HARTMANN: BELGRADE SHOULD FULFILL ITS OBLIGATIONS
HAGUE, April 10 (Beta) - The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal
for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) spokesperson Florence Hartmann told
BETA on April 9, that the Belgrade authorities should recognize and
fulfill their obligations in respect to full and permanent cooperation
with the ICTY.
"Things are very simple. Obligations, which Yugoslavia must respect as a
member of the UN, derive from the statute of the ICTY," Hartmann said
regarding announcements from Belgrade that a law on cooperation with the
ICTY could be adopted soon.
"The cooperation should be full and constant. We expect that Belgrade
will recognize and fulfill its obligations and that it will not create
new obstacles to full cooperation and fulfilling all ICTY's orders,
either now or in the future," said Hartmann.
DRAFT YUGOSLAV LAW ON COOPERATION WITH THE HAGUE UNACCEPTABLE, HARTMANN
WASHINGTON, April 9 (Tanjug) - Spokesperson for the chief prosecutor of
The Hague tribunal Florence Hartmann said that the draft Yugoslav law
on cooperation with that tribunal was unacceptable. Hartmann told the
Voice of America that for now as it has been represented, with the
details that are know, the law is unacceptable.
Pointing out that Yugoslavia has its obligations and must comply with
them, Hartmann said that there can be no conditioning with the law,
there cannot be a difference in treatment under such a law, because
then some would be extradited to The Hague, and some others would not
be out of arbitrary and unknown reasons, so that conditioning is
absolutely unacceptable and as whole does not observe obligations, or
the primacy of obligations that exist in the Statute of The Hague
tribunal.
Hartmann recalled that the tribunal prosecution has on a number of
occasions established that such a law is not necessary and that they
work under the Statute of the tribunal and will continue to demand from
Yugoslavia to fulfill its obligations under the Statute of the
tribunal.
===*===
ILUSTROVANA POLITIKA (Belgrade, Yugoslavia),
Issue 2197, February 24, 2001
Who is Florence Hartmann-Domankusic?
Her favorite word is sanctions!
Few people know that this Frenchwoman, now the
spokeswoman of Carla del Ponte, lived and worked for
a long time in Belgrade as the correspondent of the
Paris "Le Monde". Her "favorable reporting" on
Yugoslavia in the past earned her the withdrawal of
her reporter's accreditation
by Ozren MILANOVIC
In the past we have been threatened with sanctions by
countries, international organizations and military
alliances... Now we are being threatened by a woman
who is the press representative to a prosecutor:
Florence Hartmann-Domankusic, a Frenchwoman, the
spokeswoman to Carla del Ponte, an Italian, in a
court located in Holland. Like an angry Smurf, at
press conferences held every day she lifts her finger
and points at the southeast of Europe:
"The Yugoslav government must not delay extradition
of persons accused of war crimes. This preparation of
a law on cooperation with the international tribunal
seems like a bid to buy time. If cooperation doesn't
begin within the foreseeable future, we will request
the reinstatement of sanctions against Yugoslavia.
Some of those sanctions were only temporarily
suspended anyway until we see what the new government
is going to do."
Deafened by threats, frequently we don't put much
effort into figuring out who is threatening us and
why.
Warning from Paris
Dr. Marisa Marie Matei of the Paris "Teleobjektif"
recently wrote an open letter of warning to the
Serbian media:
"How is it possible that no one has bothered to
investigate Florence Hartmann-Domankusic's methods of
work during the time that she was "Le Monde's"
correspondent in Belgrade? To what extent she is
objective and neutral, and consequently, the Hague
tribunal as well, can best be seen by her articles on
Gospic and Vukovar (a city whose residents were 67
percent Serb before it was taken over by Croat
Tomislav Mercep) before the bombing, as well as on
Marin Selo and Pakracka Poljana, Paulin Dvor... while
at the same time she searched Vojvodina with a
magnifying glass looking to find a Croatian victim
somewhere; and when she would find one, she would
show all her foreign reporter colleagues whom she
personally met and "joined" regularly at Belgrade
Airport after learning of their arrival from her
husband, one of the airport's directors. Isn't it
strange that the file on the murder of Serbs in
Gospic in 1991 disappeared from the tribunal archives
at the same time that Mrs. Hartmann-Domankusic became
Carla del Ponte's press assistant?"
