Lustracija na "srpski način"
Lustration "the Serbian Way"

Summary/Abstract: At the session held on 30 May 2003, the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia adopted the Law on Responsibility for Violation of Human Rights. The Law has been published in the official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia No 58 of 3 june 2003. According to this Law, lustration means determining the accountability for violations of human rights in the past, in order to determine if a person is acceptable to perform a public function in the present or in the future. This interpretation of lustration has its legal basis in Article 35, paragraph 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, according to which everybody has equal access under conditions to every post of function. The Law, therefore, makes it a condition for anyone who has an ambition to perform a public function -- that he has not in the past violated human rights. Whoever meets this requirement -- has access to the public function. This is the whole idea of lustration ''the Serbian way''! There is no room here for big words of complex explanation, just like in the case of access to working posts, to which we have been accustomed for a long time. Accountability in terms of lustration is more political and ethical then it is legal; it is more social then professional, more preventive then repressive. It differs from criminal accountability, as it is derived more from the commandment: ''Do good'' (so that there is no evil), than from the commandment ''Do no evil'' (so that you are not punished). It is therefore more in the realm of hygiene than pathology of life. If we understand lustration as a condition for performing a public function, it will stop to disturb and threaten us. It is, actually, based on good intentions: it intends to stop those who have in the past violated human rights from doing it again.

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