Peter Handke, the war in Yugoslavia and the Milošević trial – controversy around past and truth

With Paweł Mościcki, a author and philosopher working at the Institute of Literary investigation of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, we talk about the link between Nobel Prize laureate Peter Handke and the war in Yugoslavia and whether the accusations against Slobodan Milošević were true.

(Interview is simply a edited and completed version of the podcast Are you aware? p. Miloshevic and Handke: Justice for Serbia, Compromise of the global Criminal Court, writer Shame) of 4 June 2024.

Rafał Górski: “Let us do this: Let us perceive to 1 another alternatively of barking and lashing out of enemy camps. Let us halt comparing Slobodan Milošević with Hitler. Let's halt seeing him and his wife Mira Markovic Macbeth and his woman or the parallels between this couple and the dictator of Ceausescu and his wife Elena. And let’s not usage the name “»concentration camps« Peter Handke, Nobel Literary Prize laureate, said. On June 10, 1999, NATO troops ended the bombing of Yugoslavia. What is Handke's connection to the Yugoslav War?

Paweł Mościcki: Handke was associated with Yugoslavia due to his origins – he was born in the Austrian-Slovenian borderland and considered himself a Slovene after a little. For him, the nostalgia behind Yugoslavia as a national state that has united different cultural groups and different nationalities is so strong due to the fact that it allows you to go beyond a narrow identity framework.

It seems to me that the imagination of the Yugoslav country was an imagined homeland for him, especially due to the dissolution of these nationalisms. It is all the more ironic that in the 1990s during the break-up of Yugoslavia a Serbian nationalist was made Peter Handke. In my opinion, this is simply a complete misunderstanding, and its origin is very simple.

Peter Handke belonged to a fewer but notable group of intellectuals who had a separate opinion on what was happening in Yugoslavia and during the war in Bosnia, and later, during NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia than the mainstream press and Western politicians.

In this way, he stood in any sense in opposition to his full environment and to the consensus that he then developed in Western countries.

Peter Handke started with a very strong text, first published seems to be in the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, which had the subtitle “Justice for Serbia”. It was a separate voice that immediately sparked quite a few controversy and accusations, and which simply claimed any objectivity. And he advocated for it in the propaganda apogee of pressure, in which Serbs were liable for the war in Yugoslavia due to their racism, nationalism, imagination of large Serbia, effort to conquer the remainder of the republics of the erstwhile Yugoslavia. Slobodan Milošević, as Serbian leader, was personally liable for the full war situation, and Peter Handke lied to it. He showed that all this communicative does not necessarily correspond to the realities and real sources of conflict and the real division of work for various bloody events.

By force he exposed himself to various kinds of attacks. erstwhile he received the Nobel Literary Prize a fewer years ago, it was all reminded of him. Many have protested this decision, considering that a man who negates the genocide committed by the Serbs is on the side of a nationalist regime, defending a war criminal who was Slobodan Milošević, has no right to receive specified a award and should be kept on the margins of public debate.

The problem with the communicative about Peter Handke himself is that most people who comment on this context of his work did not read his texts on this subject and is frequently based on various media associations in which Handke was involved.

This controversy is besides liable for what I call double projection. First, we make a communicative about the war in Yugoslavia, in which roles and responsibilities are clearly given: the Serbs are guilty, the Croats are innocent, the Bosnians are innocent, and the Western countries have nothing to do with the demolition of Yugoslavia. And then you plan different roles for Handke: if you question this way of thinking, then you most likely support Serbian nationalism.

In the case of the second charge, we are dealing with another double-cross. It can be claimed that Slobodan Milošević belonged to those little nationalist leaders of the republics of the erstwhile Yugoslavia. Just compare his speeches with speeches by Alija Izetbegovic or Franjo Tuđman, presidents of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. This was admitted by respective more honest commentators and Western diplomats. Milošević was alternatively attached to the Yugoslav communist apparatus, and so the national issue was not fundamental to him, especially the 1 understood racially.

As far as Peter Handke is concerned, it would be alternatively hard to convince that this is simply a man who has a sentiment for nationalist politics. He has repeatedly spoken out against German and Austrian traditions related to this kind of policy. As a consequence of this double propaganda curve he was accused of being almost fascist writer. Therefore, it seems to me that looking at the function Handke played in the media at the time and present is crucial due to the fact that it shows what happened to the public debate in our countries, how the transformation has undergone the media discourse, how crazyly ideologicalized the categories we usage have become.

