Vojislav Šešelj
An extremist Serbian politician, moonlighting as a
paramilitary commander during the 1990s wars in former
Yugoslavia. Alternately an ally and critic of
Slobodan Milošević, the uncompromising Šešelj represented the far-right strand of Serbian politics after Milošević's fall, and was publicly indicted by the
War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague on
February 15, 2003.
Šešelj was born in
Sarajevo in
1954, and like a number of ex-Yugoslavia's nationalists had once had a high-flying academic career.
Biljana Plavšić, one day to be the vice-president of the
Bosnian Serb republic, was a former biology instructor, and the future
Croatian president
Franjo Tudjman a controversial revisionist historian. Šešelj topped his class at law school and became Yugoslavia's youngest holder of a
doctorate.
Chetniks
The intense Serbian nationalism of the 1980s first developed among academics, with the
Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences publishing a now infamous memorandum in
1986. Šešelj, perhaps, was ahead of the game, and received a two-year prison sentence in
1984 for an unpublished article which called for the federal Yugoslavia to be replaced with something approaching
Greater Serbia. After his release, Šešelj continued to agitate for the nationalist cause in
Belgrade, and found his audience ever more willing.
While Miloševic - who had jumped on the bandwagon as late as
1987 - delivered a historic address before an audience of hundreds of thousands on the site of the symbolic
Battle of Kosovo in
1989, commemorating the six hundredth anniversary of the 'glorious' defeat, Šešelj was in the
United States making contact with ultranationalist Serb émigrés led by
Momčilo Đujić. Đujić's group called themselves
Chetniks after Serbian bandits who had
fought Ottoman tax-collectors and a
World War II resistance movement which had come to be associated with Serb nationalism.
Šešelj had the ceremonial title of
Vojvoda, or Duke, conferred upon him by Dujić, and travelled around North America and Western Europe raising funds from like-minded Serbs before returning to Yugoslavia in
1990 and founding a succession of Serb nationalist parties. All were banned by the Yugoslavian government, although his
Serbian Chetnik Movement received nearly 100,000 votes in that December's elections. His
Serbian Radical Party, reviving a name which had dominated the politics of the kingdom of
Serbia, was founded in February
1991.
During 1990, Šešelj had also maintained contact with rebel Serbs in the Croatian town of
Knin, who were making very clear that they were determined to resist the ever-increasing likelihood of Croatia's secession from the federation. That December, they declared that their
Krajina region was an autonomous Serb district, independent from Croatia, and Krajina paramilitaries took part in a number of clashes with the Croatian police during the spring and early summer of 1991.
Šešelj kept up a barrage of nationalist speeches inciting the Krajina Serbs, and appeared in person at the March 1991 stand-off between police and paramilitaries in
Plitvice National Park. One band of paramilitaries named themselves the
Šešeljovci, Šešelj's men, in his honour. In May they helped local Serbs in the village of
Borovo Selo to ambush a detachment of Croatian police, killing 12 and injuring 20 more in an early, bitter round of the war as yet undeclared.
White Eagles
Croatia finally left Yugoslavia on
June 25, 1991, alongside
Slovenia, and Šešelj continually appealed to Croatia's Serbs to help the Yugoslavian army, the
JNA, keep Croatia in the federation by force. He visited Serb soldiers that autumn to boost their morale before the attack on
Dubrovnik, and also recruited a number of volunteers himself, into a unit known as the
White Eagles.
During the JNA's siege of
Vukovar, in
Eastern Slavonia where the Serbs had organised themselves in the same way as the Krajina, Šešelj turned up in the city and announced that 'Not one
Ustasha will leave this town alive.' The Ustashe were the Croatian fascists during
World War II who had ruled the country as a Nazi puppet state; for Serb nationalists to refer to all Croats in this way was commonplace. Vukovar fell on
November 18, 1991, at which around 300 non-Serb patients in Vukovar's hospital were kidnapped, tortured and killed by soldiers and paramilitaries.
