Less than Human (The Cunt, The Gun, The State)
Jasmina Tesanovic
BELGRADE, 22 February 2006
I refuse to speak the name of the Bad Guy Who Became the Good Guy. When Milosevic was in power, for years on end, his words and face everywhere, his and his alone, while those of us, the political idiots, the victims, were so baffled and mute, I gave a vow to myself: the Word is power. I will never mention his name, privately or publicly.
This Bad Guy who became a good guy, because he pleads guilty in front of his God: he wants attention.
He gives long speeches, speeches full of himself and his new way out of prison: out of himself. He pleads for our sympathy, for compassion as though this lessens his guilt, and the victims' relatives feel disgusted. So does his boss, the number one indicted, who gave the order, who conveyed those orders from somebody else… He, who plays the game of the big Serbian hero from past centuries, and displays his grandeur saying literally:
I care for only three things in life: the Cunt, the Gun and the State.
God knows how many women he raped, whispered a relative sitting next to me…
His wife is sitting in the audience too… Today they are loud and laughing. While the Bad guy who became Good is describing how he executed his first victim by asking the "Poor Thing" to step out of the row and then shooting him, the sister of the shot man sobs aloud in court. The Good guy chose his first victim at random, and he does not know if his hasty shot actually murdered the man. He claims: I wanted to do it fast and clean — for their sake.
Answering the question of his own lawyer, he continues, yes, they had military elements in their clothing, they wore short trousers, thick socks. They were banging metal cooking pans to make noise and irritate us. He still despises them for this. An unrestrainable moan is coming from the audience. I believe even his women could not stop it.
We are not gypsies, he adds: we are telling the truth here and facing each other. We are not proletarians, says his superior, whom he fights for not facing the truth and admitting he gave the orders.
He says: We have still our people outside the courts and prisons, we are doing this for our country, our children. I am a Serb and this is my nation.
As we are silently sobbing, fighting the urge to scream, one of hero's supporters turns around nervously and proudly shouts: stop whimpering, you sissies… The Scorpions are named for the guns they carried, the second major value they killed for. They carried the guns out of their homes, and used them on any land they felt it was their country: that third value.
I am in a judgmental mood. I find it incredible that they believe such bullshit for even a second.
Their relatives swagger in overpriced finery, from head to foot: ugly and fantastically vulgar, but preening with self-esteem.
The Bad Guy who became Good is not whimpering: in his haughty manner, he is claiming that, for ten years, he slept badly: not because of their atrocity, but BECAUSE of the film. If it hadn't been for the film, he could have forgotten the episode of executing six bound young men, face-down in a ditch, but the fact that the film existed made him come out. The others claim they too have come out: to be arrested for various noble reasons. Are we all dreaming? Not one of these indicted criminals gave themselves in: they were all caught and nailed. Just as the ghost of their true hero and leader is still hanging in the courtroom… Today, when the press hysteria about his alleged capture once again has sunk into passive despair.
So you feel guilty because of the film? asks Natasa Kandic.
The Good guy who claims God will condemn him, fails to deny this; the film is God's stick of chastisment, come out of heaven.
The director of the atrocity film — tomorrow, he testifies himself — apparently asked for stage help from both victims and killers. He required to arrange themselves in a convenient way before he himself started shooting the video sequence. An assistant director had to charge the camera's batteries…
The Bad guy turned good, who was the first one to pull a trigger, claims that his commander wanted this video made to endear himself to somebody important. That was the purpose of this artistic endeavor. But in his rage and for all his broken illusions about the grandeur of his leader, he still is not spilling the beans…
The women in the audience are cat-fighting with us, the women of the victim's families, and the Women in Black. A mother just breaks in tears: to Hague, to Hague with all of you…this is too much… We are hushed by the policeman in the courtroom, I am hissing at the hysterical laughter of their women. We should not really sit together. We are repeating the primal scene from ten years ago, only with lawyers rather than guns.
The Good guy is speaking of the humorous slang they used, of the "packages" that were human beings, of the "petrol order," meant not for their cars but for cremating corpses. They referred to prisoners as "jale", cattle, the less-than-human. Jale, I've never heard of it. I am sitting with the mothers just like myself, women who gave birth to "jale," children executed for being less than human.
The Good guy says: we were trained to kill, but not to bear the consequences of going through with it: I never expected a clear order, I never got a clear order before: "kill these guys."
Hard to believe: in those days 8000 people were killed through hints and insinuations: the Divine Eye never registered it.
Nobody wanted to be a cunt, repeats the Good guy, meaning a coward who refused to kill. Meaning…what? He is explaining genocide. Nobody acted normally, he is adding, we were nervous, tight and laughing, but we faked it…
A lawyer points out that if the war criminal didn’t know he could refuse the orders, then he is treated as somebody fighting for his own life.
Our hero claims he never heard of the Geneva convention, how to treat prisoners or civilians… and yet he speaks so much of military pride and honor…
It goes on. Two men, godfathers to each other's children, start insulting each other in a confrontation. They are almost in tears with each other, falling out of love… I wonder why the judge is letting this indecent family scene go on forever. This morning, one of our young punk-styled Women in Black was not allowed to enter the courtroom, because she was dressed "indecently." The lawyers are lamenting that they are not allowed to use the local restaurants, by law, even though, thanks to their profession, they are spending entire days inside the court…
Did you say, or not, that I ratted us out as a CUNT?
Yes I did say that, says proudly the Other.
Did you say that one of the Scorpions didn’t shoot because he was a CUNT?
Yes, I did.
That is my philosophy, says the commander.
This tape is of an incident I didn’t know about — but even if I did give the orders to kill, and killed, I would never say sorry afterwards. Destiny was on my side at that time, and someday it will be again. I have nothing to regret and no need to apologize.
Maybe it is a good thing to hear a bad guy turn good. Then you can see what it means when the Other remains bad and claims that destiny will redeem him. That God, that destiny, they shared more than a bed, more than a love, those words that we Women in Black hear, record, compare in our notes, whisper over in the court, and promise to each other, trembling, as if raped by their intact criminal ethic, that we will never pronounce. Because the word is power, but power is in words, too.
That is why we write this.
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Previous posts on Boing Boing about Ms. Tesanovic's work: Link
Images: screengrabs from TV in Belgrade today, but they're old footage of Mladic, who hasn't been live on television in ten years. (Thanks, Bruce Sterling!)
