http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=2545%c2%a7ionID=18
ZNet | Kosovo
Milosevic at the Hague
Round Two
by Andrej Grubacec; October 27, 2002
In the latest instalment of the cycle of trials at the Hague, where
Milosevic is charged with alleged war crimes in Croatia and Bosnia, the
current president of Croatia Stjepan Mesic and Slobodan Milosevic had a
much anticipated confrontation. According to the Serbian and Croatian
press, the televised verbal duel between Milosevic and Mesic in the
Hague courtroom was closely watched by approximately 90% of the total
population in each state.
As a witness against Milosevic, the choice of Stjepan Mesic seems
somewhat unusual, if not downright bizarre. Most citizens in both Serbia
and Croatia remember all too well his most quoted and notorious
utterance. At the beginning of December 1991, Mesic, the author of the
book "How we brought about the collapse of Yugoslavia", announced in the
Croatian parliament: "I think my mission has been accomplished,
Yugoslavia no longer exists ." Six months later, in May 1992, the late
president Franjo Tudjman reminded those assembled in the Ban Josip
Jelacic Square in Zagreb: "The war could not have happened had Croatia
not wanted it. Had we not done it, had we not armed ourselves, we would
not have achieved our goal!"
The problem of history
So began the Croatian chapter. In the aftermath, history has become so
entangled with the contested questions raised at the Milosevic trial,
that is becoming quite clear to the public that British judge Richard
May and his team (South Korea's Kwan and Jamaica's Robinson) are on
"mission impossible" ..
To date, judge May has consistently antagonized the Serbian and Yugoslav
public with his utter neglect and scorn for historical context. But his
statement that "Jasenovac (a WWII concentration camp in which some 700
000 Serbs were slaughtered by Croatian fascists) is irrelevant to the
fear experienced by Serbs in Croatia" at the outset of the war is
shocking and incomprehensible. Similarly, the claim made by Mesic in his
testimony that during World War II in Yugoslavia "mostly Jews and some
Serbs" met their doom, is ripe for debate (the genocide of the Serbs in
Croatia during the WWII is acknowledged as one of the most horrendous
episodes in the whole war).
May dismissively concluded that fifty years is too distant a history to
account for the fear of Serbs in Krajina at the outbreak of hostilities.
He did not even falter when his own prosecution witness, identified only
as C37 from Pakrac (a village in Croatia), substantiated that during the
time of Tito's rule (the former Yugoslav president for life), he had
learned in "Croatian schools that 700 000 Serbs perished in Jasenovac."
Throughout the first few days of the trial regarding the case of
Croatia, countless such instances occurred in which the prosecution
presented as uncontestable a very partial version of history that is
unacceptable, if not insulting, for the Serbian public. The prosecution
has tried to corroborate this version through their witnesses, a
strategy which has ultimately proved to be very risky. Even their first
witness, C37, testified that his father had perished in a concentration
camp, and that for Serbs in Krajina at the outset of the latest war,
this history had been cause for great fear and insecurity.
Milosevic proficiently exploits these historical inaccuracies that have
been handed to him on a platter by the prosecution, relishing the
opportunity to point out the obvious discrepancies, because they provide
him with the opportunity to portray the entire proceedings as a trial
against the Serbian people. This plays into his strategy, because in
doing so, he is able to portray himself as their "ad hoc" defender.
The Enigma of Karadjordjevo
It became clear very early in the court conversation between Milosevic
and Mesic, two lucid politicians and lawyers, that Stjepan Mesic would
not prove to be an effective witness against Milosevic. When speaking of
the political aspirations of the former president of the neighbouring
state (Serbia), the Croatian president characterized them as a conscious
effort to destroy Yugoslavia, as the homogenization of all Serbs who
inhabited it, and the gradual creation of a "greater Serbia." Mesic
substantiated his claim that Belgrade officials of the nineties were
responsible for the war by citing Milosevic's famous speech in Kosovo,
and the "serbianization" campaign of the JNA (Yugoslav national army)
during the armed rebellion of Serbs in Croatia.
Milosevic immediately countered that this was a case of thesis
substitution. "It turns out that you were for Yugoslavia, while I
contrived to break it up. Well this would be the laughing stock of any
child in Serbia, mister Mesic!" "That may be, but I am not on trial
here, you are!" was the answer. Which was again met by Milosevic's
acerbic: "That is the point, mister Mesic, that is the point!"
