Yesterday, Radovan Karadzic made a mockery of the International Hague tribunal by refusing to show up to his own trial. The court had to be adjourned as a result. Today, convicted war criminal Biljana Plavsic will be set free after only serving 6 years of an 11 year sentence.
The original allegations against her? Two counts of genocide, five counts of crimes against humanity, and one count of violations of the customs of war. However, after reaching a plea bargain with the prosecution, she pleaded guilty to one count of crimes against humanity and the rest of the charges were dropped.
Her most famous photograph is of her literally stepping over the dead bodies of bosniak men to greet and congratulate war-criminal Arkan. She was thought to be a psychopath by the ultimate psychopath himself, Slobodan Milosevic. Yep, the brutal butcher of the Balkans, thought her to be crazy. She was the first woman in history to be accused of genocide. Yet only six years after she was first convicted, she is now free to return to her Belgrade apartment and live out the rest of her life.
“'Sweden did not hand down the sentence,' Reinfeldt told reporters after the cabinet decision.
'She was sentenced by an international tribunal that took into account that Plavsic cooperated with the tribunal,' he added, saying that was a likely reason she was given an 11-year sentence, not a life sentence.”
All I want to know is..what about the tens of thousands of Yugoslav civillians, mostly croats and bosniaks, killed in the war? What about those tortured, beaten and starved to death? What about those who lived the last moments of their lives imprisoned in barbed-wire concentration camps? What about the thousands of bosniak women who were brutally raped, and lost their husbands, sons, fathers and brothers in the war? If one count of murder can get you life, 6 years for a convicted war criminal seems to be a cruel joke.
She was also apparently met in Sweden by the prime minister of republika srpska, Milorad Dodik. Is he insane? Well, clearly. I just didn’t realise that fascists from the 90s still held power in the former Yugoslavia. Oh, the Balkans still have a long way to go. I think I must be living in a bubble, surrounded by those who do not care about nationality, because it seems like there are plenty more people who do.
I will now leave you with some Biljana Plavsic quotes:
“I would prefer to completely cleanse eastern Bosnia of Muslims. When I say cleanse, I don't want anyone to take me literally and think I mean ethnic cleansing. But they've attached this label, 'ethnic cleansing,' to a perfectly natural phenomenon and characterized it as some kind of war crime."
"[That the Bosnian Muslims were originally Serbs] is true. But it was genetically deformed material that embraced Islam. And now, of course, with each successive generation this gene simply becomes concentrated. It gets worse and worse, it simply expresses itself and dictates their style of thinking and behaving, which is rooted in their genes."
"We are disturbed by the fact that the number of marriages between Serbs and Muslims has increased [...] mixed marriages lead to an exchange of genes between ethnic groups, and thus to a degeneration of Serb nationhood."
Such a warm and lovely lady, that biljana!
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
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