Tears shed for Milosevic

Sunday, March 19, 2006

A photograph rests on my desktop. The women in the photograph are all old, heads covered with scarves, eyes swollen and noses red from crying. Their faces are sorrowful, filled with mourning. They are in a tangled group, arms outstretched, each trying to touch a passing car which carries a coffin. For a moment, it looks as though this photograph could have been shot anywhere in the world.

  A photograph rests on my desktop. The women in the photograph are all old, heads covered with scarves, eyes swollen and noses red from crying. Their faces are sorrowful, filled with mourning. They are in a tangled group, arms outstretched, each trying to touch a passing car that carries a coffin. For a moment, it looks as though this photograph could have been shot anywhere in the world. Maybe we recognize this scene from here or from somewhere near. Maybe this is why I feel the need to inspect this photograph again, scrutinizing the faces of these women one by one. If I could only reach them to ask: Do you know for whom you cry? Do you understand in whose name you spill your tears? Do you realize how much innocent Muslim blood stains the record of this man who you declare a national hero, a man whose name you will doubtless repeat to your grandchildren? Have you ever heard of Srebrenitza? Have you ever heard the words "ethnic cleansing?” Or have you seen and heard these things but never been able to believe them? Or... do you somehow believe that such massacres and wars are an inescapable, perhaps a necessary part of life? Really, how is it that you can explain, and even legitimize the massacres of this man they call the butcher of Bosnia? Or is it that the blood of others does not interest you, as they will always just be "the others"?

  Slobodan Milosevic, age 62, was found dead in his prison cell. His death was listed officially as a heart attack, though this is open to argument. While some believe he was murdered, others insist he was pushed purposefully towards suicide. His lawyers had been fighting against his being held in a prison cell for a long time, claiming that Milosevic had a "proclivity towards suicide." They backed this up by pointing to his childhood, when he lost the three people closest to him due to the results of suicide. His mother, father and uncle had all chosen to end their lives similarly. Thus, there are people who believe today that Serbian nationalist leader Milosevic was knowingly pushed to the brink of suicide. And so screams of "Murderous Hague" rise up in the city squares. But pushing conspiracy theories aside for a moment, there is a fact which, though ignored by his supporters, is as clear as day to the rest of the world: This man, Milosevic, took leave of this world before justice could be enacted, before Bosnian families following this trial could receive comfort, before the system could do its job.

  What interests me the most is the blinders brought down over eyes by nationalism. Those who mourn Milosevic today, who take oaths of revenge following his death, are not ignorant of his ethnic cleansing campaign. To the contrary, they not only know about it, they support it, both inwardly and outwardly. And the Serbian women crying in city squares today for Milosevic, they know full well that there were thousands of Muslim women raped during the war in Bosnia, and that this was all part of a "nationalist mission." The mission being a policy of "Serbification" for the generation to be brought forward by these Bosnian women. It is the lowest point to which humans can fall. Milosevic s soldiers used rape as a weapon. These soldiers used their "manhood" as weapons, killing by way of the life they gave. Milosevic was such a fervent nationalist that he would parade around with the exhumed bones of former Serbian kings during election periods. Don t the women in the photograph that cry today for their former leader know these things? 

  Nationalism blinds people. It desensitizes them. Under the cloud of extreme nationalism you begin to not even feel the pain of other people because they have become "the other." Nationalistic speeches are always based on words like "us" and "them." Nationalism divides. It puts a gulf between humans, making “everyone else” foreign. It removes the ability for empathy from the individual. This is why the Serbians who now exalt Milosevic posthumously as a hero cannot feel the pain of the Bosnians. The photograph on my desktop, of crying Serbian women, documents the poisoned spell cast by nationalism.