-------- Mensaje original --------
Asunto: Mladic
Fecha: Thu, 26 May 2011 14:08:30 -0700 (PDT)
De: jasmina tesanovic <[email protected]>
The self proclaimed "God of genocide" in Srebrenica, the Serbian ethnic
generalRatko Mladic was arrested today in a small village eighty
kilometers from Belgrade.
Mladic sheltered there with a relative, and lived under a false
name. For years on end he hid like a house-mouse, and was arrested
with a similar meekness.
Old, docile, with one hand crippled, the formerly ferocious warlord
lived peaceably and invisibly in a house that had been searched
repeatedly by the Serbian police. This long-wanted war criminal and
exceedingly successful fugitive from justice had a 10 million euro award
on his head.
And yet, recent polls say that, despite the suffering and ignominy he
brought them, 51 percent of Serbian citizens would not have given him up
to the international war tribunal in the Hague. No, not for any money.
Serbian stubbornness has gone beyond the period of Mladic's bloodstained
hero-worship. Nowadays the Serbs have grown indifferent to Mladic while
actively resenting the European Union, whose economic disorders have
made Serbian life miserable.
And yet it appears that somebody did betray Mladic for the reward:
someone among his circle of close friends. Some years ago, an entire
group of people, who were all accused of actively sheltering Mladic,
were released from a Serbian court through lack of evidence.
After his arrest, only a few drunken people gathered before his hideout,
and also in downtown Belgrade: the usual hooligan nationalist bands.
Mladic was taken to thespecial court of war crimes in Belgrade to be
interrogated. But this effort was interrupted because of the former
general's "difficult psychological and physical condition."
Mladic seems to have been babbling, but he managed to say, according to
his lawyer, that he does not recognize the war tribunal in Hague, and
will not plead guilty or innocent. He was armed with two pistols when
he was arrested, but he gave himself peacefully.
Who will pick up the 10 million euro reward? How much prosperity did
Ratko Mladic cost Serbia over these 16 years? These money issues are
the big questions in Serbian press. Although the police said they will
not take a penny, they did their regular job.
As a further financial twist, the state still owes the general his
regular pension, which he never received (as a fugitive). Handsome
lump-sums have paid by and to the other citizens of the state -- mainly,
blood money for his victims.
And what about the dead? Do they have a price? Gone without a name, many
of them still without graves since their bodies, dismembered and
scattered all over the territory are still being sought. The silence of
the ghosts is loud as ever in this moment of joy and victory.
More recently, European pressure has intensified from the Hague
tribunal; on June 6 the Serbian government faced a grim report from
Serbia by Serge Brammertz, citing them for non-cooperation with the
United Nations. Europe is experiencing many difficulties, but Serbia,
like a tin can tied to a cat's tail, suffers them even more so.
The primary obstacle to Serbia's European harmonization is and was, of
course, the genocidal war criminal Ratko Mladic.
We citizens of Serbia all knew that Mladic was hiding among us in
Serbia; don't ask me why, but we never believed the many tales spread
about his death or his exile. Given his modest rural circumstances, he
was concealed more discreetly than the Pakistanis hid Osama bin Laden --
but the parallels there are obvious. Mladic had his protectors in the
covert wing of the government, and the Serbian government is
traditionally an enterprise in which everything is covert, and yet
everybody knows. Ask them not why they turned him in, but why they
delayed until today.
A couple of years ago, Radovan Karadzic, the mastermind of the ethnic
cleansing inBosnia, was arrested in downtown Belgrade. Dr. Karadzic had
been hiding under a long beard as a New Age quack guru. Witnessing this
travesty on television, my aged father said: Ratko Mkadic is a
soldier! He will never do a thing like that! He will rather commit
suicide than humiliate himself in that manner or get arrested by
police! Mladic will never go to The Hague!
The same myth of fearless valor was running for the late president of
Serbia, Milosevicwho actually was arrested and died in The Hague.
Milosevic was a close collaborator with the Bosnian Serb warlords,
Karadzic and Mladic, in surpressing the Muslim population of Bosnia.
This demon dream team of Balkan genocide: Milosevic, Mladic and
Karadzic, were all destined for The Hague. They were playing chess with
one another in the anteroom of justice, waiting for a sentence longer
than their lives. Only death could bring them peace and liberation.
Radovan Karadzic sent immediately from the Hague a message to arrested
Mladic: I am sorry this happened, but I will help you out, we will work
together for the truth!
Some years ago I wrote a book on genocide in Srebrenica, the largest
single war crime in Europe after World War II. My first question,
after analyzing the design of crime was: how did they manage to
exterminate eight thousand people in a couple of days? How could they
hide thousands of bodies from the international community, from the
people present there, from the bereaved families?
After the recent capture of Osama Bin Laden, Ratko Mladic was the
fugitive number one in the world. The US president Obama said he was
happy Serbia perfomed its duty. The world press is giving all the
credits to the pro-European government of president Boris Tadic, and
his determined policy to pull Serbia away from the criminal past.
Today in Serbia even the radical right wing opposition is officially
pro-European. No one in or near power aspires to dirty their hands with
the Balkan wars; that brings no benefit. Modern Serbia has a cult of
tennis stars rather than warlords. These Millennial adults have won
some credibility, since they impress the outside world, without any
taint of the distant 1990s.
The mothers of Srebrenica victims declared themselves contented with
this turn of events. They expected it many years ago; but better later
than never. These women have learned to be deeply suspicious of the
tribunal in The Hague; the international lawyers there declared their
prize mementos and personal evidence to be bulky and useless; unfit for
a modern court proceeding. So much for their cherished mementos of
their dead, their hoarded proofs that the vanished dead had really
lived, that they were murdered.
A moment of justice is commonly liberating for the offended as well as
the criminals. But the moment of truth even more so. There is no
justice without truth. The arrest of Ratko Mladic and his adamant
transfer to the Hague tribunal will be a litmus test for this universal
and ancient motto. And for our globalized world of crime and punishment.
http://jasminatesanovic.wordpress.com/
http://twitter.com/jasminatwitter
http://jasminatesanovic.wordpress.com/
http://twitter.com/jasminatwitter
----------
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