Just as Novak Djokovic showed off the best of Serbia with his Wimbledon win yesterday, so today the world saw the worst - war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic at The Hague.
Just as soon as Novak Djokovic showed the world the best Serbia has to offer, the engraving barely cold on his Wimbledon trophy, so the world witnessed the very worst: Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic back at the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, defiant, unrepentant, disruptive, unapologetic.
Today Mladic was removed from his hearing after quarrelling with the judge, the court entering a plea of not guilty on his behalf. He faces a total of 11 counts of genocide of Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Srebrenica; persecutions; extermination and murder; deportation and inhumane acts; terror and unlawful attacks; and the taking of UN hostages.
He is charged in connection with the Srebrenica massacre – Europe’s single worst atrocity since World War Two – in which 7,500 Muslims were massacred, and is also charged over the 44-month siege of Sarajevo from May 1992 – in which 10,000 people died.
So, how easy will it be for new Serbia to consign Mladic, Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic to the past? And what does the future hold for the Serbia of Djokovic and president Boris Tadic?
The arrest and prosecution of Mladic, and the determination of Tadic to face down the ultra-nationalists who protested his capture, will do much to accelerate Serbia’s rehabilitaion, removing one of the key barriers to accession to the European Union; Djokovic’s advance to the summit of the tennis world rankings, and his imperious dethroning of Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon the icing on the cake.
Certainly, the unreconstructed elements are still there, from the pro-Milosevic graffiti scrawled on walls in central Belgrade and the selling of Mladic t-shirts at Belgrade’s main train station, to the subtle distrust of foreigners – or at least those who obviously look like foreigners.
Yet in Tadic and Djokovic – the man every Serbian boy wants to be, and every Serbian girl wants to be with, whose visage adorns billboard after advert after magazine cover – the future is brighter for Serbia than perhaps it’s ever been, even more than after the fall of Milosevic a decade ago.
As Misha Glenny wrote in The Guardian recently:
“It was fitting that Serbia’s president, Boris Tadić, himself announced the arrest of Ratko Mladić in Belgrade. Nobody has put in a greater effort to run down the indicted war crimes suspect than Tadić… What Boris Tadić has done with Mladić is to take a huge step towards the moral rehabilitation of Serbs and Serbia whose reputation was so catastrophically compromised by the wars of the 1990s.
“He deserves our support and respect.”
Though one can never forget the horrors of Milosevic, Mladic and Karadzic, nor should, Serbia now is a much changed place, its leaders looking outwards, to the future, to Europe, to the world, where its favoured son now sits atop.
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60 Responses to “Two faces of Republika Srbija: the hopeful future, the shameful past”
beebo
@shamik
1. you said karadzic was protected by the “serbs” ((the generalizations we can open up a whole other topic on btw), again show us proof that any one person in serbia “protected” him and forget about the so called proof you have “the serbs” collectively as a nation protecting him as you implied. never in the history of warfare has an entire people been labeled “guilty” as the Serbs have. Never did i hear anyone accuse Germans, Hungarians, Croats or people from Argentina collectively responsible for “harboring” Nazis who were in their countries from the end of ww2 until even today. These are Nazis who started a war in which 60 million people died and nobody was ever held collectively “accountable”. This shows how much of a sick and perverted person you are. Again all crimes should be punished but its amazing that you only mention the Serbian ones that were committed in a civil war.
2. again for the tenth time; where am i defending Karadzic or Mladic? you are the one who said Mladic was guilty event his trial started. This shows how brainwashed you are by western media.
3. you are the “apologist” as you are attempting to distort history and to somehow use the worlds greatest tennis players success to score cheap political gains for some perverted agenda you have.
4. Novak Djokovic became #1 yesterday and beat Nadal in an epic match two days ago while the Bosnian war went on 20 years ago. By 1965 the world moved on from the horrors of ww2, it is time for Bosnian Muslim jihadi apologists to do the same.
beebo
the fact that i addressed every single one of your claims and you dared not to even attempt to answer ANY of my questions or address ANY of my points shows how out of your league you are. your responses to me are weak and you can not debate me even when i am sleeping…
beebo
THE SREBRENICA NUMBERS GAME By Jonathan Rooper
http://www.srebrenica-report.com/numbers.htm
bato
“Dear Luke,
Sorry, but there was clear involvement and you know it.”
Who knows? What knows? You are malicious or misinformed. For your information, I quote:
“The ICJ presented its judgement on 26 February 2007. It cleared Serbia of direct involvement in genocide during the Bosnian war. The court concluded the massacre of Muslim men by Bosnian Serb forces at Srebrenica did constitute genocide, but that the Serbian state could not be held responsible for the mass killing, or complicity in the act.”
You write about very sensitive things. Be careful next time and inform himself on the frst place.
Slaven Jovanovic
the hopeful future — YES , the shameful past – NO. If you have just a bit of a brain in your head and did independent research you would find out that Serbs in both Bosnia and Croatia were defending their homeland and that is nothing to be ashamed about. Would like you to call the names you deserve, but am to civilized to do that.