Word: serbians
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Milosevic’s role in the Balkan tragedy can hardly be underestimated. He used a surge of Serbian nationalism in late 1980s to assume power and lead the Serbs into four bloody wars, producing hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees. At home, Milosevic’s regime bred widespread corruption, as an oligarchy of his closest allies became immensely rich at the expense of the state and the people. Meanwhile, during his 13-year rule, Milosevic clung to power by any means necessary: he rigged elections, crushed popular unrest and persecuted and killed independent journalists, opposition...
While Milosevic needs to answer to justice as a dictator, he also needs to stand trial as a war criminal. His rhetoric of nationalism and hatred certainly served to inspire the atrocities committed in the name of the Serbian people across the Balkans, and specific evidence exists pertaining to his direct role in crimes against Kosovo Albanians. This evidence forms the basis of the Hague Tribunal indictment. But, as Yugoslav Ambassador to the U.S. Milan St. Protic emphasized in a recent speech at the Kennedy School, Yugoslav authorities are determined to add war crimes to Milosevic’s indictment...
...extent of the atrocities will never be known to a Yugoslav public that has been largely kept in the dark on the issue over the past decade. The Hague trial will be seen as simply a necessary concession to the international community, and a chance for catharsis of the Serbian national conscience will be lost...
...West’s insistence on extradition is based on three misconceptions. First, most Western officials who push for Milosevic’s extradition are willing to admit the need for the Serbian people to confront their recent past, but underestimate the extent to which moving the trial to another country undercuts any such attempt. Second, it is argued that moving the trial to the Hague would serve as a deterrent to ethnic violence elsewhere, which is a weak argument indeed; if that were true, the Nuremberg trials should have served as a deterrent to the war criminals...
Srdjan L. Tanjga ’01, an applied math concentrator in Lowell House, is a founder of the Harvard Serbian Society...