Correspondents' Correspondence

...There is a distinct body of nationalist opposition in Yugoslavia that desires peaceful democratic reforms and supports human rights...

...Instead, they resignedly accept the Communist Party's role as "arbiter" in theareaof nationalism, apparently not understanding that in doing so they are in effect supporting the Party's control of every other area of life in Yugoslavia as well.-Aleksa DjIlas Addiction in Europe Strasbourg????europeans once dismissed drug addiction as a sad yet peculiarly North American plague that would never get much of a foothold on the Continent...

...In such an atmosphere people latch on to drugs, adjusting to their environment by suppressing anxiety and depression, and ascribe near-magical powers to these crutches...

...It is impossible to imagine an independent judiciary bringing citizens to trial for the "crime" of nationalism alone...

...The Party has simply decided that the internal or international situation is now favorable for a trial, or that a particular nationalist has become dangerously influential, or that an example is needed to remind everyone who is in charge...

...The rulers thus retain the ability to arraign and convict anyone they consider an opponent...

...AcceptanceoftheCommunists' self-justifications is enhanced by the West's peculiar mixture of ignorance, quasi-aristocratic aloofness and general lack of sensitivity where Yugoslav problems are concerned...

...The Council's concern is not new...

...It is profoundly wrong to exclude those who constitute this body from the spectrum of political discourse...

...The country could decline from the present Communist dictatorship to a worse one...

...Whatever, legality does not really enter the picture...

...Have their activities only recently become illegal...

...In this way they also confine opposition inside each nation and prevent the formation of a pan-Yugoslav democratic movement...

...Nonetheless, "nationalism" is not merely a term of abuse in Yugoslavia, it is a criminal charge applied arbitrarily by the regime to label and imprison all who dare to dissent from the official policy...

...These have contributed to other destructive trends, they say, citing the increase in suicides and the growing incidence of violence in the streets...

...Revolutionary nationalism" would no longer flourish...

...If such a society were to emerge in Yugoslavia, it would dampen the wilder chauvinist enthusiasms...

...in 1971 it warned that the traditional barriers against alcoholism and drug abuse were crumbling, and that better remedies were needed...

...If the Yugoslav Communist regime were genuinely interested in preventing nationalist strife and not merely in preserving its monopoly of power and its privileges, it would have long ago accepted the canons of international law, the United Nations and Amnesty International...

...It does not matter that this policy varies from place to place in the country, and changes over the course of time...

...And this was supported by a penetrating study placed before the conference participants, distinguished educationalists from the Council's 21 member states plus Canada and the United States...

...It is a conspicuous characteristic of these trials, too, that the defendants are charged with "crimes" they have committed over a long period????three to five years, or even more...

...On the contrary, once permitted to express their opinions openly, many people would speak out against the factionalism of their own group...

...In Yugoslavia it is the Party who in practice puts people on trial, not the courts...

...No genuine judiciary could ever think that way...

...In their writings and activism, these dissidents and others elsewhere have successfully combined a deep concern for their respective nationalities with an equally intense interest in human rights and the freedom of the individual...

...Mar-ko Veselica, a well-known economist...

...There is a new approach now, though????a shift in official thinking away from punishment toward prevention...

...Many well-meaning foreigners thus come away persuaded that democratization, however desirable, is impossible because it would bring about an escalation of regional passions...

...Franjo Tudjman, a historian and former Partisan general...

...it would not move from a genuine democracy into nationalist violence and tyranny...

...The Council of Europe-an organization aiming "to work for greater European unity, to improve the conditions of life and develop human value in Europe"—recently examined this virtual epidemic and its wider implications in a conference held here at the Palais d'Europe...

...Today drug abuse is evident in every layer of European society, particularly in Britain, France, Holland, West Germany, and Italy...

...The same methods were frequently employed by Tito to enhance his rule...

...They see the existing alternative as dictatorship versus civil war, not dictatorship versus democracy...

...There is no recourse to the law...

...Indeed, this has been corroborated by the angry rioting of young people in many European cities over the past year or so...

...The study regards addiction as a symptom of deeper social ills that have been exacerbated by the current recession throughout the West, and by a second industrial revolution that is threatening the jobs of millions of workers...

