Interview conducted by: Igor Mekina and Svetlana Vasovic-Mekina

VREME: The last time we met was after Dayton. Many things have changed in the meantime; back then it seemed as though the situation in the region was calming down – the wars in Bosnia and Croatia were finished, and Milosevic was characterized in the west as the “factor of peace and stability”. What went wrong?

MIRA MARKOVIC: After Dayton, definite peace was on the horizon for the territory where exhausted people, who were citizens of the former Yugoslavia, lived. I, who had suspected the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1989, and was convinced of war in 1990 and was against the collapse of the country and especially against its collapse via war, rejoiced tremendously over peace. Peace for all people. Everyone who was informed of the Dayton events, especially the closest circle of those that had negotiated and made decisions in Dayton, know that Slobodan was the key person of the Dayton peace. The American administration was counting on his role as such and in that sense they weren’t deceived. If peace in Bosnia and in the Balkans was the goal, they not only had an honest but, primarily, a capable and influential ally in the president of Serbia. Yet that newly established peace didn’t seem to agree with someone who decided on what was to happen in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and in the Balkans. Either someone more important than the ideologists and creators of Dayton’s policies existed, or those policies were abandoned. Someone somewhere, important, the most important person, decided to continue with the destabilization process of the Balkans and to abolish even this, third Yugoslavia. The Albanian minority in Kosovo was exploited for that purpose, aggressive nationalism and separatism were incited amongst the Albanian people, weapons were delivered and powerful logistics were prepared for an armed rebellion of part of the Albanian population in Kosovo – against the Serbs, against Serbia, against Yugoslavia.

It was the duty of the army and police of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to stop that rebellion, just like it is the duty of all armies and police services, i.e. all countries in the world when part of their territory is imperiled. Resistance to Albanian separatism and terrorism provided by the Yugoslav army and police was proclaimed a crime by the governments of the countries which belonged to the NATO alliance and punished with a three-month-long bombing campaign. That is the short and complete truth.

VREME: What did the NATO intervention against Yugoslavia mean to you personally?

MIRA MARKOVIC: Back then, and even now, with regards to NATO’s so-called invasion against Yugoslavia, I believed it was World War III in which the 19 most powerful countries in the world with their united forces and the most contemporary weapons, waged war against nine million citizens of a country which was endlessly exhausted after the year-long sanctions and of having had to provide for one million refugees. That war is shameful for those countries, for those governments which in the most part were left-oriented ones and a degradation for science whose vast heritage in all fields was used to cause human suffering, destruction of material goods and death, instead of improving the lives of the poor, the happiness of all people, and a longer and better human life in its entirety.  

VREME: Could the intervention have been prevented had different policies been led, primarily in Kosovo?

It might have been prevented if an agreement on the invasion of Serbia was signed in Rambouillet.

VREME: Why were early elections called on September 24, 2000 – was it because of the anniversary of the Eight Session?

I now see for the first time that that date coincides with the time when the Eight Session was held. I don’t think anyone had that coincidence in mind. It was totally accidental.

VREME: From today’s perspective – would it have been better for SPS and JUL had they held regular elections?

MIRA MARKOVIC: As far as the election regularity is concerned – those elections were regular. They were only held two months earlier that federal and local elections were held in 1996. Those were held at the beginning of November. I don’t think September or November would have changed much in this case.

VREME: How did you view events in the period from September 24 till October 5, 2000?

MIRA MARKOVIC: I was surprised by the results of the presidential elections. I allow myself even today to say that I am fairly competent to assess the public mood. I myself had actively taken part in the election campaign and I had a picture of the voters’ mood. That picture spoke in favor of a result which was different from the one which was announced on October 6. However, I might have been wrong; that the public mood, as far as the president of the republic was concerned, was different. However, this is a topic I could analyze, very thoroughly and simultaneously, at great length. And that is, naturally, impossible in the scope of a newspaper interview and in the scope of a single answer to a single question. I could write a political study on it or a sociological essay, if I could find someone free enough to publish it.

VREME: Were you informed that buses from Cacak were on their way and did you know about everything that had occurred in Belgrade on October 5?

MIRA MARKOVIC: That trucks, busses and bulldozers were preparing to come to Belgrade on October 5, we only heard a bit about in our house on the evening prior to Oct. 5 and that morning. In that sense, the information that reached my husband, and which I heard from him, didn’t indicate any kind of serious violence. We both believed that it was some kind of pressure to prevent the second election round for president. Although, really, we didn’t understand why that second election round should be prevented.

