Post by Emperor AAdmin on Aug 13, 2005 19:11:30 GMT -5
July 11, 2005
New York Times
The Wages of Denial
By COURTNEY ANGELA BRKIC
TEN years ago this week, Serbian forces slaughteredmore than 7,000 Muslim men in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica. Despitethe efforts of a dedicated few in Serbia, and despite the war crimesprosecutions at The Hague, Serbia is no closer today than it was a decade ago toreckoning with its war guilt.
For years Belgrade has denied involvement by itscitizens in Srebrenica and other massacres of the 1990s. The recent broadcastof a graphic video that showed Serbian paramilitary police executing six youngmen from Srebrenica should have made it very hard to sustain that revisionism.Amazing as it seems, however, the video was not enough to shatter what Serbianhuman rights activist Sonja Biserko has described as the country's "stateof collective denial."
Fewer than half of Serbs polled last spring believedthe Srebrenica massacre took place. And while much has been made of the video'seffects on a shocked Serbian public, it remains to be seen where that publicwill stand once the furor recedes. The Radical Party, which won 27 percent ofthe popular vote in the last national elections, making it the largest party inParliament, has already criticized what it sees as the anti-Serb hysteria that"wishes at all costs to put the burden of all crimes on Serbia."Graffiti has appeared in several cities praising the "liberation" ofSrebrenica. Rumors circulate that the video was doctored, or that the mencommitting the crimes were acting independently.
Instead of coming to terms with its past, Serbia hascircumvented the issue with the narrative skills befitting a psychopath. Forexample, a debate on Srebrenica at the Belgrade Law Faculty earlier this yearwas initially titled "10 Years After the Liberation of Srebrenica."In response to the video, Serbia's president, Boris Tadic, said, "Serbiais deeply shocked" that "the killers had walked freely amongus." But Mr. Tadic's government surely knows that the killers in the videoare but a small fraction of the number who continue to walk the streets ofSerbia and Montenegro as free men.
A fairy tale has passed for public memory until now inSerbia and Montenegro and it is conspicuous in its omission of Serb atrocitiesin Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, which left hundreds of thousandsdead. The Serbian version of that history denies the fact that PresidentSlobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia and those like him enjoyed overwhelmingpopular support in Serbia during the war, despite the evictions, rapes andunchecked slaughter by Yugoslav troops and irregulars. It suggests that Belgradetoday has nothing to do with Belgrade as it was 10 years ago. It aims at anabsurd relativism, placing Serbian atrocities within the context of crimescommitted by other ethnicities (in fact, the C.I.A. has reported that Serbswere responsible for 90 percent of all atrocities committed in Bosnia). Mr.Tadic was quoted as saying, "Crimes are always individual." All ofthis is fiction.
At the end of the Second World War, Allied troopsforced German citizens to walk through Nazi death camps. They were confrontedby crimes committed in their name, in order to ensure that those crimes couldnot be denied or minimized later. The people of Serbia and Montenegro, bycontrast, have never been forced to acknowledge the crimes committed in theirname.
There are those who refuse to whitewash Serbia'srecent past. The Helsinki Human Rights Committee in Serbia and the independentbroadcaster Radio B92 are admirable examples. People like Natasa Kandic,chairwoman of the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade, have spent yearsfighting for the truth, often at great personal risk. Extremists threatened tolynch Ms. Kandic at the law school debate on Srebrenica, and one of them spatin her face.
Eight of Serbia's human rights groups have drafted adeclaration on Srebrenica that would obligate the country's government toconfess to the massacre and to "expose and punish any ideologicaljustification of crime." But the daily newspaper Blic reported that themajority of parties in Serbia's Parliament refused not only to endorse thedeclaration but also to debate it.
Serbia must relinquish the fairy tale that its ownwartime suffering was equivalent to the devastation it visited on others.Adopting an honest declaration on Srebrenica would have been an important firststep, and the Serbian Parliament should have taken it. For as long as Serbia'speople deny complicity in war crimes, they undercut any hope for justice andcheat their country out of any decent future. The Western aid money that haspoured into Serbia may help rebuild the country's infrastructure, but it willdo nothing to cut out the cancer that riddles the country's heart.
Western governments are anxious for reconciliation inthe Balkans, which would ensure future stability in the region. They arepushing hard for the arrests of people like Radovan Karadzic, the architect ofthe genocide, and Ratko Mladic, who carried it out, and they lauded the speedwith which the Serbian government detained those suspected of being the killersshown on the video. But those arrests will not be nearly enough.
Such men were not exceptions, nor were they actingindependently, and Serbia must acknowledge this truth, rather than denying orminimizing it. That means surrendering all war crimes suspects to The Hague andpaying reparations to the victims of war. The West should ask for no less thanthis when it considers Serbian requests for aid.
Courtney Angela Brkic is the author of"Stillness: And Other Stories" and "The Stone Fields," anaccount of her work excavating mass graves outside Srebrenica.
