Radovan Karadzic and his grandchildren

[CroRadio.net]

http://www.signandsight.com/features/1746.html

27/08/2008
Radovan Karadzic and his grandchildren
Karadzic has been caught, but the war is not over yet for the heirs of
Yugoslavia's war criminals. By Dubravka Ugresic
I am not a monster, I am a writer!
(Radovan Karadzic)

Over the weekend of the 19th and 20th of July 2008, the town of Key
West in Florida played host to one hundred and forty-one — Ernest
Hemingways. Hemingways from all over America gathered in Key West in a
competition for the greatest degree of physical resemblance between
the famous writer and his surrogates. This year the winner was Tom
Grizzard, in what is said to have been a very stiff competition. The
photograph that went round the world shows a collection of merry
granddads, looking like Father Christmases who have escaped from their
winter duties, that is to say like Ernest Hemingway. The old men, who
meet every year in Key West on Hemingway's birthday, took part in
fishing and short story writing competitions.

The following day newspapers in Croatia carried a photograph of an old
man who has no connection at all with the hundred and forty-one old
men from the previous article. In Croatia on 21st July 2008, Dinko
Sakic died, at the age of eighty-six. Who was Dinko Sakic? Sakic was
the commandant of the Ustasha concentration camp of Jasenovac, where
Jews, Serbs, Gyspies and communist-oriented Croats were systematically
annihilated. After the war he managed to escape to Argentina, and it
was not until 1999 that the Argentinian authorities handed him over to
Croatia, where he was sentenced to twenty years in prison.

At that 'historic' moment, many Croats saw the sentence of Dinko Sakic
as an injustice because for them that same Independent State of
Croatia (in which Dinko Sakic had killed Jews, Gypsies, Serbs and
unsuitable Croats) was 'the foundation of our present Croatian
homeland', as the local priest, Vjekoslav Lasic, put it on the
occasion of his death. The priest was in fact merely expounding a
thesis put forward by Franjo Tudjman, the first President of Croatia
(since Ante Pavelic), and the 'father of the Croatian nation'. 'That
is why every decent Croat is proud of the name Dinko Sakic,' announced
the priest Vjekoslav Lasic, adding that he was 'proud that he had seen
Sakic on his bier dressed in an Ustasha uniform.' The funeral of old
Dinko Sakic at Mirogoj cemetery in Zagreb on 24th July 2008 was
attended by some three hundred people. Even aged criminals have
friends. Three hundred people is a pretty decent number.

On the day of Dinko Sakic's funeral, another old man rose from the
grave in Croatia. Zvonko Busic Tajko — the Croatian Mandela, or the
most renowned Croatian emigre (as some Croatian newspaper headlines
put it) — landed at Zagreb airport on 24th July, to an enthusiastic
reception by a crowd of some five hundred people. Busic was returning
to Croatia metaphorically from the grave, but in fact out of American
prisons where he had spent thirty-two years. Way back in the 1970s,
with his American wife, Julienne Eden Busic, he and a few friends had
hijacked an American aeroplane on its way to New York, because 'he
wanted to draw the attention of the world to the unjust position of
Croatia in the former Yugoslavia'.

This gesture of 'political activism' (as the Croatian papers defined
Busic's terrorist act) ended ingloriously, because Busic's explosive
device led to one American policeman being killed and another losing
an eye, and Busic and his wife ended up in prison. Julienne was
released on the eve of Croatian independence, she got a job in the
Croatian Embassy in Washington, and later in Croatia, in Franjo
Tudjman's personal security service. The Croatian army built a villa
on the Adriatic coast, so that she would be able to dedicate herself
fully to writing her autobiographical novel 'Lovers and Madmen' and to
her political activities, lobbying for her husband's release from
prison.

Among those gathered at Zagreb airport were Croatian politicians,
patriots, pop singers (Marko Perkovic Thompson, for example), priests,
children sitting on their fathers' shoulders and holding their welcome
drawings up to the cameras, young people shouting Ustasha slogans (For
the homeland ever ready!) and singing Ustasha songs. 'The Croatian
Mandela' made a patriotic speech and quoted a verse from Ivan
Gundulic's poem 'Osman', which every Croatian primary school kid knows
by heart:

The wheel of fate spins around
And around ceaselessly:
He who would be above is cast down
And he below is left on high.

Zvonko Busic added that, thanks to the good Lord and free Croatia (at
last I am in my free homeland!), he had climbed high, while, according
to the logic of the wheel of fortune, his enemies had fallen down. The
only person, to comment briefly the following day on Busic's
resurrection was the Croatian President Stipe Mesic (His motive could
have been patriotic, but the method he applied was the method of
terrorism). Zvonko and Julienne Busic told the newspapers that they
wanted a little peace, athough Busic's lively speech, his evident
excitement at finally finding himself 'among his own people', and the
five-hundred strong crowd suggested precisely the opposite.

