Zoran Bozicevic, an associate photo editor at the National Post, covered the war in the former Yugoslavia for The Associated Press for four years. He moved to Canada from his home in Croatia in 1997. This is his first-hand account of the Milosevic era.
- - -
When I think about Slobodan Milosevic, I think about death and destruction, about burned villages, about dead bodies on farms, fields and streets, about tears and blood. When I think about him, I think about war.
In late 1989, I travelled to Belgrade, the capital of Serbia and Yugoslavia, from my hometown, Zagreb, in Croatia. At that time, socialist Yugoslavia was still holding together, nine years after the death of its creator, Tito. The Communist presidents changed in succession, each year a president from a different republic.
In Serbia, a new political star was on the rise -- Slobodan Milosevic, a wild-eyed man with funny-looking hair and fiery speeches.
In Croatia, we found his rhetoric amusing. It is hard to be passionate about politics when you grow up in a one-party system. However, this late after Tito, ties with Belgrade were loosening, Croatian Communists were growing mellow -- so mellow that they would allow democratic elections a year later, and lose -- and Milosevic was far away, or so we thought. On my visit to Belgrade, I noticed that Tito's pictures were being replaced by Milosevic's, his posters were decorating store windows and people were buying his words and promises.
Fast-forward a year later. My mother's kitchen window looks on the railroad connecting Zagreb with Belgrade. In May, 1990, a train loaded with drunken soccer hooligans from Belgrade was stopped in front of our building. While waiting to be escorted by the police to the soccer stadium, the gang chanted from the train: "Slobodan, send us lettuce, there will be meat when we slaughter the Croats."
Fast-forward another year, and the same chant was sung by Serbian soldiers marching behind black pirate flags through the rubble of what used to be the town of Vukovar. After 86 days of siege and constant bombardment, Milosevic's Yugoslav army and various paramilitary gangs captured the town. This time they were true to their words -- they slaughtered thousands of Croats.
Vukovar is in a region called Slavonija. To put it into Canadian perspective, Slavonija is very much like Saskatchewan on a far smaller scale. It is flat and agricultural; its people are nice, friendly and relaxed. An old saying describes the life in the region moving in the rhythm of a ploughing ox.
It is also the region closest to the border with Serbia. The first big wave of refugees to hit Zagreb came from there. As a young photojournalist, I was sent to document those first refugees.
There would be countless faces recorded on my negatives later, all with the same expression of pain, hopelessness and loss, with stories growing in horror as the time went by. But for some reason, those first scenes are burned into my memory. People came in a long line of cars loaded with scattered belongings they managed to rescue in the hour they were given to leave their homes and farms. There was lot of commotion in a sports arena, where they had to spend their first night on the floor.
Aid workers and reporters stumbled around as lost as the refugees themselves, not knowing what to do or what to ask and say. An elderly couple stood isolated in the corner. They were both short and stocky, with round, open faces. The man was holding his hat, twisting its rim with thick worker's fingers. The woman was looking around expressionless. They recounted their story in long, slow sentences. They told about their Serb neighbours going around the village, knocking on doors with guns in hands, ordering the Croats to pack and leave. They told about the farm and things they left behind. Then the man paused, his expression unchanged except for a single tear sliding down his round cheek. "They took our son away. He is 17."
From that moment on, my memories are a whirlwind of scenes and images of war -- bodies loaded on a horse-pulled cart, elderly villagers who did not leave on time. An old woman whose face was smashed with the butt of a rifle, still clutching kitchen cloth in hand. Soldiers fighting and dying, victorious or defeated, and more refugees with fewer belongings and less time to leave.
Of course, to wage a real war, Milosevic needed a counterpart. He found it in the man who became the first president of Croatia, Franjo Tudjman. Tudjman declared Croatian independence, Milosevic countered that all Serbs should live in one country. Tudjman raved about the Croatian army crushing the rebellion, Milosevic sent the Yugoslav army to help the rebellion.
After about a third of Croatia was lost to the rebel Serbs, the two sides were locked in the status quo and the war moved to Bosnia. The two madmen presidents met in secret to divide Bosnia. They agreed to join its mostly Croat-populated southwest to Croatia, and its northeast to Serbia. But Milosevic and Tudjman didn't include Muslims in the equation and the war went on with now three sides battling each other. Four years later, with more than 300,000 people dead and millions displaced, the war in Croatia and Bosnia ended.
In one of their meetings a photo was released of the two presidents -- Milosevic and Tudjman -- shot from the back. They were on a terrace overlooking the sea, chatting idly and enjoying the sunset, like each of their meetings hadn't been paid for by thousands of lives.
Tudjman died of cancer shortly after the war. He left a legacy of fresh graves and hatred. Unfortunately, the worse monster, Milosevic, went on to wage and lose another war, in Kosovo, and was finally removed by his own people. He died in his cell in The Hague on Saturday, awaiting resolution of the trial for his war crimes.
All the time I was covering the war in the Balkans, I wished for Milosevic's death. But all I feel now is sadness. Sadness that he slipped away so easily, when he should have suffered for all the suffering he caused. Sadness for all those anonymous victims from my war photographs, for millions of people whose lives were eternally ruined by the decisions of the monster.
