[Mazhi]

Translated from: http://www.delo.si/novice/svet/matere-i ... peklu.html

Mothers from Srebrenica: Mladić should burn in hell





The first hearing of Ratko Mladić was also followed by mothers from Srebrenica.

Srebrenica - At the Memorial Centre in Potočari where more than 4500 victims of the Srebrenica genocide are now buried, 20 mothers from Srebrenica gathered today where they watched the first hearing of the ex-leader of the Army of Bosnian Serbs on TV.

When Mladić appeared at the International Crime Court, the women fell silent. Then one of them whispered: "I hope he will burn in hell." "If only we could try him right over here. I wish they would bring him here so I could cut him to pieces."

"It is correct that he be tried, even though it is late. He should have been at court a long time ago already," Nura Alispahić said, who, some years ago, could watch the murder of her son Azmir on TV, which had been taped by members of Serbian Paramilitary groups. "I was watching the news where it was announced: You will see something noone has seen before, mothers will recognize their sons, and sisters will recognize their brothers." "I saw my son who just came out of a truck and shouted towards the television: Don't kill him!"

Ratko Mladić, for a long time the most sought Hague fugitive was apprehended by Serbian authorities a week ago after nearly 16 years of hiding, in the village Lazarevo. He is being accused of organizing the Srebrenica massacre as well as taking part in the 44-month Siege of Sarajevo. After the Serbian Court had decided to give him to the Hague Court, and the Minister of Judiciary signed the order, he had been taken to the Netherlands on Tuesday.

Today was the first hearing.

[Zagadka]

the women fell silent. Then one of them whispered: "I hope he will burn in hell." "If only we could try him right over here. I wish they would bring him here so I could cut him to pieces."

Women from that region are not to be trifled with.

The whole "I'm too sick for trial" thing just pisses me right off. It isn't a marathon. Just sit there and get found guilty and rot. Or maybe he can be as sick as his victims. Sorry, alleged victims.

[GandalfTheGrey]

The whole "I'm too sick for trial" thing just pisses me right off.

the sad truth though is that it works. Time and time again we've seen high profile indictees wriggle out of trial for health reasons - from Pinochet to Suharto and now probably Mubarak. Its got to the stage where whenever a slightly elderly suspect is called for trial, you just know they will pull out this tried and tested card - and unfortunately they will probably succeed - if nothing else by delaying the trial again and again for long enough until they eventually die of old age.

[Zagadka]

They should be treated medically in a very small jail cell.

At least Osama had a fair trial.

And it isn't only that excuse. We very rarely prosecute white collar crime because of legal loopholes. If as much effort as is put into arresting gang members and drug users was put into fighting white collar crime, things would be very different.

I'm very bitter tonight for some reason.

[U184]

I am with you there Zagadka, should someone be too "sick" to be tried they better be on their death-bed and the trial should be held as soon as they are not on said death-bed. Until they are healthy they should be held in custody awaiting trial.

[Thompson_NCL]

I disagree, a sick (wo)man should not have to face trial until they are healthy. After all, they are innocent until proven guilty and should not have their trial compromised by bad health. If this means they must spend the rest of their days in a cell awaiting trial, so be it. It's not like he's facing the death penalty so a convinction is not going to change much for him.

[Dave]

Why is Mladic even bothering to play games with this kangaroo court? If he loves Serbia as much as he says he does he needs to have the courage to shoot himself.

Human rights tribunals, lawyers, and judges should burn in hell. Free Mladic!

[Zagadka]

I disagree, a sick (wo)man should not have to face trial until they are healthy.

Yea, sitting there listening to a trial is so very taxing on the body.

Just more loopholes to avoid prosecution. It isn't hard to be prosecuted.

[peterm1988]

Well, the stresses of a trial are quite taxing. I mean, look, it's obviously a fiction with Mladic, but there is a valid legal rule here - if you are innocent (or even not...) and you're on trial whilst also being ill, it's highly likely that the stress will compromise your recovery and your illness will harm your defence.

I think it's a fair rule, just need to be careful that we don't let people take the piss.

[Zagadka]

Who the hell isn't stressed when they are on trial for murdering 4500 people?

[Thompson_NCL]

Yea, sitting there listening to a trial is so very taxing on the body.

So he'll not be asked to testify or discuss issues of defence etc?

[peterm1988]

Who the hell isn't stressed when they are on trial for murdering 4500 people?

No-one. But add it on to the stress of a serious illness and it probably impairs your ability to function properly and so get a fair trial. The stress of the trial would also hurt your chances of recovery.

If you're going to go down the road of dragging someone to court, you have to give them a fair shot. If not, just give them a shot, a la Bin Laden.

[Drlee]

Why is Mladic even bothering to play games with this kangaroo court? If he loves Serbia as much as he says he does he needs to have the courage to shoot himself.

