from Oslobodjenje European edition 25 Feb. 94

by MARKO VESOVIC

(Both Marko Vesovic, the author of the text, and Nikola Koljevic, to whom the letter is aimed, were the profesors of letterature on the University of Sarajevo.

N.Koljevic became one of the leaders of SDS, Serbian Democratic Party which helped aggression of Bosnia and Herzegovina and her leaders have the biggest responsability for war crimes like shelling the cities and civil objects, massacre of civil population, ethnic cleansing, violation of the women.

Prof.Marko Vesovic is of Montenegrin nationality , who remained in Sarajevo faighting for the civil and cultural values of Bosnia by writtening.

This text maybe may help the analysts to try to understand the historical-social-psycological background of the Serbian intelectualls nationalist writters who wrote in last two centuries.

Speaking about Turkish conquists on Balkans ,it is also important to remeber that after one battle, the battle of Kosovo held 1389, the Serbia had fall under the Turkish occupation, while the Bosnians have faught against the Turks from 1463, when first bosnian city was occupied, untill 1565 when the last city - Jajce had fallen in the hands of Turks.

(Comment by Adnan Kemura)

Before we get tied up in a knot about the Serbs and the mud, let me hasten to congratulate you on your accomplishmentat Markala (in the Feb. 5 Marketplace Massacre): it will trully go down in history as the latest of the great achievements of your gang.

Nikolica! My dear little friend, Nikola. Recently at the Sarajevo Airport when you came for discussions with the Bosnian goverment , you sent me the message that I will be criminally sued (pursued) for mudslinging against the good name of the Serbian people.

"Really ! Will I?" I responded , in total awe at this good news. "But I have already , for the last 22 months , been criminally pursued all over Sarajevo by Nikola's mortars and rocket launchers and on at least three occasions they came within an inch of catching me. That Nikola certainly is a dangerous joker: he threatens me with a court proceeding while his bombs are going off around me. That's like threatening a patient who has terminal cancer that he is going to be exposed to a sneeze!

But before we get tied up in a knot about the Serbs and the mud , let me hasten to congratulate you on your accomplishment at Markala (the scene of the Marketplace Massacre): it will truly go down in history as the latest of the great achievements of your gang of butchers. I give the credit to your gang of butchers , not to the mortar shells, because they are just a tool that you are using for your butchery. Slaughter, the most sacred of all devotions which you were taught and throughly steeped in by your Chetnik forefathers from WW II, you have beautifully perfected and modernized it. The Turks no longer need to even fall into your ambush in order for you to slaughter them. Today you can slaughter them from the distance. It permits you to stay completely away from the scene of your own crime: the more mortar shells that you dumo on the Sarajevan civilian population, the more innocent you can fell.

Of course , along with the Bosnians, you also often happen to slaughter an occasional Christian, but hey, that's no great crime , it's not really a sin, because that's mostly those Serbian traitors who refused to partecipate in the building of Greater Serbia , with a club in their hands instead of a trowel. You, my dear friend , who feels more innocent than Joan of Arc, altought you have killed more Sarajevans than any plague in history , you threaten me with criminal court proceedings. Because I stayed behind in Sarajevo, threatened and targeted by the great outpouring of Serbian instanity and military madness. Instead of warmly applauding and even shouting "encore!" I humbly submit to you: I shall be honored by your criminal court proceedings , because in that way I will receive an official confirmation that you , the primitive brigands and thieves are one, and I - the son of Velimir Vesovic - am something totally different, not just "another" but something to the power of ten removed from you, such that,

as the Montenegrin poet, Njegos, mightsay, if you and I were put into the same pot, it wouldn't come out even smelling like soup.

So that you can institute criminal proceedings against me, I think you will first have to do one small thing: first you will have to capture Sarajevo. This , of course, you can do, without any problem - it would be a mere two hours work for you, if that's what you wanted to do!

If it happens that you do end up coming into the Bosnian capital in a blood-covered tank, I will personally request from that judge of yours to give me 99 years in prison, because I have utter contempt for life in a world which would be organized according to your ideas. But , if you happen to fall intop my hands, watch out, you little piglet! First of all , I will jump all over you like a goat! And then I'll turn you over to the women to beat you up good - the women whose children you have killed, blinded and crippled.

As to the fact that I have thrown mud at Serbia, that charge I do not dispute. I did throw mud at them, lots of it, in truth, and with great energy.

