SERBIA HAS NOT BROKEN WITH
MILOSEVIC YET
Press release
03/16/2006 , HCHRS
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.
Belgrade, March 15, 2006
HCHRS |