Mrs. Matei has a point; in the West, one's previous
work is a very important determinant to one's further
career. The fact that it is possible among the Serbs
for someone to say and do one thing today and then to
change it all tomorrow, the fact that our memories
are short and we forget things quickly says more
about us than about others.
But let's take a look whether it is indeed Florence
Hartmann-Domankusic who is threatening us with
sanctions for lack of something better to do or
whether there's more going on than meets the eye.
This 37 year-old lady, who carries a French passport,
received her first identity card for foreigners in
Belgrade on June 2, 1989 as the wife of Engineer Emil
Domankusic, employed at Belgrade Airport in Surcin.
Emil is the son of General Stjepan Domankusic, a
native of Slobodnica near Slavonski Brod /Croatia/,
who served as deputy chief of the Security Department
of the State Defense Council, who as a
counter-intelligence officer was known in certain
circles by the codename of Omega.
Half a year later, on January 1, 1990, Florance
Hartmann-Domankusic became employed by the Paris
paper "Le Monde" and immediately became its
correspondent in Belgrade. Then 26 years old, she was
nevertheless a beginner in the difficult and
responsible role of correspondent from a volatile
region such as our own. She submitted a request for
permanent accreditation to the Federal Ministry of
Information and very quickly received a positive
response thus becoming on April 20 of the same year
an accredited correspondent of this influential
French newspaper.
On her application for accreditation she stated that
she had been living in Belgrade since 1985 and that
she spoke Serbian, Croatian, Italian, Spanish and
English which in addition to her native French was a
very decent number and a good recommendation for the
whole world. At that time she stated that she was
born in the small town of Neville on the Seine while
later she would say she was born in Paris. Since
accreditation must be renewed every two years, on the
next application she filled out she stated that she
had been living in Belgrade since 1987.
Her "position"
Her first articles in "Le Monde" hardly require
reading between the lines and are clearly the work of
an author with a predetermined "position".
Thus, according to Florance Hartmann-Domankusic's
writing, the Serbs occupied a third of Croatian
territory, were illegally armed and (the still
unrecognized republic of Croatia) needed to crush the
ultranationalists relentlessly if it wanted to join
Europe. Of course, readers of "Le Monde" could not
learn from her articles that these Serbs were native
to the region, that they had lived here for
centuries, that they owned houses and property there,
and that they did not come here from Serbia to occupy
someone else's land.
In her articles at that time, the Yugoslav People's
Army, in which her father-in-law Stjepan held a truly
enviable position, was written in quotation marks
because it was not considered to be really Yugoslav.
And when generals were replaced, Serbs and non-Serbs
alike, she immediately interpreted this as a form of
ethnic cleansing without bothering to mention who had
worked for whom, who had spied, revealed state
secrets or simply failed to follow orders.
She was among the first to rush to Hrtkovce, a
village in Srem, and to call what occurred there (a
clash between Serb refugees from Croatia and Hrtkovce
Croats) "the shame of Serbia".
"The Croats of Hrtkovac fear for their lives. They
are being threatened. Especially at night. Franjo
Bericevic and his family are preparing to leave and
go anywhere while the Maglic sisters have already
left the house they have taken years to build...
Mobilization is purposely being conducted here. They
want to force the Croats into the Serbian Army and
send them to the Croatian front line," wrote Florance
Hartmann-Domankusic at the time, calling the Hrtkovce
case "an attempt to frighten and expel all Croats
from Serbia".
She did not mention the fact, discovered at just
about the same time, that prior to this, 32 young
Croatian men from this village had gone and signed up
for the Croatian National Guard.
When clashes began in Bosnia, Zvornik was "liberated"
from the Serbian paramilitaries, according to
Hartmann. The cry to the world that Serbia must end
its aggression against "Bosnia" had the same effect
as the previous "occupation" by local Serbs of their
own villages in Croatia.
"The Muslims want a multiethnic, democratic Bosnia;
the Serbs want to make it a part of a Greater
Serbia"; this sentence in the influential "Le Monde"
was a special message for the world.
