Today B92 is reporting that the Serbian government appears to be succeeding in its negotiations with ICTY indictee Sreten Lukić, and that he will agree to surrender for trial on charges laid by the Hague prosecutors.
What an interesting country, where high ranking officials go to great pains, after long political debate, to entice people charged with crimes to agree that it would be nice if they were to face trial. To clarify: the statute of the ICTY is a part of domestic law. Of course, this luxurious treatment only applies to people charged with major violations of international law. Minor offenders get arrested.
Balkania
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
This is perhaps a bit too snarky. There's still a lot of popular support for these people, and the government reasonably fears political unrest, up to and including riots in the streets, if they're taken against their will.
This fear may be exaggerated, sure. (I suspect it is, myself.) And "it might cause your government to fall" is not supposed to be a reason for a democratically elected government to refuse to enforce the law.
On t'other hand, fear of riots is a legitimate concern IMO. "For each of these criminals that you arrest against his will, there is a 5% cumulative chance that a bomb will go off at a random location in a major city, doing millions in property damage and possibly resulting in injuries or even deaths." In that case, trying to sweet-talk the criminals into giving themselves up wouldn't be cowardly. It would be the intelligent, responsible thing to do.
I agree that Serbia must cooperate with the ICTY. And this foot-dragging may not be the best way to do it.
Me, I don't think it is. If I were in charge, I'd swing the axe and be done with it. But having lived in Serbia, I can understand their reluctance. cf. Rebecca West, there is a great deal of intense feeling floating around Serbia, etc.
And of course this issue is hardly unique to the Serbs. Croatia can't find Gotovina. Bosnia can't find anyone. The Kosovar Albanians won't even acknowledge that there's anyone to be found. (A continuing source of irritation to the Serbs, as I noted over at the Head Heeb a few weeks ago.)
Doug M.
Eh, the riot thing would be a more credible argument if it ever actually happened. The closest they came was when Milosevic was arrested, and all you got was Sinisa Vucinic waving a gun and Marija Milosevic firing one. The people who support the criminals, like all violent rightists, are only courageous under specific controlled circumstances.
I'd agree that the thing to do would be, as Djindjic liked to say, "swallow the frog." Every post-communist government has become unpopular quickly, whether they acted decisively or not. I'd also agree that there is nothing wrong in principle with negotiation, it is the government's continued hemming and hawing and then taking a half measure under threat that makes them look less than serious.
Having said that, it is clear that some of the complaints about imbalance in Serbia are legitimate, and probably also true, though I can't confirm it, that everyone at OTP has aching jaws from gnashing their teeth whenever Ms Del Ponte tells the press that she knows something she doesnt.
Eh, the riot thing would be a more credible argument if it ever actually happened.Um. You do remember last March.
Apples and oranges? Perhaps. But I saw Trg Republika the morning after, and it left an impression.
(They trashed the mosque /and/ the McDonalds. I was waiting for weeks, but no commentor outside Serbia ever picked up on that.)
Doug M.
Well, the March riots (in Nis too) were in response to violence in Kosovo. So yes, there have been riots -- there was also violence at a gay pride march in 2001. But not for ICTY suspects. If nobody took to the streets for Milosevic, they wouldnt be likely to do it for the others.
I think that some observers might be misinterpreting the surveys that show low levels of sympathy for ICTY as meaning that there are high levels of sympathy for the indictees, which does not necessarily follow. But the fact that public opinion becomes an issue points to some design flaws in ICTY and ICTR, which all of the subsequent tribunals (East Timor, Sierra Leone, Cambodia if it ever happens) have addressed: 1) they are all located in the countries over which they have jurisdiction, 2) they all involve domestic lawyers as judges and prosecutors, and 3) they all separate the process of finding criminal guilt from the process of "establishing the historical record."
So yes, there have been riots -- there was also violence at a gay pride march in 2001.Not quite on the same scale, Eric -- the gay pride thing was a scuffle, the March riots involved millions of dollars of property damage. If the same level of violence had occurred at, say, a postal workers' strike instead of a GP march, it would never have made news outside of Serbia.
