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Slobodan Milošević listen (Serbian: Слободан Милошевић, pronounced ; August 20, 1941 – March 12, 2006) was a Serbian, Yugoslav leader. He served as President of Serbia from 1989 to 1997 and then President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000 and also led Serbia's ruling Socialist Party. He was one of the key figures in the Yugoslav Wars and became the first head of state to be indicted for several war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide, ethnic cleansing and mass rapes. Following his fall from power, he was extradited to stand trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, but died after five years in prison before the case could be brought to a conclusion. Milošević, who suffered chronic heart ailments and high blood pressure, died of natural causes, according to the UN tribunal.
Early career
Milošević was a Montenegrin Serb by origin, born in Požarevac, Yugoslavia, during the Axis occupation. His father, Svetozar Milošević, committed suicide while Slobodan was in high school; he is said to have studied for the Orthodox priesthood, but was never ordained. Slobodan's mother, Stanislava Milošević, hanged herself ten years later. Slobodan married Mirjana Marković (they had a son, Marko, and a daughter, Marija).
In 1959, Milošević joined the Communist Party (aka the League of Communists). Milošević also studied law at Belgrade University (graduated in 1964), where he met Ivan Stambolić, a young rising star within the Yugoslav Communist Party. Having followed in his mentor's steps, Milošević was later to accuse Stambolić of "having betrayed the Serbian cause". From 1969 he was deputy CEO of Tehnogas, a firm where Stambolić was CEO. When Stambolić in 1973 became leader of Communist Party of Serbia, Milošević took his place as CEO of Tehnogas. He worked there untill 1978 when he took position of chairman of Beogradska Banka (Belgrade Bank). At times he resided in New York as the bank's official representative abroad, and he finally left the bank in 1983 to dedicate himself to politics.
Rise to power
After he was elected president of the Belgrade City Committee of the League of Communists in April 1984, Milošević publicly opposed nationalism. He prevented the publication of a book containing the works of Slobodan Jovanović, a distinguished Serbian historian, law professor and nationalist politician of the early twentieth century. Milošević also advocated retaining Marxism as a school subject and publicly lambasted Belgrade's youth for their low turnout at the Communist Day of the Youth, claiming that their absence "desecrated" Tito's character and work.
Milošević emerged in April 1987 as the leading force in Serbian politics. His political positions have sometimes been termed as nationalist, although socialism and internationalism also marked his ideology. Later that year, while addressing a Serbian crowd in Kosovo gathered to protest about alleged brutality by local police, he told them that "No one has the right to beat you! No one will ever beat you again!". This broke two important taboos in Yugoslav politics; that Communist officials should not publicly criticise their peers (the police were controlled by the local Communist administration) and that Party officials should not publicly side with one of Yugoslavia's ethnic groups (the local administration was dominated by ethnic Albanians, which the Kosovo Serbs resented). Stambolić later said that "he had seen that day as the end of Yugoslavia".
Meanwhile, Stambolić had become the party leader in the Serbian section of the League of Communists; in September 1987, he became the President of Serbia. To the dismay of senior figures in the party, he supported Milošević for election as the new party leader. Stambolić spent three days advocating Milošević as leader, managing to secure him a narrow victory, by the narrowest margin in the history of Serbian Communist Party internal elections.
Dragiša Pavlović, Milošević's fairly liberal successor at the head of the Belgrade Committee of the party, opposed Milošević's policies towards Kosovan Serbs, calling them "hastily-promised speed". Contrary to advice from Stambolić, Milošević denounced Pavlović as being soft on Albanian radicals. On September 23rd and 24th, during a thirty-hour session of the Communist Central Committee broadcast live on state television, Milošević had Pavlović deposed. Embarrassed and under pressure from Milošević's supporters, Stambolić resigned a few days later.
In February 1988, Stambolić's resignation was formalized, allowing Milošević to take his place as President. Twelve years later, in the summer of 2000, Stambolić was kidnapped; his body was found in 2003 and Milošević charged with ordering his murder. In 2005, several members of the Serbian secret police and criminal gangs were convicted in Belgrade for a number of murders, including Stambolić's.
