Scorpions Srebrenica Trial, July

Scorpions Trial

July 3, 2006

   Today in the special court we have a highly educated witness, a legal  expert in security who is the  owner of a company called  Aleksandrija. In the nineties he was a deputy minister during the  genocide in Srebrenica.  Later he was Minister of  Police for the  Republika Srpska Krajina, the rump state in Croatia which no longer  
exists.  In 1999 he was also  in Kosovo as police and security.
    "Twenty-five thousand members of the police were under army command",  says the witness. Gosh that makes me shiver.  Twenty-five thousand  people? All soldiers, all agents, all secret?  Yet that was typical  of Yugoslavia: my own father was highly placed in a thriving import-
export company that was basically a front for the secret police.   
Nobody mentioned such realities to anybody; it was simply understood.

     The witness goes on: all the time, together with the police of  
Serbia and Montenegro, we collected the war deserters and sent them  
to the front-line. Oh yes, I do remember those days.  I remember how   
they wanted to grab and draft my friend in downtown Belgrade while we  
were drinking in a pub.

       A soldier and a policeman came together and confronted us.  I  
asked them: why take him, why not me? Why is nobody asking me as a  
woman to defend my country -- if it is really matter of life and  
death? My insistent nagging of the sneering policemen saved my  
friend, but I never got a straight answer from them. Why does nobody  
asks women about matters of so-called national survival?

       But our dignified witness denies that official  Serbia is  
involved in paramilitary deeds. He insults the defense, and the  
families of the victims, asking them how much foreign money did they  
get, for lobbying to get Serbia guilty of genocide?

      If it isn't "genocide," what else can one call the execution of  
eight thousand civilians in three days?  My first reaction when I  
found out about that amazing nonsensical crime was: how did they  
manage to design that?  How could they achieve such efficiency? Then  
I remembered the neat engineering of Auschwitz, its gas chambers, the  
disposal of the victims' shoes, the numerous papers and stamps and  
the attention to detail, such as the bills for the lethal gas used in  
gas chambers being sent to the victims' families.  Yes, that's it:  
the basic design of Crime, you make it pay, you pay yourself for  
doing it.

     The Serbian volunteer soldier, now a defense lawyer in this  
courtroom, picks up every opportunity to show off his superior honor  
as a warrior. His speeches are long preaching with indecent pauses  
where he moves his body  towards the stage lights as if on a TV show:  
hunting for admiration.  He declares:  Under these conditions I  
cannot defend anybody, the situation makes no sense...

     Only a week or so ago, a Muslim leader in Srebrenica was set  
free, after being tried in The Hague by the war crime tribunal for  
war crimes against the Serbian population.  There was not enough  
evidence for his alleged crime... This courtroom now suffers the  
backlash from this legal defeat. The Scorpions in the row in  
handcuffs are louder than ever. The indicted Scorpion commander  
interrupts with his pony tail shaking like a stallion's mane: I was  
there to defend the Serbian graves in Kosovo. I wasn’t looking at  
people, I was looking at the enemy.

      The Serbian historical paranoia and lamentation, woeful tales  
of sacred graves and faceless enemies, this Commander repeats this   
incessantly at this trial, it's a local mantra really.  When he says  
these things, everybody seems to understand what he is talking about,  
unless we try to reason out what on earth these terms might mean in  
court. Whose graves? Whose enemies?  Why...when...how?  Reason is not  
a friend to the mantras of paranoia.

     The trained and educated highly ranked secret policeman  
concludes: I defended Serbian people who were in trouble.  They  
needed help from all Orthodox people. 'Our' people never kill. I am  
taking a due distance from Srebrenica crime as a man and as a
policeman.

      Women form the first row.  The women of the indicted are also  
wagging their tails. In whose name is our witness talking now? Who is  
US, who is The Other? The Orthodox priest has blessed the killer  
before the execution, the gunmen admitted they pulled the trigger,  
and now this highly ranked officer an official is declaring his due  
distance  from the crime.  All in the name of Serbian Orthodoxy...  
the same words that were the mantra for killing now are the mantra  
for honor.

