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Vojislav Seselj is a free man. In fact, he has
been a free man for quite some time. Since his controversial release
from detention at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia, ICTY in 2014 to seek medical treatment in Serbia, Seselj
just picked up where he stopped 13 years ago, when he was first
arrested and charged with multiple counts of war crimes and crimes
against humanity.
Over the past two years he fully rejoined the
Serbian political maelstrom, holding rallies, issuing regular
statements on various political matters, and embracing with renewed
zeal his old racist, nationalist, and warmongering rhetoric of the
1990s.
But as of yesterday, he is more than free.
He is
fully acquitted of any wrongdoing during the Yugoslav wars.
On all nine counts of crimes against humanity that
included murder, persecution and expulsions of non-Serb civilians in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia, the ICTY trial chamber
concluded that he was a mere politician, and not a war criminal. A
politician with somewhat unpleasant extreme right wing views, but
not directly responsible for any criminal acts these views may have
inspired his followers to engage in.
To help all shocked observers understand this
logic, judge Jean-Claude Antonetti helpfully explained: “The
propaganda of nationalist ideologies is not criminal.”
But Vojislav Seselj was not on trial for
propaganda, and judge Antonetti certainly must know this, if he
bothered to read the indictment. Seselj was on trial for his acts,
not for his words, acts that have cost hundreds and hundreds of
lives.
He organised armed murderous paramilitary forces to forcibly
remove non-Serb civilians from their homes, steal their property,
and kill those who resist. He threatened non-Serbs with rape (but not
Albanian women because
“they are too ugly for Serbian men”),
slaughter (“with a rusty spoon so they don’t know if they died from
slit throat or tetanus”), and genocide (“If NATO decides to bombs
us… there will be no Albanians in Kosovo anymore”). And his words
were not just bluster – he had a fully armed and organised militia,
and referred to himself as its General - which he sent out to
implement his murderous plans.
And for each of these, and many, many other
examples of what Seselj actually did and not just said, the ICTY
trial chamber had rebuttals. For the charge of ethnic cleansing as
in Seselj’s actual words “we need to cleanse Bosnia of Muslims”, the
judges concluded that he was just “galvanising the Serb forces”. For
the charge of inciting war crimes in Vukovar by ordering his troops
to “spare no one”, the judges concluded that he was “lifting his
troops’ morale”. For the charge that he was sending a volunteer
militia to fight on behalf of rebel Serb forces in Croatia, the
judges concluded that they were sent to Croatia “to protect the
Serbs”. For the charge that his troops forcibly expelled all Croats
from a village in northern Serbia, the judges concluded that
Seselj’s militiamen were just looking for accommodation for Serbian
refugees. For the charge that Seselj organised population transfers
in Bosnia and Serbia, removing non-Serb civilians from Serb
controlled territory, the judges concluded that these civilians must
have left on their own volition, to live with their ethnic kin.
Pity the trial chamber did not ask a survivor of
this ‘humanitarian transfer’ if they, perhaps, felt grateful to
Seselj’s ‘White Eagles’ militia for this act of kindness.
After about a dozen of these examples - lacking
not only any grounding in historical facts, but also in basic logic
and human decency - you’d be forgiven if you thought a time machine
sent you back to 1993 and you were watching Slobodan Milosevic
explain the war effort on Serbian national television. (If the time
machine keeps Serbian TV on for a little longer, you may see
Vojislav Seselj himself, spewing vulgar racist jokes, and a young
man always at his side, looking in adoration, and nodding in
agreement. Yes, that would be the current Prime Minister of Serbia,
Aleksandar Vucic).
But back to 2016. What happened yesterday was an
embarrassment for the Tribunal. The embarrassment is not the
acquittal itself – after 13 years of this bungled trial,
unprofessional judicial conduct, replacement of trial judges,
medical releases and their failed overturns – it was not going to be
a shock had the trial just ended in mistrial. The embarrassment is
in the rewriting of the history of the Yugoslav breakup in a manner
that is not only outside all major scholarly consensus, but also in
direct contradiction with what the ICTY itself has concluded in its
previous cases.
Just last week, the ICTY convicted Radovan
Karadzic of genocide and crimes against humanity in Bosnia. After
yesterday’s verdict, one has to ask if the ICTY still believes that
Karadzic and Seselj fought in the same war? In the same country? In
the same century? On the same planet?
What the trial chamber carried out yesterday was
an attack on the historical record, and on the historical transcript
the ICTY itself have been creating these past two decades. The
Seselj verdict so fundamentally changes the interpretation of the
character of the Yugoslav wars that it flips the main causal chain
of events completely backwards.
While most historical interpretations of the war
emphasise Serbian expansionist policies under Slobodan Milosevic
(often confusingly and imprecisely called the Greater Serbia plan)
to be one of the major causes of the war, yesterday’s verdict
reversed this causality to claim that Serbian policies were mere
consequences of the Yugoslav breakup. Upon hearing this version of
their past narrated from the bench of the highest international
court, Serbian nationalist historians must have just popped their
third bottle of champagne.
While the absurdity and internal contradiction of
yesterday’s verdict may be preparing us for an overturn on appeal,
we are left with the feeling that the ICTY seems to have decided
that they had enough of Seselj, and that they don’t want to see him
again. Too bad that choice is not an option for all the victims of
Seselj’s atrocities and for the citizens of Serbia who, again, have
to live the nightmare that is having Vojislav Seselj in their midst.
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