Serbs Must Prosecute Milosevic

Had former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic been killed in the two-day standoff with Yugoslav authorities that preceded his arrest, the people of Yugoslavia would have never discovered the full extent of the horror and destruction of more than a decade of his rule. The crimes, both those committed against his own people and against others in the name of his people, would fail to receive proper attention in the absence of the principal perpetrator. The opportunity to use Milosevic’s trial as one of the building blocks of democracy in Yugoslavia and ethnic tolerance in the Balkans would have been lost. Ironically, this is exactly what will happen if Milosevic is extradited to the Hague War Crimes Tribunal.

There is a tendency to view the two sets of charges against Milosevic, those for abuse of power in Yugoslavia and those for war crimes in Kosovo, as competing for priority. The international community is more interested in the war crimes charges and is thus insisting on having a war crimes trial in The Hague at the expense of a trial for corruption in Yugoslavia. However, not only are both sets of charges crucial for the future of the Balkans, but the purposes of both trials will be better served in Yugoslavia.

Milosevic’s role in the Balkan tragedy can hardly be underestimated. He used a surge of Serbian nationalism in late 1980s to assume power and lead the Serbs into four bloody wars, producing hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees. At home, Milosevic’s regime bred widespread corruption, as an oligarchy of his closest allies became immensely rich at the expense of the state and the people. Meanwhile, during his 13-year rule, Milosevic clung to power by any means necessary: he rigged elections, crushed popular unrest and persecuted and killed independent journalists, opposition leaders and student activists. To finally unseat Milosevic in October of last year, the people of Yugoslavia had to take to the streets by the millions.

Perhaps the greatest challenge facing the new authorities is building democratic institutions and civic society from scratch after 40 years of communism and 13 years of Milosevic. In a country where those who ruled have always been above the law, it is difficult both for the new rulers and the nation to fully understand the nature of a democratic system, its emphasis on public debate and its respect for legal procedures. A highly publicized trial in Yugoslavia would expose the full extent of Milosevic’s totalitarianism, establishing for good its legacy of violence and fear. More importantly, it would demonstrate the limits of legitimate governmental power to a nation new to democracy, placing current and future governments under closer scrutiny of the electorate.

While Milosevic needs to answer to justice as a dictator, he also needs to stand trial as a war criminal. His rhetoric of nationalism and hatred certainly served to inspire the atrocities committed in the name of the Serbian people across the Balkans, and specific evidence exists pertaining to his direct role in crimes against Kosovo Albanians. This evidence forms the basis of the Hague Tribunal indictment. But, as Yugoslav Ambassador to the U.S. Milan St. Protic emphasized in a recent speech at the Kennedy School, Yugoslav authorities are determined to add war crimes to Milosevic’s indictment at home. Trying Milosevic for war crimes in the country could help ease tensions in and around Kosovo. The new Yugoslav authorities have recently adopted a softer rhetoric in their contacts with ethnic Albanians, trying to reemphasize that Kosovo is still a part of Yugoslavia and Albanians still Yugoslav citizens. The willingness of the new authorities to expose the war crimes of the Milosevic regime can improve their legitimacy in the eyes of the Albanian community.

If Milosevic is extradited to The Hague, the full extent of the atrocities will never be known to a Yugoslav public that has been largely kept in the dark on the issue over the past decade. The Hague trial will be seen as simply a necessary concession to the international community, and a chance for catharsis of the Serbian national conscience will be lost.

The West’s insistence on extradition is based on three misconceptions. First, most Western officials who push for Milosevic’s extradition are willing to admit the need for the Serbian people to confront their recent past, but underestimate the extent to which moving the trial to another country undercuts any such attempt. Second, it is argued that moving the trial to the Hague would serve as a deterrent to ethnic violence elsewhere, which is a weak argument indeed; if that were true, the Nuremberg trials should have served as a deterrent to the war criminals on all sides in the Balkans in the 1990s. The final and most fundamental motivation, however, is that Milosevic’s extradition represents a personal satisfaction for those Western nations and officials who fought against him in the past decade. Pursuing this personal vendetta should not take precedence over helping Yugoslavia fully confront the consequences of the Milosevic rule, which can be best achieved with a domestic trial.

Yugoslav authorities assumed considerable risk, both in terms of casualties and in terms of provoking political instability, in apprehending Milosevic. The trial itself is likely to lead to further deep divisions and conflicts within a nation that is struggling to understand and accept its recent past. Yet Milosevic is behind bars where he belongs, and will stay there for the rest of his life; the publicity of his arrest, the overwhelming weight of evidence and the fact that he will be tried by those who overthrew him guarantee it.

The international community should fully support the government of Yugoslavia in its determination to try Milosevic for both abuse of political power and war crimes, and the Hague Tribunal should share evidence with the Yugoslav authorities to make the indictment against Milosevic stronger. Using trade sanctions and cutting economic aid in order to force the extradition would make the people of Yugoslavia a hostage of Slobodan Milosevic once again, just as they were during his rule.

Srdjan L. Tanjga ’01, an applied math concentrator in Lowell House, is a founder of the Harvard Serbian Society.