THE TRAIN FOR EUROPE
Srda Popovich

Bosnian Institute News
Monday, 20 October, 2008
UK

Forthright overview of some current issues ranging from the tendency
of Serbian politicians to blame Dutch government obduracy rather than
their own failure to arrest Ratko Mladic for the EU’s decision not
to unfreeze the SAA, via the B-H genocide case against Serbia, to the
‘victory of the pro-European option’ under Tadic and the issues raised
by the Ã~Pindic assassination trial

Svetlana LukiÄ~G: We’re now more or less over our anger and sense
of humiliation at the fact that the notorious Stabilization and
Association Agreement hasn’t been unfrozen. Everybody has been wailing
about the injustice done to us by Holland, because of some business of
theirs about some battalion. But let’s not forget what that battalion
business was all about. The Dutch battalion didn’t manage to prevent,
didn’t do enough to prevent, the genocide at Srebrenica – or what
President TadiÄ~G has recently been calling the well-known Srebrenica
‘incident’ or ‘tragedy’… TadiÄ~G and other politicians mention the
Dutch battalion en passant, as if it were of no importance.

SrÄ’a PopoviÄ~G: That’s because otherwise they’d have to explain it
all, and the explanation is quite crazy: that the Dutch are greatly
frustrated because they let MladiÄ~G disarm them, because they weren’t
capable of preventing genocide, and they can’t forgive themselves
for that, whereas we’ve forgiven ourselves for everything. And
[our politicians] don’t dare, of course, to mention what it’s
about. Given our moral flexibility, we can’t quite understand that
the Dutch really do blame themselves greatly, whereas in our view
MladiÄ~G himself is not responsible, let alone the Dutch. That’s why
[our politicians] say nothing. When Ä~PeliÄ~G then starts complaining
about injustice, I can’t understand how he can possible use the word
in this context, given what MladiÄ~G did, and that we’ve spent years
lying and protecting him, and are probably still protecting him. We
recently had the anniversary of the crime at TopÄ~Mider, and I’m sure
it’s generally believed that those soldiers were killed by MladiÄ~G’s
bodyguards, because he was hiding in that building. Never mind, we
pass over all that, and when the Dutch show what we see as excessive
moral concern, we cry ‘injustice’.

It’s quite shameful how brazen we’ve become. Those who think the
Dutch will give up are wrong; it was a great shock to that society,
their government fell as a result, what more need we say? They can’t
absolve themselves, for having been involved in the event. It doesn’t
matter how marginally they were involved in the event, they can’t
pretend to themselves that they have a certain understanding for what
happened in Srebrenica, and don’t take it all that seriously. No,
they take it very seriously, and no one will make them waver, that’s
for sure. It must have been very difficult for them when the Agreement
was being signed too, but they were promised then that it was simply
a matter of signing the Agreement, that ratification still lay ahead,
that candidature lay ahead, and that if MladiÄ~G was not surrendered by
then, they could stick to their position. There’s a cynical explanation
– in which I don’t believe – which is that they serve as a handbrake
within the European Union, that can be put on at any time and that
can always serve as an alibi in case things do not progress. I don’t
believe that, but I’ve heard such cynical explanations, which seem
plausible because they’re in line with our own political practice.

People can’t understand how a society like the Dutch functions. It’s
a Protestant society, people there take moral issues seriously, they
have a high standard for human rights, all those institutions like
the International Court of Justice or the Hague tribunal are located
there, and these are very serious subjects for them.

I don’t normally read Politika, but I looked at today’s on-line edition
and read a text by one columnist, the name’s not important but he
writes for Politika, which is partly government-owned, isn’t it? He
writes about the Dutch position, which he characterises as peevish
– just like that: peevish, insolent, contemptuous. And offers as a
comfort that, if we do one day get accepted into the European Union,
we’ll be able to place conditions on the entry of others, and make them
pay for all this. This is in line with KoÅ¡tunica’s line about making
things difficult – we’ll get in, and then we’ll make things difficult;
then you’ll see, when we begin imposing vetoes! Then at the end of
his text that same columnist moans and says: but maybe we’ll be the
last to enter, and we won’t be able to make fun of anyone. Well,
what kind of attitude is this, towards a European Union that we
supposedly wish to join? What sort of position is this, in our main
daily, partly owned by our government, which talks in this way about
the European Union, where the EU is seen in this manner? You can see
that we’re really not ready for it. What Holland? It has nothing to
do with Holland! I go back to what Ä~Leda JovanoviÄ~G speaks about –
the system of values. How we see ourselves in a community of nations
towards which we display such a hostile attitude? That’s why I say
the Netherlands is not the problem.