However, Stjepan Mesic's testimony in the Hague did reveal two key
points. The first was the Croatian president's confirmation of the
authenticity of key documents that revealed the modus operandi and
decision making process of the former Presidency of the SFRJ (Social
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the former Yugoslav state founded after
WWII).
The second revelation is much more significant for the internal politics
of Croatia - more so than for Serbia. It has to do with the well-known
meeting of Franjo Tudjman and Slobodan Milosevic in a small place called
Karadjordjevo in March 1991. Stjepan Mesic testified in the Hague that
Tudjman told him at the time that he was going to meet Slobodan
Milosevic alone in Karadjordjevo. According to Mesic's testimony, the
late Croatian president returned to Zagreb a changed man. Mesic claims
that Tudjman had always, until that meeting with Milosevic, supported
the territorial integrity of Bosnia and Hertzegovina. But he returned
from Karadjordjevo convinced that Croatia would be able to return to its
territorial boundaries from 1939 (the province of "Banovina" at the
time). Though the public remained ignorant of this fact for a long time,
the formation of the Serbian Republic and the Croatian Republic of
"Herzeg-Bosnia" soon followed, and it became clear that new borders were
being drawn in Yugoslavia. Stjepan Mesic also stated that "expert
commissions" were appointed for the configuration of those borders, and
convened secret meetings in Belgrade and Zagreb during this period.
Unlike Slobodan Milosevic, who almost completely disregarded the matter
of Karadjordjevo in his cross-examination, Mesic's testimony sent a
shockwave through Croatia, particularly to politicians in Zagreb. The
extreme Croatian right is furious, arguing that that Mesic is betraying
his country cheaply, selling it out and not for the first time.
Meanwhile, war veterans are angrily demanding that he be relieved of his
presidential duties.
The torments of Mesic
The dispute on the nature of the Belgrade regime at the Hague was also
the most sensitive and perilous element of Stjepan Mesic's testimony.
Although, on his first day in court, he gave strong arguments on all of
the circumstances he faced as the last president of the Yugoslav
presidency in the former SFRJ, he failed to respond with precise answers
when cross-examined by Milosevic on the second day of the trial.
Particularly striking was the fact that he could not, nor did he attempt
to, deny the intense climate of fear that the Serbs in Zagreb and the
rest of Croatia were subjected to in the nineties. When Slobodan
Milosevic quoted with astounding precision the racist slogans that were
proclaimed in the Croatian National Parliament in the fall of 1990,
Mesic acknowledged that those statements damaged Croatia's reputation.
But he responded by shifting the blame for them, arguing that Milosevic
was responsible for them, not the authors of these slogans, nor he
himself (since Mesic had been president of the Zagreb parliament at the
time). Soon after, many thousands of Serbs from Croatia lost their jobs
in state management, the media, public companies and industry. When
Milosevic asked whether such a threatening atmosphere in Croatia had the
Serbs in Zagreb worried, and whether Mesic himself returned from
Belgrade in order to instigate a rebellion against the "national
government" (of the SFRY), Mesic acknowledge that incidents such as
those had occurred. Then he immediately returned to the war motive of
"greater Serbian" borders. He claimed that the border was created by the
army and paramilitary formations, along with Serb insurgents in Croatia,
controlled and armed by Milosevic himself.
Though it was expected prior to their confrontation in court that
Milosevic would seek to undermine the moral and political value of the
current Croatian president's testimony, Stjepan Mesic was perceptibly
unnerved by Milosevic's questions about his time in prison between 1975
and 1976. Mesic testified that he had been the mayor of Orahovica at the
time, and that he ended up in jail because of an inflammatory
nationalist statement that "Croats cleared the path to the Adriatic sea
with our swords, while all the others arrived there simply due to our
kindness or our naiveté". He was sentenced to two years in prison, yet
his sentence was soon halved. Slobodan Milosevic attempted to prove or
at least imply that the reduction of his sentence occurred due to
Mesic's collaboration with the departments of national security in
Croatia and Yugoslavia. Mesic denied this, but failed to respond to
Milosevic's direct questions with plausible answers.