"Civilization of lies"
Florence Hartmann-Domankusic then quoted a survey
which she conducted herself and proved that "if the
Serbs in Bosnia continue in the same fashion, they
won't last for more than a few months. Their
imaginary fairy tale will collapse like a house of
cards".
She predicted the same thing for the Serbs in Serbia.
The name of Slobodan Milosevic was always linked with
the attributes of strongman and butcher... She wrote
that the opposition was weak and powerless and upheld
the Greater Serbian aspirations of the strongman. She
wrote in her newspaper about the young people and
students who rebelled on March 9, 1991 that "even
though they rebelled, the majority of them represent
captives of a civilization of lies".
And here is how she proved it:
"Surveys show," she wrote, "that 40 percent of those
surveyed blindly believe everything they see on state
television news broadcasts. And a far greater number
believe that the isolation of Serbia is the result of
a world conspiracy against this nation, not the
result of Serbian nationalist policies which resulted
in bloody clashes in the region of the former
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia."
She said the following about the "other side":
"The Bosnian Territorial Defense only ordered a
blockade of JNA barracks and their disarmament...And
then the Yugoslav media jumped to the following
conclusion: Bosnia and Herzegovina has declared war
on the JNA."
When the United Nations debated whether to allow
imports into Serbia for humanitarian reasons, she
opposed it with her commentary: "By doing so the UN
would agree to feed the propaganda apparatus of
Slobodan Milosevic which, according to the commission
of the world organization for human rights, played a
primary role in spreading nationalist hate."
In her 1993 interview with the commander of the
Yugoslav Air Force at the time, General Bozidar
Stevanovic, Florence Hartmann-Domankusic said that
"the bombing of Serbia" was not excluded and asked
whether his air force were ready to defend the
country. Caught off guard, the general thought a bit
and replied: "We are ready to defend ourselves but I
don't believe that this could ever happen. Should it
happen, there would be heavy casualties on both
sides."
Among the first world reporters to start calling
Croatia a country before its recognition, she also
rushed to be the first to call Bosnia a country
before its formal recognition in the United Nations.
In an interview with Ibrahim Rugova she was full of
praise for him and called him a cosmopolitan,
tolerant and a democrat at heart.
Our protest
"Le Monde" is read by few people in Serbia and
consequently her articles drew more attention in
France and the rest of the world than at home. Thus
among the first to react was Nedeljka Gluscevic of
the Yugoslav Cultural Center in Paris, who had the
opportunity to see and to read every issue of "Le
Monde", and who addressed our officials and
influential institutions both officially and
unofficially, pointing out the malice in the writing
of the correspondent from Belgrade.
Mrs. Gluscevic's comments were also echoed by many
Serbs living abroad, Serbian cultural clubs and
various organizations. Many letters of protest were
sent directly to "Le Monde" but very few of them
passed, in shortened form, through the editorial
sieve. In several direct responses to the writers of
those letters, "Le Monde" defended itself citing
freedom of the press, everyone's right to their own
opinion and so on.
It was as a result of these complaints by Serbs
living abroad that the federal information minister
at the time, Slobodan Ignjatovic, refused to renew
Florence Hartmann's accreditation in April of 1994.
According to one version, when she filed for another
two-year renewal of her accreditation her application
was simply rejected; this corresponds with the date
her accreditation was originally issued - April 1990
- and renewed for the first time - April 1992. Thus
in April 1994, however it happened, Florence
Hartmann-Domankusic was denied the right to continue
reporting from Belgrade.
Three years later, in May 1997, she told the Belgrade
magazine "Intervju" that she had been denied the
right to stay in the country which is not true.
"The withdrawal of accreditation, in fact, meant
automatic expulsion from the country because most
foreign correspondents are non-citizens and their
right to stay in the country depends on their
reporter's accreditation. My life in Belgrade was not
based only on journalism. I also had the legal right
to stay in the country on the basis of marriage with
a Yugoslav citizen. Nevertheless, the Belgrade
authorities refused to allow me to return to the
country where I had lived for eight years and where
two of my children who also had Yugoslav citizenship
were going to school. Four months after I was
expelled I was allowed to return for 15 days under
the condition that I report to the Federal Ministry
of Information and sign a decision according to which
I couldn't work according to Article 130-something of
the Criminal Code which was generally used against
Albanians and similar 'terrorists' because I
allegedly conducted activities detrimental to
Yugoslavia's imagine in the world. I didn't sign
because I didn't feel it applied to me."
