Serbia riots: Hypocritical ‘rules-based order’ in action

The US decides which ‘rules’ are in effect: the ones from January 6 or October 5.

The main trouble with the “rules-based order” promoted by the West is that the ‘rules’ in question keep changing. Take, for example, Sunday evening’s riot in Belgrade, which saw sympathizers of the ‘pro-Western democratic civic opposition’ try to break into City Hall and declare themselves winners of the recent municipal election.

At least 2,000 protesters gathered outside the building known as the Old Palace, smashed its glass doors, and attempted to force their way inside. Riot police held the line, used teargas to push them back, and then batons to disperse the mob.

What the opposition claimed had happened, however, was that they were just peacefully protesting a “stolen” election against a “tyrannical” regime, which had the police break the doors so it would have an excuse to engage in brutality.

Obviously, the protesters didn’t get the memo from Our Democracy – meaning the US – dated January 6, 2021, and spelling out that any questioning of electoral results makes one a criminally liable “denier,” while smashing the doors of a government building amounts to a “deadly insurrection” allowing the police to indiscriminately use deadly force.

Given that the protesters in question fetishize the US and would love nothing more than to be under its rule, it seems only fair that the American rules would apply to them too.

However, these protesters were working off a different American precedent: the color revolution that first brought their ideology to power in Serbia on October 5, 2000. Back then, a motley “pro-democracy” coalition cobbled together by the US Embassy, trained by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and funded by “suitcases of cash” smuggled across the border stormed the parliament, torched the ballot boxes, and insisted they had actually won the presidential election. The tactic worked, and was then repeated in Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004 and 2014), among other places. So imagine their shock when the US ambassador in Belgrade disavowed them instead!

“Violence and vandalism against state institutions have no place in a democratic society,” Christopher Hill pronounced. “Grievances should be raised through legal, peaceful, nonviolent means.”

In the hours and days ahead, Serbia’s leaders and its citizens should remember: The legitimacy of democratic processes depends upon transparency and on the readiness of all parties, winning or losing, to respect the will of the people as expressed at the ballot box.

— Ambassador Christopher R. Hill (@usambserbia) December 25, 2023

“All of Serbia’s citizens have a right to be heard and a responsibility to express their political views peacefully and without resort to violence,” added Hill.

So political violence was OK in Serbia in 2000 – and in the US in 2020, according to some people – but not now, according to Hill, who asserts to be the proper arbiter of such matters, even though on paper he is a mere ambassador bound by the Vienna Convention rules.

The “pro-Western liberal democrats” in Serbia – who, again, fetishize Hill’s country and dream of serving its every whim – don’t seem to get this. The irony of using political violence while calling themselves “Serbia Against Violence,” ghoulishly appropriating the deaths of elementary-school children in a May mass shooting, is lost on them entirely.

For the past week, they coped with the loss at the polls by insulting the electorate as too stupid, uncouth, and primitive to appreciate their greatness – when they weren’t lying about 40,000 Bosnian Serbs supposedly showing up to illegally vote in Serbia, that is. These people certainly seem as thick as the Belgrade Fortress wall.

The joke could be on the rest of us, however. For while both the government and the opposition in Belgrade are obsessing about an election, the US-backed ethnic Albanian regime in the breakaway province of Kosovo is destroying Serb cemeteries and illegally seizing churches, and generally refusing to abide by signed agreements. Because, again, the “rules-based order” means that those who have the blessing of Washington and Brussels can do no wrong.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of DTNZ.