http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/printout/0,13155,901020930-3535
24,00.html
TIME (USA)
Sep. 30, 2002/Vol. 160 No. 14
Star Power in Serbia
Slobodan Milosevic's performance at his war-crimes trial has won him
increased popularity at home
BY ANDREW PURVIS/BELGRADE
For Slobodan Milosevic, old habits die hard. He has been away from home
for
more than a year now, held by the United Nations at its war-crimes
tribunal in the
Hague. But each morning he returns to Serbia via the airwaves, the
familiar pink
cheeks and silvery hair reclaiming their place on TV sets across the
former
Yugoslavia. For the president of the National Committee for the
Liberation of
Slobodan Milosevic, an organization of hard-liners, it's a welcome
sight. "I am
proud of our President," says Bogoljub Bjelica. "He is superior in every
way."
That view is widely shared in Serbia. Approval of the ex-President, not
long ago in
the single digits, doubled in the first week of his trial earlier this
year to 20% and
stayed there. Approval of the international tribunal conversely
continues to drop:
now even the NATO alliance that bombed Belgrade, polls say, is held in
higher
public esteem.
The Serb nationalism that Milosevic rode to power, meanwhile, is
enjoying a
modest revival. Ultranationalist Vojislav Seselj, Milosevic's own pick
for President
in elections at the end of this month, now claims 12% support, up from
4% in May.
Those who hoped that the spectacle of the former President in the dock
would
shock Serbs into recognizing the crimes done in their name are having to
rethink.
And worse may lie ahead. This week prosecutors begin the second part of
their
case against Milosevic - for his responsibility in the ethnic cleansing
of Bosnia and
Croatia. In this phase of the trial, he is expected to dwell heavily on
how Serbs are
victims, not perpetrators, of the Balkan wars, a popular refrain at
home. "Milosevic
was politically dead before he was transferred to the Hague," says
Dragoljub
Zarkovic, a leading Belgrade editor. "The tribunal has given him the
kiss of life."
That is quite an achievement. It was Serbs, after all, who dumped the
ex-apparatchik from power two years ago and then gleefully tore his
campaign
posters from city walls. Today his quarrelsome successors have siphoned
off some
of that anger. And Milosevic, the consummate party hack, has skillfully
repackaged
himself as an outsider. His decision to represent himself in court
combined with his
physical isolation in the Hague helped foster the image of one man
standing against
a powerful foe. So too has the unnamed heart ailment that repeatedly
halted
proceedings this summer. The absence of high-level witnesses who could
testify to
his crimes from the inside hasn't helped. "In principle I hate him,"
says Luka
Raspopovic, 19, a student lounging by the Sava River. " But I am rooting
for him in
the trial. He's alone against the world."
Milosevic has also used his position, and the media spotlight, to bang
away at the
view shared by many Serbs that their country should not be singled out
for its role
in the Balkan wars. In recent opinion polls, Serbs still blame Croat
nationalism,
nato and the United States - not Serb aggression - for starting the
breakup of
Yugoslavia. "He's telling people what they want to hear," says a
tribunal official in
Belgrade.
Shortly before the trial started this February, the Kosovo Albanian
publisher Veton
Surroi said he hoped Serbs would use the opportunity "to open their
souls and say,
'Where was I when that happened? Where were the Serb people?'" But
despite
the efforts of prosecutors to draw attention to the massacres at Racak
and other
killing grounds, Milosevic often successfully kept the focus on
technicalities. A few
months ago, when a prosecution witness described in detail the discovery
of
several murdered women at the bottom of a well with injuries to their
pelvic areas
suggesting rape, Milosevic blithely argued that the victims must have
fallen and
injured themselves. In caf�s from Belgrade to Bujanovac, a kind of
collective
amnesia is setting in. "Mass graves? People don't believe in mass graves
any more,"
says Natasa Kandic, a human rights investigator who documented war
crimes in
Kosovo. "We haven't touched on our own responsibility."
None of this means that Milosevic is likely to get off when the trial
wraps up two
years from now. Prosecutors are building a strong legal case against
him. Milosevic
may be holding his own in the eyes of many Serbs, but it will be U.N.
judges, not
opinion polls, that decide his fate. Until then, Milosevic will continue
to primp and
proclaim on TV sets across Serbia. "He looks like he would do it all
again," says
Kandic, shaking her head. In fact, he probably would.
Serbian News Network - SNN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.antic.org/
