By Dusan Pajovic
The day before yesterday, the United Nations Council voted on the Srebrenica Genocide Resolution. A small civilizational step that I hope would bring some comfort to the victims’ families.
Dusan Pajovic (Photography: Dalibor Sevaljevic)
As for the rest of us, I don’t think there’s much to “celebrate”. Not just because the adoption of such a resolution is a moral obligation, but because there’s nothing to be happy about in life after Srebrenica. Just like Adorno said that writing poetry after Auschwitz was a barbaric act.
The resolution was voted, confirming that we live in the time of monsters. It’s devastating to find out that not every button was “green”, that support for this Resolution wasn’t unanimous.
Voting was organized in line with the standard geopolitical course. Therefore, part of the states relied on what kind of relations they have with the initiators, sponsors and perceived “targets”. Thus, some abstained because of their relationship with Germany, some because of their relationship with Rwanda, some because a similar resolution was not written for Gaza, and some because they believe that the Resolution deepens tensions.
A good part of those who abstained and those against have one thing in common: they have no idea about Srebrenica. That’s why they believed Vucic’s idiotic rhetoric “You powerful people abuse us, but we don’t give in”, and found themselves in it. If you are a country in the Global South, it’s not difficult to identify with that story – the so-called ‘the West repeatedly robbed, killed, bombed them, while neo-colonial practices continue to this day’.
Leaders of these countries didn’t realize that Serbia is to the countries of the former Yugoslavia what NATO and the colonial troops are to them. Aggressor, war profiteer, omnipresent Big Brother that interferes in internal affairs, owns territories and installs puppet governments.
On the other hand, while the diplomats were explaining the reasons for backing, abstaining or voting against, Vucic was foaming at the mouth with nervousness and uncertainty. To complete the fascist symbolism of the pathetic all-powerful victim, he draped the Serbian flag and tearfully wailed that no one should take it off him. He looked like a child who had already been sent to his room, now offering performative resistance to his parents behind closed doors through tears.
During voting, he held the flag over his lips and looked at the screen like Eurovision performers while waiting for the audience’s votes. The results of voting were revealed, and according to his perception, he “lost”. Livestream downfall of an autocrat.
It seems that the road from installing the sign ‘Ratko Mladic Boulevard’ to the pissed-off hysteria in the UN bench is shorter than thought. Paradoxically, in those benches, he – the president of Serbia – was the only one who claimed that the Serbs were a genocidal nation. Everyone else, the whole world, convinced him that they were not.
Many diplomats were making a considerable effort to prove what people from the region have been writing and talking about for years: that there’s no genocidal nation and that guilt is individual. But after so many texts, written and spoken words – I’m pretty sure that both Vucic and those protesting know that. They are not bothered by the invented label of “genocidal people” that they themselves invented, but rather by the condemnation of the genocide itself.
In 1995, Vucic said in parliament, “kill one Serb, we will kill 100 Muslims.” Protesters against the Resolution, I believe, have nothing against it. Moreover, I believe they like to hear “My dad is a war criminal”, “Mosques fly to the clouds” and similar odes acknowledging the genocide. They also like to chant Ratko Mladic’s name, draw his graffiti and call for the repetition of the crime with the words “Knife, Wire, Srebrenica”.
It’s not about being misled by stupid propaganda that the UN wants to declare the Serbs as a genocidal people. But the fear that because of the Resolution, they’ll no longer be able to do that. That they won’t be able to celebrate the soldiers of death and call for new Srebrenica.
They are not misled – but bloodthirsty.
That’s why, for me, they also belong to those genocidal individuals. Not as a nation, but as individuals who support and celebrate that genocide. To make it clear: both Karadzic and Mladic are genocidal, but so are the mob that have their backs.
If today were 1995, if they wouldn’t be shooting in Potocari, then they would probably be the ones helping to bury the bones of the victims.
It’s really hard to have any kind of class solidarity or justification for these social coding errors. Looking at the broader picture, I understand that they’re also victims of: mythologized history, poor economic status and education. I understand that, but don’t justify it.
Long ago Sartre wrote that he hated victims who respected their executioners. I would add that the victims who celebrate other people’s executioners must be despised.
I think we respect them even more with that, because we’re dealing with the masses based on their potential; with what they could be, instead of adapting to their degraded state.
(The opinions and views of our columnists aren’t necessarily those of the CdM news team)
Dusane, you are absolutely right! Thank you for writing this!