Activismo y derechos humanos
Juicio a los Escorpiones de Srebenica, por J. Tesanovic

Jasmina Tesanovic ha estado asistiendo a las diferentes sesiones del juicio a los Escorpiones. Corro a colgar su testimonio, titulado "¿Quién dio la orden?. De momento, no cuento con traducción al castellano. Intentaré conseguirla y también ampliar esta introducción. Saludos

Jasmina Tesanovic
Who Gave the Order
Scorpion Trial 2

Day 1, January 23, 2006
The fifth indicted Scorpion hardly speaks. When he does, one cannot understand him, in this small courtroom where the Scorpion trial continues today. It is minus 11 degrees here in Belgrade, it snows, we still have our Russian gas heating on, but for how long?

He mumbles, groans, and shakes his head while the severe judge woman interrogates him. From behind, I see his thick neck and body, distorted as if in pain. He is a couple of meters away from me. He is asked to speak louder, but he has nothing to say really; he pleads not guilty. Until recently his defense was
silence. Today the few words extorted from him by the impatient judge are I DON'T REMEMBER, I DON'T KNOW...

He twitches and his eyes are-directed to the patch of floor in front of him. He was the chauffeur who took the six Muslim prisoners to the meadow where they were executed. He had a Kalashnikov, he had a pistol, and he claims he didn’t shoot. He saw them being executed but he says: my eyes were blinded by sudden darkness, I know nothing.

For five hours he tells this story. He was the driver, supposed to bring bread to his fellow soldiers, but brought them prisoners and then death. They shot first only four prisoners, and then made the other two take the bodies to a house nearby, where they shot them too. Lawyers and judges are interrogating him. He has nothing to say.

Finally one other indicted member of his paramilitary group comments that he was the one who shot the last two prisoners in the house. Then he screams: of course I shot, we all shot... Again, he lost his temper. Night blinded his sight. The judge is angry with him. She says: all this time you claimed another thing! He recoils... hustle in the courtroom.

"I saw the film for the first time on TV and I think the film was manipulated, some people who were there are missing..."

Who is missing? The victims, the Bosnian officers, his paramilitary friends... again he knows nothing. The trial is adjourned. We are silent, we Women in Black, together with friends of the victims who came again to Belgrade. The brutality and banality of the killer's coming-out has sucked away my sense of morality. If he has no regrets, nothing to say, is there anything at all to
say in this world?

Day 2, January 24, 2006
Day of maps and confrontations. Today, hardly anybody mentions bodies or guns. It is a day of military jargon and display. If one didn’t know the trial was
about the Scorpions, one could even get interested in their discourse. All of them have inflated egos and high self-esteem: now they are sitting in front of
each other, and clashing in front of the judge, with their varying versions of who said what, who was responsible for what, who was where... Ten years
ago, that very day when innocent civilians were executed in cold blood.

That is not their main issue. Their topics are loyalty, the silence of omerta, honoring their hierarchy and sacred military duties. They are relatives, kin, godfathers to each other and to their children. One of them is married to another's sister.

The judge asks him to explain their family ties. He replies: why do you think that being in bed with a woman makes me closer to her than to her brother? He is the number one indicted, obviously responsible for the execution, but he is playing it tough, denying everything, waving his long hair in arrogance and showing off his built-up body as if he were a gay model. He despises the court, the judges and the audience. He answers only to himself, and to Serbian honor, and he lies. He lies all the time, denying everything.

His subordinates are deluded. They are heavily disappointed and sad. They are spilling the beans, revealing what they think they know, but the deeper truth is coming out. Even the arrogant top guy didn’t give the ultimate orders. He got his orders from somebody else, from some proper Serbia authority, from the secret police, from the regime.

Tell the court who gave the order.

YOU tell, if you know. They are fighting each other. The name hovers in the air. Nobody is saying it.

Their pledges of sympathy and innocence have nothing to do with reason or politics. The courtroom was packed up, the press hustled from our media center room so that they could not get a proper insight. Another parallel trial is going on, the trial of the murder of our late Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. Not the trial of the Scorpion paramilitaries, but the trial of the Zemun Clan mafia.