A communicative that does not stick to the facts is very rapidly produced, it is not coherent, it is not able to tell in any fair way about the tragedy of Yugoslavia's dissolution.

With this simple, propaganda opinion, however, the participants of the public debate are hierarchized and blackmailed by their accusations, which all citizen liable for his words must be horrifying due to the fact that no 1 wants to appear as individual who questions genocide or supports cultural cleansing. It is crucial to see how the public debate in our countries functions and, therefore, the state of democracy that we are allegedly trying to defend everywhere in the world. In Yugoslavia, too, it was argued that Western countries must enter the game to defend Europe from the revival of nationalism, which as a consequence of the break-up of Yugoslavia has increased.

Some time ago, you recommended the book “The Miloševicia Process. Observer’s relationship. Why is it worth reading and who is its author, Germinal Civikov?

Before I met her, I did not think that specified publications were published in Polish. The main trend of the Polish public debate was very anti-Serbian, due to the fact that it was a copy of what functioned in the West.

The "Gazeta Wyborcza" surely has the top merit in sustaining the various narratives, which – present we know it – are somewhat missing the reality. So I was amazed that the book by the writer who followed Milošević's trial for many months was published in Polish. It is interesting due to the fact that it reminds us of what this process looked like in general: how it happened, how it did it, and whether it fulfilled the conditions of fair conduct in the context of global law.

Let us remind that from the very beginning the legitimacy and legitimacy of the global Criminal Court for the erstwhile Yugoslavia in The Hague have been questioned, due to the fact that it was a creation of anything peculiar in the area of global law.

With this book, we can see if Milošević has actually been proven guilty of his crimes.

Is there anything else worth reading about?

I besides urge John Laughland's book "Travesty", or "Paradia". It is simply a book on the Milošević process and global law, in which step by step it proves that we are dealing with a parody of the process alternatively than the appropriate process. Both of these books show that the allegations made by the Court against Milošević have not been proven, and during the trial a number of shortcomings or corruption have been revealed.

Many witnesses turned out to be unbelievable, and any of them revealed that they were being blackmailed or even tortured. 1 might wonder if we had been faced with tortures aimed at extorting evidence incriminating Milošević. The trial, which lasted an highly long time, due to the fact that over 4 years, did not end with the formulation of the sentence, and Milošević died in alternatively vague circumstances before the end of the trial in his cell.

These books besides show that media coverage was a scandalous lie.

Civikov recalls the moments erstwhile Lord David Owen, 1 of the crucial diplomats involved, among others, in the creation of the alleged Owen-Vance peace project, testified before the Court and said that Milošević is not a nationalist and is not guided by any racist optics. His wife is besides hard to characterize. Meanwhile, the press later stated that it was Lord Owen who stated that Milošević was not a racist, but his wife was.

It seems that the same Owen claimed that Karadžić, who was the leader of Bosnian Serbs actually committing war crimes, said that he allegedly considered Milošević to be king of the full Balkans. Then it turned out that Karadžić said it about himself, not Milošević. So we've been dealing with a series of specified curiosal curses.

What was the result?

All this made the Court effort not to disappoint the global audience, who has already met Milošević as a Balkan executioner, a butcher, an ruthless genocidal killer who performs cultural cleansing. It was the language of paper headlines.

During the trial, it was hard to keep this image due to the fact that it turned out that things were a small more complicated. Milošević, who represented himself as a defender, rather skillfully exposed various rhetorical treatments to place him liable for various events. The effect of the Court's meetings was very low, and Milošević was mostly defensive from the process, which was reflected in the fast failure of media interest in this event.

Peter Handke wrote 2 books in which he describes his own experience with the Hague Court, as he watched the process twice, was to witness the defence in the Milošević trial, but withdrew from it. I think these Handke's stories show a bigger problem. This is not only a problem of legal authentication of the Court, but besides a much deeper change in the sphere of politics in general and to what degree it is dependent on various another factors which are not democratic, specified as the construction of narratives by the media or the inequality of various global players who, through this Court, prosecute not justice but their political objectives.

It is worth recalling that the Tribunal for Crimes in the erstwhile Yugoslavia was funded by NATO, and it was established erstwhile NATO bombed Yugoslavia, so we are dealing here with the judging of the winners.

