| Ivo Skoric on Sat, 20 Apr 2002 14:11:55 +0200 (CEST) |
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This, indeed, is hillarious that Dutch government resigns over the responsibilities in the matter relatively remote to them, while the government of Serbia, which is not only close to the region, but also closely involved with what happened in the region, behaves as if this does not really have anything to do with them. Sad but usual. ivo (E) Serbs should heed Dutch example, says daily Politics Katarina Tepesh Apr 18,2002 N BELGRADE, April 18 (Reuters) - Serbs should take a lesson from the Dutch and face the facts of the Srebrenica massacre instead of making heroes out of Bosnian Serb leaders held responsible for it, a Belgrade newspaper said on Thursday. "While Serbian political figures are calmly walking streets of Belgrade wallpapered with the smiling faces of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the government of Dutch Premier Wim Kok has resigned over the official report on the bloody massacre that took place in June 1995," the Danas paper said. Karadzic, the wartime leader of Bosnian Serbs, and Mladic, his top military commander, are wanted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal on charges of genocide for the killing of some 7,500 Muslim men after Serb forces took the Srebrenica enclave. Solidarity posters, flyers and T-shirts with portraits of Karadzic have become a fairly common sight in Serbia recently, proudly proclaiming that "Every Serb is Radovan." Both men remain at large seven years after the mass murder occurred. "Ever since that day, Karadzic and Mladic have repeated the only thing they found worth pronouncing -- that they do not feel guilty and that they would never surrender to the Tribunal in The Hague," Danas said in its editorial, Remember Srebrenica. "The Dutch battalion, on the other hand, feels guilty because it did not prevent the crime. The Dutch government, which had nothing to do with the slaughter, felt responsible for not doing enough to prevent it." Kok resigned with his cabinet and the Dutch army chief quit earlier this week after a report citing the failure of a small Dutch peacekeeping force to prevent the massacre. Belgrade-based Danas is the leading liberal paper in Serbia. Together with radio B-92 it has spearheaded a campaign of facing up to the crimes committed during the wars in former Yugoslavia. The newspaper said political leaders should remember the massacre "not for the (international aid) money this country will get for cooperation with the Tribunal but for all the crimes committed in the name of Serbs." "Not everyone is Radovan," it countered. Anti-Karadzic posters are being papered over in northern Vojvodina province by Social Democrats whose leader said the party "cannot allow that the entire Serbian nation and all Serbs are individually identified with war criminals." "Not every Serb is a criminal," the new stickers say. 04/18/02 10:33 ET Copyright 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL. Ivo Skoric 1773 Lexington Ave New York NY 10029 212.369.9197 [email protected] http://balkansnet.org # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [email protected] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]