We all meet on the coffee shop. We stare at each other during the recesses. A sinister guy from a mafia family hisses at us: Women in Black! When the
Radical Party gets into power, you will be DONE!

I heard that many judges who presided firmly and justly against the clan power-structures were put aside afterwards. Who rules in Serbia today? Who pulls
the strings and gives the orders, six years after Milosevic left for The Hague?

Day 3, January 25, 2005
After days on end of war criminals and their lawyers, the victims appear on the podium. These are the grieving survivors. We no longer have the actual victims, for they are not only dead, but, as DNA tests proved, their scattered bones were dissipated into several mass graves. Some pieces are still missing. Is there hope to restore the identities of the missing?

Six family members of six victims are entering the courtroom today. Mothers, sisters, children and other kin, they came to Belgrade from Srebrenica and
around in order to testify and identify their nearest and dearest. With Muslim names and clothes, they are aliens to this big dirty city, with war criminals
loose, and to this clean fancy court, where justice is attempted.

Every day, B92 television is broadcasting documentary material about the Scorpions. I hear that, even when in prison, they are still among the richest war-profiteers in Serbia. Even if they get a life sentence, which in practice means 20 years, once they are out, being men in their thirties now, they will still be rich and powerful.

The judge in the court says: International law is above the national law. So, we have to respect the decision of several other family members, who are afraid to come, but will testify via Internet. This is a big offense to swallow for the war criminals and their nationalist lawyers.

The first witness testifies, in despair more than in tears. This mother recognizes her missing 16 year old on the film of the killing. The audience
trembles.

This morning I mingled with the relatives of the criminals. ?They are always loud, and they sit in the first rows. I broke through their solid, shoving
front-line and sat in the first row myself. Now, their wives and sisters of the killers are sobbing uncontrollably, along with me.

The sister of the dead boy has to interrupt her testimony, because she cannot speak. She manages to say: You cannot imagine the situation that day, July
11, 1995. The UN troops were doing nothing. The Serb militia were raging. People were being bombed, pushed from one side of the country to another,
divided up, and executed... Girls were torn from their families and raped. In the camp where we spent the night, we fifteen thousand souls, insane screams would wake us during the night, and we would all start shivering. Waiting to be executed, people were committing suicide, or going out of their minds.
Nobody knew the truth of what was happening, but we all felt death, and we were right.

The eighteen-year-old son of the executed father says: I was eight. I saw him leaving us. I knew I was seeing the last of him. I saw the film, made a few hours later, shown here ten years after they shot him. He had that same shirt, and that same face I loved so much. I will never forget. I need no DNA tests. I know that is my father.

His father was filmed while executed. And the 8 year old boy was also filmed, while being given sweets by Ratko Mladic, the child fed candies while his
father was shot.

Another mother cannot go on with the photo identification. She does not even weep; she simply faints. I understand this woman best. When they tell us: if you were not there you cannot understand, I can recognize that: I know that I don't understand.

These six people in front of me lost almost all of their nearest and dearest in those few days of killing.

They all have the same earnest question: WHY. Those who were killed were not soldiers. All they wanted was to flee the UN enclave and live. Invariably, after their speeches, they turn in amazement to see the faces of the guys who did it.
They stare. The men she did it stare back. Nobody utters the words: ethnic cleansing.

One of the indicted even manages an apology. A witness hears him: my deep condolences. But I obeyed the orders.

One question is the central issue at this trial. Who ordered this? Natasa Kandic, human right activist, wants to prove that was state terrorism. The criminals want to define themselves as honorable civil warriors. We sit through the evening with our new Bosnian friends. They ask only justice, and even believe they will get it here in the special-court in Belgrade.

We are knitting our new lives together. We speak the same language, though we call it different names. We share a history, though from opposite sides. We
have the same beliefs. Call them justice, and truth, or love for the world.

In this second round of the Scorpion trial, the banality of evil was revealed by these six simple heartfelt voices of reason.

Publicado por magda 12:22 PM | Comentarios (9)

Activismo y derechos humanos
abdalajis.org

He recibido un mail de un chico de la Plataforma Pro Manantiales del Valle de Abdalajís:

"Buena noticia. Los Atanores hoy, y tras las últimas lluvias, echan un hilo de agua. No proviene de los acuíferos, sino de la infiltrada por el terreno cercano al manantial, pero bueno... Por lo menos hay esperanza, aunque la lucha continua".