VREME: Didn’t your associates tell you that the people were dissatisfied because (also on account of the Election Commission’s behavior) a suspicion existed that election fraud was being prepared, since Kostunica had won in the first round?

MIRA MARKOVIC: To begin with, I usually ask myself first. I didn’t notice that the “people were dissatisfied because a suspicion existed that election fraud was being prepared”. Furthermore, I myself didn’t notice that a suspicion existed that election fraud was being prepared. And, I myself never thought that anyone, in those state institutions in charge of the elections, would prepare for an election fraud. And why would it all be undertaken in the interest of the SPS-JUL candidate? Slobodan Milosevic had been at the head of Serbia for ten years, and then Yugoslavia. He wasn’t a presidential candidate for the first time and he knew perfectly well that if that function is conducted in a conscientious and honest way, it doesn’t bring anything a person would fight for, and it takes a lot out of life, it presents an endless burden and the one who is carrying out that task doesn’t have a single day which isn’t filled with worries, tensions and an enormous amount of work.  

To be president of a republic is attractive only for someone who has no intention of working, who will delegate the majority of the work to be carried out by others, who is devoid of a feeling of responsibility for the state and the nation and who views that position as a chance to live well for a while and if the mood occasionally hits him, to make decisions about other people’s lives. It is a separate question, even if someone suspected that election fraud would occur, is that a reason to burn the federal parliament and state television and to so mercilessly beat up its reporters? I truly don’t see any connection between a possible suspicion of a possible theft and the beating up of the state television’s general manager and journalists. And as far as, as you mention, my associates are concerned and their eventual warning about the dissatisfaction of the people and suspicion of possible election theft, no one warned me of such things. My comrades, associates, the people I met with didn’t see what I didn’t see.  

VREME: When did you find out that Kostunica had won?

MIRA MARKOVIC: My husband received a message on October 6 that Vojislav Kostunica wishes to see him. Slobodan agreed to meet with him. On that occasion Vojislav Kostunica informed him that the Federal Constitutional Court had decided that he had won the elections for president and that this was published in the Official Gazette. My husband immediately accepted that information and congratulated Vojislav Kostunica. He told him, along with his congratulations, that he believes that it isn’t right to start out his mandate by burning and destroying everything that our son had owned which had happened in the course of the previous night. Vojislav Kostunica, as people say, expressed his regret on account of it and said that he knew nothing about it.

VREME: How did you accept the fact that Kostunica had won?

MIRA MARKOVIC: Slobodan addressed the public, he shortly announced once again that he congratulates the new president and that in future his activities would center on his party, family and, especially, his grandson Marko. And that was all. No one in our family was sorry he was no longer president of the republic, we especially weren’t unhappy because of it. We were unhappy because everything occurred in an unusual and needlessly aggressive manner.

VREME: Were you afraid that in the events on the streets on October 5 (and in the following days) someone could have harmed your family or you?

MIRA MARKOVIC: Our family has been exposed to media terror since 1990. My husband has been exposed to physical threats for a full decade. For a decade, certain circles exist which keep threatening that they will kidnap him, poison him, arrest him, kill him… Since October 6, all the members of our family are exposed to danger, as far as our lives are concerned. We and our children, even our grandchild are being threatened, threatened and threatened. That they will arrest us, kill us. And as far as the media terror is concerned, it has the form of a lynch which no nation has ever used against any of their citizens, especially not against the president of the country who had devoted the last fifteen years of his life exclusively to the interests of his people and from those people, i.e. its majority, he received acknowledgment for such dedication in the manner that the majority of those people elected him to be their president four times. The pathological mind which has devised this lynch believes that it isn’t enough to expose only the former head of state to media terror, but that all members of his family should also be exposed to that terror. Even the children, who never dealt with politics, who were never members of any party, and their business activities had absolutely nothing to do with politics. On the contrary. Our family is exposed to a pogrom in which Stalinist and fascistic experiences have been united and perfected.