Quite right. He will hang anyway and this will rob his enemies of their propaganda victory. Shame though. We trade with, entertain and otherwise tolerate these despots because we don't have the moral courage to go to war with them until after it is too late and then later sanctamoniously try to hang them when it is easy work. Of course no responsibility for the people who supported him with their votes and apathy when he was in power.

[Mazhi]

Who the hell isn't stressed when they are on trial for murdering 4500 people?

The estimate for Srebrenica victims is more than 8000. More than 6500 have been identified so far by DNA analysis of the remains of bodies dug up fom mass graves (some bodies were actually cut apart by the murderers and put in two, three, and in one case, four graves). 4500 have been buried so far. But Srebrenica is not all he took part in, there are many other crimes.

Drlee, he can't be hanged. The Hague doesn't do death penalties.

Why is Mladic even bothering to play games with this kangaroo court? If he loves Serbia as much as he says he does he needs to have the courage to shoot himself.

Human rights tribunals, lawyers, and judges should burn in hell. Free Mladic!

That's disgusting. Do you support or deny genocide? Saying such things should become illegal, like it is with the Holocaust.

I really hope Mladić gets sentenced. This will finally bring some closure and catharsis to so many people.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/def ... video.html

Defiant Mladic arraigned in The Hague

War crimes suspect Ratko Mladic refused to enter pleas at his arraignment Friday at The Hague. Mladic told the court that he was defending his people and his country during the Bosnian war. (June 3)

http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=95835

Mladic calls genocide charges ‘obnoxious’

The Hague, Netherlands—Ratko Mladic, frail but defiant after 16 years on the run, made his first appearance before U.N. judges and his victims Friday, dismissing a long list of charges of genocide, mass murder and persecution as “obnoxious” and “monstrous words” that had nothing to do with what he called the defense of his nation.

The capture and trial of the Bosnian Serb wartime commander closes the bloodiest chapter in European history since World War II and is nearly the final act of the Yugoslav tribunal, a court that launched a renewed era of international justice after the Nuremberg trials of Nazis war criminals.

Together with his former political boss Radovan Karadzic, Mladic is accused of orchestrating a four-year war for Serbian domination in Bosnia that cost 100,000 lives and climaxed with the July 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the U.N.-declared safe zone of Srebrenica.—AP

The real Mladić:

Translated from: Mladina; Author: Heni Erceg, Croatian reporter

When I met Mladić

I saw him around in the summer of 1991 when I was in the vicinity of Knin and in Dalmatia filming war reports. I remember him as an arrogant soldier - he had just become the commander of the Knin Corpus - a reactionary nationalist, a man who, just like Milošević, lied every time he opened his mouth. The so-called "bravery" his admirers still attribute to him was undoubtedly enabled to him by the arms and numerical strength of the Yugoslav People's Army. Photos now really do show him to us as quite a weakened man, but there is no reason for us to think that he has changed in any way, except physically.

When Mladić was destroying and emptying towns and villages in ex-Krajina, he kept convincing me that ALL Croats are actually Ustashe, but that nothing will happen to them as long as he is the boss there. But atrocious crimes did happen over the civilian population, the village Škarbnja at Zadar was leveled with the ground, in a few days Mladić's hordes slaughtered more than 30 of the people there. So he put into reality the ideas of his military and political leadership which sent him there as a messanger of death after they were unpleased with his predecessors. He was the helped of the berserk and unorganized Paramilitary unit of war criminal Milan Martić. Comrade commander later, as he was mad due to my "Ustasha" reporting, said: "She should come herself, I will explain what we are fighting for here!" But the poor guy was with numerical domination fighting only civilians, women, children... In the name of the ideological nonsense of "all Serbs in one state".

After Mladić cleansed much of Croatia of its Croatian inhabitants, he left to Bosnia in 1992 to carry out his obsessive mission - to drastically reduce the number of Muslims there. To "set an example", he chose Srebrenica and murdered 8000 people, and the terrible cynicism of all this is most obvious in the film where he is comforting a boy, telling him not to worry because nothing would happen to him. Many years later, when digging up bodies from one of the many hundreds mass graves there, the skull of this boy was found.

Shortly before the Srebrenica genocide, Mladić's daughter commited suicide - she shot herself with her fathers's gun. But this hard personal blow did have absolutely no effect on the trail of death that continuted to follow this anti-hero, who later, despite his crimes, became a part of Serbian mythology. More exact, the Balkan mythology of nationalism, to which others also contributed - those who are now so pleased that Mladić has been arrested, but are far from innocent themselves. For example, the fans of Franjo Tuđman, the man who, after Mladić's death march around Croatia, continued to cooperate with this criminal, and also his Belgrade bosses. Countless meetings took place between Mladić and the Croatian leaders of the artificial Herceg-Bosna entity, meetings on which they spoke of the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and of course, the ethnic cleansing of areas where Bosniaks lived. Mladić repeatedly met Croatian generals, made deals regarding arms, oil and, most importantly, common fight against Bosniaks.

