Below -
Serbian Feminism: Against Serbian Nationalism
The President, the Soccer Hooligans and an Underworld "House of Horrors"
A grisly trial in Serbia has raised questions about connections between the
country’s top leadership and its violent drug gangs. By
Robert F. Worth, The New York Times Magazine, May
3, 2023
What a Textbook is Teaching Young Serbs About the
Balkan Wars
Within the nearly 400 pages of a widely used Serbian textbook, college-age
students can learn that neighboring Montenegro and Republika Srpska, one of
the two main entities that compose Bosnia-Herzegovina, are "Serb states."
They won't learn that Serb forces committed genocide at Srebrenica in 1995,
killing more than 8,000 mostly unarmed civilian men. Other war crimes by
Serb forces in the post-Yugoslav wars get hardly any mention. By Nevena
Bogdanovic, RFE/RL, November 30, 2022
In Bosnia’s Prijedor, Party in Power Spawns Right-Wing War Crimes Deniers In
the Bosnian town of Prijedor, site of some of the worst Bosnian Serb crimes
of the 1992-95 war, members of a party in power helped create a right-wing
organization committed to rewriting history. By Enes Hodzic, BIRN, September
26, 2022
In Belgrade, a mural of war criminal Ratko Mladic has a city divided
Whether or not Belgrade will be a capital that allows street art honoring
convicted war criminals has plagued the Serbian public debate. By Aleksandar
Brezar, euronews, November 26, 2021
How Europe’s far-right found friends in SerbiaThe Serbian
president is accused of using activists to silence opponents,
communicating regularly with the leader of a violent far-right
movement. Also, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon had hoped to build a
right-wing bloc in Europe. The
Times (London), March 24, 2021
Arrests Shake Up a Soccer Scene in Serbia Ruled by Gangsters and
‘Gravediggers’ A reputed gangster and leader of an
“ultras” fan group, who also reportedly had ties to the government, has been
arrested following a series of gruesome murders connected to a Belgrade
soccer stadium. By Andrew Higgins, The New York Times, March 20, 2021
Genocide denial leaves Bosniaks stuck in a violent past
Genocide denial is spreading and the
narrative so firmly entrenched inside Serbia and Republika Srpska is now
easily found all over the West more broadly. Bosnian genocide denial and
antagonism in the West has become really a kind of bellwether of the broader
crisis of democratic discourse in the political west. At times it seems like
these revisionist discourses in the west have become almost as mainstream as
they have in Bosnia and the region itself. CBC Radio, December 22, 2020
Conspiracy Theories, Denial, and the Coronavirus
During the war, Serb nationalist leaders had spread
conspiracy theories in order to maintain popular support for both the
conflict and their hold on power. At the time, I blamed the embrace of
denialism on the trauma that people experience in wartime. Telling the big
lie works, I thought, when a population fears for its safety. A diplomat
based in Bosnia who asked not to be named told me that, decades after the
war’s end, corrupt nationalist leaders and the media outlets they control
have been perpetuating the rhetoric of mistrust and fear in the country,
particularly before elections. The glorification of convicted war criminals,
the denial of genocide and war crimes, and bitter disputes around
conflicting commemorations all create an environment of perpetual division
that is gradually becoming the norm.
By David Rohde, The New Yorker, July 18, 2020
How Radovan Karadzic Led an American Scholar Into a Labyrinth of Genocide
Denial Author Jessica Stern
recently published
an unusual
book about Radovan Karadzic, who was convicted in 2016 for committing
genocide against Bosnian Muslims. Based on 12 intimate prison interviews,
she naively endorses his position that there is “some truth to … Karadzic’s
claims that [Bosnia's wartime president] Izetbegovic had cultivated jihadis,”
and that Serbs committed genocide out of a fear that Bosnian Muslims were
planning to impose a sharia state. Stern also gives validity to allegations
that Bosnian Muslim military leaders shot at their own people, or
manufactured scenarios that were likely to put citizens in the crosshairs of
Serb snipers, in order to garner international sympathy. Yet, her
presentation of these long-contested claims contradicts the international
tribunal’s judgment in the trial of Karadzic.
We are in a climate of renewed denial of the Bosnian genocide. A few
months ago, the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to the Austrian
writer Peter Handke, whose books on Bosnia have been widely criticized as
engaging in genocide denial.
Stern could be
fairly accused of framing the Bosnian war as one of “very fine people on
both sides.”