The parting with Tudjman
One of the weakest points in Stjepan Mesic's verbal confrontation with
Milosevic was the polemic concerning his rift with Tudjman, the ruling
party of the time, the HDZ (Croatian Democratic Community), and official
Croatian politics in the spring of 1994. Mesic claimed that he parted
with Tudjman based on their disagreement over the division of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, because Tudjman refused to end the state plunder of
Croatia, and because Tudjman was clearly not prone to abide by the law
and a lawful state. Milosevic responded by asking the obvious: why
hadn't he demonstrated those concerns sooner, rather than staying on as
the second most powerful man in the Croatian government during the most
horrible crimes against the Croatian Serbs (many of which still remain
unpunished)? His meaningless reply, that the country had by that time
been exposed to " Serbian aggression", returned the story back to the
beginning.
The initial encounter
After the cross-examination of the strongest Croatian witness against
Milosevic, the prosecution must have been very disappointed. The two
presidents of states once on a war path, the former and the current one,
squabbled endlessly over the country that no longer exists, only to wave
their responsibility for the war in which it perished. Not even twelve
years later, now that borders, states, ethnicities of the population and
the leaders have all changed, none of the protagonists of the Yugoslav
drama is willing to claim their share of the blame for its disappearance
from the political map of Europe and the world. Milosevic wants to be
remembered as its protector, and Mesic refuses to take any blame for the
war.
This was starkly illustrated by Stjepan Mesic's description of his first
personal encounter with Slobodan Milosevic. It was in the spring of
1991, in Belgrade. The then president of Serbia invited Mesic and the
late president of Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, to his office to discuss the
possible consequences of the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Tudjman
carefully examined a map that Milosevic claimed had been drawn up by the
most renowned world experts. Tudjman put the map in his pocket and
carried it with him to Zagreb. There he repeated Milosevic's words, and
some time later, they both met in Karadjordjevo and reached an agreement
on Bosnia. The origin and the real meaning of this unusual map, that
supposedly depicted terrible consequences for Croats and Serbs in case
of Yugoslav disintegration, has never been determined nor confirmed.
Prosecutor Nice showed little concern over the issue. He sarcastically
remarked that he himself could obtain all the necessary maps on
Southeastern Europe. Even if it meant "walking into the nearest Hague
supermarket and buying the first available highway map". So much for law
and sovereignty, states and borders, along with the seriousness of the
Hague "Tribunal."
ZNet | Kosovo
Milosevic at the Hague
Round Two
by Andrej Grubacec; October 27, 2002
In the latest instalment of the cycle of trials at the Hague, where
Milosevic is charged with alleged war crimes in Croatia and Bosnia, the
current president of Croatia Stjepan Mesic and Slobodan Milosevic had a
much anticipated confrontation. According to the Serbian and Croatian
press, the televised verbal duel between Milosevic and Mesic in the
Hague courtroom was closely watched by approximately 90% of the total
population in each state.
As a witness against Milosevic, the choice of Stjepan Mesic seems
somewhat unusual, if not downright bizarre. Most citizens in both Serbia
and Croatia remember all too well his most quoted and notorious
utterance. At the beginning of December 1991, Mesic, the author of the
book "How we brought about the collapse of Yugoslavia", announced in the
Croatian parliament: "I think my mission has been accomplished,
Yugoslavia no longer exists ." Six months later, in May 1992, the late
president Franjo Tudjman reminded those assembled in the Ban Josip
Jelacic Square in Zagreb: "The war could not have happened had Croatia
not wanted it. Had we not done it, had we not armed ourselves, we would
not have achieved our goal!"
The problem of history
So began the Croatian chapter. In the aftermath, history has become so
entangled with the contested questions raised at the Milosevic trial,
that is becoming quite clear to the public that British judge Richard
May and his team (South Korea's Kwan and Jamaica's Robinson) are on
"mission impossible" ..
To date, judge May has consistently antagonized the Serbian and Yugoslav
public with his utter neglect and scorn for historical context. But his
statement that "Jasenovac (a WWII concentration camp in which some 700
000 Serbs were slaughtered by Croatian fascists) is irrelevant to the
fear experienced by Serbs in Croatia" at the outset of the war is
shocking and incomprehensible. Similarly, the claim made by Mesic in his
testimony that during World War II in Yugoslavia "mostly Jews and some
Serbs" met their doom, is ripe for debate (the genocide of the Serbs in
Croatia during the WWII is acknowledged as one of the most horrendous
episodes in the whole war).