New York Times
The Wages of Denial
By COURTNEY ANGELA BRKIC
TEN years ago this week, Serbian forces slaughteredmore than 7,000 Muslim men in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica. Despitethe efforts of a dedicated few in Serbia, and despite the war crimesprosecutions at The Hague, Serbia is no closer today than it was a decade ago toreckoning with its war guilt.
For years Belgrade has denied involvement by itscitizens in Srebrenica and other massacres of the 1990s. The recent broadcastof a graphic video that showed Serbian paramilitary police executing six youngmen from Srebrenica should have made it very hard to sustain that revisionism.Amazing as it seems, however, the video was not enough to shatter what Serbianhuman rights activist Sonja Biserko has described as the country's "stateof collective denial."
Fewer than half of Serbs polled last spring believedthe Srebrenica massacre took place. And while much has been made of the video'seffects on a shocked Serbian public, it remains to be seen where that publicwill stand once the furor recedes. The Radical Party, which won 27 percent ofthe popular vote in the last national elections, making it the largest party inParliament, has already criticized what it sees as the anti-Serb hysteria that"wishes at all costs to put the burden of all crimes on Serbia."Graffiti has appeared in several cities praising the "liberation" ofSrebrenica. Rumors circulate that the video was doctored, or that the mencommitting the crimes were acting independently.
Instead of coming to terms with its past, Serbia hascircumvented the issue with the narrative skills befitting a psychopath. Forexample, a debate on Srebrenica at the Belgrade Law Faculty earlier this yearwas initially titled "10 Years After the Liberation of Srebrenica."In response to the video, Serbia's president, Boris Tadic, said, "Serbiais deeply shocked" that "the killers had walked freely amongus." But Mr. Tadic's government surely knows that the killers in the videoare but a small fraction of the number who continue to walk the streets ofSerbia and Montenegro as free men.
A fairy tale has passed for public memory until now inSerbia and Montenegro and it is conspicuous in its omission of Serb atrocitiesin Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, which left hundreds of thousandsdead. The Serbian version of that history denies the fact that PresidentSlobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia and those like him enjoyed overwhelmingpopular support in Serbia during the war, despite the evictions, rapes andunchecked slaughter by Yugoslav troops and irregulars. It suggests that Belgradetoday has nothing to do with Belgrade as it was 10 years ago. It aims at anabsurd relativism, placing Serbian atrocities within the context of crimescommitted by other ethnicities (in fact, the C.I.A. has reported that Serbswere responsible for 90 percent of all atrocities committed in Bosnia). Mr.Tadic was quoted as saying, "Crimes are always individual." All ofthis is fiction.
At the end of the Second World War, Allied troopsforced German citizens to walk through Nazi death camps. They were confrontedby crimes committed in their name, in order to ensure that those crimes couldnot be denied or minimized later. The people of Serbia and Montenegro, bycontrast, have never been forced to acknowledge the crimes committed in theirname.
There are those who refuse to whitewash Serbia'srecent past. The Helsinki Human Rights Committee in Serbia and the independentbroadcaster Radio B92 are admirable examples. People like Natasa Kandic,chairwoman of the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade, have spent yearsfighting for the truth, often at great personal risk. Extremists threatened tolynch Ms. Kandic at the law school debate on Srebrenica, and one of them spatin her face.
Eight of Serbia's human rights groups have drafted adeclaration on Srebrenica that would obligate the country's government toconfess to the massacre and to "expose and punish any ideologicaljustification of crime." But the daily newspaper Blic reported that themajority of parties in Serbia's Parliament refused not only to endorse thedeclaration but also to debate it.
Serbia must relinquish the fairy tale that its ownwartime suffering was equivalent to the devastation it visited on others.Adopting an honest declaration on Srebrenica would have been an important firststep, and the Serbian Parliament should have taken it. For as long as Serbia'speople deny complicity in war crimes, they undercut any hope for justice andcheat their country out of any decent future. The Western aid money that haspoured into Serbia may help rebuild the country's infrastructure, but it willdo nothing to cut out the cancer that riddles the country's heart.
Western governments are anxious for reconciliation inthe Balkans, which would ensure future stability in the region. They arepushing hard for the arrests of people like Radovan Karadzic, the architect ofthe genocide, and Ratko Mladic, who carried it out, and they lauded the speedwith which the Serbian government detained those suspected of being the killersshown on the video. But those arrests will not be nearly enough.
Such men were not exceptions, nor were they actingindependently, and Serbia must acknowledge this truth, rather than denying orminimizing it. That means surrendering all war crimes suspects to The Hague andpaying reparations to the victims of war. The West should ask for no less thanthis when it considers Serbian requests for aid.
Courtney Angela Brkic is the author of"Stillness: And Other Stories" and "The Stone Fields," anaccount of her work excavating mass graves outside Srebrenica.