By Edina Becirevic,
a genocide scholar at the University of Sarajevo, January 29, 2020
Srebrenica, Racak, and the triumph of the lie
Only a concerted effort to preserve and promote
the memories and truths surrounding the atrocities committed in the breakup
of Yugoslavia can overcome the rise of the "alternative fact." Serbia
is wresting back control of the dominant narrative on the past, the present,
and the future. This leaves Kosovo – and more importantly the victims and
survivors – in a very vulnerable position. By Aidan Hehir, Prishtina
Insight, December 23, 2019
From El Paso to Sarajevo How white nationalists have been
inspired by the genocide of Muslims in Bosnia. By Murtaza Hussain, The
Intercept, September 1, 2019
Rewriting Yugoslav history: Serbian war criminals-turned authors
There is an entire self-sustaining structure
perpetuating a historical delusion: that, contrary to the established proof
unearthed by investigators and prosecutors, Serbs did not mastermind and
execute the crimes of Bosnia and Kosovo wars.
Video
report here (10 minutes) Produced by Hasan Rrahmani and Johanna Hoes
for Al Jazeera, July 22, 2019
State of Denial: The Books Rewriting the Bosnian War
The 1992-1995 Bosnian
war spawned a new literary genre -- books that fly in the face of
established facts, written by or about those convicted of the killings.
By Mladen Lakic, Anja Vladisavljevic, and Filip Rudic, BIRN, October 19,
2018
Serbia has scarcely tried to escape Milošević’s poison
After the '90s, the process of denazification in
Serbia never really began, writes a Serbian educator and human rights
activist. By Milos Ciric, Kosovo 2.0, September 28, 2018
Bosnian Serb president bans teaching about Sarajevo siege,
Srebrenica genocide Reuters, June 6, 2018
Dodik keeps
denying scope of Srebrenica atrocity
HINA Croatian news agency, July 10, 2018
The Bosnian Serb leader denied that Bosnian Serb forces besieged
and attacked people for years during the 1990s war. Denial: the continuation
of genocide by other means.
The arrest and conviction of Ratko Mladic,
2011-2017
Serbia "In Denial" Over Srebrenica Genocide
Ignorance and denial of the 1995 Srebrenica
genocide is still widespread in Serbia, a debate at Belgrade’s
Centre for Cultural Decontamination was told this week.
Nemanja Stjepanovic from the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law
Centre said that 21
years after the genocide took place, all the facts about
the massacres have been established in detail thanks to court
testimonies and evidence. “Ignorance and a lack of information
could have been the excuse for not accepting the crimes back
then. Today, there are no more excuses. Every denial of the
Srebrenica crime means approval for it,” Stjepanovic said. By
Ivana Nikolic, BIRN/Balkan Insight, March 8, 2016
Serbia's Future: Back to the Past?
Interview with Sonja Biserko, by John Feffer, November 14, 2012
Tadić's Serbia as Noah's Ark Interview
with Žarko Korac, a former Serbian deputy prime minister.
"Srebrenica is our moral obligation! Imagine that after 1945 the
Germans told the Allies: Hitler is dead, you have bombed our
cities, you have leveled Dresden to the ground, you have
arrested the criminals, what do you want now? But the fact is
that the Germans remain ashamed to this day of what was done in
their name. Here in Serbia, however, there is no such
awareness. Our politicians are beach guards in the winter
season, third-rate personalities devoid of vision. Bearing in
mind who its leaders are, I am at times quite astonished that
Serbia has made any progress at all." September 16, 2011,
translated from Dani (Sarajevo)
Mladic was not alone
Justice in the Balkans must
encompass not just war criminals, but their whole communities.
Denial that crimes took place at all, especially that genocide
occurred in Srebrenica, still pervades much local discourse. A
culture of denial is still the leading paradigm of Serbian
social cohesion; on the social value meter, he who deceives is
far ahead of she who exposes the truth.
The author is a
professor of political science at Sarajevo University, well
respected in progressive (anti-denial, anti-nationalist)
circles. By Nerzuk Curak, July 3, 2011
Nationalism in Serbia - Dangerous
dream of a great empire Belgrade has
still not cut itself loose from the nationalist ideology of Greater Serbia,
which in the 1990s led to the worst genocide in Europe since the Second
World War and resulted in the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia.
Europe still does not want to admit how much harm it has caused with its
constant concessions to Serbia's policies, and how much this has contributed
to the current disastrous situation in Kosovo, in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in
Serbia.
By Christian Schwarz-Schilling, Süddeutsche Zeitung
(Munich), August 15, 2010
Only Integrating Bosnia Will Complete the Balkan Mosaic
Fifteen years since the Srebrenica atrocity, people’s
consciousness in Serbia remains largely unchanged, blocked by organized
amnesia and relativization. The younger generations in Serbia need to know
the truth about the 1990s, even though they themselves are not responsible
for the crimes committed during the period. These generations must progress
beyond the interpretation that Serbs were only victims. Only the creation of
a lasting peace will prevent repetition of those crimes, which involves
remembering and telling the truth about the wars of the 1990s.
