Jasmina Tesanovic: Belgrade, 3 May 2006
To Hague, to Hague
photos by Goranka Matic (Serbia in the early
1990s)
General Ratko Mladic, the world's most famous living
war criminal,
has not been arrested today. The president of the war
tribunal in
Hague, Carla del Ponte announced today that Serbia is
in the dog
house again: negotiations with European Union again
suspended, US
monetary help too… and many other repressive
measures to follow,
called the invisible wall of sanctions.
Carla del Ponte said angrily: President Kostunica
deceived me, only a
month ago he said they were closing in with the
operation…. Mladic
is hiding in Belgrade, moving from one flat to
another, helped by the
locals.
President Kostunica in return read a short notice for
his people,
not much really, except that he did his very best,
which is next to
nothing.
A Swiss radio broadcast is interviewing me: how do I
feel about
Carla's harsh statement against Serbia? Great, I say.
She could do
better, and this is not her first time. But who
cares, what
practical difference does it make if Mladic is hiding
in Serbia, or
in Switzerland or Moscow, or anywhere on the globe?
Interpol exists.
The secret police have gone anywhere, hit-men are
everywhere…
One minister of the current government did
resign, the only one
to speak of responsibility and credibility. I am not a
politician,
judge or police officer, yet I feel more
responsibility than some of
these people, regarding this issue, which is once
again turning the
wheel of history backwards.
Thanks to this failure,
our children
will grow in a xenophobic, homophobic, nationalist
clerical society.
One day they will justly get rid of us, their parents,
for being so
useless.
An old mythological ritual in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
part of the
country where my father comes from, is the performance
of "lapot."
Lapot is the execution of a useless member of society
with his own
consent.
The executioner and the feeble victim would climb
to the top of
a mountain, some isolated place with a nice view.
Then a loaf of
round bread would be placed on the head of the old man
or woman.
With one deft stroke of an axe, the head would be sent
off rolling
down the hill together with the breadloaf. The
remaining part of the
body would be buried with all due honors.
Mladic will never give himself in, he is a soldier.
He will commit suicide first, says my father.
He is not a soldier, he is a war criminal. How can
one appeal to his
"sense of duty" as President Kostunica does, asking
him to turn
himself in?
Well, if Mladic kills himself, does that end the
issue? asks my
father again.
Sure it would.
Well, why doesn't he, then…
There were times when people in this region
committed suicide
for much less than genocide, for a minor public shame
like
bankruptcy. When my grandfather went broke, my
grandmother had a hard time convincing him to ignore
the social pressure to kill
himself. Mladic's daughter committed suicide in the
very heyday of
his war career.
Many guesses why she did that: some nationalists
even blamed
the press for writing things about Mladic that his
family could not
bear. How easy it is to imagine being the niece of
Hitler, the wife
of Stalin, the daughter of Mladic: German women,
Russian women, and
Serbian women today. The women who refuse to perish
of their shame
become the rubble women, those who clean the history
of crime.
– – – – –
(Images: courtesy Goranka Matic)
Jasmina Tesanovic is an author, filmmaker, and wandering thinker who shares her thoughts with BoingBoing from time to time. Email: politicalidiot at yahoo dot com.
Previous essays by Jasmina Tesanovic on BoingBoing:
– Preachers and Fascists, Out of My Panties
–
Scorpions Trial, April 13
– The Muslim Women
– Belgrade: New Normality
– Serbia: An Underworld Journey
– Scorpions Trial, Day Three: March 15, 2006
– Scorpions Trial, Day Two: March 14, 2006
– Scorpions Trial, Day One: March 13, 2006
– The Long Goodbye
– Milosevic Arrives in Belgrade
– Slobodan Milosevic Died
– Milosevic Funeral
– Link to previous posts about Jasmina's work.
