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New Normality

Jasmina Tesanovic

Belgrade 11th April, 2006

The city is flooded. The Danube is rolling at high speed through Northern Serbia. If it were not a drama it could be romantic fun. If we didn’t know that the changing climate is no longer natural, we would paddle in rowboat and sing with mandolins. Instead we know it's sure to get worse with global warming, electricity cuts, bad Internet connections...

Today from Hague tribunal, on video link, a protected witness is speaking at the Scorpions Trial. The connection is bad but his message comes through with full impact. He looks flat and distorted on the screen, like a cartoon character, his egg shaped head is protruding towards the indicted Scorpions while his body shrinks behind his words, delayed and out of sync with the image. He is so far
and yet so near: he is the guy who owned the video cassette with the execution of the six Muslim civilians.

After repeated death threats he leaked it to the Hague tribunal judges though Natasa Kandic, our heroine on this grim war stage.

This small woman is fearless today in the court as well as in 2004 when she first got the video. We heard that the cassette existed, and was distributed among video clubs in the region. And today's witness confirmed this: we all knew of the crime... I made copies and played them in the soldiers' dorms. This film distributor in the war-criminal economy did many other useful things for the cause: he owned transportation vehicles for fruit, food, whatever...
and of course, now it pops out without any doubts, he transported PEOPLE; the Human Packages.

During all these court sessions, it was obvious that Scorpions were not much for soldiers. On lost his leg on the front-line and is the pet of all the others; but
since the weren't in fact soldiers, what were they actually doing?

This protected witness with no address, escaped to Hague with his family after he sold the cassette to the Justice. The big Boss, the famous commander kicked him out of the gang because they fought over the spoils, the original cassette, the money-making deals, confiscated goodies... He said loudly: the
Scorpions were transporting the civilians in buses from Srebrenica, close to the border line with Muslims. They executed them there and the bodies were
left to the other side be collected and buried. To Fake it: pretend they
were killed in a battle.

Our buses were mingled with humanitarian buses, inside the protected enclave which should have saved the civilians.

No comment.

Today is the anniversary of the professional killing of the journalist Curuvija following the orders of the secret police. No one is indicted yet. A film exists in
that case too... but that film has not yet been sold out.

The killer of our premiere Zoran Djindjic left his gun to be found by the police: because it belongs to history in a museum, he said proudly.

This is a time of New Normality, when law and justice find their ways through the fearful leaks of those who are selling history in bits and pieces.

April 12, 2006

The Muslim Women

Belgrade is sinking today, heavy rain. The link to Hague is back: the cassette owner witness today is going into details with the bad guy who became good
by pleading guilty as to how many people he shot.

- I don’t know, says the witness, two or three people.

- For me it is very important if it is three or six...says the indicted. Because I am a moral person.

Sighs from the audience. Today we are sitting in the usual crowd with relatives of victims and criminals, but there is a new, third lot in dark suits and fancy caps.

The wife of one war criminal asked the men in suits: who are you, if I may know...

We are the police, says one, slightly embarrassed.
He meant the secret police...

She retreats in awe. I guess her husband claimed too that he was on a secret mission. A mission of secretly executing as many people as he could.

- So, specifically, what does 'certification of the shot bodies' mean? asks the indicted Scorpion of his ex pal, the protected -witness Scorpion. They are
exchanging their small talk in court as if it were small-arms fire.

- Yes, sure, we must be precise; you shoot the body in the head with a pistol. You use the gun only rarely.

That is not a proper certification then.

This witness was beaten and sent away because he contradicted the Commander. The others got the order shoot with the gun and camera.

Now we moan in the audience... but soon it will beover... The next protected witness asks to be questioned via video link and not in public. This even though we know his name and that he is the one most responsible for spilling the beans to the Justice.

Only some viewers get to stay inside: the secret police, few humanitarian lawyers... We Women in Black together with relatives of the victims and the criminals are all tossed out in the rain. I am angry and disappointed, so are their women. I nearly offered the Scorpion women peanuts while we were waiting for the guards to let us in on special permit.

I choked back the instinct, but I still wonder, would they have taken the peanuts? Since they call all of us: The Muslim Women.

Publicado por magda 02:46 PM | Comentarios (6)