VREME: Isn’t that an expected reaction to the previous period when your husband, SPS and JUL were in the government, to the period of arrests and beatings of the students and Otpor activists, the purges at the University, repression of the media…

MIRA MARKOVIC: The previous government didn’t arrest, nor beat up students. Nor Otpor activists. As is well known, during the 1996 and 1997 demonstrations, which lasted three months, the police was on the streets and didn’t intervene at all. It was strongly forbidden to. I have to admit that to the shock of the public, since those three-month “walks” through Belgrade ground life to a halt in the largest part of the city – public transport wasn’t running, people had to walk to work, and those who had small children had to take them to kindergarten by foot in the greatest cold, the schools were closed, shops as well, a large number of shops in the downtown area were looted… And the demonstrators were protected and certain that, despite everything, nothing would happen to them. If that wasn’t so, they wouldn’t have taken along babies in their prams on those walks.

VREME: The police, however, didn’t remain passive, as was seen in the course of the winter, when the demonstrators were dispersed with water cannons and beaten up on Branko’s bridge?

MIRA MARKOVIC: Somewhere towards the end of the demonstrations, towards the end of winter, water hoses were used on the New Belgrade bridge. That was the only repression and I don’t see that it was particularly cruel. Similar demonstrations in western countries wouldn’t have lasted even a few days, and as a rule they are dispersed extremely brutally. They don’t even hide that and we all know perfectly well that it’s true. Furthermore, at the university, under the former government, there were no purges…

VREME: And what of the mass sacking of the professors and the destruction of the university’s autonomy?

MIRA MARKOVIC: Not a single university professor was fired from his job due to political reasons. The Law on State Universities was adopted, by which the education minister, i.e. the government, appoints the university presidents, deans and presidents of the executive boards of the universities and their schools. That is a practice in state-owned universities and schools in the majority of the European countries. The opposition of that time reacted stormily, claiming that the presidents and deans of the school should be elected by the employees of the university, i.e. school. Self-management which they criticized so much, suited them in this case.  

Now they have the chance to correct the mistakes of the previous government. Now they are in power – let them change the Law on Universities, let them not allow the education minister, i.e. government, to appoint the presidents and the deans, let the employees elect them. However, I doubt they will do that. Now that the minister of this government decides who shall be president and who dean, he won’t give up that opportunity in favor of those employed at the schools. Now that Law will be good.

As far as the media repression is concerned now there’s something that really never existed. Over 95% of the media in Serbia was in the hands of the opposition. In that media, the government was accused of all sins – of being stupid, of being incapable, corrupt, untruthful, no good, the worst in the world. Rarely did anyone from the government react to these accusations. And then two or three years ago the Media Law was passed which foresaw financial responsibility for false information, slander and insults. That Law was, so to say, copied from the practice of the western countries, in which strict financial and other punishment is foreseen for slander and lies.  

VREME: But that law practically choked the freedom of the press in Serbia.

MIRA MARKOVIC: I wouldn’t say it was media darkness, but even if it was, then it was similar or less so than in the countries whose information laws we used. That is the US Communications Act and the French Information Law, in which, truly, the penal measures are a lot more rigid than the ones which were to be implemented in our version of that law. That law was applied for a very short time in Serbia. Maybe not even for a full year. The government gave up applying the law it had passed and the media continued freely with its lies and slander, insults and humiliation of the people who, politically or in any other way, didn’t agree with them.

But, when you say arrests were made, people were beaten up, others purged from the universities and the media was repressed – those aren’t vain words. You didn’t invent them. That is happening – now! Since October 5 when they were beaten up in front of the entire public, RTS reporters, activists and sympathizers of the leftist parties are constantly being beaten up throughout Serbia. Even their children are beaten up. Things have gone – as far as violence is concerned, even further – political unlike-minded people and members of their families are being fired from their jobs or are being degraded at work, so that this practice reminds us of the humiliation which people were exposed to during the worst Stalinist days.

VREME: That appears to be the expected response of those who have lived through similar humiliations in the period up to October 5, 2000.

MIRA MARKOVIC: I have already denied that any such things existed. Which is why I wouldn’t dwell on them again. And as far as violence is concerned, that isn’t all. In the night between October 5 and 6, the SPS headquarters in Belgrade were burned down, along with SPS and JUL headquarters in many municipalities in Serbia. The JUL directorate was robbed during that night. On top of that, there is no one to complain to, i.e. even if you do complain, no one will be called for responsibility for arson and theft and no one’s damage will be compensated. The courts have become totally dependent on politics. A few professors have been fired from the university, and new dismissals have been announced. On top of that, the fact that those dismissals from the university are due to political reasons isn’t even being hidden.

