Why the national minorities’ members are reluctant towards the employment in the police force of Serbia?

According to the data of the Centre for Civil-Military Relations 45,149 people are employed in the police force of Serbia. Out of this, the number of the members of the minority communities is almost negligible. Among the negligible minorities – Hungarians, Albanians and Bosniaks, the least visible are Croatians and Roma.

The number of the employed Hungarians is 487 or 1.08% of the total number of employees in the Ministry of Police, next are Bosniaks with 453 employed or 1%, what is much less than the total percentage of this minority in the population of Serbia. The following are 296 employed Albanians or 0.66% of the total number of employees. And finally, there are only 40 Roma, who make 0.09% employed in the police out of 1.44% of Roma in the population of Serbia.

The Director of the Centre, Sonja Stojanović, said for “Borba” that all of the presented data tell us that the number of the employed members of the national minorities in the Ministry of Defence is not equal to their percentage in the population of Serbia. “It is obvious that some of the national minorities, such as Croatians and Roma, are totally invisible in the police “said Stojanović.

The State Secretary of the Ministry of Police, Dragan Marković, recently stated the police “gives special attention to the national minorities”, but that their members “ do not express enough interest for the employment in the police “.  The Ministry of Police said that they do not have data about the number of employed Roma. The most recent data, from 2006, obtained the Center for the purpose of the research on the reform of the police, which was performed in the cooperation with OSCE.

There are several reasons for the lack of interest of minorities for the job in police, according to Stojanović. Most of all, that is the weak material status and low payments of the police officer, than the inherited factor of bad treatment of national minorities by the police during the 1990s, as well as the insufficient knowledge of the Serbian language.

“The fact is that there was no lustration and that the appeals against the torture made by the NGOs were often becoming obsolete, especially in the Sanjak region, because they were not preceded in time. All of that is affecting the trust of the citizens”.

“Also, in recruiting of the new personnel our police do not take into account the knowledge of the minority languages.  That would be, of course, the positive push towards the greater interest for the employment in the police, not only by the members of the national minorities but also by the Serbs who are speaking the languages of the minorities. All of that would certainly improve the relation between the police and the minority communities”.

If we speak about the Hungarian population, they remind to the critiques of their members to the Ministry of Police often made in the past. These critiques are based on the fact that Hungarians were leaving their jobs in the police exactly because of the bad treatment of the members of their community by the police, but also because of the great numbers of the employed policemen who are refugees from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo.

The objections of Hungarians towards those members of the Ministry of Police are based on the fact that they are coming from a different social milieu and unused to the ethnic structure in Vojvodina; they did not have good communication with Hungarians from Vojvodina, unlike some older members of police who are also of Serb nationality but coming from Vojvodina.

This incident, inability to educate without discrimination and pressure, is also noted in the OSCE Report on reform of the police.

According to Stojanović the demands of the Albanian national minority today are not just employment in the force but also the opportunity of promotion.

As the Center claims, the situation in the three municipalities in the south of Serbia is much improved after the so called “Čovic’s peace plan” which put an end to the conflict in the Southern Serbia in 2001. In accordance with this peace plan, a “multiethnic” police force was created, thus certain short term courses were organized in order to increase the number of Albanians in police in three municipalities in the south of Serbia.

– 58% of Serbs, 40% of Albanians and 2% of Roma work currently in the police force in Bujanovac. In Medvedja, where the population is predominantly composed of Serbs, the police force also kept respective percentage – 85.7 % of Serbs and 12.1% of Albanians. In Preševo, where the dominant population is Albanians, numbers in police force are equally divided between Serbs and Albanians, 50% both.

According to the information of the Centre, the Ministry of Police of Serbia performed the research on the sample composed of 1,868 high school students. The question was if they were interested for the work in police. The results shown that the most interested for the work in the blue uniform are Albanians, and the least Hungarians.

(Daily newspapers „Borba” – topic of the day – February 5th, 2009, interview made by Dragana Bokan and Vesna Tašić)