<nettime> Re: (no subject)

["Ivo Skoric" <vze3c9dm@verizon.net>]

This, indeed, is hillarious that Dutch government resigns over the 
responsibilities in the matter relatively remote to them, while the 
government of Serbia, which is not only close to the region, but 
also closely involved with what happened in the region, behaves as 
if this does not really have anything to do with them. Sad but usual.
ivo

(E) Serbs should heed Dutch example, says daily
Politics
Katarina Tepesh
Apr 18,2002
N

BELGRADE, April 18 (Reuters) - Serbs should take a lesson from the Dutch and 
face the facts of the Srebrenica massacre instead of making heroes out of 
Bosnian Serb leaders held responsible for it, a Belgrade newspaper said on 
Thursday.
 
"While Serbian political figures are calmly walking streets of Belgrade 
wallpapered with the smiling faces of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the 
government of Dutch Premier Wim Kok has resigned over the official report on 
the bloody massacre that took place in June 1995," the Danas paper said.
 
Karadzic, the wartime leader of Bosnian Serbs, and Mladic, his top military 
commander, are wanted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal on charges of 
genocide for the killing of some 7,500 Muslim men after Serb forces took the 
Srebrenica enclave.
 
Solidarity posters, flyers and T-shirts with portraits of Karadzic have 
become a fairly common sight in Serbia recently, proudly proclaiming that 
"Every Serb is Radovan."
 
Both men remain at large seven years after the mass murder occurred.
 
"Ever since that day, Karadzic and Mladic have repeated the only thing they 
found worth pronouncing -- that they do not feel guilty and that they would 
never surrender to the Tribunal in The Hague," Danas said in its editorial, 
Remember Srebrenica.
 
"The Dutch battalion, on the other hand, feels guilty because it did not 
prevent the crime. The Dutch government, which had nothing to do with the 
slaughter, felt responsible for not doing enough to prevent it."
 
Kok resigned with his cabinet and the Dutch army chief quit earlier this week 
after a report citing the failure of a small Dutch peacekeeping force to 
prevent the massacre.
 
Belgrade-based Danas is the leading liberal paper in Serbia. Together with 
radio B-92 it has spearheaded a campaign of facing up to the crimes committed 
during the wars in former Yugoslavia.
 
The newspaper said political leaders should remember the massacre "not for 
the (international aid) money this country will get for cooperation with the 
Tribunal but for all the crimes committed in the name of Serbs."
 
"Not everyone is Radovan," it countered.
 
Anti-Karadzic posters are being papered over in northern Vojvodina province 
by Social Democrats whose leader said the party "cannot allow that the entire 
Serbian nation and all Serbs are individually identified with war criminals."
 
"Not every Serb is a criminal," the new stickers say.
 

   04/18/02 10:33 ET


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Ivo Skoric
1773 Lexington Ave
New York NY 10029
212.369.9197
ivo@balkansnet.org
http://balkansnet.org

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