To make every hair on your head stand on end.

Of course, we are talking about the Service that also responds to the names BIA, Udba, State Security, and, indeed, the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The name is not important here – today's Serbia is knee-deep in regime repression against its citizens.

Is the subtitle exaggerated? No. Because if it were, the government would not have sent an unambiguous threat through its Center for Social Stability – although it would be more appropriately named the Center for Dehumanization – to Veran Matić.

The message reads: “If any of you see Veran Matić in the next month or two, tell him that he is not the only (pseudo) journalist who has grown a beard and to be a little more patient, the continuation is coming soon.”

 Do you remember Đinđić and Slavko Ćuruvija?

The allusion is blatant.

“If any of you happen to see Zoran Đinđić, tell him that Tito also had problems with his leg before his death,” stated Toma Nikolić in 2003, shortly before the assassination of Serbia's first democratically elected prime minister. At that time, Đinđić was walking on crutches due to an Achilles tendon injury.

And when he tells Matić that “he is not the only (pseudo) journalist who has grown a beard,” the Center for Dehumanization threatens him with being killed like Slavko Ćuruvija. He also had a beard.

Both of these threats are connected by the Service, which boasts that everything passes except for it. Is there a bottom to dishonor? Well, its members were convicted for the assassination of Đinđić and subsequently accused of the liquidation of Ćuruvija. In this latter case, four members of the Service were not convicted, and then the Supreme Court determined that the Appellate Court in Belgrade, by issuing a final acquittal, violated the law in favor of the accused.

Official Revenge

Where does Veran Matić fit into this?

He was the one who led the Commission for the Investigation of Journalist Murders – of Ćuruvija in Belgrade and Milan Pantić in Jagodina. During this work, the members came to knowledge of other crimes – the massacre at the Panda café in Peć, where six Serbian youths were killed in 1998, and the liquidation in 1999 in Petrov Selu of three Bitići brothers, ethnic Albanians with American citizenship.

Thus, Matić's work threatened to open a closet full of skeletons from the nineties. Scared of their past actions during that period, Vučić, his regime, and the eternal Service jointly sabotaged the work and findings of the Commission. The last straw was Matić's continued activism in the students' and people's uprising following the collapse of the pavilion in Novi Sad.

 And revenge has come. First, through the Center for Dehumanization, the Service painted a target on Matić's back, accusing him in a frenzied broadcast – aired simultaneously on numerous regime television stations – of “treason,” “espionage,” and similar nonsense. Now, from the same place, a deeply sinister threat has arrived. The signature of the authorities on it cannot be removed.

 You are not paranoid

 Under Bata Gašić, Vulin, and Orlić, the Service has established itself as the long arm of regime repression: it listens in on parliamentary parties and student plenums, creates Stalinist charges like those against the “Novosadska Twelve,” mobilizes and directs the ruling party's thugs and underground crews, fabricates, creates fake news, organizes and logistically supports violence, intimidation, and threats, and monitors honest police officers like inspectors Milenković and Mitić who uncovered Jovanjica...

If you agree with the above, you are not paranoid – the Service really does all of this. Instead of dealing with the security of Serbia, it directly endangers its citizens.

It should make every hair on your head stand on end when you think about where and how you live.

Author: Filip Švarm

Source: Vreme