By Sonja Biserko, Balkan Insight, July 8,
2010
Radovan Karadzic's New-Age Adventure His fictitious
fugitive life as a quack medicine peddler. By Jack Hitt,
New York Times Magazine,
July 26, 2009
Dealing with impunity in Serbia: options and
obstacles (Executive summary)
The brutality of the wars of Yugoslav dissolution in the 1990s took the
world, and many Yugoslavs, by surprise. While the region is certainly not
the only one in recent times to experience mass violations of human rights,
its location in the heart of Europe provoked a special sense of shame and
responsibility among the international community, which led to its
engagement in conflict resolution, peace-building, and development measures,
not least in the field of transitional justice. Yet despite this investment,
willingness in the war-affected states to confront their past and end
impunity for the crimes then committed remains weak, sustained only by the
persistence of democracy and human rights activists, and the range of
carrots and sticks offered by the international community to take up the
measures it proposes. By
Impunity Watch, July 2009
Action to Combat Impunity in Serbia: Options and Obstacles
Examines the root causes and nature of impunity for crimes committed by the
Serbian state and citizens during the wars of Yugoslavia's dissolution
during the 1990s. The 86-page document presents research findings, along
with policy recommendations drawn from wide-ranging policy consultations
with state and non-state actors for better achieving truth, justice,
reparations, and guarantees of non-repetitions of grave crimes against
international law. By
Impunity Watch, December 2008 (PDF)
The Renegade
Smug in their ethnocentricity, certain of their own superiority, indifferent
to the cultural, religious, and political concerns of their neighbors, all
the Serbs needed in 1990 was a leader to lead them into disaster. The most
repellent crimes in the former Yugoslavia had the enthusiastic support of
people whose education and past accomplishments would lead one to believe
that they would know better. The role of the patriotic intellectual in
Serbia was to make excuses for the killers of women and children. As for
journalists and political commentators, their function was to spread lies
and then prove that these lies were true. I was being asked by my own people
to become an accomplice in a crime by pretending to understand and forgive
acts that I knew were unforgivable. By Charles Simic, New York Review of
Books, December 20, 2007
The Denial Syndrome and Its Consequences: Serbian Political Culture since
2000
Since the outbreak of the War of Yugoslav
Succession in 1991 and the subsequent atrocities, a significant portion of
Serbian society, including the upper echelons of the government, has
displayed symptoms of the denial syndrome, in which the guilt is transposed
onto the Croats, Bosniaks, and Kosovar Albanians. This syndrome is also
associated with a veneration for the victimized hero. In the Serbian case,
it has also been associated with efforts to whitewash the role played by
Serbs such as Milan Nedic and Draza Mihailovic during World War II and has
reinforced feelings of self-righteousness in Belgrade’s insistence on its
sovereignty over the disputed province of Kosovo. By Sabrina Ramet, 2006
The Case for Kosova: Passage to Independence
This collection of essays examines and demolishes numerous Serbian
nationalist myths about Kosova. Edited by Anna Di Lellio, 2006
Bosnia-Herzegovina will win its law suit in The Hague
Perspective on Serbian war crimes. By Srda Popovic Translated from Dani
(Sarajevo), 12 May 2006
The Dark Side of Serbia
Milosevic was not solely responsible for the malign energy in
Serbia that caused so much death and destruction in the region. I refuse to
lend exclusive importance to a man who was only the executor of forces
behind him - the dark and dangerous forces of Serbian nationalism.
By Gordana Igric, Balkan Insight,
March 15, 2006
Winking at a blind man
By Miroslav Filipovic. Translated from Helsinška Povelja (Belgrade),
nos 91-92, January-February 2006
The
Wall of Denial
Despite mountains of evidence, many Serbs refuse to accept
that a massacre took place.
By Nerma Jelacic, Stacy Sullivan and Ed
Vulliamy in Srebrenica, IWPR, July 6, 2005
Serbia Struggles to Face the Truth about Srebrenica
"The truth has been smashed in our faces, painfully and mercilessly." So
thundered Serbia's venerable newspaper Politika on June 4. It was three days
after Serbian television had broadcast a film of Serbs executing six young
Muslims after the fall of the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995.
"The Serbian public is aghast, because it has finally seen that
someone…actually committed bestialities in uniform and with Serbian
insignia."