Milošević spent most of 1988 and 1989 focusing his politics on the "Kosovo problem". His subordinates organized public demonstrations – the so-called "antibureaucratic revolution" – which led to the elected leaderships of Vojvodina (6 October, 1988), Montenegro (10 January, 1989) and finally Kosovo itself (in February-March 1989) being removed. Azem Vlasi, leader of the Albanian Kosovan majority, was arrested; the special police's intervention during the subsequent Stari trg miners' strike resulted in thirty-two deaths.
On 28 March, 1989, the National Assembly of Serbia, under Milošević's leadership, amended the Serbian constitution to reduce the autonomy of its two provinces. Three months later, on Vidovdan (St. Vitus' day) and the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, Milošević addressed a large crowd gathered on the supposed site of the battle. Among his remarks was:
"We are again engaged in battles and are facing battles. They are not armed battles, although such things cannot be excluded yet."
The speech was widely alleged to be the official beginning of a Serbian nationalist campaign, a defining element of the Yugoslav wars that broke out a few years later. Milošević's defenders claim that speech extolled unity among all peoples in Serbia, pointing to other remarks in Milošević's speech such as:
"After all, our entire country should be set up on the basis of such principles. Yugoslavia is a multinational community and it can survive only under the conditions of full equality for all nations that live in it."
"Equal and harmonious relations among Yugoslav peoples are a necessary condition for the existence of Yugoslavia and for it to find its way out of the crisis."
Milošević closed by saying:
"Let the memory of Kosovo heroism live forever! Long live Serbia! Long live Yugoslavia! Long live peace and brotherhood among peoples!"
Presidency
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Slobodan Milošević was first elected President of Serbia by the National Assembly in 1989.
At the 14th Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in January 1990, the delegation of Serbia led by Milošević insisted on the reversal of 1974 Constitution policy that empowered the republics and rather wanted to introduce a policy of "one person, one vote", which would empower the majority population, the Serbs. This caused the Slovenian and Croatian delegations (led by Milan Kučan and Ivica Račan, resp.) to leave the Congress in protest and marked a culmination in the rift of the Yugoslav ruling party.
Milošević presided over the transformation of the League of Communists of Serbia into the Socialist Party of Serbia (July 1990) and the adoption of a new Serbian constitution (September 1990) providing for the direct election of a president with increased powers. Milošević was subsequently re-elected president of the Serbian Republic in the direct elections of December 1990 and December 1992.
In the first free parliamentary elections of December 1990, Milošević's Socialist Party won 80.5% of the vote. The ethnic Albanians in Kosovo largely boycotted the election, effectively eliminating even what little opposition Milošević had. Milošević himself won the presidential election with even higher percentage of the vote.
Milošević's rise to power happened amidst a growth of nationalism in all the former Yugoslavian republics following the collapse of communist governments throughout eastern Europe. Notably, Slovenians elected a nationalist government under Milan Kučan, and the Croatians did the same with Franjo Tuđman. The main Bosnian politicians were also nationally oriented.
The socialist Yugoslavia was at the time governed by an eight-member Presidency where four members were inclined to support Slobodan Milošević's ideas (such as the proclamation of a state of emergency), while four were inclined to oppose it. As the critical decisions would all end in a stalemate, the head of state was rather dysfunctional.
In June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia seceded from the federation, followed by the republics of Macedonia (September 1991) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (March 1992). The large Serb minorities in Croatia (580,000) and Bosnia (1.36 million) demanded to stay in Yugoslavia based on the same right of self-determination claimed by their Croat and Muslim neighbours.
The Serbs of Croatia started organizing their own autonomy as early as mid-1990, and they were supported in this by the Yugoslav government. Through 1991 and early 1992, together with the Yugoslav People's Army, they engaged in a war against the Croatian government. The first leader of Serbs in Croatia, Milan Babić, has stated that Milošević was responsible for this, whereas his successor Goran Hadžić publicly bragged about how he was "the extended hand of Slobodan Milošević".