From Vukovar, Šešelj turned his attention to
Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was also now preparing to declare its independence. Here, too, Serb nationalists had drawn up plans to resist, and Šešelj lent his voice to the campaign, arriving in
Zvornik in March 1992 to exhort his 'Chetnik brothers' to drive the 'pagans' out of Bosnia. The next month, Serb forces including volunteers recruited by Šešelj and his fellow warlord
Arkan attacked the town, instigating
ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs in which Šešelj is, according to The Hague, complicit.
Not even Serbian territory was immune: in May 1992, Šešelj rolled into the ethnically mixed
Vojvodina region and called for Croat residents to be expelled. The coalition of soldiers and paramilitaries, White Eagles included, quickly arrived in the Vojvodina, disarmed non-Serb villagers and forcibly deported the majority of the Croat and
Bosniak population.
Meanwhile, Šešelj co-operated with Milošević to sideline moderate Serbian politicians until
1993, when Milošević began to flirt with the
Vance-Owen plan for peace and cut back his support for the
Bosnian Serbs. Attempting to establish himself as the West's '
man we can do business with', he no longer found the radical nationalist's support particularly welcome, and turned on his former comrade during a parliamentary session, describing him as 'the personification of violence'. Šešelj responded with an irate speech implicating the strongman and his associates in well-publicised atrocities.
Brothers in Arms
Šešelj continued to call for
Greater Serbia during his time in the political wilderness, and was thrown out of Bosnia-Herzegovina during the run-up to the
1998 elections because he was so implacably opposed to the
Dayton Accords which had created the Bosnian state in
1995. By then, however, he had entered government at Milošević's side once more, and his Radicals were coalition partners with the parties of Milošević and the president's wife
Mira Marković.
In March 1998, Milošević made him a deputy premier at an acute moment in the diplomatic crisis concerning the treatment of ethnic Albanians in
Kosovo. Helping to rally extreme nationalist sentiment round Milošević at home, Šešelj also conveniently represented to foreign diplomats what the likely alternative to Milošević's cronies would be. He resigned from his governmental position in June
1999 when
NATO troops set foot on Kosovo's hallowed soil.
Still an arch-pragmatist - few Serbian politicians are not - Šešelj withdrew his support from Milošević at the last minute when Serbian opinion turned against him in October
2000. He had personally signed an order that very May for police to storm the independent television station
Studio B; now he demanded that Studio B, which would become one of the major voices of the protest, was brought back under the control of Belgrade's mayor.
In the supposed new era of Milošević's successor
Vojislav Koštunica, Šešelj maintained his brand of populism, appealing to voters who have seen no economic benefit from the change of government. In December
2002, he came second to Koštunica in Serbia's second attempt that year at a presidential election, but the result was ruled invalid once again as the minimum turnout of 50% had not been reached.
Šešelj was publicly indicted by the Hague Tribunal in February
2003, and surprisingly announced that he would fly to The Hague within a matter of days, adding that he had had prior knowledge of the indictment. He was hardly expected to display the repentance of Biljana Plavšić, who followed up a similar sensation by pleading guilty to crimes against humanity in December 2002.
Indeed, he followed Milošević's tactic of refusing to enter a plea, and underlined his
contempt for the court by refusing to follow protocol and stand up for the judges' entrances. Before the trial proper had begun, he had already declared his intention to use the
dock as a platform for his rejection of the court's legitimacy.
In April 2003, the Serbian government accused Šešelj of complicity in the murder of the Serbian prime minister
Zoran Đinđić the previous month. He was not charged with direct involvement, which was allegedly perpetrated by members of the
Zemun gang, but had predicted 'a turbulent spring in Serbia' before leaving for The Hague and - according to the deputy PM - had ordered Đinđić to be eliminated over lunch in Belgrade.
Read more:
http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/ses-ia030115e.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,896152,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,856379,00.html