May dismissively concluded that fifty years is too distant a history to
account for the fear of Serbs in Krajina at the outbreak of hostilities.
He did not even falter when his own prosecution witness, identified only
as C37 from Pakrac (a village in Croatia), substantiated that during the
time of Tito's rule (the former Yugoslav president for life), he had
learned in "Croatian schools that 700 000 Serbs perished in Jasenovac."
Throughout the first few days of the trial regarding the case of
Croatia, countless such instances occurred in which the prosecution
presented as uncontestable a very partial version of history that is
unacceptable, if not insulting, for the Serbian public. The prosecution
has tried to corroborate this version through their witnesses, a
strategy which has ultimately proved to be very risky. Even their first
witness, C37, testified that his father had perished in a concentration
camp, and that for Serbs in Krajina at the outset of the latest war,
this history had been cause for great fear and insecurity.
Milosevic proficiently exploits these historical inaccuracies that have
been handed to him on a platter by the prosecution, relishing the
opportunity to point out the obvious discrepancies, because they provide
him with the opportunity to portray the entire proceedings as a trial
against the Serbian people. This plays into his strategy, because in
doing so, he is able to portray himself as their "ad hoc" defender.
The Enigma of Karadjordjevo
It became clear very early in the court conversation between Milosevic
and Mesic, two lucid politicians and lawyers, that Stjepan Mesic would
not prove to be an effective witness against Milosevic. When speaking of
the political aspirations of the former president of the neighbouring
state (Serbia), the Croatian president characterized them as a conscious
effort to destroy Yugoslavia, as the homogenization of all Serbs who
inhabited it, and the gradual creation of a "greater Serbia." Mesic
substantiated his claim that Belgrade officials of the nineties were
responsible for the war by citing Milosevic's famous speech in Kosovo,
and the "serbianization" campaign of the JNA (Yugoslav national army)
during the armed rebellion of Serbs in Croatia.
Milosevic immediately countered that this was a case of thesis
substitution. "It turns out that you were for Yugoslavia, while I
contrived to break it up. Well this would be the laughing stock of any
child in Serbia, mister Mesic!" "That may be, but I am not on trial
here, you are!" was the answer. Which was again met by Milosevic's
acerbic: "That is the point, mister Mesic, that is the point!"
However, Stjepan Mesic's testimony in the Hague did reveal two key
points. The first was the Croatian president's confirmation of the
authenticity of key documents that revealed the modus operandi and
decision making process of the former Presidency of the SFRJ (Social
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the former Yugoslav state founded after
WWII).
The second revelation is much more significant for the internal politics
of Croatia - more so than for Serbia. It has to do with the well-known
meeting of Franjo Tudjman and Slobodan Milosevic in a small place called
Karadjordjevo in March 1991. Stjepan Mesic testified in the Hague that
Tudjman told him at the time that he was going to meet Slobodan
Milosevic alone in Karadjordjevo. According to Mesic's testimony, the
late Croatian president returned to Zagreb a changed man. Mesic claims
that Tudjman had always, until that meeting with Milosevic, supported
the territorial integrity of Bosnia and Hertzegovina. But he returned
from Karadjordjevo convinced that Croatia would be able to return to its
territorial boundaries from 1939 (the province of "Banovina" at the
time). Though the public remained ignorant of this fact for a long time,
the formation of the Serbian Republic and the Croatian Republic of
"Herzeg-Bosnia" soon followed, and it became clear that new borders were
being drawn in Yugoslavia. Stjepan Mesic also stated that "expert
commissions" were appointed for the configuration of those borders, and
convened secret meetings in Belgrade and Zagreb during this period.
Unlike Slobodan Milosevic, who almost completely disregarded the matter
of Karadjordjevo in his cross-examination, Mesic's testimony sent a
shockwave through Croatia, particularly to politicians in Zagreb. The
extreme Croatian right is furious, arguing that that Mesic is betraying
his country cheaply, selling it out and not for the first time.
Meanwhile, war veterans are angrily demanding that he be relieved of his
presidential duties.
The torments of Mesic
The dispute on the nature of the Belgrade regime at the Hague was also
the most sensitive and perilous element of Stjepan Mesic's testimony.
Although, on his first day in court, he gave strong arguments on all of
the circumstances he faced as the last president of the Yugoslav
presidency in the former SFRJ, he failed to respond with precise answers
when cross-examined by Milosevic on the second day of the trial.