I’d always welcome, of course, Toma NikoliÄ~G’s vote in favour of
ratification, and DaÄ~GiÄ~G’s too; it’s good even if someone does
it without believing in it, because it technically puts us onto
a railroad from which there’s later no departure. But then again,
motives are important too, our true feelings are also important, and it
seems that we’re not ready. And then we have the interpretation – I’m
quoting Sonja Biserko now – that perhaps Russia has even welcomed our
orientation towards the European Union, precisely because it believes
we’ll cause problems there. For then they’ll have a vote of their
own there, to impose a veto on every decision that Russia doesn’t like.

Svetlana LukiÄ~G: A Trojan horse?

SrÄ’a PopoviÄ~G: That’s right, but [Sonja] brings it up only to
explain why it may be in the Russian interest to support something
like this. She’s not saying that such an idea exists on the Serbian
side too, but our politics have shown that it does indeed exist,
and that the two motivations can be in harmony, our own and the
Russian. For the nationalism of resentment, what you might also call
the nationalism of the Serb loser, has been defeated; but it still
exists as a kind of spite, as rage, as a thirst for moral revenge
and belated satisfaction for that defeat. This does happen. I often
cite Isidora SekuliÄ~G, she knew this about small nations when she
wrote that they’re affected by periods of euphoria, arrogance, and
megalomania which comes crashing down, and then come – this is what
I like – ‘the bitter tears after’. You suddenly become transformed
into an embittered victim, forget what you yourself have done,
start insisting on international law and talking about the injustice
committed by the big against the small. So what we have here is a
disinclination to take one’s own responsibility into account, and a
stubborn need to blame someone else for everything that happens to you.

Svetlana VukoviÄ~G: Their advice to us is that, although we haven’t
signed the Agreement because of the Netherlands, we should start
behaving as if we had, nobody’s stopping us.

SrÄ’a PopoviÄ~G: And has anyone ever prevented us from arresting and
trying MladiÄ~G? Who has tried to stop us? We remain perplexed why they
insist so much on MladiÄ~G, and never ask ourselves why we ourselves
didn’t arrest him when we had him here – for we did have him, and
indeed I think we still do. They say: we had him up to 2005. But what
were you waiting for up to 2005? And now it’s the fault of the Hague
tribunal, for insisting you should hand him over! The Hague tribunal
is acting like a subsidiary body here: it will ask for him if you
don’t put him on trial, so the situation is of your own making. But
there was no political courage, so we always come to the same point,
that the residues of the 1990s are still very much present, not only
in terms of cadres, but also in people’s heads. But nobody else is
to blame for that either.

I might mention, even though it’s a private matter, that I always used
to tell my children when they started complaining about some teacher
or friend: there’s nothing you can do about it, you can only change
your own behaviour. Did you do something that helped it happen? If so,
then change that, that’s something you can do, while the rest you can’t
change, it’s something you have to put up with. But no, we [Serbians]
never think about our own responsibility, we constantly seek to shift
the blame onto someone else, so that we’ll appear as victims. This
is precisely why we sank so low in the 1990s. When Koštunica starts
talking about how he’s defending our dignity, you can be sure that
we’ve lost it. We’ve lost even the self-respect that would permit
us to turn our attention to ourselves, to our own responsibility,
we don’t have the strength to do that; it has weakened us to such an
extent, and worn down our moral fibre so much, that we no longer have
the strength to think about our own responsibility. That’s something
that hardly occurs to us: that we should change the way we are. No,
we’re waiting to join the European Union, so that they can change
us. It really is a true capitulation, a moral surrender and total
lack of self-respect, when you say: I can’t do what needs to be done,
please try somehow to force me.

