A Conspiracy of Shame

What I am now interested in is a simple question: does a duty to remember exist? Is the duty to remember legally regulated or is it a result of expected behavior? Does a high authority stand behind this duty: the president of the country, the patriarch, the greatest living author? Or is it a legacy passed down by our forefathers? How far back do we remember? Who determines that? How detailed will it be? Does it only rely on personal memory or can someone else´s experience also be passed down?

BBC´s documentary A Cry From the Grave, which RTS aired on July 11, 2001, could not only remind us of the events of six years ago, but could also inspire reflections in this direction - how much and what do we remember. As far as I can see, that didn´t happen. People with first and last names appear in front of the cameras and microphones, this country´s citizens of legal age, to express their protest because this film was aired. According to them, A Cry From the Grave is part of the general campaign against the Serbian nation. However, the movie A Cry >From the Grave isn´t unknown and new to the public in Serbia. Until now, it was aired twice on TV B92 and TV ANEM (TV B92 bought the rights to air this film just like for any other film or series). Therefore, the reaction wasn´t aimed at the film itself but at the fact that it was aired on a prime-time slot on state-run television.

These, as a rule, highly primitive and arrogant reactions of the representatives of the opposition, the radicals and socialists, evoke diverse reactions and associations. On the one hand, it is clear that it is a defense of a certain policy which led the country in the last ten years and which can´t be contested at any price. The other, far more serious issue is the principle acceptance that everyone should answer for committed crimes accompanied by a strong refusal to accept that the Serbs ("the Serbian nation") took part in it. Naturally, what we have here is pure hypocrisy. All top officials of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) knew only too well that in July 1995 in Srebrenica around seven thousand unarmed men were killed in cold blood - aged between 16 and 65. I don´t think these officials (B. Ivkovic, for example) took part in the execution, that duty belonged to other services, but they were more than aware from the very start that their favorite general Ratko Mladic had committed a true massacre in Srebrenica. A simple (crude) question should be put to both the radicals and the socialists and some other patriotic public service employees: what would their reaction be if Bosnians or Croats during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia had killed the same number of unarmed Serbs in a single spot. Would war customs and statements that all sides had committed crimes be mentioned in that case as well? Naturally, each life lost is irredeemable and valuable unto itself, but the number of those who were killed in action or were assassinated has always been, after each war, an issue that was seriously considered. Why is Milan Bulajic today, after more than half a century, striving to prove that the number of those killed in Jasenovac is definitely a lot higher than the one which Franjo Tudjman operated with? Sensitivity expressed towards our own victims should also imply a sensitivity towards victims in general.

BLOOD RITUALS: One of the most moving events in connection to Srebrenica which I heard of didn´t even happen in Srebrenica. It happened on the road to Zvornik. That was the road on which the women, children and senior citizens from Srebrenica were being driven by UNHCR to Tuzla. That first day, they were transported in open trucks. In front of one pedestrian overpass in Zvornik, a large number of people gathered, mostly women and children. Everyone took stones along, of which some weighed up to ten kilos. Not a single truck existed in which there were no casualties, of which some even fatal. After that, UNHCR stopped all truck transportation and started using buses. Is it possible that no one knew what had occurred in Srebrenica? The entire Podrinje region knew about the stoning of the trucks bearing women and children. Just like they knew about Naser Oric´s crimes committed in the Serbian villages surrounding Srebrenica.

What Srebrenica evokes isn´t only naked horror and petrification in front of the proportion of mutual hate, but also immense irrationality. The question is highly morbid but at the same time utterly logical: why did Mladic and his gang allow the women, children and elders to leave Srebrenica alive? Why didn´t they kill them all, thereby eliminating all witnesses? A day after the women and children were separated from the men, they were driven into exile along the road where they could see vast fields of dead Srebrenica citizens. Some sort of arrogant madness exists in it all which cannot be rationally explained. What did the people who decided to kill so many others think? That things would be sticky for a week after which everything would settle down by itself? Did they feel like Messiahs who are undertaking dirty tasks for future generations? (The Muslims in Indonesia who carried out the dirty work of exterminating the Chinese ethnic communities accused of spreading communism acted similarly in 1965.)

To kill women and children isn´t a task which can be undertaken lightly, not to say mechanically, as is the case with men. Men capable of carrying a gun present a legitimate target. (Women´s inequality proved to be their highest protection here.) The right to have revenge on this territory, from Croatia to Macedonia, remains a holy right. The spirit of Leka Dukadjini isn´t only an Albanian mantra, and doesn´t have much to do with religion. It contains a certain blood ritual - a combination of the worst traditions and customs which only a closed, conservative and patriarchal society could invent.

As far as asanation is concerned, that too is nothing new. Only terminology changes. Back then, in 1997, I heard the story of a driver employed by a large trucking company in Serbia, who was assigned to transport earth from the vicinity of Srebrenica to the Drina River bank. Huge bulldozers loaded the earth onto the trucks, and he drove without a word. All up to the moment when he spotted a skeleton "waving" to him on his rear view mirror. He then stopped the truck, left it on the road and went back to his home town, totally shattered. Not to mention the equipment and munitions which was transport on a daily basis via Zvornik and Bijeljina. During the time of the so-called Skelan offensive, the citizens of Uzica and Bajina Basta could, just like tourists, watch how artillery support was provided by the Serbian side. That´s why only an autistic person can view the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina as a war in another country. (Albeit, an autistic person fails to notice a war even when it is waged in his own street. He waits for it to come to his home.)