Ten years after the fall of the enclave
and the massacre of up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in the days that followed,
Srebrenica has returned to haunt the Serbs. But the screening of the now
notorious executions video was neither the beginning of the uproar about
Srebrenica in Serbia nor the end. While it is true that Serbs were initially
taken aback by the film, it seems that some have quickly recovered from the
shock. While many commentators in Serbia and abroad predicted immediately
after the showing of the video that it would radically change Serbian
attitudes about the crimes committed in their name during the Yugoslav wars,
it is far from clear that this is happening.
By Tim Judah, June 17, 2005
Serbia in the vicious circle of nationalism
This study is an effort to bring to light new forms of
nationalism in post-Milosevic Serbia and show that Serbia has not yet found
an alternative to nationalism. --
Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, December 2003
Political Propaganda and
the Plan to Create "A State For All Serbs."
Consequences of using media for
ultra-nationalist ends. Report
compiled for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
by Professor Renaud De la Brosse, February 2003
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5 (PDF)
Under the Holy Lime Tree: The
Inculcation of Neurotic and Psychotic Syndromes as a Serbian War Strategy,
1986-1995 The article looks at some of the recurrent
themes in Serbian propaganda, including Victimization,
Dehumanization of designated "others," Belittlement, Conspiracy,
Entitlement, and Superhuman powers and divine sanction. By
Sabrina Ramet, Polemos (Zagreb), December 2002
The Disintegration of the Yugoslav Intellectual Community
With the erosion of the Yugoslav centralist system, nationalism found a home
in the official scientific institutions. In this article, the 1986
Memorandum of the Serbian Academy is analyzed in detail. The Memorandum
started the definitive transition of the country’s leading ideology from
communism to nationalism and later became useful to Milosevic in his rise to
power, when he adopted the national program included in the Memorandum as
his own. By Robert Stallaerts, 2002 (Published in Secession, History and
the Social Sciences, edited by Bruno Coppieters and Michel Huysseune)
Saviours of the Nation: Serbia's Intellectual Opposition and the Revival of
Nationalism
Discusses why the
strong and apparently democratic opposition movement subsequently turned
towards an extreme form of nationalism and had by the end of the 1980s
accepted Milosevic's undemocratic policies.
By Jasna Dragovic-Soso, 2002
Serbian
Nationalism in the Twentieth Century,
submitted to the ICTY May 29, 2002. Available in six parts:
1
2
3
4
5
6
Expert Report of Audrey Budding (PDF)
Serbia is sick with indifference The
Serbian
people have spent thirteen years listening to
Milosevic's media, the state and private TV stations which, by order of the
Leader, spouted hatred against their neighbors and made them indifferent to
war crimes. The same media, using the same frequencies and managed by more
or less the same individuals, are now in the service of the new government.
They do not forget the heroes from the past. Thus BK TV forwarded New Year's
greetings from its viewers to Radovan Karadzic in the Bosnian mountains.
--
By Bozo Nikolic, Monitor (Podgorica, Montenegro), February 8, 2002
What did your dad do for Milosevic?
The author finds collective amnesia in Serbia, as people assure him that,
all along, they hated the dictator and supported the resistance. -- Tim
Luckhurst, The New Statesman, October 16, 2000
The Forging of Schizophrenia "I know that Fascism is a
historical term; that the history of Nazi Germany is not the same as that of
Milosevic's Serbia. However, in post-modernist and feminist theory we speak
of so-called `sliding concepts', when a new epoch inherits with some
additions concepts belonging to an earlier one. In my view we should not
fear the use of `big terms' if they accurately describe certain political
realities. Serbian Fascism has its own concentration camps, its own
systematic representation of violence against Others, its own cult of the
family and cult of the leader, an explicitly patriarchal structure, a
culture of indifference towards exclusion of the Other, a closure of society
upon itself and upon its own past. It has a taboo on empathy and a taboo on
multiculturalism. It has powerful media acting as proponents of genocide; it
has a nationalist ideology; it has an epic mentality of listening to the
Word and obeying authority." -- Interview with Zarana Papic, prominent
Serbian feminist and supporter of the Belgrade circle Women in Black.
Bosnia Report, May 11, 2000
Milosevic Is One Problem. National
Denial Is the Other.
The thousands of Serbs marching through the streets are not calling for Mr.
Milosevic's resignation because his forces executed or expelled hundreds of
thousands of
Albanians in Kosovo. No, the protesters are angry with Mr. Milosevic
because he has driven Yugoslavia's economy into the ground. They are angry
that he turned their country into a pariah nation. Yet, perhaps most
telling, they are angry with him not because he fought wars in Kosovo,
Bosnia, and
Croatia but because he
lost them. Stacy Sullivan, The New York Times, August 21, 1999
Serbia Under the Threat of Fascism
Former mayor of Belgrade Bogdan Bogdanovic discusses the nature of Serbian
nationalism.
