It may take a while, but Biljana Plavsic's dramatic courtroom statement will affect far more than just one woman's fate.
Former Republika Srpska President
Biljana Plavsic capped her extraordinary political career last week with a courtroom statement whose potential significance can hardly be
overstated. This is not to say, of course, that the importance of Plavsic's
acceptance of responsibility for the practice known as "ethnic cleansing" has
been grasped by all those it may concern. Far from it.
But there is no
doubt that, at least on the face of it, the confession of involvement in such
dreadful crimes by such a high-ranking indictee has all the ingredients of a
momentous event in the postwar reconstruction of Balkan societies. But will we
really come to regard Plavsic's headline-capturing statement to the court as the
watershed in the work of the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the
Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), an institution charged not only with delivery of
justice, but also with facilitating reconciliation among the former Yugoslavia's
ethnic groups?
The issue of Plavsic's own credibility is at the heart of
the matter. Her nationalist critics denounced her as a traitor as early as 1997,
when she broke ranks with the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), the organization
that masterminded and carried out the ethnic cleansing of what would later be
recognized as Republika Srpska, one of two entities constituting today's Bosnia
and Herzegovina. Serb nationalists who realized how far-reaching the Plavsic
confession could really be either dismissed it as a selfish defense strategy or
a development of no consequence. But while they declared business as usual,
there was hardly any doubt left that Plavsic had given them the business.
Serb liberals, as well as such influential international figures as
former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, have praised Plavsic's
courage ever since 1997 and welcomed last week's confession as a highly moral
gesture that will help the reconciliation process. Meanwhile, Bosniak and Croat
nationalists dismissed Plavsic's deal with the court as a ploy to avoid life
imprisonment, an argument their Serb peers share unreservedly.
Plavsic
may have moved through many life situations as if she were from another planet,
but she is certainly no stranger to being dismissed and underestimated. In a
macho culture, she has been routinely belittled, not only as a woman, but as an
old woman who never married, in itself an incriminating fact in the Balkans.
Paradoxically, the failure by her fellow SDS founders to take her seriously
catapulted Plavsic into the top echelons of the Serb nationalist movement and
enabled her to bring those same leaders to their knees after the war.
Together with a fellow academic, Nikola Koljevic, Plavsic was nominated
in 1990 by the SDS as a Serb member of Bosnia's collective presidency, the
highest office in the then Yugoslav republic. Neither Plavsic nor Koljevic were
among the most influential SDS politicians, but party leader Radovan Karadzic
nevertheless wanted them in the presidency, partly because he rightly believed
they would follow his instructions, and partly because the most important tasks
the SDS conducted, such the illegal arming of the population, were to be carried
out in secrecy, as far as possible from any Bosnian institution.
In the
early and most crucial stages of the war, Plavsic was again a nominal member of
the Bosnian Serb leadership. But in reality, she was little more than a
chatterbox who often toured the frontlines, warming the hearts of soldiers with
a mixture of motherly questioning and extraordinarily racist statements. It is
often recounted how in 1993 she refused to shake hands with Serbia's President
Slobodan Milosevic at a gathering designed to convince the Bosnian Serb
parliament of the merits of an international peace plan that Milosevic had come
to support, while Plavsic ridiculed it.
Apart from being excluded from
Karadzic's inner circle when it came to really important and specific
decision-making, Plavsic didn't get to share the spoils either. While Karadzic
and his closest associates got enormously rich through plunder, Plavsic always
made a point of continuing to live a relatively modest life, which earned her
the reputation of an "honest Nazi" among liberals.
Plavsic's apparent
absence of ambition and her uncompromising nationalism accounts for Karadzic's
decision to nominate her for president of Republika Srpska in 1996, when he, as
the highest-ranking ICTY indictee, was driven underground by the international
community.
It was the SDS's continuing plunder, this time of ethnic
Serbs, that quickly swayed Plavsic against her own party. In one of the most
breathtaking developments of Bosnia's postwar period, Plavsic allied herself
with the Serb opposition and turned against the seemingly omnipotent SDS
structure. By the time Karadzic and his cronies realized how skillful and
ruthless Plavsic really was, her newly established anti-corruption coalition was
actively supported on the ground by the NATO-led peacekeepers, ensuring that
Plavsic prevailed.
