Mladic Arrest Hasn't Ended Denial in Serbia

Despite all the international pressure exerted on Belgrade in recent years, only a very few optimists believed that General Ratko Mladic would actually be arrested. 

There were two reasons for this scepticism. First, the numerous trials held at the Hague tribunal to date have thrown up an abundance of irrefutable documentary evidence of the strong connection between Bosnian Serb military chief Mladic and the civilian and military leadership of Serbia during the 1992-95 conflict in Bosnia.

After all, during that whole period, Mladic was receiving a salary from Serbia, and once the war ended, Belgrade continued to pay him an army pension.

Secondly, after the end of the Bosnian conflict, the image of Mladic as hero was carefully nurtured by the mainstream media in Serbia. With the exception of a minority of liberals, most of the population in the country believed in this image as promoted by the media.

Only ten days before Mladic was arrested, an opinion poll conducted in Serbia showed that despite the ten million euro reward offered by the government, 78 per cent of respondents said they would not disclose the general's location if they knew it, 51 per cent strongly opposed his arrest, and 40 per cent said they regarded him as a Serb hero.

These strong levels of support were echoed in vox pops carried out in both Serbia and Republika Srpska, RS, the Serb entity in Bosnia-Hercegovina, following Mladic’s arrest.

“I shuddered inside when I heard the terrible news,” a Bosnian Serb woman said with tears in her eyes when reporters interviewed her in the small town of Pale near Sarajevo. Many ordinary men, women and young people made similar remarks in the days following the arrest.

Some were sad, like the woman in Pale, while others were angry and upset. Their anger was directed at Serbian president Boris Tadic, who announced news of the arrest to the world, and also at the European Union, which had made Mladic’s detention a condition for Belgrade to begin membership talks.

Recent days have seen a number of protests in Serbia and Bosnia as people give voice to their frustration. Although some unrest was to be expected, one has to wonder why the former Bosnian army chief continued to enjoy such wide support so many years after the war.

How is it possible that despite all the trials at the Hague tribunal and in local courts relating to the genocide perpetrated at Srebrenica and the siege of Sarajevo, citizens of Serbia and RS appear to know so little about the crimes with which Mladic is charged?

There is no doubt that the media in both Serbia and RS played a crucial role in creating this knowledge vacuum among ordinary people.

Only a few days before Mladic’s arrest, Serbian state radio and television company RTS indirectly admitted as much.

In a move that few anticipated, RTS publicly apologised for its wartime propaganda, as well as for its support for the regime of then Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, who was accused of playing a key role in the Balkan wars of the Nineties.

“We apologise to the people of Serbia and neighbouring countries who were exposed to insults, slander and hate speech,” RTS said in a statement posted on its website on May 24. “We have repeatedly hurt the feelings, integrity and dignity of intellectuals, opposition, independent journalists, and national and religious minorities,” the statement read.

In an effort to distance itself from its old warmongering role, RTS pledged itself to “promoting the rule of law, social justice, human and minority rights and freedoms, in line with European values”.

The apology was the first of its kind from Serbia's state broadcaster, one of the symbols of Milosevic's era and a pillar of his long years in power, a time punctuated by wars in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, international isolation and eventual economic downfall.

Some observers would argue that the apology came too late, given the damage the broadcaster did during its years spouting propaganda. Also, apologies are fashionable in the Balkans these days, especially when they carry no binding commitments.

RTS’s apology needs to be taken with a pinch of salt not because it came too late, but because it did not address the most important issue – the continued denial of Serbia’s true role in the Balkan wars.

So although RTS’s statement is welcome, it is not enough. What would be far more useful and effective would be for RTS to change its current editorial policy, and speak openly about the Srebrenica genocide and other war crimes perpetrated by Serbs and on behalf of Serbia. That way, RTS and other Serbian media could make a major contribution to ending the widespread culture of denial in this country.

Under the Milosevic regime, the dehumanisation of “others” and the rebuttal of war crimes allegations became the norm. War propaganda turned into the propaganda of denial, aimed at diminishing Serbia’s role in the wars in the Nineties. Nothing short of a process akin to de-Nazification will truly change Serbian society, which is especially sensitive to the genocide charges in Mladic's indictment.

Michael Waltzer wrote an insightful book called “Just and Unjust Wars” in 1977, in which he drew on the ideas of Thomas Aquinas, who distinguished between jus ad bellum – the justice of war – and jus in bello – justice in war. Marking out a clear distinction between the two would be a useful exercise for Serbian society in the days to come.

Prior to Mladic’s arrest, and a few days afterwards, the Serbian media began admitting that some injustices in war did take place. According to this interpretation, war is bad, atrocities happen in every war, and it is now time for Serbs to start accepting that some crimes were committed in their name.

However, a major step has yet to be taken, the same step that helped German society recover morally from the Second World War when it faced up to the evils of Nazism. If Serbian society really wants to come to terms with the past, it will have to gradually accept the fact that Serbia was responsible not only for some injustices in war, but for playing a leading role in unjust wars.

Dr. Edina Becirevic teaches at the Faculty of Criminal Justice Sciences in Sarajevo.