We found no trace regarding her expulsion in the
above-cited ministry but in the meanwhile, the
"terrorists" have come to be called that by the
entire world - with the exception of Florence
Hartmann-Domankusic.
A year after her "expulsion", that is, in 1995,
Engineer Emil Domankusic resigned from his job at
Belgrade Airport and moved out of the country. His
apartment in Svetozara Corovica Street, which served
as "Le Monde's" office, was sold, as was the other
apartment he received a while ago in Karnegijeva
Street.
Through the Internet we discovered that he is now
employed as one of directors of an airport in East
Timor.
Let's work together
That Florence Hartmann-Domankusic liked to help her
colleagues from abroad is proven by numerous
collaborative reports from our region. Thus she
visited Prevlaka with the female correspondent of
"The Financial Times" and visited Vukovar and many
other places with another female correspondent. In an
interview with the magazine "Intervju" in May 1997,
she said:
"I never went after the scoop. I always shared
information. If you work together, you collect more
data. Besides, you cross-reference and compare
information, you weigh different positions, you have
access to more sources; all of this is necessary,
especially in conditions under which it is difficult
for reporters to work. I was frequently in dangerous
situations and it is always better to be with someone
then. For example, another female correspondent and I
discovered Ovcara in November 1992. Before that the
only information that was available was that there
was a mass grave near Vukovar. And nothing more. No
one wanted to say who the victims were."
So it is thanks to Florence Hartmann-Domankusic that
the story of Ovcara was heard around the world, that
is, the Serbs were accused of conducting mass
executions of Croats. Much later ,by the time the
truth was finally revealed and it was discovered that
the victims were, in fact, Serbs, Croats, Russians
and Slovaks killed during the maelstrom of war, that
they had been buried there due to fear of disease,
and that their number was hundreds of times less than
initially speculated, Florence Hartmann-Domankusic
was no longer working for "Le Monde".
Two years ago in Paris she published a book,
"Milosevic: The Diagonal Moves of a Pawn", but did
not get the publicity and earnings she expected. In
the book her treatment of this politician is to
accuse him of everything ugly that has happened in
the Balkans in the last decade.
However, this turned out to be just the ticket to get
into the Hague tribunal. As an expert of Milosevic,
she became the spokeswoman of Carla del Ponte last
autumn - suddenly and to the surprise of many because
the position did not previously exist. Louise Arbour,
Carla del Ponte's predecessor, did not have a
spokesperson.
Many liked the charming and pleasant way in which the
new official, Florence Hartmann, who quietly ignored
the second surname of Domankusic still in her
passport, rolled her "r's" when speaking either
Serbian and Croatian, according to need. When she
began to lecture President Kostunica and to threaten
the entire nation with sanctions, Dr. Marisa Marie
Matei of "Teleobjektif" spoke up to reveal who she
was and to express doubts concerning the expedient
disappearance of the Hague file on the Serbs
massacred in Gospic ten years ago.
At the same time in Croatia, 33 year-old retired
general Mirko Norac, a former waiter from Sinj, is
facing The Hague for crimes committed in Gospic ten
years ago when he swore he was only accountable to
Maks Luburic and no one else. Norac is now in hiding
somewhere in Herzegovina, demonstrators in Croatia
are preventing his departure to The Hague, declaring
him to be a national hero, and the Croatian press is
speculating that the secret file against him was
"discovered" in time and that he was advised to
"disappear".
It would be interesting to hear Florence
Hartmann-Domankusic comment on "the Norac case". She
might start by explaining why she is not demanding
that Croatia extradite him and why she is not
threatening the country with sanctions if it fails to
do so.
This would be an objective and unbiased gesture on
the part of the spokesman of an unbiased court.
Anything else might be differently interpreted.
Translated by S. Lazovic (May 31, 2001)
/NOTE: After disappearing for two weeks, Mirko Norac
turned himself in to Croatian authorities on Feb. 21,
2001 "after the International War Crimes Tribunal in
The Hague said it would not attempt to try him" (BBC,
Feb. 22). He and four Croats have been indicted for
war crimes against Serb civilians by a Croatian
court./
HAGUE, April 10 (Beta) - The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal
for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) spokesperson Florence Hartmann told
BETA on April 9, that the Belgrade authorities should recognize and
fulfill their obligations in respect to full and permanent cooperation
with the ICTY.
