but also Kacarevic, the Editor-in-chief of the newspaper, and me, as well.
But the repertoire of their blackmailing seemed to have no limits. They tried to involve me in a very sophisticated, though rather transparent game of deceit and delusion. It was not that they wanted me to hand over the newspaper to them, so that they could be new owners without reimbursing me. In order to cover up their doings, they demanded that I must stay on as a minor shareholder, as some sort of a puppet playing at still being the owner, so that on the outside everything would seem the same, that no change would be apparent. Meanwhile, they would placed their own men at key positions to run the newspaper and the printing company, to decide on the newspaper policy, on editorial staff, Board of Directors, General Manager, and Editor-in-chief.
I Could Not Believe
I had some twenty different meetings with them regarding the matter. The degree of repression and intimidation rose day by day. At the same time, I had the feeling of resistance to pressures, mounting inside me by every passing day. I felt that I must find the way to survive and remain what I was, and what I have always been. I was not prepared to change at the age of fifty-three, with thirty-three years as a private businessman behind me! I managed in my quest with God's help. I couldn't allow myself to loose face at the time when I was approaching my retirement, and to leave to my descendents the feeling of shame. My antecedents buried in Zejtinlik Graveyard in Thessalonica, as well as those who had died for their King and country in 1941 would have never forgiven me, and I could have never slept peacefully after that. Quite possibly, I would have died from bad conscience.
That is why I couldn't accept their ultimatums, despite all the threats, uttered by an orchestra of negotiators, who all spoke in the same manner.
WHO WE WERE
ABC Business System consisted of: ABC Grafika, Newspaper Printing Company; ABC Etigraf, Printing Company for printing stickers and cartons; ABC Udarnik, Transport Company; ABC Tehno Servis, Building Company; NIP Glas, Newspaper Editing Company; NIP Glas Javnost, Newspaper Editing Company; ABC Stragarit, Factory for Production of cardboard and isolation paper. We printed: GLAS JAVNOSTI, GLAS NEDELJE, SRPSKO NASLEDJE (Serbian Heritage), ZIVOT PASA, and AUTO MOTO MARKET.
The Business System employed nearly 1250 workers and associate workers.
CRAZY TIMES
At that time, and it all began with the killing of the Police Minister, Radovan Stojicic Badza, terrible things began happening. Secretary-General of YL, Zoran Todorovic Kundak and many other men, who held the dubious epithet of being "strong men," as well as other "businessmen" of the same provenance, were killed.
TOMORROW: THE HOST DOES NOT GIVE IN EASILY
2) The Host Does Not Give in Easily
I could never understand, let alone accept that those, who held such important positions in this country, could be involved in violence, extortion, and barefaced robbery. I was faced with racketeering, and I had my house shot at in my native town, Belgrade.
I kept going to new negotiations trying to find out what it was that they wanted. Would they ever comprehend that I had invested in the company several million German marks. Adding the fines I had been paying till December 31 of 1999, according to their Law on Media, the tally rose to 12 million marks.
I tried to acquaint them with the investments I had made, with foreign and domestic bank loans I had to take, I insisted on that, but to no avail. They spoke from the position of power only: reminding me that they were in power; that all levers of power in the country were in their hands. They kept repeating that I must hand over to them all I had, without any reimbursement.
I could never understand, let alone accept that those who held such important positions in this country could be involved in violence, extortion, and barefaced robbery.
I admit that I was afraid. The fear got greater with every passing day. I was aware that those men had great power and authority, but had no feeling of humility or mercy.
All of a sudden, charges started piling up against our Companies, millions of dinars in fines were demanded according to the notorious Law on Information. Financial police fined us for allegedly violating different ordinances. Court Executors began coming to our Company, on the regular bases, taking away our machines and equipment. It was done systematically, with the plan to bleed us dry economically and financially, thus smashing our whole Business System and, thus, destroying the newspaper and the printing company, where several independent papers and editions were printed.
I realized that the authorities were carrying out their threats, that they were killing my business in a planned, systematic and well organized way. They warned me, at every meeting, what power they had.
They did everything to frighten me out of my wits. It was all crystal clear to me, yet I couldn't and wouldn't, the man that I am, and as a Serb, to give in. That's why I am still around, with all my employees, worried what would happen next, not only to my family, but to my Companies, as well. The new Government has not yet taken over all levers of power into their hands, but I have not lost the hope that the wrong done to me would be righted.
This wrong was done to all the Companies of ABC PRODUKT Business System. ABC PRODUKT Business System was brought to the verge of bankruptcy by their illegal machinations. Newspaper GLAS JAVNOSTI and the Printing Company ABC GRAFIKA were fined more than a hundred times. For printing the bulletin CHANGES, the printing company ABC GRAFIKA was proclaimed bankrupt, illegally.
They Wanted Their Own Reality
The leaders of the former regime, through their lackeys, but above all, through the former president of Commercial Court in Belgrade, managed to illegally proclaim our Company bankrupt.
I don't want to bore our readers by explaining to them that I am made up mostly of defiance, audacity, and insubordination. I could never stand dirty games, fraud, or injustice of any kind. The methods of drastic extortion employed by the few, who held all levers of power in Serbia have especially been abhorrent to me. At the same time, we were left absolutely unprotected. We could not demand protection from the authorities, the way conscientious, loyal and enterprising citizens anywhere in the world can.
At the time of real communism, as a businessman with private property, I had paid a high price for my attitude to life. But at that time I knew what I was dealing with and whom I had against me.
Then, I had been the "class enemy." Now, it seemed to me, the very air had conspired against me, serving the ruthless regime which, in order to satisfy their personal interests, ground to dust everything before them.
I owe thanks: to the readers of GLAS JAVNOSTI, who called us constantly during those hard times, giving us their moral support; to political parties, that through their announcements defended us, but also used our misfortunes for their own political promotion; to some newspapers, agencies and TV stations, that informed the public about our problems, about everything we have been put through and everything that had happened to us.
I realized that we were left to fend for ourselves, without anyone's support, confronted by incredible power personified in the regime, which threatened to liquidate us.
Thanks to Journalists and Media
In May of 2000, faithful disciples of the ruling regime consisting of three coalition parties, unanimously "gave honor where it was due" - to the journalists and media. That is another confirmation of the truthfulness of my writings.
I believe that both my company and I have always been very correct, almost thankful towards media, newspapers, and journalists. Throughout my career as a private businessman, journalists have always been very correct when reporting about the problems I was faced with.
Thanks to journalists and media, after years of exile, I decided to return from abroad. I had been forced to leave my country because of an unjust sentence passed by the communist authorities. The sentence was:
"According to the Public Prosecutor's findings, Radisav Rodic is sentenced for working as a manager, in such a way that he was able to obtain financial gain to such an amount, which is not in accordance with either the effort invested or his level education."
That had happened in Serbia, on May 28, 1979.
Thanks to media, which reported very objectively about my case, I returned to Serbia. I was faced with racketeering, and I had my house shot at, in my native town of Belgrade, as long ago as 1992. I turned to media, newspapers and journalists. They helped me. I am thankful to them. I shall always feel thankful.