On the 21st July 2008, the day Dinko Sakic died, all the world's
newspapers carried a photograph of an old man with a long white beard
and white hair, coquettishly gathered on the crown of his head like a
kind of diminutive Samurai pigtail. This old man had no connection
whatever with the Hemingways of Key West, nor with the late Dinko
Sakic, nor with Zvonko Busic, who was to land at Zagreb airport three
days later. This old man looked as though he had fallen out of the
file of some Hollywood agent: like a third-rate actor specializing in
the roles of Merlin and Gandalf in film fairytales. The old man was
arrested in Belgrade by the Serbian police just as he was getting into
a number 73 bus. It turned out that the old man was called Dragan
Dabic, or rather Dragan David Dabic (3D), or rather — Radovan
Karadzic.

From the moment of the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, the Balkan butcher
and European Osama Bin Laden, the media were overwhelmed with
countless farcical details: Karadzic's unsuccessful attempts to get
involved in football and his derisive nickname 'Phantom'; his
statement that Yasser Arafat was first an international terrorist,
then twenty years later he was awarded the Nobel Prize (an echo of
Tudjman's claim that some authority on the Nobel Prize had once
flattered him saying: If you were not a Croat, General, you would
certainly have received the Nobel Prize); Karadzic's frenetic 1986
student speech from the roof of the university; his activity as a
police informer; his financial fraud and embezzlement; his collection
of children's verse 'There Are Miracles, There Are No Miracles'; his
alleged mistress who also has two names; his website shop where you
can buy a little velbing (from well-being) or a 'cross-shaped
composition of the smallest velbing for your personal protection to be
worn on the chest' or a large velbing or 'spacious cross-shaped
composition which harmonises a whole space'; the decoration on his
website, a Jewish three-branched (!) menora which is in fact the
Orthodox three-fingered blessing in disguise; his cheap aphorisms
which seem to have been copied from Paulo Coelho (Man is the most
perfect instrument!).

The exchange of commentaries circulated on the Internet and in private
emails. They included mention of the film 'The Hunting Party', set in
the forests of Bosnia, through which Richard Gere hunts the notorious
Bogdanovich, played in the film by the Croatian actor Ljubomir
Kerekes… And then a friend of the author of these lines dug out on
YouTube a video clip from Barbarella in which Dr. Durand Durand (3D!)
sets his Excessive machine in motion and performs his 'Sonata for the
Executioner and Various Young Women'. What possible connection can
there be between Barbarella and Karadzic? None whatever. Apart from
the fact that the Irish actor Milo O'Shea, who plays Dr. Durand
Durand, is extraordinarily like Ljubomir Kerekes, that is to say Dr.
Bogdanovich, from the film 'The Hunting Party', in other words like
Karadzic before his complete make over.

Despite everything, this heap of trivial rubbish circulating in the
media served Karadzic himself well, in his transformation from a
notorious murderer into clown in order to placate a potentially
hostile crowd. Intrigued by the farce of his disguise, many people
managed to forget that this same Karadzic-Bogdanovich-Dabic is sitting
on a pile of anonymous human corpses, and there is a large, silent,
nameless heap of witnesses, including the women of Srebrenica, for
whom this whole media circus around Karadzic is like salt on an open
wound.

Pawel Pawlikowski's 'Serbian Epics' – the best and fullest portrait of
Karadzic to date – was made as long ago as 1992. Everything in the
film is so clear and explicit that this documentary on its own could
serve as an indictment against Radovan Karadzic. In the intervening
years, Karadzic's criminal file has become notoriously public, and the
new details which have flooded the media since his arrest have merely
confirmed what we all knew: that Karadzic is a murderer, sitting
calmly on a pile of the corpses of people whom he himself killed and
all the time the only thought buzzing in his head is – how to survive.
An enormous human mechanism has been keeping Karadzic alive, the same
mechanism that preserved Milosevic for years: servants, like-thinkers,
admirers, assistants, petty and large-scale criminals, the police, the
state apparatus, politicians, murderers, fighters, patients, women,
friends, priests, the church, believers, dealers, people — both sick
and quite ordinary.

