Furious prison officers in Yugoslavia's largest jails have refused to work, insisting on better working conditions and demanding an end to prison riots that have undermined the country's new government.
Officers walked off the job at three major prisons, insisting they would only guard the perimeter of the facilities and not venture into cell blocs that inmates took over earlier last week.
The prisoners, who were demanding better treatment and shorter sentences, had agreed to end the uprising that killed one inmate after the government of President Vojislav Kostunica offered to include them in a proposed amnesty agreement. Prisoners at one detention center had recently begun to surrender the bats and clubs they used to take control.
Still, the week of unrest — and now the strike among prison officers — threatened to weaken the new government, whose lack of control in the prisons could be seen as an indication of a shaky grip on law and order.
The slow government response to the uprising outraged officers in Zabela Prison, near Pozarevac, 50 miles east of Belgrade. They said recently they would not resume control in the prison even after the inmates ended their mutiny, Beta news agency reported.
The officers demanded better salaries, improved working conditions and a meeting with the prison warden and Justice Ministry officials.
Prison officers at two other detention centers — in Nis and Sremska Mitrovica — joined the protests, demanding that their salaries be doubled and that the correction department be reorganized, Belgrade's Radio B92 recently reported.
In a statement to Belgrade's media, Dragan Subasic, a commissioner in Serbia's interim Justice Ministry, said he hoped the officers 'will act like real professionals' and predicted the problem would be resolved soon.
The government had collected funds for overdue salaries and announced a major reshuffle in the ministry's corrections department, Subasic said.
The riots began November 5 in Sremska Mitrovica after Serbian inmates learned authorities were considering amnesty for ethnic Albanian political prisoners. Accusing the government of discrimination, they overwhelmed officers, who fled from the jail. The uprising then spread to the prisons in Nis and Pozarevac.
Prisoners took control of most buildings inside the prison walls, but wardens have maintained control of the prisons' main administrative facilities, including the main gates.
Over the past week, Justice Ministry authorities from Kostunica's government met with inmates and brokered a deal. If order was restored, the government agreed to expand the amnesty law to include Serbs doing time for some nonpolitical crimes, as well as to free ethnic Albanians convicted of political crimes during the Kosovo conflict.
In Zabela, inmates surrendered a pile of iron bars, axes and jackhammers, Beta news agency reported. Inmates in Nis and Sremska Mitrovica had agreed to surrender their bats and clubs and allow officers back in to restore control to the compounds by the end of the day.