The speaking of the truth in this war is clear and definite evidence that I was victimized by anti-Serbian hysteria. Because the truth , these days in Bosnia, is spoken only by angry cannibals who would like to cook some Serbs alive. I was constantly reminded of this, while I still had a telephone, by Serbs who had no first name and no last name and who would call me late at night to tell me how incredible it was that I would attack an author of children's poetry who has become world famous for his heinous acts which have gone beyond anything ever known to mankind. They called me to express their deep concern that I was , with a most careless disregard in my journalism, using Karadzic's act's of burning , slaughtering, raping, and looting as a pretext to morally discredit him in the eyes of world public opinion. I reassured them , as I now reassure you : Don't worry! Not even European public opinion can be fooled so easily by the truth!

Once upon a time , a long time ago, before you turned yourself into a little Jerk with a head full of military megalomania, I let you know confidentaly that I was not , in fact, at all in any way Serb. "You only think that you are not" was your answer , with an expression of horror as if you saw me going over the edge of precipice, I send you this message, which I send also to all those Montenegrins whom you call "the cream of the Serbian crop."

The hatred which you have today towards Bosnians is exactly that longago hatred that you had towards the Turks. Because you regard Bosnians as the most vile of all the results of the Turkish occupation (from the 15-th toward 19-th centuries) and as long as there is one mosque or one gracefull sculped Turkish tombstone in Bosnia , it will remained you of your 500 years of servitude. So you have set out , once and for all , to "free Bosnia from Turks", which means to wipe from the face of the earth all evidence that you were once a peasant serf subject of the Ottoman Empire.

There is a story, written down by Vuk (Karadzic , an early 19th century linguist and Serb nationalist, who "codified" the lenguage) which goes like this. "A Turkish landlord comes to the Serbian peasant and tells him ,"Take off your flask , so I can hang up my rifle" - which translates 'Fix dinner'. After he ate his dinner , the Turk though he ought to take a walk to help his digestion, but he was somehaw lazy and didn't really feel up to it, so he says to the peasant:" Listen you, I don't feel like doing anything; I'm going to take a nap and you take my shoes and go for walk around the yard with them". Another story I heard was told to me by Miroslav Toholj:"In Hercegovina, I don't know exactly were, in the times when there would be a significant appearance of files, the Turkish sheriff would come into a vilagge , I don't know which one, and he would call together all the peasants and tell them."today you are to put on your very best cloths , because you are going to catch files in the Bey's courtyard."

You my dear friend , for whom today's slaughter in Bosnia represents "the continuation of the uprising of 1804" you, who have by youself returned to the beginning of the 19th century in your peasant serf's soul, you have serious reason to treat the Bosnians like some kind of "tail" that was left over here from the Turkish occupation. But why do you try to force that hatred onto me as some kind of moral obligation, when for those 500 years, I was a free man?

While you took Turkish shoes for a walk and caught bugs in the Turkish official's courtyard, I was sharing a fortress with the Turks at a number of locations. Which is to say , I have no vendettas with Turks and they have no vendettas with me. We took care of those interpersonal accounts right then and there, with the use of our weapons, but you , on other hand , have waited for centuries to get your revange for the humiliation of your defeat at the hands of the Turkish forces. For that reasons you say that Bosnians are " a parasitic people, acvcustomed alwasysto live at the expense of others". So you look at them today , by God , through peasant's eye's, as if they were the former Turkish nobility that you used to slave for. But I have no reason to hate Bosnians. No personal reasons: all the harm that has ever befallen me has been the handiwork of Montenegrins and Serbs. And certenly not historically: they never took from me a third of what I earned.

So why should I hate the Turks, when their existance here gave good reason for my national self-respect.

And one other thing. Let us remember the feudal "right to the first night with bride." Who knows whether one of your great-grandmothers may have had to provide her favors to some Turkish official. Yoy today are raping Bosnians women so that you can return to the Turks in kind for that ancient custom, right? No-one else ever touched any of my great-brandmothers. Not only because they were not serfs of peasants, but because I always had tucked into my belt or slung over my shoulder some handy little rifle that made sure that I could protect their honor.

It seems to me that there is absolutly no reason for me to be a Serb, so what else can I tell you? It doesn't pay because it is exclusively thanks to you that the word "Serb" has come to be a kind of emetic - a pill that makes most sensitive people want to throw up. But it doesn't pay historically also. Why would I, a descendant of a free people want to throw my lot in with a people who were enslaved for 500 years? So I must deny you the right, not the right to pursue me criminally - there you are over there, do whatever you want, but the right to sue me as a Serb! Remember this forever! As long as there are 400.000 people who register themselves as Montenegrins, I would not for anything in the world register myself as a Serb. Neither I nor any of my brothers. But anyhow, as for you Serbs, cogratulations! You always were a chosen people, a people of great dignity, and you will be again, as soon as you've managed to throw that stone through the Turkish window.