Guilt, Responsibility, and Denial. Eric Gordy
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uses General Pavković—once Milošević’s favorite—to interfere with the police doing their legal duty. And all that from populist motives, so the federation will fall apart and in the next election he can win votes for his own, until recently minority DSS party, which has been known only for giving statements to the press.
A (tragi?)comical element emerged at the moment of the actual arrest, when Milošević’s daughter Marija fired a gun (a gift from General Pavković, engraved with his signature and portrait) in the direction of the car that was taking Milošević away. One couple (Mira and Predrag, 1 April) composed a comical poem about the shooting. Another writer (Milan Palinić, 1 April) quoted a canonical movie joke: “Did you hit the air, Marija?”12 Perhaps the sadistic pleasure these writers took in Marija Milosević’s desperate gesture could be understood as a sign of relief at the arrest?
The Question of What Milošević Was to Be Charged With
One of the questions raised by the arrest was whether Milošević ought to be arrested at all, and if so what for. Some people continued to support him, declaring that he defended national goals and could not be considered a criminal:13
(Nenad, 31 March): I don’t regard him as guilty, he defended the homeland from a satanizing that was prepared in advance. He is a hero, not a traitor.
However, most people seemed to agree that he ought to be arrested and charged with something. The government’s indictment charged him with embezzlement, theft, and abuse of power—attempting to assure that he be arrested and tried in Serbia for violations of domestic law.14 Several commenters expressed outrage at the absence of war crimes from the indictment:
(Maja, 31 March): For abuse of power? Shouldn’t he be tried for genocide against the Bosnian, Albanian and Croatian people, or maybe for the destruction of SFRJ, or for the decline of the Serbian people? I think that Milošević did many things that were worse than ABUSE OF POWER!!!
(Branislav Zekić Zeka, 31 March): The fact that He has been arrested is very good news. But that he will be charged for embezzlement, building without a permit, and unpaid electric, sewer and heating bills…. Garbage! That is throwing crumbs to us, because every honest citizen of Serbia has at least a few, more or less bloody, reasons to bring charges against our former president. I hope that he will be tried in Belgrade for all of the crimes he committed against his own people, for all the killings he ordered, for treason and theft and especially for all the things he is charged with by the Hague Tribunal.
It is difficult to distinguish to what degree such comments represented legal interpretations and to what degree they could be considered as expressions of hatred or revenge toward Milošević personally. One of the principal arguments that Koštunica offered in favor of moving slowly against the previous holders of power was the need to avoid what he called “revolutionary justice.”15
Belgrade or The Hague?
Closely tied to the question of what Milošević was to be charged with was the question of where he should be tried, or more specifically whether he should be extradited to ICTY. People who rejected this possibility raised issues ranging from the fear that an international trial of a former president would amount to an imposition of collective guilt to doubts about the fairness and objectivity of the Tribunal:
(Vuk Vujović, 31 March): Now, anybody who thinks about it even a little bit knows that he will be tried in The Hague as a former president, which automatically and immediately means that if he is found guilty, everything that the Serbian people did during the period when Milošević was president will be declared a crime. That means every commander or soldier who was on the battlefield will be a war criminal, every dead soldier will be a war criminal, and every mother who cried for her child will be a war criminal.
(siniša, 31 March): Our country is in the condition it is in and one more betrayal or surrender of our citizen to The Hague, even if it is the former president, brings a bad image to all members of the Serbian nation. Our citizens should only be tried in our country for their actions. Any other decision is shameful and stamps us with recognition as a genocidal horde which only understands force and blackmail. I wonder who would defend our exhausted country if it ever really needed it. Many patriots have already been arrested and sent to The Hague for no reason, hiding out and believing that if they need to show their innocence, they would be able to do it in their own country. But they have been deceived by the current regime who sends them as scapegoats to the executioners in The Hague, who instead of honest and fair trials have sentences prepared in advance by their American mentors.
(Boris, 31 March): Do the people who are doing the arresting know what is waiting for them tomorrow if they are not cooperative?
Other writers argued that since Milošević had committed both domestic and international crimes, he should be tried for both. Sometimes this was expressed jokingly—for example by the Vojvodina politician Nenad Čanak, who suggested that Milošević should be tried in The Hague and then serve his sentence in a Serbian prison (where conditions are worse than in the resortlike Scheveningen prison used by ICTY):16
(aca, 31 March): It would be best for us to offer some compromises to the West … first, that we (the Serbian people) try and convict him, then after his fiftieth year of prison we send him to The Hague. Or better, we should clone him … we’re satisfied, they’re satisfied….
Some writers who advocated extradition expressed this as a desire for revenge, although several writers advanced the thesis that by trying and convicting the person responsible for organizing and financing war crimes, guilt could be transferred from the social collective to an individual:
(Vlada, 31 March): I don’t know how people can still support and feel sorry for him after all the evil he has brought us. Did he regret any of the lives that he gambled away? Let him go to The Hague if he has to!! He doesn’t deserve any better. (marko, 31 March): Arrest that murderer, traitor and WAR criminal Milošević. Send him immediately to The Hague so we can remove the guilt from the whole Serbian people … just do that and show that you are for change, for a better future, for equality between people without regard to religion, nationality or political belief, don’t forget we are in the 21st century.
Clearly more was at stake in the question of extradition than an assessment of the charges or of the legitimacy of ICTY.17 People who wrote in to give an opinion also expressed general orientations about sovereignty, the nature of individual and collective responsibility, and the use of ICTY as an instrument in domestic and international politics.
Is Milošević Serbia?
Also at stake in the controversy over the arrest was the extent to which people recognized a personal stake in the fate of Milošević. Through this dispute the question was raised of whether people continued to identify Milošević as a symbolic (if no longer official) representative of the Serbian people. Here the clearest signs of willingness to break with the recent past could be observed, as many writers not only rejected any identification with Milošević, but criticized the people who did:
(Petar, 31 March): I really enjoy the comments from people who see the arrest of Milošević as their own shame, and the people who think it is a shame “for the whole Serbian people.” I am ashamed too, but only because this bloodsucker was arrested only after almost fifteen years of robbing and pillaging a country that was once beautiful and that once had a future. I can only hope this is the beginning of sobering up and real denazification, although I think the job will never be finished, because I have the impression that what people hold most against Milošević is that he didn’t succeed in creating Greater Serbia.
People who made a connection with Milošević on the level of identity were accused by these writers of a sort of false consciousness—here the question of authenticity of experience was raised, with Milošević supporters being identified with a nationalist diaspora that is pictured as both more extreme than the domestic population and also as uncaring and alien, not sharing the fate of people living in the country:
(Dejan, 31 March): I like all the messages coming from “patriots” and “great sons and daughters of