"Things are very simple. Obligations, which Yugoslavia must respect as a
member of the UN, derive from the statute of the ICTY," Hartmann said
regarding announcements from Belgrade that a law on cooperation with the
ICTY could be adopted soon.
"The cooperation should be full and constant. We expect that Belgrade
will recognize and fulfill its obligations and that it will not create
new obstacles to full cooperation and fulfilling all ICTY's orders,
either now or in the future," said Hartmann.
DRAFT YUGOSLAV LAW ON COOPERATION WITH THE HAGUE UNACCEPTABLE, HARTMANN
WASHINGTON, April 9 (Tanjug) - Spokesperson for the chief prosecutor of
The Hague tribunal Florence Hartmann said that the draft Yugoslav law
on cooperation with that tribunal was unacceptable. Hartmann told the
Voice of America that for now as it has been represented, with the
details that are know, the law is unacceptable.
Pointing out that Yugoslavia has its obligations and must comply with
them, Hartmann said that there can be no conditioning with the law,
there cannot be a difference in treatment under such a law, because
then some would be extradited to The Hague, and some others would not
be out of arbitrary and unknown reasons, so that conditioning is
absolutely unacceptable and as whole does not observe obligations, or
the primacy of obligations that exist in the Statute of The Hague
tribunal.
Hartmann recalled that the tribunal prosecution has on a number of
occasions established that such a law is not necessary and that they
work under the Statute of the tribunal and will continue to demand from
Yugoslavia to fulfill its obligations under the Statute of the
tribunal.
===*===
ILUSTROVANA POLITIKA (Belgrade, Yugoslavia),
Issue 2197, February 24, 2001
Who is Florence Hartmann-Domankusic?
Her favorite word is sanctions!
Few people know that this Frenchwoman, now the
spokeswoman of Carla del Ponte, lived and worked for
a long time in Belgrade as the correspondent of the
Paris "Le Monde". Her "favorable reporting" on
Yugoslavia in the past earned her the withdrawal of
her reporter's accreditation
by Ozren MILANOVIC
In the past we have been threatened with sanctions by
countries, international organizations and military
alliances... Now we are being threatened by a woman
who is the press representative to a prosecutor:
Florence Hartmann-Domankusic, a Frenchwoman, the
spokeswoman to Carla del Ponte, an Italian, in a
court located in Holland. Like an angry Smurf, at
press conferences held every day she lifts her finger
and points at the southeast of Europe:
"The Yugoslav government must not delay extradition
of persons accused of war crimes. This preparation of
a law on cooperation with the international tribunal
seems like a bid to buy time. If cooperation doesn't
begin within the foreseeable future, we will request
the reinstatement of sanctions against Yugoslavia.
Some of those sanctions were only temporarily
suspended anyway until we see what the new government
is going to do."
Deafened by threats, frequently we don't put much
effort into figuring out who is threatening us and
why.
Warning from Paris
Dr. Marisa Marie Matei of the Paris "Teleobjektif"
recently wrote an open letter of warning to the
Serbian media:
"How is it possible that no one has bothered to
investigate Florence Hartmann-Domankusic's methods of
work during the time that she was "Le Monde's"
correspondent in Belgrade? To what extent she is
objective and neutral, and consequently, the Hague
tribunal as well, can best be seen by her articles on
Gospic and Vukovar (a city whose residents were 67
percent Serb before it was taken over by Croat
Tomislav Mercep) before the bombing, as well as on
Marin Selo and Pakracka Poljana, Paulin Dvor... while
at the same time she searched Vojvodina with a
magnifying glass looking to find a Croatian victim
somewhere; and when she would find one, she would
show all her foreign reporter colleagues whom she
personally met and "joined" regularly at Belgrade
Airport after learning of their arrival from her
husband, one of the airport's directors. Isn't it
strange that the file on the murder of Serbs in
Gospic in 1991 disappeared from the tribunal archives
at the same time that Mrs. Hartmann-Domankusic became
Carla del Ponte's press assistant?"