Estuve en el Valle de Abdalajís a mediados de noviembre con Tatiana Donoso. Sus fotos son muy buenas y las expondremos a principios de febrero en Madrid. Gracias a todos los que habéis ofrecido vuestra ayuda para organizarnos. Pronto enviaremos un correo explicando los detalles. (Por cierto, que este domingo volveré al Valle para recopilar más datos. Nos vemos por allí).

Publicado por magda 04:53 PM | Comentarios (5)

Medios de comunicación
Arrancando

He tardado tanto en volver que se me amontonan las ideas y ya no sé si comenzar comentando las últimas recomendaciones de la Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores (CNMV), que reclama a las empresas que incorporen mujeres a sus consejos de administración, los videos tipo “El caso” que tanto abundan por nuestras televisiones últimamente o el sobresalto que ha supuesto la detención de varios marroquíes en mi ciudad acusados de pertenecer presuntamente a una célula terrorista de Al Qaeda.

Como el último tema merece un buen rato lo dejo para después. Prefiero hablar sobre el programa “Àgora” (Canal33), que debería escuchar los consejos de la CNMV, porque son ya muchas, muchísimas, las semanas en que los cinco invitados a la mesa de Ramon Rovira son exclusivamente hombres.

Un amigo y yo solemos llamarnos para comentarlo hasta el punto de convertirlo en un absurdo hobby. Yo, más optimista, suelo pensar hoy “pondrán” una, al menos una, para disimular. Pero no, no hay manera. La misma historia semana tras semana. Después vienen los aburridos debates sobre la paridad, que no me gusta en absoluto, pero estas situaciones me parecen incomprensibles, tanto que hace ya algún tiempo incluso mandé un sms –mi primer sms televisivo, chispas-, pero por supuesto no lo colgaron, no debía ir ni con el tema ni con ellos. Será que siempre hablan de “alta política” y al parecer no hay mujeres autorizadas para hacerlo ni a este lado del Ebro ni al otro, porque, eso sí, al menos a las tertulias de Àgora hay que reconocerles el esfuerzo por reunir a gentes de todos los orígenes, gentilicios y tendencias. Y no es poco en los tiempos que corren.

Precisamente, una de las razones por las que no he escrito en este blog en mucho tiempo es mi particular “objeción de conciencia” a comentar (y de ese modo contribuir de algún modo, aunque sea mínimo) la basura que se arrojan y nos arrojan los generales Mena, algún que otro columnista independentista, los grandes partidos, los partidos pequeños, los periódicos que juegan a salvapatrias y oportunistas varios. Ahora más que nunca creo que habrá que reactivar el viejo proyecto que teníamos Rafa Panadero, Boris Matijas y yo.

Como también deberían ponerse en funcionamiento los miembros del Consejo Provisional de Informativos de RTVE. Desde que empezó la era Zapatero, apenas si han dicho una palabra y no se entiende, como tampoco se comprende que la cadena pública emitiera una y otra vez el video de los tres jóvenes que recientemente asesinaron a una indigente en un cajero de Barcelona anunciándolo, además, a todo bombo y platillo bajo el epígrafe de “¡¡en exclusiva!!”.

Hoy ha sido TV3 la que se ha despachado bien con los videos grabados con un teléfono móvil de otros chavales que apaleaban a desconocidos por la calle. Y lo peor es que toda esta serie de “sucesos” en horario de máxima audiencia es algo más que una moda.

Publicado por magda 04:25 PM | Comentarios (8)

Activismo y derechos humanos
Dos años

Sigo si poder escribir regularmente. Pero hoy necesitaba redactar al menos algunas líneas. Mónica me ha dejado su ordenador un momentito para celebrar que esta web cumple hoy dos años. Y tal vez sea eso lo que le ha pasado, que ha tenido la crisis típica de esta edad. La superará, fijo. En cualquier caso, aprovecho para recomendar la película "La escurridiza". Pronto la comentaré.

¡Feliz 2006!

Publicado por magda 03:04 PM | Comentarios (23)