In 1992, the same thing happened in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as the Yugoslav People's Army moved the bulk of its forces in. In 1995, Milošević negotiated the Dayton Agreement in the name of the Bosnian Serbs (similar to how Tuđman did it for the Bosnian Croats). As the agreement finally brought an end to the war in Bosnia, Milošević was credited in the West with being one of the pillars of Balkan peace.
Downfall of Presidency
On 4 February, 1997, Milošević recognized the opposition victories in some local elections, having contested the results for 11 weeks.
Constitutionally limited to two terms as Serbian president, on 23 July, 1997, Milošević assumed the presidency of the Yugoslav Federation (currently Serbia and Montenegro). Armed actions by Albanian separatist groups and Serbian police and military counter-action in Serbia's previously autonomous (and 90% Albanian) province of Kosovo culminated in escalating warfare in 1998, NATO air strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia between March and June 1999, and finally a full withdrawal of all Yugoslav security forces from the province.
During the Kosovo War he was indicted on 27 May, 1999, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Kosovo, and he was standing trial, up until his death, at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which he asserted was illegal, having been established in contravention of the UN-charter.
The Yugoslav constitution called for a two round election with all but the two leading candidates eliminated for the second round. Official results put Koštunica ahead of Milošević but at under 50%. Opinion polls suggested that supporters of most of the minor candidates would go to Milošević as would numbers of people who abstained in the first round but would oppose an opposition supported by the NATO powers.
Milošević's rejection of claims of a first-round opposition victory in new elections for the Federal presidency in September 2000 led to mass demonstrations in Belgrade on 5 October and the collapse of the regime's authority. Opposition-list leader Vojislav Koštunica finally took office as Yugoslav president on 6 October when Milošević publicly accepted defeat. Ironically, Milošević lost his grip on power by losing in elections which he scheduled prematurely (before the end of his mandate) and which he did not even need to win in order to retain power which was centred in the parliaments which his party and its associates controlled. This downfall is called the Bulldozer Revolution.
Following a recently issued warrant for his arrest by the Yugoslav authorities on charges for corruption/abuse of power, Milošević eventually surrendered to security forces on Saturday, 31 March, 2001. On 28 June of the same year, Milošević was transfered by government officials from Yugoslavian to United Nations custody just inside Bosnian territory. He was then transported to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, although the Constitution explicitly prohibited extradition of Yugoslav citizens. Koštunica formally opposed the transfer.
Trial
Following Milošević's transfer, the original charges of war crimes in Kosovo were upgraded by adding charges of genocide in Bosnia and war crimes in Croatia. On 30 January, 2002, Milošević accused the war crimes tribunal of an "evil and hostile attack" against him. The trial began at The Hague on 12 February, 2002, with Milošević defending himself while refusing to recognize the legality of the court's jurisdiction.
His popularity among the Serbs and Yugoslavs again rose sharply once the trial had begun, as his supporters see it as a travesty of justice and violation of national sovereignty.
Milošević had a team in Belgrade that helped him, often sending him information available from the secret police files. Serbian insiders often supported Milošević's point of view, while Bosnian and Croatian witnesses have offered a lot of testimonies supporting the indictments. The tribunal has to prove he had command responsibility in Croatia and Bosnia, at least de facto, since formally as a President of Serbia at the time he was not in charge. His influence may have gone beyond his formal duties, but there is little to no record of this.
Milošević was not considered by some contemporaries to be a radical nationalist himself (although some of his followers were). Milošević's rhetoric did not make use of hate speech.
At one point during the Yugoslav wars, Serbia had rejected further cooperation with the Croatian Serbs (the Republic of Serbian Krajina), and also with the Bosnian Serbs (the Republika Srpska, in 1993, when Serbia closed the border over the Drina river). After the Dayton Agreement in 1995, the Serbian nationalists (Vojislav Šešelj's radical party) became his sturdy opponents, up until 1998 when they joined his party in a coalition government.
