BELGRADE LETTER:It's nine o'clock at night and it is still 32 degrees. The cafes along the boulevards of central Belgrade are full of people eating ice cream. The city around them is changing by the day. New glass towers are popping up, replacing faded 19th-century grandeur, and people are hoping that the European Union will solve all their problems, political, social and financial, writes Jim Loughran.
But the past has a nasty habit of cropping up in the present. Leading human rights workers will tell you that the Milosevic regime has never really gone away. They will even go so far as to say that they feel more at risk now under the new government of Vojislav Kostunica than during the time of Milosevic.
"At least in the time of Milosevic you knew who the enemy was," says Jelena Djordjevica, campaigner for women's rights. "Now with the coalition of democratic parties you never know where you stand. How can we say that there has been a break with the past when the people who supported and promoted the policies of Milosevic are still in key positions of power?"
Most human rights activists will tell you the same thing. "How can you say that the war is over when if you go into certain restaurants in Belgrade you will see a portrait of Radko Mladic, or where you might find someone accused of war crimes sitting at the next table?" Djordjevica says.
A leading investigative journalist explains how he survives even though he has consistently exposed corruption and links between government and organised crime. As a result he has received repeated death threats. "I survive through secret diplomacy. I have my network of contacts who let me know when something is going to happen. My house does open onto a park and I did think it was too open to a sniper's bullet, but in the end I decided it was an acceptable level of risk."
Journalists who expose what is really going on in this country are in a very dangerous position. "Serbia is walking the knife edge between the violent past and a new progressive future," he says.
Natasa Kandic is one of the most prominent human rights defenders in Serbia. She is director of the Humanitarian Law Centre, which works on crimes committed during the war. As a result she is consistently vilified and subjected to smear attacks in the media as an enemy of the state and a traitor to the Serb nation.
Biljana Kovacevic of the Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights finds herself in much the same situation. "In the battle for the future of Kosovo the government of Serbia needs a new enemy to demonise and defenders make a good target."
Boris Milicevic is the president of Gay Straight Alliance, which campaigns for the rights of lesbian, gay and transgendered people, and he is one of the few publicly out gay people in Serbia.
As a result he has received death threats, been harassed, spat at in the street and refused service in restaurants. He and a friend had been to a party in a restaurant when a group of skinheads recognised Boris from television and attacked them. They were both injured but could not make a complaint because his friend was not out to his family.
When he complained to the owner of the restaurant, the reply he got was, "what do you expect - this is not New York". A recent survey of gay people showed that 70 per cent of those interviewed had been physically assaulted or knew someone who had.
One young man had his throat cut, and because he went public with the complaint the level of intimidation and threats became so intense that he had no choice but to leave the country.
But there is resistance to the intimidation. As Boris says, "we have to step out of the moment of fear . . . we have chosen the course we want to pursue. We know that the people who oppose us are very strong, but we rely on the support of the people."
Today is the 12th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre. Every year a group called the Women in Black organises a vigil in memory of the victims, calling for the perpetrators to be brought to justice. This year I attended, and the vigil was passing off peacefully until just before the end. The police started rounding people up, telling us to stay in line and follow them. They had received a warning that a group of neo-fascists were planning to attack the demonstrators further down the route. The police called in reinfor
cements, so that in the end more than 100 of them escorted us back to the office, with paramedics on standby.
As we left the demo I got a tap on the shoulder and a friendly voice said, "I hear you're from Ireland - so am I. I came to Ireland as a refugee from Srebrenica. My two brothers and 30 cousins were all killed."
I asked him if he had been back to Srebrenica. "No, my house is a ruin and even if I did go back I would have to look at the people who killed my family."
For him nothing has changed.
Jim Loughran works for Front Line, the international foundation for the protection of human rights defenders