...Eldin Hadzovic
One of the central political and rhetorical theses of official representatives Serbs in the Balkans is a defense against accusations that Serbs are "genocidal nation". This defense is regularly put forward as a reaction to the attitudes that appear in certain extreme circles, which directs the political debate to the question of the collective nature of a nation. However, any serious sociological and legal analysis starts from a clear and irrefutable premise: genocidal nations do not exist. The concept of genocide cannot be attributed to the entire ethnic or national community, because a nation is not a homogeneous biological or moral organism. However, the rejection of the concept of collective genocide does not free a society from the need to face the question of responsibility for crimes committed in his name.
In order to understand this distinction, it is necessary to refer to the philosophical considerations of Karl Jaspers, who in his work The question of guilt (1946) analyzed in detail the forms of responsibility after the Holocaust and the fall of the Nazi regime in Germany, distinguishing between four forms of guilt - criminal, political, moral and metaphysical - and different forms of responsibility, while not attributing them collectively to the entire nation. He clearly separates collective guilt from collective responsibility. Guilt is always individual - legal guilt is determined in court for specific acts, while moral guilt is a matter of individual conscience. On the other hand, collective responsibility is political and civil. The German people were not legally "collectively guilty" of the Holocaust, but they bore the political responsibility to build a society that rejects the Nazi ideology from the roots and honors the victims. The opposite example is the multi-decade non-acceptance of Turkey's political and historical responsibility for the 1915 Armenian genocide, where the state's refusal to face the past perpetuates historical trauma and prevents catharsis.
THE IRONY OF POLITICAL DISCOURSE
Are Germans and Turks genocidal peoples? Of course they didn't. Are their states and political elites responsible for the genocide and the attitude towards its victims? Beyond any doubt.
It is at this border between the individual and the state that the irony of the political discourse in Serbia arises. While officials loudly reject the thesis of a "genocidal people", the actions of state, religious and political institutions often produce the opposite effect, taking upon themselves and entire social structures the burden of rehabilitating those convicted of the most serious crimes.
The most striking and fresh example of this practice took place literally on September 7 at the general's funeral Ratko Mladić at the Topčider cemetery in Belgrade. The former commander of the Republika Srpska Army, who was convicted by the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia of genocide and war crimes, was sent off with the highest military honors. The casket was carried from the chapel to the gun carriage by members of the Serbian Army, who also held an honor guard, the honor platoon was fired, and the brass band performed military marches and the song "Far Away".
The very top of the Serbian political and military establishment, as well as representatives from Bosnia and Herzegovina and the diaspora, attended the funeral and burial in the Church of St. Luke. In addition to Aleksandar Vulin and Minister Milica Đurđević Stamenkovski, Serbian Government Ministers Nikola Selaković, Darko Glišić, Bratislav Gašić, Nenad Vujić and Nenad Popović, former Minister of Health Danica Grujičić, MP Miloš Jovanović took part in the send-off. SNSD president Milorad Dodik, Banja Luka mayor Draško Stanivuković, former RS interior minister Siniša Karan and minister Radan Ostojić were present from Bosnia and Herzegovina, while Russian ambassador Aleksandar Bocan-Harčenko gave diplomatic legitimacy to the event. The special weight of the event was given by the funeral service, attended by hundreds of priests, personally served by Patriarch Porfirija, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The funeral was also attended by several thousand citizens, who arrived in organized bus lines.
NOTHING IS ACCIDENTAL
Although the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, did not personally attend the funeral at Topčider, his political and moral responsibility for this act cannot be abstracted, because it was he who laid the foundations of this attitude towards the past with his entire political activity. His relationship with Mladić has a long continuity: from his young radical days and political performance when he pasted the inscription "Bulevar Ratko Mladić" over the sign with the name of Boulevard Zoran Đinđić, all the way to the current presidential mandate. Immediately before the funeral, responding to the warnings of the European Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos, that Mladić was condemned war criminal should not be buried with state honors, Vučić categorically rejected those demands, saying: "We will protect the dignity of our people, we will protect the dignity of our citizens. I don't care what Marta Kos or anyone else says when I have the people, when I have Prigrevica and the citizens of Serbia with me." The presence of his son Danilo Vučić in the first rows of the crowd testifies that the presence of the state apparatus and family was no accident.
Sending Mladic off with military honors is a logical epilogue to decades of media and political rehabilitation. In the public discourse of the dominant media - with the exception of rare independent voices - Mladić is continuously presented as a hero. The trivialization of the crime went so far that Mladić, while the technical circumstances in The Hague allowed him to do so, was included live in the morning programs of television with a national frequency, sending viewers messages such as "I love you Grandpa Ratko".
Genocidal nations do not exist. Neither the Serbs, nor any other people in the world, are born with the stamp of collective guilt. But then who is the one who repeatedly, persistently and systematically sews and imposes the same label on Serbs? These are not critics from outside, international courts, nor Western diplomats. The label of genocide is affixed to the foreheads of their own people by those who most loudly swear to defend them from it. The top of the state that organizes military honors for the convicted of genocide, the head of the church that sings his eulogy and the president who defiantly says that celebrating the crime is their "dignity", directly equate the entire nation with one war criminal. By turning the personal guilt of Ratko Mladić into a national holiday and national sanctuary, the political and spiritual elites of Serbia are consciously taking the entire nation hostage. They are the ones who tell the world: Young man, that's all of us. And therein lies the final irony of this tragicomedy - the biggest Serbophobes and creators of the myth of the "genocidal people" are not sitting in Brussels or Sarajevo, but on Andrić's wreath and in the Patriarchate.
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