And as far as the media is concerned, all are exclusively state-run ones. Repression lies in the fact that in them an opinion other than the one which is planned to be the only one cannot be published. There are a few rare exceptions. Amongst them, this interview with me. That is, exceptions will occur, if everything is published just like I said and if I won’t suffer any unpleasant consequences on account of it.

Reprisals, therefore, which you are attributing to the former government didn’t occur at that time. They are occurring now, although slightly more exaggerated and dramatic, then listed in your question.

VREME: Various versions exist on what had actually occurred on October 5. How much truth is there in the claims that “Slobodan had ordered that a bomb be dropped on Studio B”, “to assassin 30 people”, “to shoot at the demonstrators”

MIRA MARKOVIC: I spent the majority of that day, October 5, with him. None of that is true. Just like absolutely nothing that is being written about him and us in the press and is being aired on all the TV channels from October 6 till today is true. Nothing is being written about what is true in connection to October 5 and 6 and in the days immediately following and a few days prior to it. Everyone remains silent on that. Even I.

VREME: Why have you opted for silence?

MIRA MARKOVIC: Because even the reasons why I opted for silence are not to be disclosed.

VREME: The newspapers which have in the meantime stood by the new government seem to excel in publishing the “juicy details” from your and your family’s life. What is your opinion on the “democratization of the media” such as Politika daily, RTS etc? What do you think of the people who were once close to you and who have in the meantime stood by the new government or left the country?

MIRA MARKOVIC: In that turnabout which was executed in a few days, and even in a few hours, the following elements were crucial: 1) fear, 2) bribes, 3) a low level of development of political affiliation and personal loyalty and, 4) a guilty conscience.

I ascribe special meaning to this fourth element, a guilty conscience. I suppose that the first people to join the new policies and the new government are the ones who, during the previous policies and the previous government and thanks to those policies and that government – had made considerable and even illegal fortunes. In their wish to preserve their “considerable” fortunes, and out of fear that people would find out about their “illegal” fortunes, they put themselves at the disposal of the new government with the hope, and with a plea, to protect them, to “forgive” them. And in return, they will, in the most innocent case, abandon the policies in which they had taken part, their associates, party comrades, even personal friends from that milieu, and if need be, they will even accuse their comrades, associates and friends if they are told they have to be accused. They will ascribe responsibility to them for the policies which they themselves had taken part in, often as its creators, in order to protect their benefits and material goods which those policies had made possible. Therefore, I assume that all of those from the former government who aren’t mentioned in the newspapers for any evil doings are in fact suspicious and these are often extremely rich people who have bought the present government’s silence by selling off their party comrades, political associates and personal friends. And they sold off mostly those who, both in political and personal issues, are honest people… That is why I believe that the SPS and JUL members who aren’t mentioned in the print media and on television as thieves, tycoons or as those who are suspect on  some other basis are suspicious and responsible – I believe they are the ones who have made a deal with the government to protect their financial and other interests, their rather considerable fortunes, and in return they will contribute to the harangue against their former comrades and personal friends. Or to at least play dumb and not take part in their defense.

VREME: Who had especially disappointed you from the former “fellow travelers” of the former government?

MIRA MARKOVIC: Those in that government who I looked upon not only as like-minded people but, prior to all, as personal friends.

VREME: Could you be more specific, for example when talking about SPS and JUL?

MIRA MARKOVIC: Some fawning and cowardly people from SPS and the JUL stood by the new government, but it seems mostly thieves have stood by it. I won’t be the one to list their names, I communicate with my impressions and presumptions, I am waiting for all those who have precise knowledge of it to speak up. There are plenty of those who were authorized to know such things in this country.  

VREME: What of those who have left the country?

MIRA MARKOVIC: As far as leaving the country is concerned, I condemn only those who have left it during the bombardment. I have understanding for all those who left it prior to and after it. However, at the same time, I see that those who had left the country during the bombardment or who had removed their children from the country in those times, are now accusing patriots, soldiers, even heroes of treason. The country of Serbia has never lived through such shame. This will be its first time. Possibly its last. If heroes are denounced and soldiers humiliated, and if cowards and traitors are to decide on the fate of the country, there will no longer be a Serbia, nor Serbs. I, a Serbian Yugoslav, claim this.  

VREME: You have recently, in an interview for a Vienna newspaper, stated that Slobodan is a hero. Why is it then that he and the majority of his comrades are no longer referred to as patriots, soldiers, heroes in the greatest part of the media?