The trial is still a controversial issue and has featured many conflicting and strange testimonies, which are viewed by all sides of the argument to support theories of cover-ups and dishonesty by the opposing parties. For example:
- the statement by William Walker, the US former ambassador to El Salvador during its war, that he did not remember phoning several senior US officials to say that, at Racak, he had discovered a justification for a NATO war, but did not dispute that officials who said they had received his calls were telling the truth,
- the testimony by General Wesley Clark that Milošević had come to him privately at a conference to admit to prior knowledge of the Srebrenica massacre and in the same evidence that NATO had no links to the KLA,
- the statement by Rade Marković that a written statement he had made implicating Milošević had been extracted from him by ill-treatment legally amounting to torture by named NATO officers,
- the statement by Lord Owen (author of the Vance Owen Plan) that Milošević was the only leader who had consistently supported peace and that any form of racism was personally "anathema" to him.
The prosecution took two years to present its case in the first part of the trial, where they covered the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. Throughout the two-year period, the trial was being closely followed by the publics of the involved former Yugoslav republics as it covered various notable events from the war and included several high-profile witnesses.
Milošević got increasingly ill during this time (high blood pressure and severe flu), which caused intermissions and prolongued the trial by at least six months. In early 2004, when he finally appeared in court in order to start presenting his defense (announcing over 1,200 witnesses), the two ICTY judges decided to appoint him two defense lawyers in accordance with the medical opinions of the resident cardiologists. This action was opposed by Milošević himself and the pair of British lawyers appointed to him.
In October 2004, the trial was resumed after being suspended for a month to allow counsel Steven Kay, who complained Milošević was not cooperating, to prepare the defense. Steven Kay has since asked to be allowed to resign from his court appointed position, complaining that of the 1200 witnesses he has only been able to get five to testify. Many of the other witnesses refused to testify in protest of ICTYs decision not to permit Milošević to defend himself.
In November 2004, former Soviet Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov became the first high profile witness to testify for the defence.
It was considered likely that, if allowed to present his case, Milošević would attempt to establish that NATO's attack on Yugoslavia was aggressive, thus being a war crime under international law and that, while supporting the KLA, were aware that they had practiced and intended to continue practicing genocide, which is a crime against humanity. If a prima facie case for either claim were established, the ICTY would be legally obliged under its terms of reference to prepare an indictment against the leaders of most of the NATO countries, even though the Prosecutor already concluded an "inquiry" against the NATO leaders.
Supporters of Milošević
There are some writers and journalists who have argued that the criminality of Milošević's actions during the Bosnian Civil War have been exaggerated to provide justification for the military intervention. Political scientist Michael Parenti has made the case that Milošević, and the actions of the Serbs more broadly, were systematically exaggerated by the mainstream U.S. media during the period of NATO's bombing (see Parenti's book "To Kill a Nation" for more details).
Additionally, Paris based journalist Diana Johnstone made the case in her work of investigative journalism Fool's Crusade that Milošević's actions were marginal at best, and certainly not greater than the crimes of the Croats or the Bosnian Muslims, even going so far as to claim that the massacre of Srebrenica did not occur, and was a media fabrication. Johnstone though, has been claimed as a long-standing friend of Mirjana Marković, Milošević's wife.
Political scientist Edward Herman (former co-author with Noam Chomsky) publicly endorsed Johnstone's findings in his review of Fool's Crusade in the Monthly Review after the book's publication.
Noam Chomsky himself has not commented on the accuracy of Johnstone's findings although he has indicated that he regretted not supporting her book strongly enough upon publication. This comment was then allegedly distorted by journalist Emma Brockes in an interview with Chomsky in The Guardian on October 31, 2005 to make it appear as though Chomsky himself was denying the Srebrenica massacre. Chomsky in response, issued an open letter to the The Guardian in which he accused Brockes and the editors of fabrication , The Guardian later apologized to Chomsky and retracted the article in a short letter.
Diana Johnstone later commented on The Guardian piece in Alexander Cockburn's journal CounterPunch. Chomsky does not agree with Johnstone's views on Milošević, the Serbs, or Srebrenica in particular, but has been critical of NATO's intervention and has indicated that the campaign was carried out with prior knowledge that the bombing would escalate the atrocities. His views on that topic can be found in his book The New Military Humanism.
University of Pennsylvania Professor Francisco Gil-White's investigative journalism on The Emperor's New Clothes and Historical and Investigative Research reveals documentation that, he believes, supports the claims that the criminality of Milošević's actions as President of Yugoslavia were exaggerated, if not wholly fabricated.