And the next problem is the way the anticipation of moral opposition to these processes was cut off. Normally, as long as the trial is pending, 1 can presume that the suspect is not convicted. There are differences of opinion as to whether he is guilty or innocent, 1 may question the charges against him. Meanwhile, the atmosphere around this process was that it was actually unacceptable to question any information from the Court. And if you wanted to stay in respectable and morally uncompromising spheres, you had to believe wholesale in all charges against Milošević.

Handke besides shows another side of the medal: that this Court besides judged another criminals, representatives of another republics, that during the war in Yugoslavia various criminal actions were carried out not only by the Serbian side, but from all others, possibly outside Slovenia. It was simply a process of bloody decay of the state, in which many not completely controlled events occurred. All of this is not liable for 1 person, and the Western countries, for example Germany, have besides played a role, which were very rapidly recognized by Slovenia and Croatia in 1991, decently undermining the legal and political position of the Yugoslav State.

This process shows how much there is left of the regulation of law in Western democracies. Handke, arguing for justice for both Serbia and Milošević himself, demanded restraint and appealed for impartial analysis or judgement of historical events.

In 1 of his books, he says straight that he does not claim that Milošević is innocent at all. On the another hand, he believes that Milošević is not guilty of the acts alleged by the Court against humanity, genocide.

And this conviction by Handke so far has not been disputed due to the fact that the Court has not given Milošević a conviction for these crimes. The course of the trial alternatively shows that he was not going to confirm these allegations, which evidently does not mean that Milošević did not actually commit specified acts. But in the course of the trial, there are certain things to prove, and until that happens, you cannot legally make anyone liable for these actions. Otherwise, we are not dealing with a real trial, we are dealing with a demonstration process.

What NGOs and how did they support blurring the fact about Milošević's trial?

Civikov lists two: Institute for War and Peace Reporting and Coalition for global Justice. They reported the process in a selective and biased way, and became a origin of cognition for many media.

But I think the problem was even wider. In John Laughland's book, I found information that frozen me, which means that the organisation of safety and cooperation in Europe was very active in the Milošević trial from the Court. The OSCE, otherwise a respectable and essential institution, represented William Walker, a erstwhile United States Ambassador at the Court. He was active in the operation of the American administration, which was undoubtedly a organization in the war in 1999. More interesting, William Walker was ambassador to El Salvador at the exact minute erstwhile the American army committed war crimes there. He besides participated in the process of overthrowing General Noriega in Panama in 1988 and 1989. Clearly, the degree of political corruption around this Court was unprecedented. Besides, this is simply a wider problem, due to the fact that the very overthrow of Milošević many commentators see as a consequence of the classical model of the colorful revolution – Serbia was buried with money from Western NGOs, which caused the political atmosphere, discourse and social sentiments to change rapidly, resulting in a change of power in Belgrade, and then led to a alternatively unlawful arrest of Milošević and to this process.

The question of who is liable for our perception of the war in Yugoslavia has been utilized for many analyses. quite a few books were created showing how the media reported the war in Yugoslavia and how these media relations contributed to the division of the national country.

At each phase of this breakdown, the communicative created by the Western media and the policies of the Western countries were closely linked, and the effect of each time was what the western countries, the division of Yugoslavia, cared most about,

Breaking up a very large political organization that could have been a competition for a Europe reconstructed in the neoliberal pattern in the early 1990s, after the collapse of the russian Union.

During the trial, Milošević was frequently referred to the thought of a large Serbia, which means that the war in Yugoslavia broke out due to the fact that the Serbs sought to conquer the remaining republics, or at least to unite all Serbs in 1 state body. Many times this communicative was exposed and it was proved that Slobodan Milošević was not a supporter of the thought of the large Serbia.

The full communicative was created by PR company Ruder & Finn. Her first possible client was Slobodan Milošević himself. At the very beginning of the war in Yugoslavia or even before it began, there was a gathering where he was offered PR service to his administration. Milošević felt it was unnecessary – he was an old-time politician and did not realize that this kind of communication skills had just become absolutely crucial. As a result, Ruder & Finn served Bosnia and Croatia media and PR.

Among another things, for many years we had the image of this war created by PR specialists. In fact, to this day, most people asked on the street will repeat the most crucial slogans behind which the PR of this company stands. besides cultural papers that are associated with this time, seldom go beyond this general framework created by PR treatments.