MIRA MARKOVIC: Because the media is in the hands of the government which doesn’t allow a difference of opinion, and it especially wouldn’t allow a difference of opinion with regards to the former head of state, since the lynch aimed against him has become a priority in the platform of the new government.

VREME: The media has been uncovering new affairs on a daily basis – from arresting Rade Markovic to large sums of money which both your husband and you have seized while you were in power. Your comment?

MIRA MARKOVIC: At the beginning of October the media claimed that my husband had transferred three planes full of gold somewhere in the world after October 6, that he has accounts in foreign banks, that he is a rich man… That as far as money is concerned. Naturally, no one is even mentioning those planes now; he never had a single account in either foreign or domestic banks, apart from the checking account where he received his salary. And as of October 1, Slobodan isn’t receiving any salary. The dirtiest thing of all concerning him, which can constantly be read in the press or heard on TV, is that he had financially profited from his many-year-long presidential position.

VREME: Are you referring to accusations with regards to the house in Tolstojeva…

MIRA MARKOVIC: I am referring to all the accusations in connection to material goods. We have had a house in Tolstojeva Street for over ten years. We are now renovating it. Partly, because we had planned it a long time ago, and we acquired a permit from the authorized municipal bodies for it in 1996. Now, however, we have additional reasons to renovate, since during the bombing of the army barracks in Topcider and the Misovic hospital, our house was also extensively damaged. Anyway, the renovation of our house is our business. I don’t see that anyone is interfering with the hundreds of thousand of citizens in this country who are renovating their houses and apartments, especially not the state and its media. Somehow, this only applies to us.

If you are prone to making comparisons with the previous government, then one should admit that it had never dealt with who lived where, what he lived off of, and how the opposition leaders lived – its political adversaries. Nor did that interest anyone in the previous government, nor should it have interested us. Looking at what this new government is doing, it seems as though the previous one had made a mistake. Had they informed themselves properly of the financial status and personal lives of their political opponents who are now in office, only with great difficulty would any of them now be ministers. Only with difficulty would many of them avoid justified criminal and moral responsibility.

VREME: And what of the residency in Uzicka street?

MIRA MARKOVIC: There is no residency in Uzicka Street. In the extension of our garden in Tolstojeva street lies a huge garden in which formerly the residence of the Chinese ambassador was situated. Since our garden was very small, my husband, in order to widen that garden, asked the government of Serbia to allow him to use a part of the neighboring, former Chinese garden and to purchase the auxiliary object of the former Chinese residence, which is located in that part of the garden. That wouldn’t have violated the space in which the former Chinese residence was located, since the space surrounding it would still remain large and beautiful. And the auxiliary building? Why, the heating system for the residency was located there, the guard and gardener used it, it is a totally decrepit structure which couldn’t have been used for housing purposes. For us, the primary thing was the garden. The government approved such a thing, and we paid the requested price for that auxiliary building. Nothing is contentious there. Just like there is nothing contentious, for reasons which are difficult to explain, in the continuos attempt to find some sin of the former president of Yugoslavia. The Hague, gold, house, plot… I expect them to start examining whether he had truly graduated at the School of Law and whether that really was in Belgrade, whether he knows how to swim or is he just faking it, whether his glasses truly do have a plus two dioptry or whether he had deceived the people, wearing two and a half…  

In short, if the government wishes to dispute the legality of the decision on allocating the plot and the purchase of the house in which a heating system was located for the neighboring residence, let them dispute it. We will live like before, on the space of the former garden. Unless the government assessed that that too was illegal, immoral or – too much. Maybe they will believe that that also has to be taken away from us. From my point of view, violence over property is only a trifle in comparison to violence over beliefs and lives.

VREME: In other words, you believe the media should concentrate on the property of other officials?

MIRA MARKOVIC: Any director of a better standing company or president of a larger municipality has more material goods than Milosevic. Not to mention the ministers. Let the new government investigate foreign accounts, housing square meters, money spent on educating children abroad, and especially the firms of various prominent people, primarily from their own ranks and from the ranks of the former government, but owned by those who the new government doesn’t mention in their media. Fantastic surprises are in tow for the public. If someone in the new government would dare to and would want to do that, they themselves along with many journalists and a large number of the citizens would have to apologize to Milosevic. If a man exists who took nothing from the state, nor received anything, then it’s him. And if a man exists who this state is indebted to, it’s him.

