Dirty about cleaning

(Peščanik.net)

In the international public, and in some parts of the country as well, the recent statement by Minister Snežana Paunović that if she had been in Milošević's place in 1998, she would have ethnically cleansed Kosovo, has provoked strong condemnation.

The representative of the European Commission, Anita Hipper, for example, said that there is no place in Europe for rhetoric that justifies and advocates ethnic cleansing, the European Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos, said that she was shocked by the statement for which there can only be zero tolerance, the MP, Šaip Kamberi, assessed that the statement sows fear among Albanians living in Serbia, and several opposition parties, along with the National Convention's working group on the European Union for Chapter 35, called on the Prime Minister to dismiss Minister Paunović.

President Vučić discreetly distanced himself from the statement, claiming that it did not reflect his will or the will of the Serbian government, although, incidentally, it is not about will at all, but about consciousness and meaning, and the government certainly does not and cannot have the psychological function of will.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, Ivica Dačić, however, went to the other extreme, and, like those who, from the donkey's seat of politics and law, justify every atrocity with evasive reciprocity, called the criticism of the statement shameful and hypocritical, given that the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Kosovo and Metohija has been kept quiet for years. And when it has been kept quiet about it, then I guess we have the right to speak about the fates of others without regard to the law.

The question arises whether in this case, in addition to political responsibility, one could also speak of criminal responsibility.

A criminal offense has already been reported. Causing national, racial and religious hatred and intolerance (Article 317 of the Criminal Code). Not without foundation. Expressing regret that members of a large ethnic group were not forcibly removed from the territory of the state of which they are citizens leaves open the interpretation that this is actualizing the threat of a criminal enterprise that its creator believes was desirable and unreasonably unfinished. Although, despite the logical causality, the example cannot serve as a direct comparison, it must be noted that it is difficult to imagine a state, constitutionally based on the rule of law, that would turn a deaf ear to the criminal consequences of a publicly expressed position that any crime against humanity, from whose darkest reserves lurks the "final solution" from the good of Nazism, should have been carried out to the end?

That's not all though.

A particular form of crime is attracting attention Racial or other discrimination (Article 387, paragraph 5 of the Criminal Code) which sanctions public approval of crimes against humanity committed against a group of persons determined on the basis of national or ethnic origin, in a manner that may lead to violence or hatred towards them, if these criminal acts have been established by a final judgment of a court in Serbia or the International Criminal Court.

Are all the above, not at all simple, assumptions fulfilled here? Let's see.

A criminal act Crime against humanity (Article 371 of the Criminal Code) is committed by anyone who, in violation of the rules of international law, as part of a wider or systematic attack directed against the civilian population, inter alia, orders a forced relocation.

The rules of international law that would be violated in this case are contained primarily in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Articles 12, 20, 26), the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Article 14) and Protocol No. 4 to this Convention (Articles 2 and 3). They proclaim freedom of movement and residence, the prohibition of discrimination and the prohibition of expulsion of nationals. Article 5 of the Rome Statute, which was ratified by our country in 2001, stipulates that the International Criminal Court has jurisdiction over criminal acts regulated as "crimes against humanity".

By final judgments of the Hague Tribunal, several persons were convicted of crimes against humanity committed through the forced relocation (deportation, transfer) of the civilian population to Kosovo and Metohija.

There is certainly reason to suspect that the way the minister made and explained her statement could lead to violence or hatred towards the affected ethnic group.

Although she did not directly approve of the crimes of the convicted persons (Ojdanić, Pavković, Lukić, Šainović, Đorđević, Lazarević), the minister indirectly, targeting the accused but unconvicted Milošević, approved of ethnic cleansing, reinforcing the trend by personally personalizing the fiction of its execution, through the admission that she, if she had had the power, would have carried it out.

It is therefore not difficult to conclude whether and to what extent the essential elements of the aforementioned criminal offense are present.

Understandings similar to the one discussed here are not only of political origin. They are, it is justified to agree with Fromm, largely a psychological problem. Their danger goes beyond the character structure of the individual and looms over us all like a threatening disaster, arising from the conciliatory but also fanaticism of many others. Although criminal prosecution is not a panacea for eliminating the phenomenon itself, the silence of state authorities, including those in the field of justice, would give it wings.