The treatment of Florence Hartmann appears cynical in the
extreme. For the fact is she revealed that The Hague tribunal, by a
wrong interpretation of its own rights, allowed the Serbian state to
censor part of the minutes of meetings of the Supreme Defence Council
[of FRY] which made it clear that Serbia participated in genocide
[in Bosnia-Herzegovina]. The vice-president of the appeal chamber,
who submitted a separate judgement to the International Court of
Justice in The Hague, also took this view, since the tribunal did
not demand of the Serbian side to provide uncensored minutes of the
meetings. The Bosnian side too asked for these and did not get them,
but it was The Hague tribunal that first allowed the censoring.

Florence Hartmann describes very precisely how this happened: how
at some point in 2004, during MiloÅ¡eviÄ~G’s trial, Carla del Ponte
demanded that the Serbian state hand over the minutes; how this led to
much dispute; and how an agreement was ultimately reached – she says
with SvilanoviÄ~G – that Serbia would make the minutes available,
but that in line with Hague tribunal rules parts of them that might
affect Serbia’s national security could be crossed out. What happened
was that the Hague tribunal’s understanding of what constitutes
national security was extremely wide, with an interpretation that
lawyers call contra leges, i.e. an interpretation that contradicts
the letter of the law. In other words, something that might endanger
Serbia’s vital interests – and it was even said that it might cause
severe financial, moral and political repercussions. Which means
that on the basis of those minutes we might have been condemned for
perpetrating genocide and asked to pay reparations, which the Court
judged would have endangered Serbia’s vital interests.

In 2005, another court concluded that it was true that the law was
wrongly applied here; that the rules of The Hague tribunal say nothing
about a country’s vital interests, but talk only of national security
interests, which in this case were not threatened. In other words, the
Hague tribunal decided that the minutes should not have been censored,
yet in the end they were censored, in line with the logic that the
first decision had created an expectation on the Serbian side that
they could have crossed out whatever they wanted to in these minutes,
and that it would not look good if minutes submitted in this form
and with these expectations were nevertheless to be made public. But
when you look at the whole thing, it is clear that behind it lies the
political logic that the full force of the law could not and should
not be applied to Serbia, because to do so would be fatal for it,
so we should be forgiven. It was thus a political decision. And now
you see the paradox: the Serb nationalists call the Hague tribunal
a political court, and so do I, because we were forgiven even though
according to the law we shouldn’t have been forgiven.

Svetlana VukoviÄ~G: This has to do with the charge filed against us
by Bosnia-Herzegovina before the International Court of Justice in
The Hague.

SrÄ’a PopoviÄ~G: Right. You can always demand on the basis of newly
revealed facts and evidence that a trial be repeated, because it is
evident that if the court had known these facts its decision would
have been different.

Svetlana VukoviÄ~G: It is interesting that, when we look at the
reaction of Bosnian public opinion to the Florence Hartmann case
that has now opened, the Bosnians did not as expected say: great,
we are now in a position to ask for a new trial.

SrÄ’a PopoviÄ~G: I feel that they have become so exhausted by all
these shenanigans – I cannot describe them otherwise – surrounding
the whole question of genocide that they simply don’t believe that it
can have any effect. But there will be future generations. The same
happened with the Armenians: the first generation was so destroyed
and depressed that it wished only to forget it all, and for people
to stop talking about the genocide; but the grandchildren of the
people who had been exposed to genocide said: wait, let’s see what
happened, this thing has to be properly examined. And now, of course,
KaradžiÄ~G too will be charged with genocide.

