absolutelyBangkok archive · Seriously
Originally published Sept. 5, 2008
Not a purely Thai topic, but nevertheless relevant for a nation that has exported thousands upon thousands of its daughters as brides. The proud nation of Serbia mulls over the official import of young women from Burma, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam — to prevent the extinction of its own people.
How dare they don’t go for Thai brides. Maybe they’ve become too costly? Because, as Zeljko Vasiljevic says, State Secretary to the Labor and Welfare Ministry: “There (in Asia) they already live on two dollars a day. Here it’s economic heaven for them.” Heaven for them. Never mind the Serb’s nationalist and racial supremacy.
“They’re Buddhists,” Vasiljevic goes on, “and that’s a peaceful faith similar to (Serbian) Orthodoxy, they’re traditionally loyal to the state they live in and are hard-working.” The proposal to bring 100,000 modest Southeast Asian brides to Serbia for bachelors, particularly those living in backward rural areas, has — surprise — caused outrage, surprise and laughter.
By Boris Babic, DPA
Belgrade — Labour and Welfare Minister Rasim Ljajic had to apologize 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 30,000 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.
With a view to the “250,000 bachelors in Serbia,” home to more than seven 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 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.
In 2004, a priest warned Croatia it is short 103,000 unmarried women aged 25-49 and he called for women to come from Ukraine to make up the deficit.
Working on a smaller scale and for profit, Nediljko Babic, a man called “Gangster”, has meanwhile gained dubious fame by arranging marriages between young Croat men from backward areas along the Adriatic and Ukrainian girls.
He has helped arrange 250 marriages with a strong showing of 400 children so far, a 2007 newspaper report said.
Via Earth Times
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