FIELDS OF DEATH: Is the public in Serbia sincerely surprised by the discovery of mass crimes, their cover-up operations and subsequent explanations? Let me remind you that at the beginning of 1996 a book written by two Dutch soldiers, Srebrenica - History of a Crime, was published over half a year prior to its Bosnian edition. The publisher Radio B92 didn´t encounter any special problems due to this publication although, as far as I know, not a single review was published. When Erdemovic gave himself up to The Hague tribunal, the public in Serbia found out first-hand how operations on the Bosnian fields of death were conducted. Firing squads, dug out pits, helpless people awaiting their turn. There are no speeches, no explanations, no blindfolds. Nothing. Simple, banal death. Erdemovic himself was a small executor in that huge business of elimination. He could only testify to his part of the job. Only a couple of hundred killed, not more.

What is definitely a specific Serbian paradox is that in Serbia, in all those years, there was no conspiracy of silence. A lot was written and publicly spoken. The fact that state-run media avoided this subject, and the government sharply denied that any crime was committed in Srebrenica, can´t be justification for anyone that he knew nothing about it. In Serbia itself, not to mention international TV and radio programs, there was a lot of information on Srebrenica during the last six years. (A lot more than on Kosovo.)

Ovcare, Prijedor, Omarska, Zvornik, Visegrad, Foca, Srebrenica... these are places where the Serbian side unambiguously committed serious crimes. However, Srebrenica stands out not because of the imposing number of those killed, the logistics and cover-up technology but also because of the explanation and laconic silence which ensued from Serbian officials, but also many institutions like the Serbian Orthodox Church and Serbian Academy of Science and Arts. They, obviously, just like Branislav Ivkovic, knew nothing about it. Or, in order to "find something out", they first expect a report on crimes committed by others against the Serbs. If that is the case, the first move was made in Croatia - at the Knin cemetery where an exhumation of the Croatian Storm´s victims is ongoing. (Will the indictment raised against Naser Oric change something?)

SHAME AND NATIONAL LOYALTY: How was the truth on Srebrenica hidden despite all that information? That demands a fundamental and serious answer. A part of that answer lies in a certain kind of shame due to all that had occurred, but also in some kind of national loyalty oath. Since what had occurred had occurred, and it can´t be undone, the best thing is to deny everything. That opinion is shared not only by the people who were witnesses or participants of the war but also by those who had absolutely no connection with the war and violence. I don´t believe great fear of the truth on Srebrenica exists in Serbia at this moment. There are no more powerful godfathers and Cosa Nostra laws, regardless of the fact that some claim that "everything is the same, only he´s gone". The disappearance of an atmosphere of fear and the lifting of all taboo themes in society are sufficient proof of radical changes. (It is interesting to note that the most radical criticism that nothing has changed comes from members of the Helsinki Committee of Human Rights in Serbia, Vuk Draskovic and certain DSS members.) The statement of the high Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) official from Vojvodina that the discovery of the refrigerated trucks and the media frenzy that ensued presents an act of national masochism, can be viewed as some kind of regret that this topic can be freely and publicly debated. As though the seriousness and strength of the state itself is threatened by it. The feeling of shame and national loyalty have something specific: crimes committed by our own side can only be freely discussed and confided amongst proven members of our people. The minute someone from outside appears, someone unknown, especially a foreigner, the conversation dies off. In that way, crimes become some kind of a family secret. We can only surmise what such a secret´s long-term price is. The experience of other nations which faced up to serious crimes are fairly diverse. The most well-known being the German experience. Ian Burum writes about it in a brilliant book The Weight of Guilt - Remembrances of the War in Germany and Japan. Burum notices that amongst the German population, the dominant feeling is guilt, and amongst the Japanese, the feeling of shame. However, these feelings developed twenty years after the war. And they were most strongly felt by those who never took part in the war. Executioners, as a rule, never feel guilty. They aren´t haunted by a conscious. Possibly nightmares, guilty conscious - no way. Time is needed for guilt, just like for shame. Just like for truth. The Polish public was only now informed of the crimes committed in a Polish village. The Polish villagers executed 1600 Jews by themselves, without the presence of any Germans. The Polish president apologized to the Jews. Sixty years later.

ETHICAL AND POLITICAL CHAOS: But what if more or less everyone knows the truth? What else is needed for the whole nation to confront all that had occurred? Public trials, for example? Why are we ashamed? Is the feeling of shame universal, something that characterizes a conscious human being? Can the feeling of shame be collective? Is shame something we are born with, or do we acquire it later? All of those questions somehow seem anachronic. As though they are peeping out of the nineteenth century. Morality, ethics, tolerance, equality, followed by human rights... are characteristics which mark the second half and end of the twentieth century. Shame, pride, the feeling of dignity, sympathy, indifference, narcissism, all of those are secondary feelings in comparison with hatred, guilt and a capacity for forgiving. This hierarchy of feelings is totally in keeping with the ethic and political chaos which emerged after the collapse of communism. With its departure, the human spirit and human character had to succumb to the demands of the times: on the level of public life, the only things that can exist are those that can be measured or clearly named. Everything else belongs to tiring and unnecessary nuances.

However, if we fail to find our way out of the slavery of our own national shame and senseless loyalty towards the perpetrators, won´t we fall into another cycle of autism and self-pity which could incite the next wave of xenophobia and hatred? Those who are dissatisfied with the changes could at least start encouraging the citizens to face up to the truth. Or to give up on their own people. Truly, maybe that would be the best option. For both sides. In the meantime, the public debate itself on all that had occurred in Srebrenica, and not only in Srebrenica, can help to conquer both unpleasant shame and sick national loyalty. Another thing: the suggestion on forming a special commission, most probably on the  Serbian parliamentary level, at the moment when the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation already exists, seems rather nebulous. Has someone estimated that the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation is superfluous because Slobodan Milosevic has already been extradited to The Hague? If someone imagined that the Commission´s role was to oppose or replace the tribunal, then he´s got a lot of problems. Both moral and political ones.