So before in 1993 the Croats and Bosniaks started fighting each other, Mladić received 10 million German marks from the Croatian budget for weapons and "favours that he did". But this was just part of the long-term negotiations and fertile cooperation between Tuđman and Milošević at destroying Bosnia and Herzegovina, during which Croatia kept supplying Serbs with oil that fueled the tanks that killed Sarajevo inhabitants and inhabitants of other cities in BIH. This is probably the reason that Croatian courts have still not accused Mladić, neither for the massacre in the Škabrnja, nor the other crimes commited in Croatia. Besides, what Serbia and Croatia have in common is the very light attitude towards home war criminals the states don't want to try because every last one of them is a "hero, not a criminal". But they will, simply due to pragmatic reasons that are being forced onto them by the EU, give them up to the Hague. Now is therefore also the time for trades of Serbia with the EU, this means - we to you, you to us - we give you our biggest criminal, you give us entry negotiations.

Because of this the political victory of Tadić at the fact that Mladić has finally been arrested, must be taken with precaution, because it is clear to all of us that the arm of justice could have reached him any time if it wanted. All the long 16 years. If it only wanted to. But this political behaviour of the authorities in Serbia with on one hand radical nationalism and on the other, waiting for the "political conditions" to deal with war criminals is the reason why they were hidden for so long, if they actually were in the first place.

And with this, these authorities, not only in Serbia, but also in Croatia - who would simply like to be pro-European for foreign politics and nationalistic for home use - created a cancerogenic social atmosphere in completely amoral attitude to the crimes of "our side" and indoctrinated whole generations with the belief that every crime in the name of the nation is actually a heroic act. This is why it is naive to believe that the arrest will enable Serbs to HONESTLY deal with their past and give up nationalism for good. It won't, this is not even the intention of those who finally decided to find and arrest Mladić. Their intention is socially irrelevant, but politically it's about meeting demands for EU entry.

What they are not doing and have not been doing is a serious process of decontamination of the nations in this region. They should be doing this.

[furrypurpledinosaur]

No one should burn in hell. It's wicked to wish something like that to anybody, even Adolf Hitler doesn't deserve that. What a horrible title.

[Mazhi]

Why don't you tell the mothers of Srebrenica victims they've made me write a horrible title?

Poor, poor Mladić being told by the mothers of those he slaughtered he should burn in hell.

[furrypurpledinosaur]

Why don't you tell the mothers of Srebrenica victims they've made me write a horrible title?

Appeal to emotion doesn't work with me.

Poor, poor Mladić being told by the mothers of those he slaughtered he should burn in hell.

I am arguing about immorality of the hell doctrine, I am not defending Mladic.

[Andropov]

Hell is not real, so the morality or immorality of wishing someone to go there is absurd to argue about.

[Igor Antunov]

Yes but people like to argue.

[Dave]

That's disgusting. Do you support or deny genocide? Saying such things should become illegal, like it is with the Holocaust.

I really hope Mladić gets sentenced. This will finally bring some closure and catharsis to so many people.

Fortunately I live in a country which actually has something close to free speech. It is perfectly legal for us to deny the Holocaust here, though no one will take you seriously if you do. I wonder why some countries need laws to protect historically established facts from attack by small, marginalized groups? I'd much rather know what kind of nonsense people believe in upfront rather than criminalizing it so you never know who's a loon and who's not.

I neither support nor deny genocide. I am ambivalent on genocide. However, the Yugoslav Wars were ethnic wars based on ethnic hatred. The fastest way to end ethnic wars and establish durable peace is to let someone win--invariably this results in ethnic cleansing. It was ethnic cleansing that ended many ethnic squabbles all over Europe. As a result of the Nazi and Soviet population transfers and genocide, and the subsequent expulsions of ethnic Germans and Hungarians all over Eastern Europe, most nation-states in Europe after World War Two were finally ethnically homogeneous.

The international community's current approach to the problem, trying to stop every fucking conflict in the world, simply prolongs conflict into endless affairs. Does anyone really think that Bosnia is a viable state? If NATO packed up and left Bosnia, what do you think would break out? Peace and love. Operation Storm solved the problem in Croatia, but Bosnia is unresolved. Either the populations need to be mixed, seriously separated, or somemone needs to win. Otherwise we're looking at a powder keg which will go off eventually.

The catharsis you speak of has a a mirror: revanchism in Serbs, particularly Bosnian and Krajina Serbs. This will confirm their view that the entire world is against them and reinforce their siege mentality. Just look at I_S and RSK!

If we want to prevent massacres, then instead of simply delaying them we should compel all parties to negotiate durable borders and then commence population transfers. As much as is possible, borders should be drawn to reduce incentive for dispossession. So the "Field of Blackbirds", for instance, should ideally be within Serbia rather than Albanian Kosovo. It's messy and not without hardship, but it's certainly a lot cleaner than Mladic and Gotovina. Do you really think Eastern Europe would be stable today if seventeen million Germans still lived outside the borders of Germany and Austria?