Ratko Mladić arrested

A couple of weeks ago, Osama bin Laden was found and killed in Pakistan by the US. As is usually the case, a lot of banter and ridicule followed – one of which was a picture of Osama Bin Laden titled ‘Hide and Seek Champion: 2001– 2011’. I remember thinking that he wasn’t the champion, there were still many war criminals and the like at large such as Ratko Mladić – the man who masterminded the genocide in Srebrenica and presented it as a ‘gift’ to the Serbian nation. I wondered whether he’d ever be caught.

Last week, as some of you might know, Ratko Mladić was indeed arrested in Serbia. The head of the Yugoslavian National Army (JNA) and the one who executed Karadžić’s vision verbatim all over Bosnia, has been – as an unbelievable amount of westerners like to eloquently say – finally brought to justice. I don’t quite agree and I’d like to share my reasoning with you.

Just like Slobodan Milošević and Radovan Karadžić, Mladić will be taken to the Hague and put on trial for his war crimes, prominently displayed in front of the western public and that is about as much as the West can do. Quite frankly, it is not enough. I don’t want to sound too contemptuous when I say all of this, but a trial in the Hague is definitely not what the definition of justice is. Prisoners in the Hague are more comfortable than you and I have ever been – the Detention Unit is described as “the Hague Hilton”, and anyone can watch a video tour of how luxuriously war criminals have it there. Moreover, the running cost of all of the trials of former-Yugoslavian war criminals is about $1.2 billion (estimated back in 2008). Money that could have been better spent in helping the victims and their families somewhat recover. Don’t get me wrong – no money could ever make up for the damage that has been done, the lives that have been lost, the suffering my people have endured since 1992, but it would help.

To put it in plain language, justice cannot be satisfied in this case. Not ever. And that is the painful truth we have to learn to accept. You cannot bring back the dead, you cannot undo murders, rapes, unspeakable torture and the horrors the West Balkan people have survived in concentration camps. Justice most certainly will never be satisfied for the genocide survivors of Srebrenica. It will not bring back the massacred children of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

However, his capture is a good thing. Somewhat comforting news and a lot of us will sigh with relief tonight.

I also happen to have an exam tomorrow – just a few hours away from writing this, but I honestly do not care. I’ve wasted enough time going over online articles. Most of the foreign reactions are, unsurprisingly, quite naïve in parts, too optimistic and they sound like clueless happy-ending-believers.

Last term I wrote an article about Lilly Ebert, a Holocaust survivor, and the events that life put on her shoulders. She might not have known that in the audience, there was a German student, sitting and listening to her every word. It was he who later asked her a question – one I found was unbelievably insightful:

“Have you gone back to Germany or shared your story with the German youth? How did they react?” It was the one question Mrs. Ebert seemed startled to have been asked. She did not smile, but replied nevertheless:

“I have not gone back to Germany and would not talk to Germans of my age. I’d wonder what they had been doing during the war and whether they submitted to the general murderous convention that Hitler preached. I wouldn’t like to meet people of my own age, and I’d feel uneasy meeting the German youth of today – I’d wonder what their parents did and with what ideologies they have been brought up”.

That is quite understandable. Time could never erase the horrors she had been through. I wonder whether there are enough Serbians out there who would listen to what a Bosnian concentration camp survivor has to say. Hitler and his chief war architects shot themselves and later the Nuremberg trials were carried out, their significance being substantially more important as they were held on German territory. Justice was brought to the heart of Germany and spread via Nuremberg throughout the country we today admire. Distance dwindles the seriousness of monstrous deeds, and to put that in today’s perspective: the Hague might be a good idea, but it definitely is not the best one. Democracy can only come from within the country itself, remorse and shame can only be felt throughout the Serbian nation once the crimes that have been committed are recognised and categorically convicted by their leaders. No reconciliation can be achieved in that area until the ones who have committed these atrocities come forward with their repentance. Boris Tadić (Serbia’s current President) is not the one to ask for forgiveness; Karadžić, Mladić, Milošević and the like are. His words will not be listened to by the chetniks (četnici) who rallied for Ratko Mladić just half an hour away from Sarajevo. Support has been prominently displayed all over Youtube videos and Facebook pages for Mladić just hours after his arrest was confirmed. All of these featured promises of a new war in the Balkans and prophecies of the ‘next Mladić’. My whole body twitches at the thought of this. I can still see, written in capital letters: RATKO MLADIĆ, SRPSKI HEROJ (Ratko Mladić, Serbian hero). Tadić’s words will be considered a betrayal to the true Serbian blood and this is what was chanted by the chetniks. He is a start though – I just hope he doesn’t get overpowered and crushed eventually.

Wikileaks recently released documents that said that the Serbian government knew where Ratko Mladić was up to 2009. They released documents with tips on his whereabouts which were sent by the US officials to Belgrade and were completely ignored. Now it seems he’ll receive the best medical care the world has to offer, which might postpone his death for a year or two, but I highly doubt we’ll see him convicted. A déjà-vu from Milošević’s case. There indeed is no justice in the world, only our attempts at evening out the consequences.

Finally, there is a common link between the Balkan radicals (the Balije, Ustaše and Četnici): they are (mostly) uneducated, village folk who are brought up in communities which have been concentrated in small areas, manipulated by religious and political leaders into believing that serving them is ‘serving God’s will’. They believe that they are a chosen nation and are brainwashed from their cradles by a neo-nazi-like ideology. You also get the other extreme: I for one find it startling that Radovan Karadžić was educated at Columbia University, New York (an Ivy League school, yes). Still, the most alarming thing about the rallies in Mladić’s name was that there were many children and youth standing side-by-side with their grandparents, Serbian flags in some hands and Mladić’s portraits in others. It sickens me that this is today’s reality.

There is hope for the future nevertheless. Last year, after the refusal of the Serbian Government to put forward a document acknowledging Serbia’s involvement in the war in Bosnia and that there had been a genocide in Srebrenica just a decade ago, 20 young Serbian members of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights spray-painted across the Assembly’s entrance: Тa тешкa страна рец ‘геноцид’ (that tough foreign word ‘genocide’). Kudos to you my friends.