Volkskrant op-ed: Mladic Must Be Arrested!
Kurt Bassuener June 21st, 2010
Last Monday, in advance of the EU foreign ministers’ meeting, Srebrenica survivor and author Emir Suljagic and DPC Senior Associate Eric A. Witte had an op-ed in Dutch daily De Volkskrant calling on EU governments to demand Serbia’s handover of Gen. Ratko Mladic to the ICTY. Below is the English-language of the article which ran in the paper on June 14.
Mladic Must Be Arrested!
De Volkskrant (Netherlands)
14 June 2010
Emir Suljagic and Eric A. Witte
There was a time in recent Dutch politics when the weight of genocide in Bosnia was enough to bring down a government. The international community’s failure to protect civilians in Srebrenica is now almost 15 years removed. But the effort to bring to trial Ratko Mladic, that genocide’s lead architect, is an issue for today. It faces a major test on Monday, and once again the Dutch find themselves on the front lines.
In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb Army overran the UN Safe Area of Srebrenica. International fecklessness left Dutch soldiers as the last hope for tens of thousands of Bosniaks who had survived the initial Serb onslaught in April and May 1992 and taken refuge in the town. Serb forces under the command of General Ratko Mladic deported women and children. Then, between July 11 and 16, they butchered some 8,000 men and boys in a series of massacres. As a result of Mladi?’s genocidal operation in Srebrenica, the Bosniak community in the eastern part of the country has effectively ceased to exist in all but name. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, established with Dutch support and hosted in The Hague, subsequently charged Mladic with genocide and other crimes. Nearly 15 years on, he remains a free man.
Over this period, Mladic’s general whereabouts have been known. Unreformed elements of the Serbian military, civilian intelligence, and security services, amid stretches of complicity at the highest echelons of government, offered him protection. But even as Serbia was unwilling to confront powerful nationalist and criminal elements in its own midst to bring Ratko Mladi? to justice, it continued to progress toward European Union membership. Two years ago, the EU invited Serbia to sign a Stabilization and Association Agreement, a major stepping stone toward EU candidate status.
Just as it appeared that the EU and its member states would allow Serbia to gain membership while a man wanted for genocide was roaming its territory, survivors of Srebrenica took heart when Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen made clear that The Netherlands would block Serbia’s SAA by refusing to ratify it until Mladic was arrested and brought to trial.
Serbia’s history of cooperation with the ICTY demonstrates that it has only undertaken the most difficult cooperation in response to firm conditions on aid and steps toward Euro-Atlantic integration. For years, despite some improvement, Serbian governments have continued to hinder the work of the ICTY, chiefly through extensive activities of its diplomatic and intelligence communities. Many promises have been broken. On 31 December 2003, current President Boris Tadic promised that Mladic would be arrested during 2004. This year his justice minister made a similar pledge. Past claims that Mladic was out of the country or otherwise out of the reach of the authorities have been later disproved through photographs and other documentation.
On Monday EU foreign ministers will meet, and many of his colleagues will press Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen to relent on Serbia’s SAA. Foreign Minister Verhagen has signaled that Mladic’s arrest is no longer the bottom line, and that the government could ratify Serbia’s SAA if ICTY Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz merely notes Serbian cooperation.
For its principled stand to date, with only Belgium offering tacit support, the Dutch government has faced tremendous pressure from a number of EU member states, the EU institutions, and increasingly, Washington. These actors argue that what reforms Serbia has made should be rewarded with EU candidate status now. Underlying this pressure is a belief that justice for genocide in the 1990s should not be a priority. In any case, Serbia’s boosters argue, the government is doing all it can to make the arrest, and the Dutch policy has been tried now without results.
Yet there are indications that the Dutch stance was responsible for the July 2008 arrest of Mladic’s fellow genocide fugitive, wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. Since that time, EU officials and various governments have undercut Dutch leverage by assuring Serbia that the Dutch government would eventually give up, and the SAA could be approved even without Mladic’s arrest. The resulting ambiguity has discouraged Belgrade from making the last politically difficult arrest.
Principled and astute Dutch leadership is now at risk. Ratko Mladic is 68 years old, and without firm reiteration that his arrest is the condition for ratification of Serbia’s SAA, Belgrade has every incentive to let him live out his old age as a free man. If the current Dutch caretaker government allows this to happen, it would be sacrificing its legacy as guardian of justice in a city and country that has come to embody the very concept. It also would be depriving a new governing coalition from weighing in on a shift in policy that has enjoyed broad parliamentary support.
In July 1995, before the international community abandoned civilians to slaughter, it abandoned Dutch peacekeepers. In the effort to bring to justice the man most responsible for the crimes at Srebrenica, the international community is echoing this act. Unfair as it may be, the Dutch are once again the bearers of final hope for the victims of Ratko Mladic.
Emir Suljagic is a Srebrenica survivor. Eric A. Witte is a Senior Associate of the Democratization Policy Council.