VREME: The media is accusing you of other things as well – for example of ordering the assassination of political opponents. The investigation of the assassination of three Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) members and the brother of Danica Draskovic on the Ibarska highway and the assassination of Slavko Curuvija lead to the State Security Service (SDB), which the press refers to as your personal service?

MIRA MARKOVIC: There were many assassinations in Belgrade and Serbia. Mostly criminal, and some political. The interior minister of Serbia was assassinated, JUL’s general secretary, the defense minister of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, The Yugoslav Airline’s (JAT) general manager, the president of the Executive Council of Vojvodina… All of those people, who were killed for political reasons, are either my husband’s associates or personal friends. Until today it wasn’t uncovered how they lost their lives. Since these are political murders, then their executors, i.e. those who gave the orders, would by the very nature of things have to be from the ranks of their political enemies. It isn’t a usual practice to assassin political and personal friends without political and personal reasons, for no reason at all.

SDB is, as far as I have understood such things, a rather independent institution and, or so it seems, often insufficiently informed. If that wasn’t the case, it would have known on time that the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) had been arming itself for years, that bunkers were being dug up for months in Kosovo, that spies from all parts of the world were traipsing through the country unhindered, that during the bombardment dozens of locators were responsible for many lost lives and the destruction of material goods, that dozens of terrorists had entered the country with the task to kill the head of state, and so forth. I don’t believe this service knew all this, I believe even less that they had organized it themselves, and the least possible option would be that such orders, which in the final instance were against him too, were issued by the head of state. I doubt, therefore, that SDB has any connection with the accident on the Ibarska highway and with the assassination of Slavko Curuvija.

As far as I am concerned, I had no contacts with former SDB officials. They themselves will confirm this. And as for these new ones – I have even less to do with them. I don’t know whether the accident on the Ibarska highway was of a traffic or political nature. However, I honestly believe that the government in Serbia had no role in it. If it was a political thing, then those were certain policies, external or internal, which had nothing to do with the governments in Serbia and Yugoslavia, that is – those policies were contrary to the Serbian and Yugoslav governments. As far as the owner of Dnevni Telegraf is concerned, a long time prior to his assassination he moved both himself and his business dealings to Montenegro and I think his death has nothing to do with politics.

VREME: But SDB, in accordance with the law, was responsible to your husband, and not to the opposition leaders. How could someone from the opposition issue SDB with an order to carry out an assassination of the SPO top officials at the Ibarska highway or to kill a journalist?

MIRA MARKOVIC: I didn’t say that SDB is responsible for the traffic accident on the Ibarska highway, and especially SDB’s chief Rade Markovic isn’t responsible for it. If I said that in the case of that accident political motives were possible, furthermore motives of certain policies which had nothing to do with the governments in Serbia and Yugoslavia, I didn’t say that the protagonists of those policies had acted via SDB. They could have acted alone.

VREME: The newest issue of Spiegel has taken things even further – without listing their source of information, they directly accuse you for the murder of the police minister Badza, and for the assassination attempt on Kire Gligorov…

MIRA MARKOVIC: As far as I personally am concerned and my role in the assassinations of the police minister of Serbia and the president of Macedonia, if they weren’t dealing with the death of one man and a serious injury of another, those two “charges” would be an inspirational theme for a treatise on how hate and evil can degrade reason and intelligence. I am waiting to be shortly accused of inciting the war in Chechnya, the floods in India, the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, low temperatures in Siberia. Even if it is coming from political opponents and personally malicious people – it’s too much. But, first of all, it is stupid.

VREME: It is a fact that Ivan Stambolic was your close friend and later political opponent. How do you experience media insinuations that his disappearance is connected to your house? You believe that the business dealings in Montenegro are to blame for Curuvija’s fate, while something similar was published in Politika daily following Stambolic’s disappearance, only the blame was found in his “dealings with Republika Srpska”. Did you personally inquire who could have organized that kidnapping i.e. – assassination?

MIRA MARKOVIC: Ivan Stambolic was my husband’s friend. However, we didn’t have especially close family relations. After the Eight Session, Ivan Stambolic left politics and my husband, following his wish, enabled him to become director of the Jubmes bank. He didn’t maintain any personal contacts with him. He didn’t have any political ones since Stambolic was no longer politically active. In my family there was no special animosity towards Ivan Stambolic’s family, and we never even mentioned him. New and tumultuous times arrived. Ivan Stambolic remained in the past.  

