Happy new year, everyone! By some measure, the ten top news stories.
In Serbia, after five years of the Democratic Party trying to pretend it was just like the Serbian Radical Party and the Serbian Progressive Party trying to prove it was just like the Democratic Party, they finally traded identities.
Croatia joined the EU in 2013 and showed how quickly it could integrate the European standards of 1941.
ICTY overcame the barrier of distance and adopted the legal standards of the states whose behaviour provoked its founding.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the public demanded accountability, and the state and its sponsors briefly thought about it.
Kosovo and Serbia sort of made an agreement and sort of held some performances that sort of looked like elections.
Emirs, Strauss, Kahn and Guzenbauer, enough said?
Tito attracted more attention than all the spectacles that have been dwarfing Skopje.
Russia upped its game by replacing an ambassador who questions whether the people around him are Serbs with one who calls the people around him monkeys.
People across the UK quivered with excitement at the prospect of lots of folks freeing up inexpensive vacation homes across Romania and Bulgaria.
People should know, and so other people are there to help them, and so they will. On 28 March 1999, members of the “Scorpions,” a reserve police unit, paid an uninvited visit to the home of the Bogujevci family in Podujevo. By the time the visit ended a few minutes later, fourteen members of the Bogujevci family, the Lugaliju family and the Duriqi family were murdered by gunshots. The visit by the “Scorpions” was not part of a battle or a fight against terrorism. At the ages of two and four respectively, Albion Duriqi and Mimoza Duriqi had not had the chance to join any organisations, paramilitary or otherwise. Shehide Bogujevci, at the age of 67, and Hamdi Duriqi, at the age of 72, were past the age for active military service.
Some of the five children who survived the massacre participated in collecting and giving evidence. Fatos, Saranda and Jehona Bogujevci gave evidence at the trials of Vlastimir Djordjević (convicted and awaiting appeal) at ICTY and of Saša Cvjetan (convicted and sentenced in a domestic court in Serbia) and Dejan Demirović (turned protected witness). There were a few more trials of members of the “Scorpions” unit, and the surviving children gave testimony at all of them. Other than Vlastimir Djordjević, none of the people who supplied, financed and commanded the “Scorpions” have been charged.
This is probably about as far as courts and prosecutions are likely to go. The limits on criminal justice are, in a word, overdetermined. But resolved that the people who ought to know about the crime should know, the surviving family members put together an exhibition, “Bogujevci – visual history,” (the PDF catalog) which made its way this week to the Belgrade Cultural Centre. The exhibit is disarmingly simple. A visitor enters and sees first the living room of the family home, looking very much like typical family living rooms across the region. The next room gives details of the killings through photos and lists of the victims and recollections of the survivors. Visitors then move on to the hospital room where the survivors were mistreated, and finally to a room showing documentation of the trials. The surviving family members explain the exhibition in terms of the need of people to know the truth. The director of the Cultural Centre explains that she was willing to (fight to) host it so that “as a society we can show that we are ready for dialogue.”
Is it necessary to say that not everybody in Belgrade was enthusiastic about the prospect? The responses ahead of the exhibition ranged from the loopy papers like the extreme-right Pravda (“Albanian provocation in the centre of Belgrade”) and Kurir (“Albanian propaganda: Artists from Kosovo make an exhibition in the middle of Belgrade!”), to the finger-yellowing tabloid Telegraf (“Scandal: An Albanian exhibition right in Knez Mihailova”) and the whatever-the-fuck-they-are Novosti (“Albanian propaganda right on Knez Mihailova”). So if you peek at the range from subconscious-official to hyper-official media, you could get the feeling either that there is a broadly shared consensus in opposition to information out there or that under conditions of austerity they are all sharing the same headline writer. The fact that on the evening of the opening only a few dozen members of the Horst Wessel community choir showed up to shout insults at the attendees might be taken to suggest that the latter is the case.
But there was a surprise attendee. Prime minister Ivica Dačić came to the opening, let the members of the Bogujevci family take him on a tour, gave a statement affirming the importance of the exhibition, and expressed his sympathy with the victims of violence. That would be the same Ivica Dačić who was the principal spokesman for the Milošević regime at the time that the massacre took place. Throughout the evening and into the morning, there were expressions of Ivica-love from the most unexpected quarters. He was praised for courage, for showing his readiness for reconciliation, and for placing officialdom on the side of open exchange.
And it’s a bit hard to disagree, all that is great, especially in comparison to what could have happened, and may very well have happened not much earlier. Maybe the gesture was transformative and meaningful enough, and we can agree with Woody Allen (did I just say that?) that 80% of life is showing up.
Or maybe not. Let’s have a look at what Ivica Dačić actually said. First he gave a statement minimizing the number of perpetrators and their sponsors, saying:
“They asked me when I came here about an apology, my answer is that everyone who is guilty has been convicted and that I would like all of the guilty people for all of the crimes from all sides to be convicted. That is much more meaningful than an apology. I offer my sympathies to the families of the victims of crimes; for the sake of reconciliation and the continuation of our shared life that is the way it should be in all of the major parts of the former Yugoslavia.”
So, he makes it a little bit interesting. In a few sentences he tell us 1) that anybody who has not already been convicted is not guilty, 2) that guilt for crimes depends on reciprocal guilt for crimes from other formerly warring parties, and 3) that states not involved in the conflict of which the massacre that is described in the exhibition was a part have some obligation to the ones that were involved. The narrowing of responsibility brings with it a broadening, and gle čudo both of them are transparently self-interested.
But that’s not all that Ivica Dačić said. He continued:
“It would be a shame if an exhibition like this were taken to imply that we are talking about our crimes or their crimes, because victims are victims. The guilty people did not do what they did in the name of Serbia, nor did anyone authorise them to do it.”
This is a bit interesting because Dačić knows better. He knows, for example, that the trial chamber judgment in the Djordjević case explicitly addresses the authority given by the Interior Ministry to the “Scorpions.” He knows that Interior Ministry personnel involved with similar crimes are still employed in the Interior Ministry. He knows that the “Scorpions” were a reserve police unit under the jurisdiction of the Interior Ministry.
But yes, I can anticipate you saying, sure, Interior Ministry this, Interior Ministry that. Dačić was there not as a technical official of government, but in his symbolic role as Prime Minister. Perhaps if the Prime Minister wants answers, he could share some of his thoughts with the Minister of the Interior. I think they might know one another.
Apologies for being a little contrarian here, it’s not really in my nature. It’s great that Ivica was thoughtful enough to roll himself into the gallery. He took one small step for humankind. And along the way placed one little kick in the butt of justice.
East Ethnia 