Scorpions Trial  July 5,

The first witness today is a suspended policeman from the Montenegro  
police. He refuses to  give a statement before the court, saying: I  
don’t know who summoned me here and why. I was falsely quoted in The  
Hague tribunal by General Vasiljevic. I have been through terrible,  
dishonorable,  dehumanizing, non-Serbian treatment. I am not afraid  
of this trial: I am afraid of the traitors of our people. I am a  
serious man, a man of my word.

     OK man of your word, let's hear what words you have to say.

     He says nothing.  Then man of the honorable words is without  
words. His honor is based on his silence and his deeds on his being  
Serbian. What's honorable about that?  It's a sheer silent  
presumption, the same mantra... a plea to the irrational, an excuse  
for the inhuman, non-Serbian, dishonorable treatment he has given to  
the OTHER.

       I am not amazed anymore by this small-talk of their clan,  
based on  irrational rituals. I am just wondering: do they ever do  
something good with the same strength and conviction?  If so, why not  
ask them to build a bridge instead of bombing one?

       And finally the witness appears who failed to appear in the  
June session appears. My gay friend, a young Woman in Black, is  
excited to see him so handsome, in his early thirties, dark and as  
Milos calls him: the only disloyal citizen of city of Sid where the  
Scorpions operated. This is the witness who handed the video cassette  
of the execution to Natasa Kandic.  Natasa Kandic is the legal  
representative of the victims in this court, and the woman in Serbia  
most hated by nationalists today. Not that she cares about that  
hatred, but we, yes, we Women in Black who sit with the family  
survivors, we are happy to finally see our guy.  We would have done  
the same thing as he did.  We did similar stuff for years on end, and  
here we are to support him.

     The witness is unemployed.  His wife is supporting him.  The  
Scorpion wives giggle in disrespect over this, since they are  high-
maintenance girls supported by war criminals. In fact everybody is  
making fun of him now, even the judge makes a disrespectful remark.   
I wonder how would his wife feel to hear that; do women marry only  
money makers, at all costs? I remember warning my daughter against  
rich guys in dark times.  In a time of war even gold will soil your  
hands.

     The witness didn't serve in the army.  He says he was considered  
"immature."  How did he reach maturity? asks the warrior lawyer  
ironically. Does he has a psychiatric file?  Is he old enough to  
smoke now?

       I have seen so many young people lose all civil rights in  
order to stay human; that is called Antigone's choice, and comes from  
ancient Greece.  When  the laws are evil one has to take the law in  
his  own hands.

       A young man I know very well, lost his passport, his driver' s  
license, and acquired a file at the mental hospital because he  
refused to serve the military and fight in Croatia while Croatia was  
still a part of Yugoslavia. He was 19, and in order to split from the  
army, he had to pretend he was mad...  After some years of pretense,  
his best friend, who served the army with the same moral doubts but  
had no guts to feign insanity and humiliate himself, said: I think he  
is not pretending anymore, he has gone crazy. Last time he was at the  
doctors who wanted to enlist him, he bit the sink to convince them.  
And he did, he chewed the plumbing. But now I think he has really  
gone crazy.
      Well this sane soldier got killed  a couple of years later in  
the next war: his last letter came from a tank in Kosovo: We are  
sitting all day in our vehicle as an exposed legitimate military  
target of NATO. We eat one can of liver paste per day, we  wash once  
a week, and we smoke marijuana for days on end. We also drink heavily  
and talk only among ourselves since we are not allowed to communicate  
with our relatives back in Serbia. But we are all right.

     These two men made different choices but their fates were  
randomly guided by the criminal minds of others.

      The  warrior lawyer seizes the limelight; he calls the witness  
the servant of Natasa Kandic, an officer of Hague tribunal and the  
criminal court. SO WHAT?

      The commander confronts him and calls him a traitor, dirt, a  
phenomenon in Serbian history... We Women in Black are proud of him.

       The bad guy who became good, who now wants to play God, has  
his five minutes of revelation: I know what love is, he repeats  
several times. I love Serbia and I am proud of it. I understand the  
families of the victims. He stares at them, as if that will make them  
love him. He is like King Kong really, destroying love and claiming  
love. We stare back in silence.

       There is something wrong with the language here today.  I  
promise myself: I will never love anything or anybody if that means I  
have to kill that thing, that person. If love is as blind as faith,  
let me be the one who doubts.