When my husband was informed of Ivan Stambolic’s disappearance a few months ago, he issued a command to the interior minister of Serbia to do all that he could to find Ivan Stambolic or to at least find out where he is and what it’s all about. While he remained in the position of president of the republic, he never received that information. He didn’t influence that case further, it was passed on to the jurisdiction of other people.  

VREME: Can you possibly be a little more specific in connection to Ivan Stambolic’s fate?

MIRA MARKOVIC: I can. Ivan Stambolic in the year 2000 was no opponent to my husband. And as far as my husband’s political opponents are concerned, he communicated with them politically. He never threatened anyone with hanging, deportation, he didn’t burn the property of their children, he didn’t fire members of their families from their jobs nor evict them from their apartments, he didn’t delve into their accounts in the country nor abroad, he didn’t count the firms which were registered in the names of aunts and grandchildren, he didn’t forcibly cut their minor children’s hair in the elementary schools, he didn’t forbid opposition media, he didn’t beat up political unlike-minded people on the streets, he didn’t threaten all those who think differently than he does with jail and political trials, he didn’t organize ambushes of women – political unlike-minded ones – in the lobbies of the houses where they lived, only to beat them mercilessly, he didn’t file charges against anyone who slandered him, he didn’t even arrest those who threatened him with hangings, kidnapping and murder.

His behavior, as everyone knows, isn’t like that as far as current political unlike-minded people are concerned. Why would he, after a thousand years, deal with someone whom he had erased from memory in a way which never “corresponded” with current and often aggressive and merciless political opponents.

VREME: Wasn’t exactly that happening until October 5 – the political opponents of SPS and JUL were labeled by the state-run media and the officials of those two parties as traitors, spies, mercenaries…

MIRA MARKOVIC: It was. They were mentioned in that way. It is possible that during the pre-election campaign some got carried away in that sense, they spoke at random. However, didn’t these unjustly accused and overly accused people, once they came to power, pass a law which amnestied Albanian terrorists and started to arrest Serbian generals who defended the country in Kosovo from those amnestied terrorists. Didn’t they use all their energy to proclaim the supreme commander of their country’s army as guilty, because he defended his country? It is true that the left coalition candidates, which you mention, in the pre-election campaign made many statements in connection with the patriotism of their political opponents without justification. But, it is also true that those political opponents of theirs, once they came to power, and by adopting the aforementioned law, didn’t really dispute the leftists’ statements.

ON THE ADMIRERS

VREME: Did you expect any of the former associates to stand up in defense of Slobodan Milosevic?

MIRA MARKOVIC: Of course I did. Especially those who had loved him more than I and our children did. That is why I am shocked that I am the only one who talks about it in this way. I wasn’t running after him at the various promotions and construction sites, I didn’t stand next to him at any speaker’s platforms (apart from on Dec. 24, 1996 at the counter-rally, when many of his associates had to be persuaded to stand on an unprotected speaker’s platform in the middle of Belgrade where demonstrations were raging for the second month). Those “admirers” of his who unabled anyone, even me, to approach him, should defend him from slander in these times. They have fled to other parties today, retreated into retirement, transformed themselves into apolitical advisors in the firms where they were directors for ten years or they have made some other kind of deal with the new government not to defend their boss, to keep quiet, and in return the new government won’t touch them. To allow them to retain their firms, villas, chauffeurs, representation, peaceful dreams. If they can sleep peacefully after the deals they made.

ON ALL THE RUMORS

VREME: Rumors have it that Stambolic was eliminated because his eventual candidacy would have seriously endangered your husband’s election chances?

MIRA MARKOVIC: Rumors also said that my husband has diabetes (it is a well known fact that he isn’t on a diet, even with regards to sweets). Rumors also circulated that my Marija had married Mitsotakis’s son (even though he doesn’t have any sons). One could also hear that Marko received the best grade when he sat an exam which I held (even though he never studied anything, he has only completed high school). Rumors had it that I was opening up a botanical garden (it is true that I love flowers, but I prefer artificial ones, I am not inclined towards any type of nature activities).

A thousand stupidities were heard and I ask myself – why? Is it because Albanian terrorists have reached Vranje; because the Bor mining complex isn’t operating as of October, and it was fully operational even during World War II; because power cuts are a daily event, and the price of electricity is rising; because we don’t know how many soldiers and policemen were killed, and how many Serbs had their throats slit in the vicinity of Bujanovac… Do we not know this because all of it truly is horrendous. In order to avoid those topics, i.e. responsibility for the state of the country, the press is counting the number of trees in our garden and investigating how many croissants are produced daily in Milica’s and Marko’s bakery. So, that is the essence of those “rumors”. And Stambolic couldn’t have been a possible counter-candidate to my husband at the presidential elections. His counter-candidate at the presidential elections in September was NATO.

