Court and conscience

On March 24, the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague sentenced ex-leader of the Bosnian Serbs Radovan Karadzic

Karadzic received 40 years in prison for crimes against humanity. The verdict provoked a predictable reaction in Russia. The overwhelming majority of comments by deputies and political scientists boiled down to the fact that the ICTY is a “trial of the Serbs”, and therefore, the ex-president of the self-proclaimed Republika Srpska is a victim of reprisals perpetrated by the West. None of the Russian comments I saw mentioned the word "Srebrenica". Meanwhile, it was the murder of more than eight thousand Muslims in this Bosnian town that became the main point of the charge of genocide against Karadzic.

But our commentators are silent about the specifics, as well as about the fact that the tribunal tried (and is trying) not only Serbs (among whom there are acquitted), but also Croats, Muslims, Kosovo Albanians. Judge, by the way, is not always successful. There are individual cases when acquittals look like the result of successful liquidation or intimidation of witnesses. Moreover, in Russia they prefer not to notice the fact that both Radovan Karadzic and the commander of the Bosnian Serb troops, Ratko Mladic, were extradited to the tribunal by Serbia, where they were hiding.

Judgment is an individual matter. Everyone is responsible for their actions. The fact that someone managed to deceive justice or elude it is no reason to turn a blind eye to the crimes of others. But the Russian defenders of Karadzic do not think about such things. And this, probably, is the worst thing: demonstrative immorality, which has become a lifestyle and politics

To this, the Russian lawyers of Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic have a standard answer: they say that Belgrade went to extradition not from a good life, but “only by the will of the Washington and Brussels regional committees.” However, why even after the election of the nationalist president Tomislav Nikolic, the official position of Belgrade has not changed, no one explains. And this explanation is quite ordinary: the majority of Serbs, although they consider themselves victims of injustice, are not at all going to get bogged down forever in disputes about a less than brilliant past. The economy, the problem of refugees, a visa-free regime with the European Union, and in the future, accession to it - this is what interests the citizens of Serbia today. Not without reason, it was under the former radical nationalist Nikolic that negotiations on the settlement of relations with Kosovo went in full swing. Although imperfect, but competitive and democratic politics, even in a country traumatized by authoritarianism and war like Serbia, rather quickly leads to realism and pragmatism. And so today it happens almost everywhere in the Balkans.

Against this background, the Russian defenders of Karadzic and Mladic, who are trying to be more Serbs than the Serbs themselves, would look ridiculous if not for two circumstances. First, the word "genocide" does not frighten them. They are ready to defend any criminal, as long as he is against the West, and especially America. And secondly, people who ask again and again “Why were Serbs convicted more than Croats and Albanians?” They ignore not only historical facts (there are more Serbs, they were better armed and organized), but also the very essence of law. Judgment is an individual matter. Everyone is responsible for their actions. The fact that someone managed to deceive justice or elude it is no reason to turn a blind eye to the crimes of others. But the Russian defenders of Karadzic do not think about such things. And this, probably, is the most terrible thing: demonstrative immorality, which has become a lifestyle and politics, and collective responsibility, replacing personal responsibility and, ultimately, conscience.