Comment: Milosevic on Trial – the Serb View

When prosecutors at the UN tribunal opened their case against Slobodan Milosevic two years ago, they hoped that the process would make waves in Serbia. It was hoped that once the Serbian public became aware of the crimes Milosevic committed, they would distance themselves from their leader and acknowledge that crimes were committed in their names.

Unfortunately, this has not happened. When the prosecution rested its case last month, Milosevic was enjoying a resurgence in popularity and the tribunal remained one of the one of the most despised international institutions in Serbia.

Indeed, in December’s parliamentary elections, four Serbian political parties placed tribunal indictees on their election tickets – including Milosevic, Vojislav Seselj – and the new government, under the direction of Vojislav Kostunica, proposed a moratorium on cooperation with the Hague court.

How is that a man who was regarded as symbol of evil at the time of his ouster on October 5, 2000 could be rehabilitated in the minds of the Serbian public after nearly 300 witnesses – including his former associates and scores of his victims – testified against him?

Why wasn’t the Serbian public appalled by the horrors of war that were recounted in the courtroom?

The answer is simple. The Serbian media, the intelligentsia and the government have led the public to believe that the tribunal as an anti-Serb institution, calling it, “a court that tries Serbia,” “a political rather than a legal institution”, “an illegal institution of the international community”, “an institution formed to cover up NATO and American crimes”, and “a court of selective justice”.

Reports about the tribunal in the media are almost always negative. Sometimes the reporting is shallow, sometimes incorrect, and sometimes just biased.

While Milosevic was making political speeches each day in The Hague, often harassing witnesses, articles in the Serbian press hailed his defence strategies, with headlines such as, “Milosevic rejects accusations” and “Serbia was never at war”.

There are practically no stories in the media offering the readers an analytical summary of the Milosevic trial so far.

Still, to say that the media is to blame would not be the whole story. The Serbian public has been able to watch live broadcasts of the Milosevic trial and even without the press commentary, it has reacted negatively.

Some intellectuals living and working in Serbia - journalists, lawyers, activists of non-governmental organisations and even some political party members - have argued that in order to make a clean break with the past, the public has to face the past. There is no future, they say, unless this can be done, and the Hague’s role in that is irreplaceable. However, these arguments only reach a small and closed circle.

Much of the Serbian intelligentsia simply echoes the established notion that the Hague is indeed anti-Serb. Often, this is a result of ignorance. One of the important reasons why the Serbian people and its intelligentsia don’t understand the Hague tribunal’s role – regardless of whether they support it or oppose it – is their inability to differentiate between criminal proceedings and the people’s judgment.

Very few here are truly aware that it is just facts that are established before the tribunal and that, depending on the established facts, a person can be acquitted or convicted. It is the court’s duty to pass its decision solely on the credibility of concrete evidence on war crimes presented in court against individuals with a first and a last name.

Facts are established in the course of the trial, while some of the evidence is more and some less convincing. The presentation of the case is mostly a very slow and boring process, because there are many procedural activities involved. This is why in public appearances of many Serbian politicians or intellectuals evidence is selectively taken out of context – usually as the person following the trial sees fit.

Despite his unpopularity, Milosevic has managed to present the trial as a defence of the “Serbian cause”.

It is true that a trial for graves crimes against humanity and war crimes should not only result in a criminal punishment, but also in the harshest moral and political conviction. But such a trial is not held to judge politics or ethics.

However, even the Serbian intellectuals who support the Hague tribunal often speak of the responsibility of Serbia as a whole, its politics or state institutions – army, police, church – for the crimes committed during the Milosevic era. In their public appearances, they often speak of “the collective responsibility of the entire Serbian people”.

Although such statements carry great importance in the process of facing the past, they don’t exactly help improve the perception of the tribunal as a legal institution. Public debates would become clearer if the attitude towards the Hague tribunal were legalistic, strictly distinguishing between the individual and collective. Mixing these aspects only causes confusion and so becomes yet another argument used by those opposing the tribunal, who claim that this is a political court that tries Serbia and its politics.

The negative perception of the Hague court is also a result of the behaviour of Serbia’s new, democratic authorities which mainly met their obligations towards this institution at the eleventh hour and following ultimatums. Cooperation with the tribunal was always presented as a necessary evil, a condition that unwillingly has to be met so Serbia would have some gain –financial or political.

Besides all this, occasional political statements issued by the tribunal’s chief prosecutor or by the prosecution spokesperson, in which they exceed their authority, are also an argument used by the court’s opponents and back the already formed public stance that this is a political trial based on a negative attitude towards Serbs.

Unless a clear line is drawn between a crime and politics, no trial before the national courts or the Hague, will cause the kind of public reaction that would reflect the monstrousness of the crimes that have been committed.

Biljana Kovacevic-Vuco is the president of the Yugoslav committee of lawyers for human rights.