At this moment, many Serbs are lighting candles and praying for their
man in prison in The Hague. Ordinary citizens, aging rockers (Bora
Djordjevic), members of the ultra-right group 'Honour' (Obraz),
Serbian radicals, supporters of Vojislav Seselj, Tomislav Nikolic,
Karadzic, with children at their head — a boy and a girl — they are
all marching at this moment through Belgrade, shouting slogans of
support for Karadzic, threatening the Serbian government, The Hague
Tribunal, the world. Many Serbs — who otherwise have no idea what to
do in the face of a sudden 'blow' in their household, when, for
example, there's a faulty tap in the bathroom, or if their wife ends
up in hospital — suddenly display supreme organisational skills and
political agility: Karadzic has been arrested — a heavy 'blow' has
been struck against their 'Serbdom'. Every blow against Serbdom has
the effect of an adrenaline injection.

Following the false news of Karadzic's arrest in 2001, 'defensive'
meetings were instantly organised in Karadzic's native village and
some other places in Montenegro. Supporters from Montenegro and Serbia
gathered, Chetnik songs rang out, priests waved censers around.
Karadzic was proclaimed a 'haiduk', 'poet', 'fighter', 'saint' and
'symbol of Serbdom'. People fell into poetic raptures (We will not
hand Karadzic over! Wake up Serbian fire! Radovan is a spark in the
rock. Whoever betrays the spark be damned! May all belonging to the
traitor be damned a thousand times!) Those present were given masks of
Karadzic's face. The Montenegrin backwoods sent a message to the
world: We are all Radovan Karadzic, in other words the people behind
the masks brazenly admitted their complicity in genocide, both real
and mental. The main slogan of the Chetnik organisation 'Honour' is:
Every Serb is Radovan! — and it could be seen in recent days again in
the streets of Belgrade.

Is Karadzic, Radovan, really an exclusively Serbian monster? Let us
not forget the fact that Karadzic easily crossed the borders between
such 'irreconcilably different' peoples as the Croats, Serbs, Bosnians
and Montenegrins, he spent his summer holidays in Croatia (making only
one single linguistic error, the experts maintain). In the end, if for
no other reason, then because of Karadzic's longevity and his ability
to rise up again like a phoenix, one might ask how many citizens of
former Yugoslavia were – Radovan Karadzic!?

The lack of a symbolic lynching of Karadzic — now, when it would have
been possible — demonstrates that the problem is deeper and harder,
and that it is not after all confined to 'Karadzices': swindlers,
prophets and profiteers, doctors of the human soul, grudge-bearers who
drag out of dusty chests their personal affronts and transform them
into ideologies, necrophiliacs, bone-diggers, bullies, exterminators,
murderers, drummers-up of collective hysteria, local 'butchers' and
'vampires' for whom many citizens of the former Yugoslavia have been
obediently sticking out their necks for two decades now. The problem
is that all these sycophants of fascism — Karadzic included — do not
excel themselves in the quantity of evil they produce, but in an
invisible form, in the seed they leave behind them, in their children,
and their grandchildren.

And those children, grandchildren, mutants, have sprung up healthy and
handsome, in the course of these last twenty years. These are the
children with Chetnik caps on their heads, who demonstrate throughout
Serbia against Karadzic's arrest. Or Marija Sefirovic (YouTube) whose
three-fingered sign of the cross spread throughout Europe, although
she was unable to explain its purpose (In the name of mother, father
and you know… — she tried irritably to explain to a Dutch woman
journalist), and who, in winning the Eurovision Song Contest, as she
put it herself, won for Serbia. These are the enthusiastic supporters
of the 'granddads, of the Serbian radical Tomislav Nikolic (the author
of the statement 'God created the world in six days, and it took me
two to shake it up'); these are the bullies who beat up Gypsies and
homosexuals in the streets of Belgrade; these make up the drunken,
ecstatic crowds at concerts by Ceca Raznatovic-Arkan.

These young mutants are from Bosnia, they go on the rampage during
football championships and wrap themselves in Croatian, Serbian and
Turkish flags as in a protective placenta. They are the secondary-
school children from Makarska who recently had themselves photographed
for their school almanac with a swastika in the background, 'for
fun' (It's not a swastika but an Indian symbol of love and peace, a
pupil explained meekly) and strutted about wearing T-shirts bearing
the slogan 'Über alles' (We meant that we had matriculated, it was
over, we were above all others, explained another even more meekly).
These are the children who appear at concerts by Marko Perkovic
Thompson in Ustasha uniforms and raise their right hands to the level
of their noses, while their granddads — Croatian academicians,
writers, journalists, doctors, generals, philosophers and publicists —
write open letters of support for an illiterate, third-rate turbo-folk
singer such as Thompson, defending his right to express uncensored
Ustasha ideas in our free Croatian homeland.