Plavsic's open siding with the distrusted West didn't
exactly endear her to the Serb masses in Bosnia. She didn't last long in power,
but did manage to lay foundations for whatever democratic structures now exist
in Republika Srpska. Her hardline past as well as the lack of personal gain in
her dealing with Westerners make it difficult for anyone to easily dismiss her
actions as irrelevant. Most important, while she is not widely adored, one often
comes across a note of admiration for her ability to spoil the parties staged by
powerful, crooked men.
For the SDS and Milosevic, two things in relation
to ethnic cleansing have been particularly important: the ethnic cleansing
itself and their blanket denial of the expulsions after the war. Plavsic spoiled
the former while it was still going on by repeatedly referring to the expulsions
in various Darwinian terms. Plavsic, a biologist, once conjured up ethnic
cleansing for the press as "natural selection." Another time she described the
Bosniak Muslim population as "genetically defunct material." She also once said
that Bosniaks would not much mind being expelled from wide open spaces claimed
by the Serbs because they "are used to living on top of one another" anyway. She
was often reprimanded by Karadzic for having too big a mouth.
There
comes the most important point of all. What Plavsic said last week is factually
compatible with her wartime descriptions of ethnic cleansing. The difference, of
course, is that she has now come to view the wartime events from an utterly
changed perspective, a perfectly believable human situation. But it is exactly
the consistency between the wartime Plavsic and the Hague Plavsic that makes
Biljana Plavsic and her expression of remorse last week highly credible.
The positive effects of Plavsic's decision to spoil the denial game may
not be immediately felt. What's more, a temporary hardening of the hardline
opinion in Republika Srpska might be in the cards. But one big chunk of the
wartime truth is now out there for anyone to see. Even though this piece of the
wartime narrative is too general due to the defendant's lack of more specific
insight into key meetings, it is important enough to influence the psychology of
Bosnia's dealing with the recent past, sooner or later.
Plavsic’s Guilt
Trip BANJA LUKA, Bosnia and Herzegovina--A 72-year-old former Bosnian Serb leader
made history last week when she confessed to her leading role in the forced
expulsions of non-Serb populations in early 1990s from the territories
controlled by Bosnian Serb forces, a practice that became known as ethnic
cleansing.
23 December 2002
Biljana Plavsic, former president of the Bosnian Serb entity
Republika Srpska and a member of the Bosnian Serb wartime leadership, explained
her decision to plead guilty to charges of crimes against humanity before the
Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
She is the first high-ranking official indicted by the tribunal ever to do
so.
“I now recognize and accept that many thousands of innocent people
were victims of organized and systematic action to remove Muslims and Croats
from the regions the Serbs considered as their own,” said Plavsic before the
court on 17 December.
The indictment accused Plavsic of taking part in a
“joint criminal enterprise” that masterminded and perpetrated genocide and
crimes against humanity. In her first appearance before the court last year,
Plavsic pleaded not guilty. But on 2 October this year, after long negotiations
with the prosecution, Plavsic pleaded guilty on one count of the indictment.
Count 3 of the indictment charged Plavsic with persecutions on political,
racial, and religious grounds, a crime against humanity. At the same time, the
prosecutor agreed to drop the remaining seven counts of the indictment.
Plavsic’s lawyer made clear at the time that his client had not agreed
to appear as a witness in any of the ICTY trials, a point Plavsic was keen to
stress last week.
Accepting guilt for the crimes, Plavsic said that
“this responsibility is mine and mine only. It does not extend to other leaders,
who have the right to defend themselves. [My responsibility] certainly does not
extend to our Serbian people, who have already paid a high price for the conduct
of our leadership. The realization that I am responsible for such human
suffering and for the besmirching of my people’s name will always remain a part
of me.”
