Human Rights: Hostage To the State's Regression - Helsinki ...

Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia
2006: SERBIA COLD-SHOULDERS
THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL
The Attitude towards The Hague Tribunal
and the Policy of Memory
Scientific circles are rather indifferent to the recent history and
collective memory and are prone to marginalize them, all of which opens to
door to manipulation of all sorts. The humanistic elite assembled in the Serbian
Academy of Arts and Sciences fosters the thesis about Serbia being a victim of
a worldwide conspiracy. They also nourish the memory of the World War II by
insisting on genocide committed against the Serbs (the Jasenovac concentration
camp). Such attitude shapes the culture of remembrance manifested at almost
every anniversary marking some major historical event. So, April 6 is
exclusively recalled as the day the Nazi Germany bombarded Belgrade in 1941,
while April 6 1991 – the beginning of the Bosnian war – is totally ignored or
bypassed. This approach is fully mirrored in the reports on the proceedings
conducted in The Hague Tribunal – the Trial Chamber’s judgments are
presented to the Serbian audience selectively and summarily. The media
coverage of the verdict passed by the International Court of Justice was
primarily focusing the section proclaiming Serbia not guilty of genocide
against Bosniaks. However, the topic itself was short-lived – practically
considered hot for a couple of weeks only. Instead, the international law is
invoked solely in the context of the future status of Kosovo. And, for that
matter, Russia’s role is being glorified – for, Russia is expected to veto a new
resolution of the UN Security Council.
Co-operation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia (the Hague Tribunal) represents a double measure of readiness of
Serbia for an essential and comprehensive democratic transition. On the one
hand, it demonstrates the position of the incumbent authorities on the legacy
of Slobodan Milosevic and his criminal regime, while on the other hand it
demonstrates its (in) sincere wish for latching on the Euro-Atlantic
integrations, of which the hand-over of war crimes indictees, primarily of
Ratko Mladic, is one of the conditions. Recent behavior of the government of
the Republic of Serbia makes us draw the conclusion that the Serb political
Human Rights: Hostage To the State's Regression
elite has problems with both sides of the aforementioned measure. In other
words in the year 2006, not a single war crimes indictee from Serbia was
handed-over to the Hague, though the government representatives kept
promising those handovers during their meetings with international officials
and the Tribunal’s chief prosecutor Carla de Ponte. It became manifest that
Kostunica-led government was, on the one hand, not willing to arrest the
indictees (during his three-year long tenure to the Hague Tribunal were
handed over only those war crimes indictees who had previously agreed to socalled
voluntary surrender), while, on the other hand, he was ready to pay a
very high price for such lack of co-operation-namely the early May suspension
of negotiations on association and stabilization with the EU.
Staging of the para-state funeral of Slobodan Milošević, who in early
March died in the Scheveningen prison, is also an important indicator of
ambivalence of the Serb political class on the recent past. Death of Slobodan
Milošević and the suicide of Milan Babić, also in the Sheveningen, have
additionally burdened co-operation with the Hague Tribunal, in parallel
providing the state-engineered propaganda with additional arguments about
the anti-Serb character of the International Criminal Court for Former
Yugoslavia.
Throughout 2006 the government of Serbia in all possible ways
avoided concrete co-operation with the International Criminal Court for
Former Yugoslavia. The most wanted indictee, Ratko Mladić, Commander-in-
Chief of the Army of Republika Srpska is still at large as are some other Hague
indictees, notably Radovan Karadzic. Non-fulfillment of the international
commitment relating to mandatory co-operation with the Hague Tribunal was
also manifest in procrastinated forwarding of the Yugoslav Army documents
to the ICTY. Since April 2005 hand-over of the last of 10 “volunteers”, war
crimes indictees, the Serb authorities by the end of 2006 have not apprehended
or handed over any other indictee.
Official Belgrade tried to ease up strong pressures from the EU and
the US to apprehend and hand-over Mladic by adopting so-called Action Plan
for Co-operation with the Hague Tribunal on so-called “Croat model”. That plan
in fact aimed at covering up the factual severance of co-operation with The
Hague Tribunal and absence of a genuine political will for a serious search for,
location and arrest of Mladic. After listening for months about the Serb
government readiness to arrest Mladic, the promise which even
representatives of the international community as well as the ICTY’s chief
prosecutor Carla del Ponte were ready in early 2006 to place faith in, in midyear,
the European Union decided to respond more firmly, namely on 3 May it
suspended negotiations with Serbia on stabilization and association.
Just two months earlier, in March 2006, Prime Minister Vojislav
Kostunica stated that co-operation with the Hague Tribunal was the country’s
priority or primary interest. In his front-page Politika interview related to the
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