Death
Milošević was found dead in his cell on March 11, 2006 in the UN war crimes tribunal's detention center in The Hague. An official in the chief prosecutor's office said that he had been found at about 10 a.m. Saturday and had apparently been dead for several hours. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia said that he had been suffering from heart problems and high blood pressure.. Although his death was reported early on 11 March it was only officially confirmed at 13.19 CET by the Dutch NOS news agency. His trial had been due to resume on 14 March with testimony from the former president of Montenegro, Momir Bulatović. The tribunal had recently denied his request to travel to Russia for specialist medical treatment. He had planned to appeal against this decision, saying that his condition was worsening. His death from natural causes has been announced by the Socialist Party of Serbia, although speaking to television cameras in The Hague, Milošević's lawyer, Zdenko Tomanović, stated that Milošević had feared that he was being poisoned, and demanded that an autopsy be carried out in Russia rather than in the Netherlands. Request for autopsy in Russia was denied by ICTY and his body was transported to the Dutch Forensic Institute (DFI). Request for presence of one pathologist from Belgrade was granted.
References
- AP article on death of Milosevic
- Herman, Edward S. (2003). "Diana Johnstone on the Balkan Wars".
- Chomsky, Noam (2005). "Open Letter to The Guardian".
- The Guardian (2005). "Corrections and clarifications: The Guardian and Noam Chomsky".
- Johnstone, Diana (2005). "The Origins of the Guardian's Attack on Chomsky".
- ICTY (2006). "Pressrelease reporting Milošević's death".
- ^ CNN (2006). "Milosevic found dead in cell".
{{cite web}}:|author=has generic name (help) - NBC (2006). "Slobodan Milosevic Dies In Prison".
- BBC (2006). "Milosevic found dead in his cell".
- news.com.au (2006). "Justice dies with Milosevic".
- reuters.co.uk (2006). "Lawyer says Milosevic feared he was being poisoned".
{{cite web}}:|author=has generic name (help)
Further reading
- Chomsky, Noam. "The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo."
- Johnstone, Diana. "Fool's Crusade."
- Parenti, Michael. "To Kill A Nation: NATO's Attack on Yugoslavia." Verso
- Lebor, Adam. "Milosevic: A Biography."
External links
- BBC News - Have Your Say
- Video Archives of ICTY Trial of Miloŝević
- Miloŝevic trial 2001-2004
- Milosevic trial news and resources, JURIST
- Court transcripts and other documentation on the trial of Slobodan Milošević
- "The Other Side of the Story" Dusan Vilic and Bosko Todorovic
- Meltdown at the Milosevic Trial: A Much Delayed Rush to Judgment, JURIST
- To Kill A Nation - The Attack on Yugoslavia
- Information about the Civil War and Milošević
- "How Politicians, the Media, and Scholars Lied about Milošević's 1989 Kosovo Speech"
- BBC News Obituary
- The Milosevic Trial Legacy: If Not Outcome, Hope, JURIST
- Bildt Comments: Slobodan Milosevic
| Preceded byIvan Stambolic | Chairman of the League of Communists of Serbia 1986–1989 |
Succeeded byBogdan Trifunovic |
| Preceded byPetar Gracanin | President of Serbia 1989–1997 |
Succeeded byMilan Milutinović |
| Preceded byZoran Lilić | President of Yugoslavia 1997–2000 |
Succeeded byVojislav Koštunica |
| Presidents of Serbia (List) | |
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| Presidents of People's Assembly of PR/SR Serbia (1945–1974) (within FPR/SFR Yugoslavia) | ,_Flag_of_Serbia_(1947%E2%80%931992).svg) |
| Presidents of Presidency of SR Serbia (1974–1992) (within SFR Yugoslavia) | |
| Presidents of the Republic of Serbia (1992–2006) (within FR Yugoslavia/Serbia and Montenegro) | .svg) |
| Presidents of the Republic of Serbia (since 2006) |  |
| Presidents of Serbia and Montenegro | ||
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