Mrs. Matei has a point; in the West, one's previous
work is a very important determinant to one's further
career. The fact that it is possible among the Serbs
for someone to say and do one thing today and then to
change it all tomorrow, the fact that our memories
are short and we forget things quickly says more
about us than about others.
But let's take a look whether it is indeed Florence
Hartmann-Domankusic who is threatening us with
sanctions for lack of something better to do or
whether there's more going on than meets the eye.
This 37 year-old lady, who carries a French passport,
received her first identity card for foreigners in
Belgrade on June 2, 1989 as the wife of Engineer Emil
Domankusic, employed at Belgrade Airport in Surcin.
Emil is the son of General Stjepan Domankusic, a
native of Slobodnica near Slavonski Brod /Croatia/,
who served as deputy chief of the Security Department
of the State Defense Council, who as a
counter-intelligence officer was known in certain
circles by the codename of Omega.
Half a year later, on January 1, 1990, Florance
Hartmann-Domankusic became employed by the Paris
paper "Le Monde" and immediately became its
correspondent in Belgrade. Then 26 years old, she was
nevertheless a beginner in the difficult and
responsible role of correspondent from a volatile
region such as our own. She submitted a request for
permanent accreditation to the Federal Ministry of
Information and very quickly received a positive
response thus becoming on April 20 of the same year
an accredited correspondent of this influential
French newspaper.
On her application for accreditation she stated that
she had been living in Belgrade since 1985 and that
she spoke Serbian, Croatian, Italian, Spanish and
English which in addition to her native French was a
very decent number and a good recommendation for the
whole world. At that time she stated that she was
born in the small town of Neville on the Seine while
later she would say she was born in Paris. Since
accreditation must be renewed every two years, on the
next application she filled out she stated that she
had been living in Belgrade since 1987.
Her "position"
Her first articles in "Le Monde" hardly require
reading between the lines and are clearly the work of
an author with a predetermined "position".
Thus, according to Florance Hartmann-Domankusic's
writing, the Serbs occupied a third of Croatian
territory, were illegally armed and (the still
unrecognized republic of Croatia) needed to crush the
ultranationalists relentlessly if it wanted to join
Europe. Of course, readers of "Le Monde" could not
learn from her articles that these Serbs were native
to the region, that they had lived here for
centuries, that they owned houses and property there,
and that they did not come here from Serbia to occupy
someone else's land.
In her articles at that time, the Yugoslav People's
Army, in which her father-in-law Stjepan held a truly
enviable position, was written in quotation marks
because it was not considered to be really Yugoslav.
And when generals were replaced, Serbs and non-Serbs
alike, she immediately interpreted this as a form of
ethnic cleansing without bothering to mention who had
worked for whom, who had spied, revealed state
secrets or simply failed to follow orders.
She was among the first to rush to Hrtkovce, a
village in Srem, and to call what occurred there (a
clash between Serb refugees from Croatia and Hrtkovce
Croats) "the shame of Serbia".
"The Croats of Hrtkovac fear for their lives. They
are being threatened. Especially at night. Franjo
Bericevic and his family are preparing to leave and
go anywhere while the Maglic sisters have already
left the house they have taken years to build...
Mobilization is purposely being conducted here. They
want to force the Croats into the Serbian Army and
send them to the Croatian front line," wrote Florance
Hartmann-Domankusic at the time, calling the Hrtkovce
case "an attempt to frighten and expel all Croats
from Serbia".
She did not mention the fact, discovered at just
about the same time, that prior to this, 32 young
Croatian men from this village had gone and signed up
for the Croatian National Guard.
When clashes began in Bosnia, Zvornik was "liberated"
from the Serbian paramilitaries, according to
Hartmann. The cry to the world that Serbia must end
its aggression against "Bosnia" had the same effect
as the previous "occupation" by local Serbs of their
own villages in Croatia.
"The Muslims want a multiethnic, democratic Bosnia;
the Serbs want to make it a part of a Greater
Serbia"; this sentence in the influential "Le Monde"
was a special message for the world.
"Civilization of lies"
Florence Hartmann-Domankusic then quoted a survey
which she conducted herself and proved that "if the
Serbs in Bosnia continue in the same fashion, they
won't last for more than a few months. Their
imaginary fairy tale will collapse like a house of
cards".