A strange situation has come about. Technically speaking, the
pro-European option has won; but the margin of victory is very thin,
numerically thin, and it’s even worse when you weigh it up together
with the understanding and the mind-set on each side. You must not
forget that Ivica DaÄ~MiÄ~G, who still swears by MiloÅ¡eviÄ~G, voted
for it; that Toma NikoliÄ~G – who calls Ä~PinÄ’iÄ~G a mafia-linked
prime minister, who is not sorry about Ä~Luruvija, for whom DuliÄ~G
is an Ustasha and so is TadiÄ~G – has also said that he would vote
for it. In other words, at a technical level, if you look only at
the result of e.g. the vote on ratification of the Agreement [with
the EU], you can say that the [European] option won. But if you look
at the values behind it, what ideologically stands behind it, then
it’s all very murky. There is still a lot of confusion on both sides.

Turning toBoris TadiÄ~G, it’s a matter of perception how strong he
really feels, and how much he only seeks to give that impression. I
can see that he doesn’t feel as strong as he likes to pretend when
he comes out so energetically with some striking phrase, and that
he thinks he has to be very cautious with the other side, and must
content himself with their superficial and declaratory support. I’m
not in a position to be absolutely sure about this, but what’s certain
is that the actual balance of forces is not yet clear. I think that
in the parliamentary and presidential elections all that has been
created in part is the illusion that one side has won. It did win,
but in my view the quality of its victory is open to doubt. And I
think TadiÄ~G knows that, so he has to be content with appearances,
and perhaps goes too far. I certainly think it is too much when
DuliÄ~G says that a coalition between the Democratic Party and the
Radical Party is not excluded. Well, I say…

Svetlana LukiÄ~G: With Toma NikoliÄ~G?

SrÄ’a PopoviÄ~G: Yes, with Toma NikoliÄ~G. It is as if everything that
Toma NikoliÄ~G said in the past, and the policy he has conducted for
seventeen years, were suddenly forgotten. But that’s impossible.

Svetlana LukiÄ~G: What the Socialist Party of Serbia did isn’t
forgotten either. But they’ve told us: it’s a matter of life and death,
we must have DaÄ~MiÄ~G. And when on 21 October a new Radical Party is
formed, the moment will come when they’ll say: you know, we must go
with the Radical Party, because it’s a life-and-death issue. What I
mean is that they constantly produce the life- and-death situation,
and then appeal to it. In 2011 TadiÄ~G will once again tell us that
it’s a matter of to be or not to be.

SrÄ’a PopoviÄ~G: In the short run, it can all be just as you say. I’m
not sure about the medium run, but it’s quite clear how it will end
in the long run. I’m not speaking about whether it’s good or not to
join the European Union; I myself think it’s good, but that’s not
the question. The fact is that no other end is possible. It’s all a
question of the tempo, rather than simply of the speed; because we
live lives that are of a certain duration, and it’s important how we
live them. For example, whether I shall spend my whole life waiting
for the European Union, and whether even you will perhaps have to
wait for that, is not unimportant.

Svetlana VukoviÄ~G: It’s an upward spiral.

SrÄ’a PopoviÄ~G: It’s an upward spiral. It’s moving very slowly,
though; it’s like watching grass grow: you watch and say ‘nothing is
happening’, but that’s not so, all you need is a larger time frame.

Svetlana LukiÄ~G: We’ll need at least 600 years, like the Serbian
Orthodox Church.

SrÄ’a PopoviÄ~G: Maybe not so long. […] I always say, rightly or
wrongly, that my greatest hope lies with civil society. And people
askl me: why, when you know how weak civil society is. Well, fine,
my hope may be weak then, but I do have it, because society must be
changed from below. That’s why I was surprised to hear Boris TadiÄ~G
say a few days ago that a good state creates good citizens. I think
the opposite is true, you must first have good citizens, the state
will follow. But I can see that he still thinks in the categories of
social engineering; that he too is forging a new man, as his father
used to do.