...A society that respects the rights of the individual is profoundly nonviolent and against extremes...

...The authors of the study further point out that drug abuse is merely one manifestation of today's deep-rooted contradictions...

...If there are no objective grounds for a violation that is being charged, then clearly an arbitrary political authority is making the decisions...

...The once-unquestioned values safeguarded by the family, organized religion and education, are in decline, while undue importance is attached to material prosperity...

...And in that circumstance repression appears to them to represent the more sensible solution...

...Visiting politicians and journalists are told by the bureaucrats in Belgrade that without strong central control the nations composing Yugoslavia would be at each other's throats...

...Then only a specific kind of nationalism would qualify as a crime: the incitement to national and religious hatred and violence...

...Thinking, speaking and writing about the problems of one's nation would have to be recognized for what they surely are????basic human rights...

...Meanwhile, it advocates restrictions in the production, distribution and sale of alcoholic drinks...

...In every dictatorship, and particularly in Communist ones, the judiciary serves at the pleasure of those who are in power...

...Of course not...

...To distant observers, the conflicts of regions with names that are impossible to pronounce, over matters that hardly seem worth mentioning, can be "explained" as irrational, ludicrous and sometimes downright insane...

...and Dobroslav Paraga, a law student whose only crime was collecting signatures for a petition requesting the amnesty of political prisoners...

...The concept of nationalism itself is so complex and vague that it is virtually impossible to establish practical criteria for its manifestations...

...Indeed, perhaps the struggle for human rights and democratic reforms must therefore focus, first of all, on wresting the judges from lhe hold of the Parly bureaucrats, rather than on some larger political objective...

...It notes, for example, that the emergenceof widespread "pill-popping" has encouraged the sense that one's well-being and health depend on pharmaceuticals and drink...

...Yet the reality is that the present power-wielders, using national strife for the legitimation of their regime, actually rule according to the old imperial precept of divide et impera...

...This reasoning is typical of despots...

...We must arrest and convict a few of them as a preventive measure and warning...

...In the long term, the Council's emphasis on prevention could lead to a greater investment in medical, social and educational services, as well as youth employment programs...

...It observes: "Unemployment, particularly that affecting young people and women, will be the paramount problem of Europe and North America in the 1980s...

...As a consequence, children are exposed to dangerous parental models of evasion and abdication of responsibility...

...Western observers, meanwhile, mistakenly equate improved personal liberties with a surge in anarchy and nationalist violence...

...No new law was decreed...

...The "poor old" dictator had to protect Yugoslavs from each other...

...The Council also advises parents, doctors, teachers and employers to recognize drug addiction as a problem related to the stresses of present-day life, rather than simply an individual deviation from the norm, and cautions against "treatment which medicates the problem without solving it...

...What they do not recognize is that democratic reforms in Yugoslavia, although they would allow certain proud expressions of nationalism, would simultaneously sharply reduce and condemn all kinds of ethnic persecution and aggression...

...Thomas Land...

...Westerners have refused to come to grips with that truth...

...and in any case, a new law should not be retroactive...

...Moreover, inappropriate and impersonal schools are failing to impart knowledge that has a bearing on our changing world...

...To account for the ominous increase of drug abuse, the study explores a broad range of societal changes that have been shaping patterns of acceptable behavior...

...The ideological and political edge of ethnic pride would not be sharpened by freedom...

...But a steady, frightening rise in the drug-related death rate of young Europeans has proved them wrong...

...The charades generally occur after top level consultations where one may hear arguments that run as follows: "Nationalists are becoming more and more active...

...Our civilization is generating contradictory messages, too...

...Yugoslav Nationalism London-Yugoslavia's Communist regime presents itself to the West as the country's only element of stability...

...Then we will see...

...They include, for example, the Croatian intellectuals who were tried in the courts during 1981: Vlado Gotovac, a philosopher and one of the most distinguished contemporary Croatian poets...

...Individuals are simultaneously being denied the scope to develop their personalities and to plan their lives realistically...

...They set one ethnic group against another and then "defend" the unity of the country...