(N.B., there was an almost identical scuffle at a gay pride parade in Zagreb, just a few weeks later. Right down to the Croatian Catholic Church, like the Serbian Orthodox Church, publishing a statement deploring the violence while making it pretty clear that the unnatural perverts were asking for it.)
But not for ICTY suspects.Not yet, no. But it seems a little blase to assume that there never, ever could or might be.
If nobody took to the streets for Milosevic, they wouldnt be likely to do it for the others.It's not a strong analogy. Slobo was at the nadir of his popularity in early 2001. He never had that many committed supporters anyway, and those he did have were lopsidedly in rural areas.
Belgrade, in particular, hated Slobo -- he always had to bus in rent-a-crowds from the sticks. So nobody in BG was going to riot for Slobo. Especially after half the city had just turned out to protest /against/ him.
I think that some observers might be misinterpreting the surveys that show low levels of sympathy for ICTY as meaning that there are high levels of sympathy for the indicteesWell, that's the kicker. Polls show that support for the indictees can be alarmingly high. (Although it's also v. sensitive to things like the wording of the question, which suggests that the issue is spinnable.)
A clear majority of Serbs think that Serbia has done enough and more than enough for the ICTY; and a large minority think that Serbia should not, under any circumstances, hand over any more indictees. Now, you can argue that that's damn foolish of them, and I'll heartily agree... but it's a political fact, and one that any Serbian government must deal with.
some design flaws in ICTY and ICTR, which all of the subsequent tribunals (East Timor, Sierra Leone, Cambodia if it ever happens) have addressed: 1) they are all located in the countries over which they have jurisdiction, 2) they all involve domestic lawyers as judges and prosecutors, and 3) they all separate the process of finding criminal guilt from the process of "establishing the historical record."#3 is a good idea, and worth exploring further.
#1 and #2 are simply not options in Serbia today. Fond as I am of the Serbs, their judicial system is currently FUBAR if not FUBAHOR. There was a window of opportunity to do a lustration in early 2001, but they didn't. Now they can't even try Djindic's killers properly.
The Hague tribunal has horrific problems, d'accord. Carla del Ponte was a horrible choice for prosecutor, and in many respects it's gone downhill ever since. But "Slobo should be tried by Serbs" is just not a meaningful response to that; it's wishful thinking, with no connection to reality on the ground in Belgrade or anywhere else. Not that you seem to be saying that... it's just something that I hear a lot. Mostly from well-meaning folks who are paying enough attention to recognize that the ICTY is broken, but not enough to know that Serbia's justice system is broken worse.
I know you read B92, so I assume you've been following some of the other judicial tragicomedies: the Legija freakshow, the botched investigation of the botched investigation of the mysterious killings of the two young soldiers, the Knjez Milos privatization scandal (which would actually be pretty funny if people's livelihoods weren't at stake), and of course the horrors of the freezer trucks and the Mackatica factory incinerators.
That last one... talk about your open secrets. I had a taxi driver buddy in BG who was asked to drive one of the freezer trucks. He didn't (he, literally, didn't like the smell of the job) but he has a colleague who did. And who's still driving around Belgrade today.
Trying to be optimistic, I can imagine a near-future Serbia -- say, five years from now -- that might be capable of trying its own major war criminals. But it's just not an option at the moment.
Doug M.
I think we probably agree on most of this stuff, but one question: I understand your objection to #1 (although Rule 4 of Procedures and Evidence does foresee the possibility, which has never been invoked), but why not #2? It doesn't have to mean transferring cases to domestic courts. I realize that the issue is a bit moot now, but still, in principle.
Well, in principle there's no reason Serbian (or Croatian, or whatever) lawyers couldn't appear for the defense at the ICTY. I don't know of any that have, but I wouldn't be surprised.
Judges and prosecutors... harder. Very difficult to find a local Serb/Croat/Bosniak/Albanian who is (1) competent (2) not compromised (3) not obviously biased and (4) willing to take the job. I don't know if the ICTY even considered it.
I know there are a lot of Rwandan defense lawyers and court staff down in Tanzania. IDK if they have judges or prosecutors. Still, Rwanda was relatively straightforward compared to Former YU.
Doug M.
Post a Comment