Belgrade- Serbia, hit hard by an economic downturn and a high unemployment rate, is facing a new kind of social protest - self-mutilation. In the past six months, three men have cut have off their fingers to protest their difficult economic plights. One was seeking payment of back wages, another insurance money for an injury he suffered on the job.
Their actions come amidst hunger strikes and other, more conventional protest actions in Serbia by workers demanding unpaid salaries or benefits they believe they are owed.
Experts say that self-mutilation is a cry for help by desperate people who are trying to make the government take notice of them.
Officials, meanwhile, say they are doing all that they can. But money is scarce, and there will be even less of it, as the International Monetary Fund has postponed the release of the second tranche of a 4.3-billion-dollar loan until Serbia undertakes necessary reforms, including cutting public expenditures.
"To me, self-mutilation is a sign of growing desperation and a cry for help. It just shows that these men have nothing left to lose and have no one to turn to for help," psychologist Slobodanka Sekic told German Press Agency dpa.
"I fear that there will be more of this gruesome situation, as (officials) are announcing plans to sack people in the administration, and so many families depend on those salaries," Sekic added.
On Wednesday Belgrade media reported that a 61-year-old man from central Serbia cut off his pinkie finger in a court room in the city of Arandjelovac. He said he was unhappy with the way his case was being handled.
The man broke his leg in 2004 while working for the beverage company Knjaz Milos. Although he was awarded compensation of a million dinars (15,655 dollars), he wants more.
Two weeks earlier, on September 15, a 64-year-old businessmen, Radivoj Atanaskovic, from southern Serbia, cut off his finger in downtown Belgrade in front of the insurance company Dunav after trying for 17 years to get the insurance money the company owes him.
Atanaskovic already cut off part of another finger in June in the southern city of Nis during a court proceeding. He demands Dunav pay him some 16 million euros (23.32 million dollars) in insurance money for his factory in Prokuplje, which was destroyed in a fire in 1992.
"I'm a desperate man. What good is my hand when they have been destroying my life for the past 17 years?" Atanaskovic told journalists in Belgrade after cutting his finger off.
The spree of self mutilation began in April, when a worker at the Raska textile factory in the southern town of Novi Pazar cut off a finger on his left hand while staging a hunger strike over wages unpaid since 1993.
"I will eat it. This is my food," Zoran Bulatovic told TV crews while showing his finger wrapped in paper.
Southern Serbia is the country9s poorest region, but workers and labor unions are threatening protests throughout the country if the government continues with its plans to cut jobs in the public sector.
Although Serbian officials have dismissed the possibility of raising the value-added tax, already 18 per cent, to reduce its budget deficit, they plan to cut a fifth of the 70,000 jobs in the public sector.
Psychiatrist Milan Milic believes that mass street protests are unlikely, but it is quite possible that isolated individuals will continue to resort to extreme measures.
Milic told the daily newspaper Blic that self-mutilation indicates "absolute despair." He added that most people are aware of the global economic crisis and realize that street protests will get them nowhere.
"That is why we should not expect mass protests, but people will increasingly turn to extreme measures, like (cutting off fingers). The crisis in Serbia is huge, and I am afraid it could lead to problematic behavior of individuals or certain smaller groups," he told daily.
Milic believes that the government should try to assure such people that their problems are being dealt with.
