Serbs want to import brides

2008-09-04 21:42

Boris Babic

Belgrde - A proposal to bring 100 000 south-east Asian brides to Serbia for bachelors, particularly those living in backward rural areas, has caused outrage, surprise and laughter.

Labour and Welfare Minister Rasim Ljajic had to apologise to the public after the state secretary in his ministry, Zeljko Vasiljevic, said Serbia would benefit by bringing in women from "Laos, Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam."

The number of Serbs is dwindling by 30&nsp;000 each year, the women disinterested in bearing children and men interested in emigrating westward instead of farming so something "must urgently be done," Vasiljevic said.

"There (in Asia) they already live on $2 a day. Here it's economic heaven for them," Vasiljevic said. "They're Buddhists and that's a peaceful faith similar to (Serbian) Orthodoxy, they're traditionally loyal to the state they live in and are hard-working."

Negative birth rate

With a view to the "250 000 bachelors in Serbia," home to 7.5 million people, the former war veteran particularly stressed that "those women nurture the cult of children and we could in five years have 300 000 newborns."

While Serbia had about 135 000 women more than men in the 15-60 age group in the 2002 census, the problem of a negative birth rate remains a thorn in the side particularly of nationalists.

After all, in Kosovo, the Serbian heartland province which declared independence in February, the majority Albanians reproduce at the highest rate in Europe.

Unlike "spoiled Serbian boys don't seek out regular girls, but gawk at silicone dolls for parties and showing off," as a columnist said in Thursday's edition of the daily Politika, the Albanians have no problems with emptying villages.

In Serbia, "when boys turn 40, they suddenly remember children and start looking for girls - machines for cooking and bearing kids," said the columnist, sociologist Slobodan Antonic.

Antonic says the Vasiljevic project, "briefed on 15 and elaborated on 120 pages," stirred a vigorous debate on Serbian internet forums, where boys support Vasiljevic's plan as something to teach arrogant Serbian girls a lesson.

In return, women complain of "infantile boys," disinterested in marriage and children, so maybe with Asian girls we can import Cuban boys and teach everybody some sense," Antonic said.

Vasiljevic, meanwhile, though obviously disappointed, said his project was not a ministry effort but his own, adding he was shelving it "until a better time." Ljajic said he was helpless to discipline his subordinate owing to the complex ruling coalition deal.

His idea, however, reflects a real problem worrying not just Serbs but others in the region too.

- SAPA