She predicted the same thing for the Serbs in Serbia.
The name of Slobodan Milosevic was always linked with
the attributes of strongman and butcher... She wrote
that the opposition was weak and powerless and upheld
the Greater Serbian aspirations of the strongman. She
wrote in her newspaper about the young people and
students who rebelled on March 9, 1991 that "even
though they rebelled, the majority of them represent
captives of a civilization of lies".
And here is how she proved it:
"Surveys show," she wrote, "that 40 percent of those
surveyed blindly believe everything they see on state
television news broadcasts. And a far greater number
believe that the isolation of Serbia is the result of
a world conspiracy against this nation, not the
result of Serbian nationalist policies which resulted
in bloody clashes in the region of the former
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia."
She said the following about the "other side":
"The Bosnian Territorial Defense only ordered a
blockade of JNA barracks and their disarmament...And
then the Yugoslav media jumped to the following
conclusion: Bosnia and Herzegovina has declared war
on the JNA."
When the United Nations debated whether to allow
imports into Serbia for humanitarian reasons, she
opposed it with her commentary: "By doing so the UN
would agree to feed the propaganda apparatus of
Slobodan Milosevic which, according to the commission
of the world organization for human rights, played a
primary role in spreading nationalist hate."
In her 1993 interview with the commander of the
Yugoslav Air Force at the time, General Bozidar
Stevanovic, Florence Hartmann-Domankusic said that
"the bombing of Serbia" was not excluded and asked
whether his air force were ready to defend the
country. Caught off guard, the general thought a bit
and replied: "We are ready to defend ourselves but I
don't believe that this could ever happen. Should it
happen, there would be heavy casualties on both
sides."
Among the first world reporters to start calling
Croatia a country before its recognition, she also
rushed to be the first to call Bosnia a country
before its formal recognition in the United Nations.
In an interview with Ibrahim Rugova she was full of
praise for him and called him a cosmopolitan,
tolerant and a democrat at heart.
Our protest
"Le Monde" is read by few people in Serbia and
consequently her articles drew more attention in
France and the rest of the world than at home. Thus
among the first to react was Nedeljka Gluscevic of
the Yugoslav Cultural Center in Paris, who had the
opportunity to see and to read every issue of "Le
Monde", and who addressed our officials and
influential institutions both officially and
unofficially, pointing out the malice in the writing
of the correspondent from Belgrade.
Mrs. Gluscevic's comments were also echoed by many
Serbs living abroad, Serbian cultural clubs and
various organizations. Many letters of protest were
sent directly to "Le Monde" but very few of them
passed, in shortened form, through the editorial
sieve. In several direct responses to the writers of
those letters, "Le Monde" defended itself citing
freedom of the press, everyone's right to their own
opinion and so on.
It was as a result of these complaints by Serbs
living abroad that the federal information minister
at the time, Slobodan Ignjatovic, refused to renew
Florence Hartmann's accreditation in April of 1994.
According to one version, when she filed for another
two-year renewal of her accreditation her application
was simply rejected; this corresponds with the date
her accreditation was originally issued - April 1990
- and renewed for the first time - April 1992. Thus
in April 1994, however it happened, Florence
Hartmann-Domankusic was denied the right to continue
reporting from Belgrade.
Three years later, in May 1997, she told the Belgrade
magazine "Intervju" that she had been denied the
right to stay in the country which is not true.
"The withdrawal of accreditation, in fact, meant
automatic expulsion from the country because most
foreign correspondents are non-citizens and their
right to stay in the country depends on their
reporter's accreditation. My life in Belgrade was not
based only on journalism. I also had the legal right
to stay in the country on the basis of marriage with
a Yugoslav citizen. Nevertheless, the Belgrade
authorities refused to allow me to return to the
country where I had lived for eight years and where
two of my children who also had Yugoslav citizenship
were going to school. Four months after I was
expelled I was allowed to return for 15 days under
the condition that I report to the Federal Ministry
of Information and sign a decision according to which
I couldn't work according to Article 130-something of
the Criminal Code which was generally used against
Albanians and similar 'terrorists' because I
allegedly conducted activities detrimental to
Yugoslavia's imagine in the world. I didn't sign
because I didn't feel it applied to me."