This shows that the function of media and media professionals in this war is significant. That is why it is so crucial to keep looking at it critically and objectively and to see how the models developed then besides function present and endanger our sensible analysis of current events.

I specifically asked about NGOs, due to the fact that in Poland we frequently see them as positive, fighting for common good. I remember how many years ago I was at the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the OSCE in Warsaw. At the time, I did not know what I knew today, and naively, I considered this institution romantically caring for human rights and democracy.

You mentioned William Walker. Let me remind you that he discovered the “massacre” in the village of Raczak in January 1999. I urge the book "The Shadow Lords", published by Sonia Draga publishing house, where Daniel Estulin, a Spanish investigative writer from Litwin origin, dedicates 1 chapter to the war in Yugoslavia – including William Walker and the OSCE. erstwhile I read this many years ago, I besides felt the frost you mentioned earlier.

I would like to add a fewer words about the “Massacre in Raczak” where the defenceless people of the Albanian village in Kosovo were allegedly murdered.

This information was an impulse to consent to the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 – it was considered essential to intervene in order to halt the ongoing genocide of the Serbs in Kosovo. present we know there was no massacre in Raczak.

There was any kind of fire exchange in which Albanian separatist militants were killed, and later on in the photos and media transmission they were posed as victims of genocide.

"If there were no protocols and educational arrangements of Finnish, Belarusian and Yugoslav doctors, these 3 incriminating witnesses would be able to get out of their lies. In fact, the prosecution had to recognise these production arrangements. alternatively consciously, it accepted these false statements and utilized them in evidence. So what's this all about? seemingly for a desperate effort to prove in the courtroom the massacre in Raczak as a real event and to burden Milošević with it, even if there are no appropriate witnesses. And the right witnesses are surely not due to the fact that there was no massacre in Raczak," writes Germinal Civikov, mentioned earlier, in the book "Process of Miloshević. Observer’s relationship.

We besides know, and this is possibly the most crucial thing, that there was no genocide trial in Kosovo.

This was a story that was to justify the request for external intervention, which is characteristic of the global policy of Western countries with the United States at the head. This story was so strong that even present there are those for whom individual who says that there was no genocide in Kosovo is simply a defender of genocide.

There was besides information about the operation with the code name ‘Podkowa’ which was allegedly implemented by the Serbs in Kosovo. It was to be an organized policy of genocide and cultural cleansing. The press said hundreds of thousands of victims. Later it turned out that there was neither specified a directive nor even a "Podkowa" operation in Kosovo. And Carla del Ponte, the president of the Tribunal on Crimes in the erstwhile Yugoslavia, announced that the final number of victims of the Kosovo War was over 2,000, of which a large part were Serbs – Serbian policemen attacked by the Kosovo Liberation Army, civilians, of course besides on the Albanian side.

I don't want to say that all Serbs were clean, friendly, etc. No, but the gap between this communicative and reality is so gigantic that it is hard not to ask ourselves why it was created.

In 2024 South Africa accused Israel of committing genocide on Palestinians in Gaza. The Prosecutor of the global Criminal Court has applied for warrants to arrest the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defence of Israel. What does this gotta do with our conversation?

I think this is an interesting example of a very wide-ranging political transformation. There is an interview in which the prosecutor of the global Criminal Court Karim Khan admits that in a conversation with him a high-profile American politician, outraged even by his various moves, said that this tribunal is for Africa and for bandits like Putin. He thus revealed that we are dealing with an institution of a political nature, not just legal or judicial nature.

I do not examine how an global court should be constructed, which would have an global legitimacy. This is highly hard due to the fact that the influence of any countries on the decisions and actions of specified tribunals will always be greater than others. Let us remember that the Court of Crime in the erstwhile Yugoslavia was appointed by the safety Council, whose permanent members are 5 countries. And it's a rotational fewer others, but it's not an full global community, so it's hard to say that through this tribunal the full planet is judging someone. Moreover, the selectivity of the actions of these global tribunals is shocking. Suffice to say that no citizen of the United States has always faced him for at least a fewer illegal wars.

