The Costs of Justice: How New Leaders Respond to Previous Rights Abuses

6. Serbia and Montenegro

6 Serbia and Montenegro Justice as Yugoslavia’s Most Valuable Foreign Export? Unlike their Polish counterparts, Serbia’s democratic opposition emerged in 2000 not merely from a half-century of communist rule and a decade of economic decline, but also from a series of 1990s wars that amounted to the bloodiest conflict in post-1945 Europe. Although Serbia’s new elites tend to gloss over rights abuses that occurred from 1945 to 1991, Yugoslavia ’s early communist period was at times at least as brutal as in other parts of the region. Under Josip Broz Tito’s leadership, hundreds of thousands of Yugoslavs were stripped of their rights in the post–World War II period, with tens of thousands imprisoned for their political convictions or economic status.1 Yet less than two decades after the Soviet Union split from Yugoslavia definitively in 1948, Yugoslavia was seen as a bastion of liberalism in the communist bloc. Yugoslavs could freely cross their border and had more economic rights under Tito’s “self-management” system than did most of their Central and Southern European neighbors. Still, for those who opposed the League of Yugoslav Communists, or favored greater regional autonomy, Yugoslavia remained a repressive state. By 1989, as communism collapsed across the former Eastern Bloc, occasional discussion of political repression turned into personal experiences of 123 brutality for many of Yugoslavia’s residents. The former Yugoslavia became a breeding ground for nationalism, resulting in the country’s violent dismemberment , during which many sides were implicated in war atrocities. The rump Yugoslavia (composed of Serbia and Montenegro as well as Kosovo and Vojvodina) was ruled for a decade by Slobodan Milošević, an authoritarian once regarded as a good communist and subsequently devoted to building a Greater Serbia that included territory belonging to newly independent countries. During this period, Milošević’s Yugoslavia was involved in multiple wars (against Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo) that claimed tens of thousands of lives. While the data vary considerably and remain extremely controversial, casualty estimates from the Bosnia war range from 100,000 to more than 200,000.2 The war in Croatia was estimated to cost between 10,000 and 20,000 lives, while the toll in Kosovo was also around 10,000.3 In each of these cases, civilians made up a large proportion of casualties. and allegations of genocide and/or ethnic cleansing were made, which led to the creation of the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague. As the former Yugoslavia rotted, Milošević thrived in an atmosphere of corruption and façade democracy. After years of rehearsals, in fall 2000, the Movement for a Democratic Serbia (DOS), a democratic alliance dominated by two Serbian opposition parties, Vojislav Koštunica’s Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) and Zoran Ðinđić’s Democratic Party (DS), helped to lead what was billed as a peaceful revolution against Milošević. Despite Milošević’s ouster, the case of Serbia is best classified as a negotiated transition . The democratic opposition did take control of some federal structures in October, with Koštunica winning the post of president, a position that was to be largely representative or secondary in authority. But the incumbents did not immediately relinquish full control of the state, instead negotiating a settlement whereby members of Milošević’s party would temporarily share seats with oppositionists at the top of key structures such as the police, justice, information, and financial ministries.4 The premiership also became a shared post, pending new republic-level parliamentary elections, which, as part of the negotiations, were moved up to December. The opposition took control of the Serb republic only after winning a majority in those generally free and fair elections. Ðinđić subsequently took 124 | THE COSTS OF JUSTICE the post of Serbia’s prime minister, responsible for running the day-to-day affairs of that government, which accounted for 90 percent of Yugoslavia’s populace. Leaders of Serbia’s former democratic opposition simultaneously faced three types of justice issues: communist-era violations, Milošević-era wartime violations, and Milošević-era non-war violations. With the exception of rehabilitation and, occasionally, bureaucratic turnover (connected with lustration), local elites have tended to focus transitional justice discussion on 1990s war-related violations. The communist era is frequently explained away as a period of prosperity and only minor repression...