We found no trace regarding her expulsion in the
above-cited ministry but in the meanwhile, the
"terrorists" have come to be called that by the
entire world - with the exception of Florence
Hartmann-Domankusic.
A year after her "expulsion", that is, in 1995,
Engineer Emil Domankusic resigned from his job at
Belgrade Airport and moved out of the country. His
apartment in Svetozara Corovica Street, which served
as "Le Monde's" office, was sold, as was the other
apartment he received a while ago in Karnegijeva
Street.
Through the Internet we discovered that he is now
employed as one of directors of an airport in East
Timor.
Let's work together
That Florence Hartmann-Domankusic liked to help her
colleagues from abroad is proven by numerous
collaborative reports from our region. Thus she
visited Prevlaka with the female correspondent of
"The Financial Times" and visited Vukovar and many
other places with another female correspondent. In an
interview with the magazine "Intervju" in May 1997,
she said:
"I never went after the scoop. I always shared
information. If you work together, you collect more
data. Besides, you cross-reference and compare
information, you weigh different positions, you have
access to more sources; all of this is necessary,
especially in conditions under which it is difficult
for reporters to work. I was frequently in dangerous
situations and it is always better to be with someone
then. For example, another female correspondent and I
discovered Ovcara in November 1992. Before that the
only information that was available was that there
was a mass grave near Vukovar. And nothing more. No
one wanted to say who the victims were."
So it is thanks to Florence Hartmann-Domankusic that
the story of Ovcara was heard around the world, that
is, the Serbs were accused of conducting mass
executions of Croats. Much later ,by the time the
truth was finally revealed and it was discovered that
the victims were, in fact, Serbs, Croats, Russians
and Slovaks killed during the maelstrom of war, that
they had been buried there due to fear of disease,
and that their number was hundreds of times less than
initially speculated, Florence Hartmann-Domankusic
was no longer working for "Le Monde".
Two years ago in Paris she published a book,
"Milosevic: The Diagonal Moves of a Pawn", but did
not get the publicity and earnings she expected. In
the book her treatment of this politician is to
accuse him of everything ugly that has happened in
the Balkans in the last decade.
However, this turned out to be just the ticket to get
into the Hague tribunal. As an expert of Milosevic,
she became the spokeswoman of Carla del Ponte last
autumn - suddenly and to the surprise of many because
the position did not previously exist. Louise Arbour,
Carla del Ponte's predecessor, did not have a
spokesperson.
Many liked the charming and pleasant way in which the
new official, Florence Hartmann, who quietly ignored
the second surname of Domankusic still in her
passport, rolled her "r's" when speaking either
Serbian and Croatian, according to need. When she
began to lecture President Kostunica and to threaten
the entire nation with sanctions, Dr. Marisa Marie
Matei of "Teleobjektif" spoke up to reveal who she
was and to express doubts concerning the expedient
disappearance of the Hague file on the Serbs
massacred in Gospic ten years ago.
At the same time in Croatia, 33 year-old retired
general Mirko Norac, a former waiter from Sinj, is
facing The Hague for crimes committed in Gospic ten
years ago when he swore he was only accountable to
Maks Luburic and no one else. Norac is now in hiding
somewhere in Herzegovina, demonstrators in Croatia
are preventing his departure to The Hague, declaring
him to be a national hero, and the Croatian press is
speculating that the secret file against him was
"discovered" in time and that he was advised to
"disappear".
It would be interesting to hear Florence
Hartmann-Domankusic comment on "the Norac case". She
might start by explaining why she is not demanding
that Croatia extradite him and why she is not
threatening the country with sanctions if it fails to
do so.
This would be an objective and unbiased gesture on
the part of the spokesman of an unbiased court.
Anything else might be differently interpreted.
Translated by S. Lazovic (May 31, 2001)
/NOTE: After disappearing for two weeks, Mirko Norac
turned himself in to Croatian authorities on Feb. 21,
2001 "after the International War Crimes Tribunal in
The Hague said it would not attempt to try him" (BBC,
Feb. 22). He and four Croats have been indicted for
war crimes against Serb civilians by a Croatian
court./