Serbia has
not Broken with Milosevic Yet
Press release
Belgrade, March 15, 2006
The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia
takes that numerous factors at Serbia's political scene have seized
Slobodan Milosevic's death as the most welcome opportunity not only to
continue denying any responsibility for the policy he had pursued over
his 13-year rule, but also to call to account everyone other than the
masterminds and executioners of this genocidal policy.
The anti-Hague campaign that is in full swing in the
media actually devastates any reformist validity of today's Serbia
through the way she presents herself to the world on this specific
occasion. The manner in which the broadcast media, particularly the
Radio & Television of Serbia as the public broadcasting service, and the
print media under the government's control such as Politika and Vecernje
Novosti cover the death of Slobodan Milosevic nothing but further
radicalizes Serbia and isolates her from both her neighbors and the
world. The messages that are being passed through these days are echoes
of those the people in the dock have bombarded us with for years - The
Hague Tribunal kills Serbs to curb the truth, the whole truth and
nothing but the truth; The Hague Tribunal is a political frame-up
against Serbia; the indictment against Milosevic was ungrounded; the
Tribunal should be immediately closed down as an incompetent
institution, etc. A strategy as such is probably best mirrored in the
fact that all Serbian detainees in The Hague begun to refuse medical
treatments under the pretext that they trusted not the Tribunal.
Obviously, all this is about a well-planned strategy
aimed at compromising The Hague Tribunal and putting an end to the
cooperation with it. In this context, the government's latest promises
that Ratko Mladic and other indictees would be extradited quite soon are
as open to doubt like all other previous excuses.
Serbia is bound to take a clear-cut position on
Milosevic's legacy and concrete measures to dismantle the policy he has
symbolized.
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