They are the young members of obscure pro-fascist parties in Serbia;
children with tattoos, whose bodies display Pavelic's face; customers
in shops freely selling fascist souvenirs; the 'brave' attackers of
tourists, foreigners, homosexuals and — Gypsies. These are children
who wear crosses round their necks, who regularly attend Catholic and
Orthodox churches and Muslim mosques, who hate each other, or some
third party, and all join in hating — Gypsies, Jews, Blacks and
homosexuals. These are young contributors to chat-sites who, I
presume, know of their brothers the young Hungarian fascists (Magyar
garda), who rose up to defend 'Magyar values and culture'; the young
Bulgarian fascists of Bogdan Rassata, who 'defend Bulgarian values and
culture' and for ideological reasons beat up Turks and Gypsies; the
brutal Russian children, who beat to death anyone whose skin is darker
than Putin's …

They are members of 'Honour' and similar ultra-rightwing groups who
lure children with the cheap glue of love of God and the homeland,
Serbian Serbia, gallant armed forces, the crucified fatherland and the
suffering nation (We need new heroes, Obilices, and new Maids of
Kosovo!). These children are young Croats, Serbs, Montenegrins and
Bosnians who use both open and closed web fora to sow and graft their
hatred and proclaim that the war is not yet over …. The local press,
local authorities and local politicians do not pay attention to the
'children', 'cases', 'hooligans', 'troublemakers', 'unpleasant, but
understandable incidents' in what is otherwise the successful daily
life of transition.

Meanwhile Radovan Karadzic can stroll peacefully in his Hugo Boss
suits into the courtroom in The Hague. His work is done.

The work of the Hague judges is to prove individual guilt in the war
crimes committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia and they,
the judges, will be the first, I presume, not to agree with the
emotional and hazy thesis of collective guilt. It seems, however, that
the mere trial of war criminals does not have the power to carry out a
real catharsis or to set in motion real social change. For without the
admission of collective responsibility there can be no successful de-
nazification. For many citizens of former Yugoslavia, regardless of
the actual scale of their responsibility and guilt in the recent war,
which, we emphasise, is not equal or the same, those who are to blame
for everything are always — the others: for the Croats it is the
Serbs, for the Serbs the Muslims, the Kosovo Albanians, the Croats,
the whole world …

All of them blame the communists, Tito and the Partisans for
everything. And then the 'Americans', the 'Russians', 'Jews',
'Europe', 'the world', unfavourable stars, destiny. All, without
distinction, insist on interpreting the events — which they themselves
initiated, which they failed to prevent, or in which they themselves
took part — as natural catastrophes in which they are exclusively the
victims. In that sense Karadzic's schizophrenic fragmentation into
gusle-player, psychiatrist, would-be footballer, ecologist, police
informer, Chetnik, murderer, politician, would-be Nobel laureate,
thief, poet, tutti-frutti guru, Orthodox mystic, into Radovan Karadzic
and Dragan David Dabic — is a typical local sickness, the result of a
general social lie, a profound moral and mental disturbance, a madness
which their milieu continues persistently to treat as though it were
normal.

There is a hope that, with the arrest of Karadzic and contrary to what
the young mutants proclaim, the war will finally end. There is a
childish hope that we will one day come across the following little
newspaper announcement: On the 21st of July 2018 - the day of the
arrest of the criminal Radovan Karadzic, sentenced to a hundred years
in prison for genocide in Bosnia - in the Montenegrin town of Meljina
known for its traditional festival of gusle-playing, there was a
'procession of collective shame', consisting of one hundred and forty-
one old men. The old men had false beards and false white hair
gathered on the crown of their heads in a pigtail and they voluntarily
exposed themselves to being spat at by the crowd, which this year had
gathered in large numbers to participate in the ritual of repentance.
In this ritual 'the old men' (every year there are new volunteers and
everyone has the right to participate in the ritual only once so that
all interested volunteers can have their turn) express their awareness
of the crimes committed, of the fact that these crimes were committed
in their name, with their full knowledge or even with their
participation, they confess their responsibility for their crimes and
apologise wholeheartedly to their victims.

July 2008


*
Dubravka Ugresic (website), born 1949, is Croatian literary scholar
and writer. During the Bosnian war, her strong anti-war stance and
criticiscm of both Croatian and Serbian nationalism meant she was
branded a traitor and ostracised by the media, politicians, fellow
writers and anonymous citizens. She eventually left the country in
1993. Her novels have been translated into twenty languages and her
essays published in major international newspapers and magazines. She
is currently based in Amsterdam where she works as a freelance
writer.

This article was originally published in German in the Neue Zürcher
Zeitung on 16 August 2008.

Translation by Celia Hawkesworth. She has translated two of Dubravka
Ugresic's books into English for Weidenfeld and Nicolson publishers:
'The Museum of Unconditional Surrender' 1998, and 'The Culture of
Lies', winner of the Heldt Prize for Translation, 1999.