In her final statement at the three-day sentencing hearing
between 16 and 18 December, Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte asked for a prison
sentence of between 15 and 25 years, while Plavsic’s counsel Robert Pavich
argued that the sentence should not exceed eight years in prison. Pavich
stressed that “there is no agreement, nor have there been any discussions
between Mrs. Plavsic and the Office of the Prosecutor regarding
sentencing.”
In a document in support of the guilty plea that Plavsic
signed, the former Bosnian Serb leader states that the “ethnic separation of the
peoples in Bosnia and Herzegovina was planned and executed in cooperation with
the authorities of Serbia by permanent and forced removal of non-Serbs,
including numerous crimes, from the territories the Serbs considered their
own.”
According to Plavsic, in October 1991--six month before the war
broke out--the Serb leaderships in both Bosnia and Serbia had already realized
that the planned expulsions would be violent. Plavsic named as co-plotters the
then-president of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, and the three top Bosnian Serb
leaders, Radovan Karadzic, Momcilo Krajisnik, and General Ratko Mladic--all of
whom have been indicted by the tribunal.
A number of high-profile
witnesses appeared at last week’s extraordinary hearing, including former U.S.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Republika Srpska Prime Minister
Milorad Dodik. Albright, who was a witness for both the defense and the
prosecution, told the court of her repugnance at “horrendous” Serb crimes in
Bosnia, but also called for "respect" for criminals who have pleaded guilty.
Their actions, according to Albright, could help victims find closure and
rebuild their ruined lives.
Both the prosecution and the defense
expressed hope that Plavsic’s decision to confess will help the process of
reconciliation in the Balkans, a key part of the tribunal
mission.
Reactions in Bosnia and Serbia were less upbeat and largely
predictable. Republika Srpska Prime Minister Mladen Ivanic stressed that
Plavsic’s plea will not affect the status of Republika Srpska, describing it as
merely the “manner she deems best to defend her own position before the Hague
tribunal.”
Dusan Stojicic, the spokesman for the Serb Democratic Party
(SDS)--the organization that Plavsic helped establish but then abandoned after
the war, describing it as “criminal”--said that “there were crimes on all three
sides. Her confession cannot be used as evidence against any individual, group,
organization, or Republika Srpska.”
But Dodik’s Party of Independent
Social Democrats (SNSD), the biggest opposition party in Republika Srpska,
welcomed Plavsic’s confession as a “historic gesture aimed at reconciliation and
the truth.” According to the SNSD’s Krstan Simic, who is also a lawyer representing indicted war criminals before the ICTY, the
citizens of Bosnia are not yet fully aware of the importance of last week’s
development.
“Unfortunately, such an act has been used for political
ends. … I am afraid that this chance has not been used as it should be: to offer
the people a platform of truth, remorse, and sincere reconciliation,” said
Simic.
Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic welcomed Plavsic’s stance as
a “good approach for everyone to look at their own place in history and their
own responsibility, instead of always hiding behind a group or institutions or
world politics.” Djindjic also expressed hope that other leaders indicted by the
ICTY would surrender to the tribunal voluntarily.
Zarko Korac, Serbia’s
deputy prime minister, argued that Plavsic’s plea would have “considerable
consequences” for other trials at the ICTY. But Zdravko Tomanovic, who is
Milosevic’s legal adviser, described Plavsic’s statement as “a remorse out of
personal interest” and said that “this testimony should not have a serious legal
or moral weight for any accused leader.”
The Sarajevo-based Society for
Endangered Peoples welcomed Plavsic’s confession. “For thousands of survivors of
crimes and the families of the murdered, this confession has awoken expectations
that justice will be found,” said Fadila Memisevic, the chair of the society.
Other reactions among Bosniaks were more skeptical. Becir Macic of
Sarajevo’s Institute for Research of Crimes Against Humanity and International
Law said that the hearing “resembled a farce” and that many in Bosnia are now
worried that the Plavsic case could become the model for other high-profile
indictees to avoid harsh sentences.
At the end of the hearing, Plavsic
was granted bail, following guarantees from the Belgrade authorities that she
would return to The Hague in January for sentencing.
--by Dragan
Stanimirovic
