The Hindu : A dictator on trial

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Feb 18, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

A dictator on trial

EXCEPT IN THE rarest of rare cases in history, it has traditionally been easier to send a criminal to prison for killing one man than for killing a hundred thousand. The 20th century, which has the distinction of being the most violent that mankind has witnessed and endured, saw many dictators and mass murderers rule without being called to account for their crimes. In that sense, the war crimes trial at The Hague of Slobodan Milosevic, former president of Yugoslavia and of Serbia, its biggest remaining republic, has historic significance. However flawed it may be, the trial will be watched with more than ordinary interest by multiethnic countries like India. The first former head of state to be tried for war crimes, Mr. Milosevic effectively led a genocidal programme of ethnic cleansing that destroyed the multiethnic mosaic that Marshal Tito put together at the end of World War II. Mr. Milosevic and his criminal gang sought to deny five hundred years of history and through a diabolic programme attempted to rid Serbia of ethnic groups like Muslims and Croats.

Mr. Milosevic and his men launched three wars, in Croatia, Kosovo and Bosnia, during their ethnic cleansing campaign, and according to the prosecution at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia caused the death of over 200,000, a majority of them Muslims. The prosecution dismissed suggestions that higher ideals underlay the genocidal acts of these men. Said Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor, on the opening day of the trial, ``Beyond the nationalist pretext and the horror of ethnic cleansing, beyond the grandiloquent rhetoric and the hackneyed phrases he used, the search for power is what motivated Slobodan Milosevic.'' With mass graves being discovered in the region every month, the protestations of these men that they were fighting to save the unity of their country are a mockery of humanity. They go beyond the bounds of legitimate warfare. ``Some of the incidents revealed an almost medieval savagery,'' the prosecution told the tribunal. True to character, the dictator refuses to recognise the tribunal, saying he cannot expect justice from an institution he has dubbed a branch of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation which bombed Serb forces in 1995 in Bosnia and in Kosovo in 1999.

The Milosevic trial is expected to last up to two years. Making him face the tribunal was no mean achievement. For, there were strong, valid arguments for the trial to be held in Yugoslavia itself by the democratically elected government there. It was feared that a trial at The Hague under Western auspices could keep the fires of hatred in the Balkans smouldering as they have done for centuries. Serbs have been poor losers. Legal experts have also speculated that it will not be easy to link the atrocities on the ground to the men ruling at that time in Belgrade. Whatever the outcome at the tribunal, the trial itself sends a heartening message to civilian victims around the world that dictators like Chile's Augusto Pinochet, Indonesia's Suharto and all those Hitler clones in central and western Africa can be called to account provided the international community has the will. This will must take the form of the international criminal court, whose creation has the support of a majority of the countries but is being stalled by powerful opponents in Washington. Old dictators should not be allowed to escape the grasp of justice, not in this age and time.

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