<
https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-my-time-with-madam-war-criminal-unrepentant-at-95-268302>
"How could a university professor and internationally established scientist
become a war criminal? This question prompted me to spend hundreds of hours
interviewing Biljana Plavšić, now 95, at her home in Belgrade, the Serbian
capital.
Plavšić, a former biologist, senior Bosnian Serb political leader and president
of the Bosnian Serb Republic, is the only woman of 161 people to have been
indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
(ICTY). She is the first female high-ranked politician to be prosecuted for
mass atrocities.
More than 100,000 people died in the Bosnian war from 1992–95. At least 8,000
Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys were killed by the Bosnian Serb Army in
the genocide in Srebrenica in July 1995.
During the war, Plavšić defended the purge of Bosnian non-Serbs (chiefly Croats
and Bosniaks) as “a natural phenomenon”, justifying her policies of ethnic
cleansing, mostly carried out by Serb paramilitaries, with theories of ethnic
and racial superiority.
Described by Western media as the “Serbian Iron Lady” and by Serb soldiers as a
“Serb Empress”, Plavšić pleaded guilty in 2002 to a crime against humanity,
persecuting non-Serbs for religious, political and racial motives. In exchange,
the court dropped further charges of murder and genocide.
After serving six years of an 11-year sentence, she was released in October
2009, returning to Belgrade in a fur coat to meet her supporters."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