I leave out the issue of Yugoslavia, although it was gross that no 1 on the part of NATO was brought to justice for those actions, but it is besides about Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and another alternatively dark achievements of the American administration. The question arises as to who this tribunal actually represents. I think what happened now is betraying a certain evolution. I am not saying that this is an evolution towards objectivity, impartiality and apoliticalness, but that would be rather naive, but it seems to me that this shows a change in the arrangement of forces. The taboo of bringing representatives of Western countries or allied countries specified as Israel to global tribunals is gone. It seems to me that for many American and Israeli politicians, however, it is inactive a shock that they can be subject to specified procedures at all.

At the same time, this request for a BOLO for Israeli politicians is besides a safe decision, due to the fact that the BOLO for Hamas leaders was besides issued, so the Court would put a small sign of equality between what Hamas did in Israel on 7 October 2023 and what Israel does in Gaza for the next months. I don't think there's any level of symmetry at all, so politically analyzing these decisions, but here we are dealing with any conjecture. Yes, Benjamin Netanyahu will be tried, but Hamas representatives will sit on the bench for balance. What is simply a legal and judicial issue is irrevocably mixed with political issues, and I do not see a chance of yet dissolving this.

Those who have read South Africa's proposal know that the arguments are very strong, that genocide can indeed be proven. Of course, until the conviction is handed down, no 1 is legally guilty. But it's a certain evolution, and we'll see how long it lasts. I think this will be met with any very decisive consequence from both Israeli and American politicians who will effort this tribunal or these tribunals, due to the fact that we besides have the decision of the global Court of Justice to neutralise somehow.

It is besides known that for respective years now Mossad and any American politicians have been very intensively monitoring and insisting on individual judges of these tribunals to force useful decisions.

It is worth mentioning that to Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the global Criminal Court, U.S. Senators from the Republican organization have sent a letter in which they actually straight endanger him and his household with various unpleasant actions if he continues his actions.

We are faced with open blackmail and a clear threat to the Court. It seems to me that it will now become an arena of ruthless political struggle. Whether, in the context of this fight, even the appearance of his legal impartiality can be maintained, I do not know. However, it is surely worth noting the evolution that global institutions are beginning to undergo and how this reflects the wider evolution of the planet system.

What crucial question has no 1 asked you about the subject we are talking about yet, and what is the answer to them?

It's hard to talk about questions no 1 asked. I don't have much talk about the war in Yugoslavia. I have been curious in this issue for a fewer years, because, as you mentioned yourself, reading about it is very informative and shows us the unusual and dark heritage of Western countries' politics, which we are frequently unaware of. And the question to which I would like to find the answer is: how does it happen that in our useful historical memory there are not even scandalous stories like this connected with the demolition of Yugoslavia, and why does it not affect our perception of different players internationally? It's truly amazing for me.

The 1999 War is more crucial to me than the September 11th [the planet Trade Center Towers demolished].

Many people claimed that September 11 points to the end of the communicative – this is an incredibly arrogant belief that the communicative is over and now we all gotta imitate liberal democracy in America. I believe that September 11 was not the minute erstwhile it could be said that past was over, but the war in Yugoslavia.

It was she who showed the actual scenes of this end of history: that in the quest to quench conflicts, global unification, etc., it was truly about dominance, which would sooner or later be challenged by someone. It seems to me that it is only now that the distant consequences of these events come to light, that any countries are declaring obedience to the global dominance of America. It is not known where this will lead to us, but who knows if the sources are not in this war in Yugoslavia.

It is worth remembering that during the illegal bombings of Yugoslavia, a Chinese embassy was besides bombed, as China inactive remembers today. erstwhile Xi Jinping was visiting Serbia, he recalled the situation. Russia has surely watched the division of the national country into tiny republics and gradually seize it for its own political purposes. Russian politicians surely learned their lesson for themselves.

I think 1999 is the right beginning of our era, and it's inactive a small mysterious for me, why we're inactive trying to think that the work for these events is so simply divided as in this narrative, that an idyllic country has abruptly been attacked by bloodthirsty Slobodan Milošević and all evil has come from this 1 man, who is Hitler's fresh incarnation, etc. This is any childish imagination of a communicative that doesn't service its bloodless continuation.

One cannot have specified a simple communicative in head and make an global policy in which any peace and creative cooperation will be possible. A more serious examination of conscience is inactive missing and so a revision of the approach to the dissolution of Yugoslavia.

I think it will be a good ending to our conversation by recalling the motto of the Week of civilian Affairs, or quote from Orwell, "If freedom means anything at all, it is only as a right to tell people things they do not want to hear."

Thank you for talking to me.