I DON’T GIVE OUT MY CHILDREN’S ADDRESSES

VREME: What are your children doing and where are they, daily speculations are especially ripe concerning Marko…

MIRA MARKOVIC: The foreign minister of the UK stated during the bombardment of Serbia that my children are out of the country. That really upset me. Marko was a volunteer from the beginning till the end of the war. His three-month-old son and Milica, during the three months of the bombing campaign, moved from one unfamiliar house to another, they were practically in hiding since they were NATO’s strategic target. For a full three months, I didn’t even know where Marko, Milica and little Marko were. Marija spent all her nights in Kosava TV heroically, at the top of the Usce building in New Belgrade, even though she knew that that building was one of the first targets, in defiance of the war and the terrible injustice. We begged her for nights, her father and I, to leave that place. She answered that she would remain there alone until the end. I thought to myself – no one has a daughter like that. I knew she was brave, but I didn’t know how brave she was. She left the Usce building only after everyone else had abandoned it and when it was impossible to remain in it. She was the last to leave.

And then, that accusation of Britain’s minister Cook, which was a lie and an injustice. I wrote him an open letter and explained where my children were. That letter was published in all the media here, and throughout the world as well. Two days after that letter, a NATO missile blew Kosava to pieces. All that Marija had no longer existed. I knew that was a reprisal for that letter. The Usce building was hit only in two places – one missile went through RTV Kosava’s studio, and the other through the first floor. Not a single went through the SPS headquarters. After that letter my little grandson and his mother started moving frequently, they went as far away as possible from the city, far away from the eyes of possible locators. I then thought to myself – my three-month-old grandson has embarked upon life by hiding and wandering, just like I started mine in 1942. I too was moved that way and hidden from the Gestapo, ever since I was born, continuously, until freedom.

After that I decided never to give out my children’s addresses to anyone, even if for only the best of intentions. And at this moment mainly those with bad intentions are inquiring about them – even though they themselves don’t know why they have such intentions.

VREME: Marko’s family has returned to the country. Why doesn’t he return as well?

MIRA MARKOVIC: Marko is justifiably extremely hurt. He has done a lot for Pozarevac and he loved Pozarevac very much. The summer disco club Madonna has established a cultural and modern form of entertainment. Contemporary music was played there, and the ambience was pretty and orderly. Madonna sold the cheapest Coca-Cola and the most expensive scotch in Yugoslavia. That most expensive scotch in Yugoslavia was a way to stop the young people from drinking scotch, and that cheapest Coca Cola was an expression of his wish to make that beautiful and modern disco club accessible even to the poorest young people. The Madonna disco club supported and created many festive events and large rallies in Pozarevac. One of those events was the 2000 New Year’s Eve celebration at the City Square, where the entire city converged and which Pozarevac shall never forget. Naturally, those were gifts to the city.

There is also the bakery which, just like the disco club, earned well, but was also a part of his intention to raise the quality of services in the town and the aesthetic culture in general. That was a beautiful, cultural, romantic place. In pretty colors, with pleasant music, with refined service and non-banalized assortment. As far as Bambi Park is concerned, it was built together with the Bambi Company. Each invested half of the means. Marko’s was all that had to do with ideas, milieu, hygienic standards, refined conduct. In the financial sense, it was a business without any profits. If someone turns the city dump into the most beautiful place in the country for children’s entertainment (and on top of it personally doesn’t financially profit by it) and becomes the object of a witch-hunt because of it, then that truly belongs to the other side of all reason and morality.

The Madonna Company and Marko personally have helped a large number of individuals. He viewed that help as his duty and never bragged about it. To publicly state his assistance would have degraded the motives out of which he helped others. That was his opinion and I think he was totally right. Marko believed that if you wish to help, then you do it for the one who needs that help, and not for personal publicity and boasting.

In the night between October 5 and 6 everything Marko had owned and built with enormous work and enthusiasm was burned and looted. The police didn’t protect him. The citizens remained silent. Marko couldn’t believe it. To be treated that way, he who had loved all people, who doesn’t even know the number of those he had indebted with his good deeds, often very great good deeds…