Published in Monitor (Podgorica, Montenegro),
June 18, 1999
Serbian aim to kill all Kosovans is nothing new
After Milosevic came to power, on the back of his promises to "defend" the
Serbs of Kosovo, Kosovo's autonomy was withdrawn and a systematic oppression
of the Kosovars was resumed. This was not oppression for its own sake. It
was aimed at the actual removal of the Albanians. Arkan, the notorious
gangster and war criminal, who was elected to the Serbian assembly as a
"representative" of Kosovo in elections boycotted by the Albanian
population, made this quite clear. Most of the Kosovars, he explained, had
come in from Albania in the last 50 years and they ought to be regarded as
"tourists". This claim is, of course, utterly ludicrous, even by the
standards of Serb nationalist rhetoric. But it's not meant as a rational
argument. It is an implicit demand for the mass expulsion of the vast
majority of the population of Kosovo. Tourists, after all, go "home," in
this case presumably to Albania. -- Fintan O'Toole, Irish Times,
April 30, 1999
Beyond Victimhood
On the Serbian opposition to Milosevic By Lawrence Weschler, April 12, 1999
A Serb who backs the Bombing As the former editor of the
Sarajevo newspaper Oslobodenje, she lived and worked under the fire
of Serbian guns on a daily basis from 1992 to 1994. Now living in Toronto,
she supports NATO air strikes over the situation in Kosovo, even though she
is a Serb. By Gordana Knezevic, The Toronto Star, April 11, 1999
The Complicity of Serbian Intellectuals in Genocide in the 1990s
The war against Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s was planned by Serbian
intellectuals and authorities long before the first Serbian attacks. In the
fall of 1986, the Serbian Academy of Science and Art, representing Serbia's
most prominent intellectuals, issued a memorandum demanding that Serbia's
borders be expanded. By Philip J. Cohen, in chapter 2 of This time we
knew: western responses to genocide in Bosnia, edited by Thomas Cushman
and Stjepan Mestrovic, 1996. (Excerpts available at the link shown.)
The Serbian
Blueprint for Cleansing Kosovo
Voislav Seselj, Serbian deputy prime minister and leader of the Radical
Party of Serbia, outlined this plan for the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo in
1995. It bears a close resemblance to what happened there in 1998-99.
October 14, 1995
Srdja Popovic: an exiled Yugoslav speaks
The Serbian anti-nationalist human rights lawyer discusses the evolution of
Milosevic's political power and his exploitation of nationalism.
Milosevic's "policy will end in a catastrophe. The weakness
of the opposition makes it more probable that it will be the catastrophe of
the Serbian people. ... The military defeat of the Milosovic government is
in the best interest of the Serbian people. It is something that every good
Serbian patriot should wish for. ... If I see somebody trying to murder
somebody else, of course my duty is to try to stop him. I'm not saying that
by doing so and applying violence to the situation, I'm actually trying to
help those people lead a good life. I don't know what they will do once they
leave the scene. What I see Serbs doing in Bosnia is committing an act of
aggression against a state that has been recognized by United Nations, and I
see them committing genocide. I think that both of these things should be
stopped. Of course, stopping it would not solve the problem of how these
people will live next to each other in the future, but first you have to
stop the crimes. The international community has an obligation to do so,
under the Convention on Genocide and the Charter of the United Nations. They
have an obligation to use force to stop aggression, and to stop genocide."
Interviewed by Slobodan Drakulic,
Peace Magazine
(Toronto), March-April 1994
Programme Declaration of the Serb Radical Party
" ... to expel without delay all 360 thousand Albanian emigrants and their
descendants," [along with specific steps for the complete annihilation of
all Kosovar Albanian culture, society, social benefits, property benefits,
educational benefits, employment, industry, domicile, and existence].
Adopted February 23, 1991
|
Serbian
Feminism: Against Serbian Nationalism
Thinking, Creating, and Living Feminism - Zarana Papic By
Dejan Georgievski, September 13, 2012
At home
with Lepa Mladjenovic, Serbian anti-fascist feminist. By Joan
Nestle, 2000
Making feminist politics among women of two sides of the front lines
The war in
former Yugoslavia did not start because people hated each other, but because
the hatred was manufactured by the states. The notion of nationalism as well
as racism is a construction. It is racism that constructs race, and hatred
against women that constructs inferiority of women, and hatred against the
ethnic other that constructs nationalism. By Lepa Mjadenovic, June 1999
Feminists in Serbia Collected
articles, 1998-99
|
|