Milosevic Trial Is Must-See TV In The Balkans

by Vesna Peric Zimonjic

(IPS) BELGRADE -- Five years after former president Slobodan Milosevic fell from power, he seems to be back, with his wartime ally Vojislav Seselj and all those speeches of old.

The rhetoric of the 1990s when Milosevic led Serbs to war against Croats and Bosniaks has returned to Serb homes through Seselj's defiant defense of Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

All of Serbia seems glued to television screens, watching live broadcast from the trial of Milosevic, who stands accused of genocide and war crimes. The trial is being watched in homes, in shops, cafes, restaurants, just about everywhere.

"I was happy to shoot Muslims (in the besieged Bosnian capital Sarajevo)," Seselj announces in defense of Milosevic. The ultranationalist Seselj awaits trial himself before the ICTY, founded by the United Nations.

"Srebrenica (where Serbs executed 8,000 Muslim men and boys) was staged by the Western intelligence services to paint a bad picture of my nation," he says on another occasion.

Seselj refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the ICTY. He has called chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte "a legal whore," compared the ICTY with a "medieval Spanish inquisition," and called prosecutors and judges "Nazi exterminators."

Opinion polls in Serbia indicate that Milosevic and Seselj have become more popular as a result of the broadcast of their tirades.

If elections were held now, the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) led by Seselj would get 34 percent of the vote, says a survey conducted by the Faktor Plus Agency. "Seselj has destroyed the ICTY with his arguments," senior SRS leader Aleksandar Vucic boasted to Serbian media. Public support for Milosevic has risen.

The reform-oriented part of the Serbian public is sounding the alarm bells after weeks of such testimony and what the opinion polls suggest. The independent B92 radio and TV station that have exclusive rights to the ICTY broadcasts are being particularly targeted.

"Veran Matic (editor-in-chief of B92) is missing the final chance to cut (the ICTY) broadcasts for the benefit of all," the daily Danas (Today) wrote in an editorial. "If the aim was to make Serbs face the war crimes, it has failed. The trials have only brought back into our homes Milosevic, Seselj and all the vitriolic rhetoric that ruined this country."

Bosnian and Croat media have been saying that Seselj's testimony is a direct transmission of Serbia's past. "The ICTY is being abused (by Milosevic and Seselj) as a political stage, with speeches being aimed at Serbia, independent of the trial," the Sarajevo daily Oslobodjenje (Liberation) wrote.

Some media reports said that human rights campaigners want an end to the broadcasts.

But leading human rights activists Sonja Biserko from the Helsinki Committee and Natasa Kandic from the Humanitarian Law Center denied reports in Serbian media that they were demanding a halt to the broadcasts.

"But B92 TV should call to their studio people who can help clarify the reason why the Tribunal is such a precious institution for the future of Serbia -- people with knowledge, dignity and a moral attitude," Biserko told IPS.

It would financially be more profitable for B92 to air Latin American soap operas instead of broadcasts from the ICTY, Veran Matic told IPS. "But that would certainly damage the fragile process of establishing responsibility and serving justice for war victims." The wars of the 1990s led to the death of more than 200,000 people, most of them non-Serbs.

Professional media organizations including the Independent Union of Journalists (NUNS) and the Association of Journalists have expressed concern over any move to stop the broadcasts.

"That would amount to the violation of freedom of media, a thing we fought for in the past years," NUNS said in a statement.

The testimony by Seselj has also raised other concerns. "Besides the populist rhetoric we know from the war years, Seselj's testimony is dangerous at the legal level," law professor Radoslav Stojanovic told IPS.

"He is implying the responsibility of the state of Serbia and all of us in the general picture of wars," he said. "Apart from the fact that not all Serbs were for wars, this can jeopardize the case against Serbia that Croatia and Bosnia have started before the International Court of Justice, demanding war damages and citing genocide as alleged Serbian crimes."