Particularly striking was the fact that he could not, nor did he attempt
to, deny the intense climate of fear that the Serbs in Zagreb and the
rest of Croatia were subjected to in the nineties. When Slobodan
Milosevic quoted with astounding precision the racist slogans that were
proclaimed in the Croatian National Parliament in the fall of 1990,
Mesic acknowledged that those statements damaged Croatia's reputation.
But he responded by shifting the blame for them, arguing that Milosevic
was responsible for them, not the authors of these slogans, nor he
himself (since Mesic had been president of the Zagreb parliament at the
time). Soon after, many thousands of Serbs from Croatia lost their jobs
in state management, the media, public companies and industry. When
Milosevic asked whether such a threatening atmosphere in Croatia had the
Serbs in Zagreb worried, and whether Mesic himself returned from
Belgrade in order to instigate a rebellion against the "national
government" (of the SFRY), Mesic acknowledge that incidents such as
those had occurred. Then he immediately returned to the war motive of
"greater Serbian" borders. He claimed that the border was created by the
army and paramilitary formations, along with Serb insurgents in Croatia,
controlled and armed by Milosevic himself.
Though it was expected prior to their confrontation in court that
Milosevic would seek to undermine the moral and political value of the
current Croatian president's testimony, Stjepan Mesic was perceptibly
unnerved by Milosevic's questions about his time in prison between 1975
and 1976. Mesic testified that he had been the mayor of Orahovica at the
time, and that he ended up in jail because of an inflammatory
nationalist statement that "Croats cleared the path to the Adriatic sea
with our swords, while all the others arrived there simply due to our
kindness or our naiveté". He was sentenced to two years in prison, yet
his sentence was soon halved. Slobodan Milosevic attempted to prove or
at least imply that the reduction of his sentence occurred due to
Mesic's collaboration with the departments of national security in
Croatia and Yugoslavia. Mesic denied this, but failed to respond to
Milosevic's direct questions with plausible answers.
The parting with Tudjman
One of the weakest points in Stjepan Mesic's verbal confrontation with
Milosevic was the polemic concerning his rift with Tudjman, the ruling
party of the time, the HDZ (Croatian Democratic Community), and official
Croatian politics in the spring of 1994. Mesic claimed that he parted
with Tudjman based on their disagreement over the division of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, because Tudjman refused to end the state plunder of
Croatia, and because Tudjman was clearly not prone to abide by the law
and a lawful state. Milosevic responded by asking the obvious: why
hadn't he demonstrated those concerns sooner, rather than staying on as
the second most powerful man in the Croatian government during the most
horrible crimes against the Croatian Serbs (many of which still remain
unpunished)? His meaningless reply, that the country had by that time
been exposed to " Serbian aggression", returned the story back to the
beginning.
The initial encounter
After the cross-examination of the strongest Croatian witness against
Milosevic, the prosecution must have been very disappointed. The two
presidents of states once on a war path, the former and the current one,
squabbled endlessly over the country that no longer exists, only to wave
their responsibility for the war in which it perished. Not even twelve
years later, now that borders, states, ethnicities of the population and
the leaders have all changed, none of the protagonists of the Yugoslav
drama is willing to claim their share of the blame for its disappearance
from the political map of Europe and the world. Milosevic wants to be
remembered as its protector, and Mesic refuses to take any blame for the
war.
This was starkly illustrated by Stjepan Mesic's description of his first
personal encounter with Slobodan Milosevic. It was in the spring of
1991, in Belgrade. The then president of Serbia invited Mesic and the
late president of Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, to his office to discuss the
possible consequences of the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Tudjman
carefully examined a map that Milosevic claimed had been drawn up by the
most renowned world experts. Tudjman put the map in his pocket and
carried it with him to Zagreb. There he repeated Milosevic's words, and
some time later, they both met in Karadjordjevo and reached an agreement
on Bosnia. The origin and the real meaning of this unusual map, that
supposedly depicted terrible consequences for Croats and Serbs in case
of Yugoslav disintegration, has never been determined nor confirmed.
Prosecutor Nice showed little concern over the issue. He sarcastically
remarked that he himself could obtain all the necessary maps on
Southeastern Europe. Even if it meant "walking into the nearest Hague
supermarket and buying the first available highway map". So much for law
and sovereignty, states and borders, along with the seriousness of the
Hague "Tribunal."