Butt Swabs and Bottles

U.S. diplomats to China were recently demeaned with anal swabs to test for COVID.  The Chinese initially denied this, but apparently eventually apologized.  The new rule is that all foreigners must succumb to these invasive tests.  I would ask why anyone but homosexuals would go to China now. Since homosexuality can be seen as a mental disorder there, it doesn’t make sense why gays would go there, either.  I do have to admit, it’s a great power move by the Chinese to demonstrate their dominance on foreigners.

Forcing foreign objects into members of rival ethnic groups isn’t unique to the Chinese, though.  Ham-fisted segue accomplished, let me bring up the Đorđe Martinović incident.  Back in the mid-1980s, Yugoslavia was having a rough time.  It wasn’t as rough as things would get in the 90s, but it was still pretty bad.  Demographics had shifted somewhat in the constituent states and ethnic tensions were rising. 

Depending on who you ask, Martinović was a Serbian farmer in Kosovo who either inserted a bottle into his rectum to pleasure himself, or he was sexually assaulted by two Albanians with said bottle.  When he was interviewed by the Yugoslav Army, he said the injuries were self-inflicted and local authorities likewise made that the official story.  Of course, the doctors who treated/examined him said his injuries were inconsistent with a self-inflicted wound (this was also a multiethnic doctor team, apparently). 

Martinović eventually recanted his confession, claiming it was coerced.  It must be a shock to hear that a communist regime would coerce confessions from people.  While a secondary medical report and the secret police concluded that his injuries were self-inflicted, it’s important to remember that this is right before the interethnic Yugoslav wars and those in power likely wanted to prevent any internal conflicts.  It’s far better to have a degenerate farmer than a hate crime.

Obviously, many people believed the assault narrative rather than the farmer with a fetish one, so the incident became one of the many contributing causes of the eventual interethnic war in Yugoslavia. There were poems and articles about it, often with allusions of Albanians as Turks (due to the historical oppression by the Ottomans).  It’s amazing that just one alleged sexual assault can have such wide-reaching implications.

I didn’t want to write about this story just because I can see a parallel between interethnic forcing of foreign objects in rectums.  This is a great opportunity to reflect on why incidents like this happen.  Some have argued that Yugoslavia became more diverse over the history of the Socialist Republic.  There is conflicting data on this account overall, but there were some massive demographic shifts. As this story took place in Kosovo, we should look there.  In 1948, Kosovo was 68.5% Albanian and 23.6% Serbian.  In 1981, it was 77.4% Albanian and 13.2% Serbian.  In 1991, Kosovo was 81.6% Albanian and 9.9% Serbian.  It makes sense that as an ethnic group without power becomes a smaller minority, they will be more likely to suffer at the hands of the majority.  Unless something changes, this is something the peoples of Europe can look forward to as they are continually outbred by the “New Europeans” from Muslim and African countries. Likewise, it’s what America has to look forward to as people “just as American as you or me” who can’t speak English move here.

One other parallel between these stories is that the victims of the attack lived underneath a broader foreign power.  Not only was Martinović living amongst ethnic Muslim domination, but also underneath the communist government of Yugoslavia.  In the case of these U.S. diplomats, it’s hard to keep track of all the foreign dominance.  Between Ukrainian ties to Biden’s son, Chinese ties to Biden, the far-reaching controls of our “allies” in the Middle East, and the oppression of the American Empire on her own citizens, it’s easy to relate to the plight of the Serbs living in Kosovo.

So, will these depredations to American citizens contribute to mass outrage against foreign oppression and desire for self-rule, as the Martinović incident did?  Probably not.  Still, at least there is schadenfreude in American apparatchik and bougie travelers to China getting degraded.