I have a collection of the statements made by the special prosecutor,
from the first one when he said: ‘we shall initiate that as soon as
you have completed your presentation’, which was a year and a half
ago, to others about how history will decide, and on to ones that look
forward to final confirmation of the verdict… And then it turned out
that when they spoke about the political background they were in fact
thinking about TerziÄ~G, who freed Legija even though he knew he would
kill Ä~PinÄ’iÄ~G; or that the political background was TijaniÄ~G’s
story that Beba already knew two hours later who the killers were,
so it was only logical to conclude that he had also engaged them. So
I don’t believe in those stories about the special prosecutor doing
anything. But I would like the political background to be examined, and
perhaps it would be a good idea, for that background was in fact the
criminal act of armed rebellion [by the Red Berets in November 2001],
in which Koštunica played a very dubious role, and for which we have
all manner of evidence that KljajeviÄ~G gathered for the Ä~PinÄ’iÄ~G
trial. And it wouldn’t need any prolonged investigation to prove and
establish all that. This for me is the political background. Why
political background? For the reasons which PrijiÄ~G cited in the
indictment: that the armed rebellion was the first step that led to
the assassination, that the two matters were very closely related, and
that it created the conditions and the means, under the control of the
state security service, that enabled the latter to murder Ä~PinÄ’iÄ~G.

This incidentally is why it’s forever being said that the Zemun
[mafia] clan killed Ä~PinÄ’iÄ~G, and that the Zemun clan had nothing
to do with it [the armed rebellion]. Ä~PinÄ’iÄ~G was killed by state
officials, people who worked in the state security service killed him,
and the weapons were theirs, according to information coming from
the service itself. General use of the phrase ‘political background’
only obscures these facts. It was a matter of armed rebellion, a
serious crime against the constitutional order and security, and
numerous witnesses have been heard about the circumstances under
which that crime was committed; the statements made by the accused
themselves show that it was a case of an armed rebellion, and there
are even tapes with intercepted conversations in which Koštunica
is frequently mentioned, among other things. So this for me is the
political background. But no one speaks about the armed rebellion,
always and only about some vague background. People then rightly say
that this is no legal description, that there’s no such expression
in criminal law – ‘political background’ means nothing. That’s true,
and the fact that the prosecutor constantly speaks about it is unclear
and confusing.

Svetlana LukiÄ~G: As Rade BulatoviÄ~G says, there is no political
will to arrest MladiÄ~G.

SrÄ’a PopoviÄ~G: Right. His own political party entered into a
cohabitation immediately after the assassination. How then can one
investigate the political background, where there is a justified
suspicion that the DSS and Koštunica were somehow involved. I
don’t say what their role was, but KoÅ¡tunica certainly played some
role in it, given that the plotters said ‘only KoÅ¡tunica can stop
this’. If SpasojeviÄ~G says ‘don’t tell Å  eÅ¡elj, we’re in contact
with KoÅ¡tunica’, if they meet with TomiÄ~G and BulatoviÄ~G, if the
latter promises that they won’t stop them, if KoÅ¡tunica doesn’t
meet his constitutional obligation as commander-in-chief to suppress
the rebellion, then it’s clear that he did play a role, but that
it has not been investigated. I think that this will be confirmed
only in order to remove the issue from the agenda, so that it’s no
longer mentioned, because every time 12 March comes round I think
they start to worry and fear that the story will resurface. They’re
waiting for it to sink into the past, to become a historical mystery,
and some have even said that we shall never know. Of course, you’ll
never know if you don’t want to know.

I believe that this case will be reopened at some point in the
future. It was promptly closed, and for the same reasons that we
were forgiven the genocide. When during [Operation] Sabre it appeared
that the investigation was leading to Koštunica, the people in the
European Union immediately cried out: don’t touch it, you don’t have
the strength for it, you’ll simply cause chaos, you’re not strong
enough to investigate this, he has the army behind him and you may
even cause civil war. Don’t ask anything, pretend to be stupid, you
have the plotters, try the plotters and be happy with that… We
are thus always treated like children, like some riffraff who are
unable to establish what happened, who don’t deserve any justice,
and who rather than bothering with it should seek instead to muddy
the whole thing and move on.

That’s how they treat us: let them be, they don’t know any better,
let’s just try to contain and minimise it, or let them carry on,
what do they know about justice. This stance offends my personal
sense of national dignity.

Translated from the PeÅ¡Ä~Manik (Hourglass) website of Belgrade’s
Radio B92,

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