Abstract
The literature on transitional justice in former Yugoslavia holds that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) proceedings, meant to establish the facts about the past, punish the perpetrators of mass violence, and even facilitate reconciliation, have led to the unexpected transformation of convicted war criminals into heroes in their home countries. Drawing on cultural criminology, the article looks at the phenomenon of “criminal celebrity,” which emerges at the juncture between public personality, intensive media attention, and high audience resonance. Considering that this transformation largely depends on the ability of different actors, including the convicts themselves, to create socially acceptable public personalities by reframing crimes, and their contexts and perpetrators, this article looks at the attempts to create such alternative accounts in the memoirs of the convicts, and in the media. This article argues that the mediation of war criminals in the ICTY facilitated a new type of criminal celebrity—the “ICTY celebrity,” who emerges from his/her relation to an allegedly unjust legal authority, rather than to the crimes. The ICTY celebrity is not a hero, known for heroic deeds or achievements—instead, his main function is to represent a flattering and consoling narrative about the past, enabling wide identification within the ethnic community.
Snimi facu idiotu
Ceri se u sudnici
K’o da je dobio na lotu
Postat će celebrity
Look at that idiot! He laughs at the court, He thinks he’s won the lottery: At last he’s a celebrity! Hladno pivo, “Udarna Vijest”
Siding with the accused of the same ethnic group, political elites and the national media have celebrated released war criminals, reframing them into national heroes (Ahmetašević & Tanner, 2009; Džihana & Volčić, 2011; Ristić, 2014; Subotić, 2009). Simić (2011) has discussed this inability of international criminal justice to translate into local justice as a demonstration of the disrespect felt toward International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) judgments, enabling the perceived interchangeability of “the labels of war criminal and war hero” (p. 1407). Pavlaković (2010) notes a similar process in Croatia where Ante Gotovina has come to exemplify “the heroic ideal derived from centuries of an oft-violent Croatian history” (p. 1718). Scholars interpret such outcomes as failures of the judicial system, on the one hand, or symptoms of the persistent nationalism of home states on the other. This article proposes to analyze the public life of war criminals within the framework of cultural criminology research, noting that the junction of mass media and consumerism have created “celebrity culture” as the pervasive media logic of Late Modernity (Marshall, 2006; Penfold-Mounce, 2009). Understanding the public portrayal of war criminals through the paradigm of “criminal celebrity” as developed in cultural criminology, provides an insight into the junction between criminals and the mass media, and the conditions under which criminals might become celebrities. Furthermore, it enables the formulation of more precise distinctions between the treatment of different war criminals, thereby qualifying the general assumption that all war criminals are heroes of their societies.
The three war criminals selected for this study fall in the category of criminal celebrity which Penfold-Mounce (2009) has dubbed the underworld exhibitionist, those who attempt “to enter the celebrity realm through selling their life stories and experiences to the public” (p. 118). All three war criminals have written ego-documents 1 (memoirs, diaries, biographies) in an attempt to reframe their public image of war criminal. They were found guilty by the ICTY on different counts, from murders to forcible population transfers and mistreatment of prisoners of war, as crimes against humanity and war crimes. Biljana Plavšić, 2 a politician and prominent member of the Serbian Democratic Party in Republika Srpska (RS) during and after the war, wrote a two-volume memoir which followed her life from the outbreak of violence in the 1990s till the end of her political career in 1998. Yugoslav Army Officer Veselin Šljivančanin 3 published his first book in the form of a diary written in the Scheveningen detention unit, starting on the first day of his detention and continuing until his release. Finally, Milan Lukić, 4 paramilitary leader of the “White Eagles” in Bosnia, employed a ghostwriter, Rajko Đurđević, to help prepare his memoir. With the exception of Plavšić’s memoirs, these documents did not receive any scholarly attention. Subotić (2012) sees Plavšić’s memoirs as a “remarkable and disappointing tale of the false promise of apology, remorse, and confession by a high-ranking convicted war criminal” (p. 57). In other words, Plavšić uses her memoir to (re)assert an essentialist, nationalistic world view, and Subotić shows the inconsistency of Plavšić’s narration when contrasted with the historical knowledge and ICTY judgments.
The aim of this article is somewhat different. Instead of exposing their fallacies, I have read these texts as an attempt to retrieve power (Gready, 1993) and to reconstruct the public self by reframing the past and criminal responsibility. The aim of the analysis of memoirs, then, is to show the discursive strategies employed by convicts for the reframing of their individual criminal responsibility and creation of a morally acceptable public persona. Nevertheless, the memoirs alone cannot change the public status of a war criminal. This status is further negotiated in the media and created in the ways the mass media and other public figures treat the ICTY judgments, convicts and their memoirs, as well as in the resonance provoked by this mediation. 5 Hence, after analyzing memoirs, I turn to media discourses, asking whether the mediation of war criminals and their memoirs has resulted in the establishment of a celebrity status for any of the convicts, and if so, what kind of media attention, narrative about the past and public resonance enables the celebrity status of war criminals. The conclusion argues that although all three war criminals present themselves in the memoirs as “defenders of the people,” pleading for public recognition as national heroes, only one of them becomes a celebrity, if not a hero. Unlike a heroic criminal like Robin Hood, whose crimes are directed against an unjust authority, the “ICTY celebrity” emerges from and is partly created by the imprisonment itself—he is known for no heroic deeds and has no achievements to his name; his main function is to represent a flattering and consoling narrative about the past.
Before the analysis of the memoirs, exploring the individual reframings of crimes and responsibility, and of the media, with the mediation of memoirs and war criminals in the public sphere, the following section will introduce “Criminal Celebrities” as a theoretical frame for the analysis. It will be followed by a short note on the method of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and Stuart Hall’s concept of encoding and decoding, used for the analysis of media.Theoretical Frame: Criminal Celebrities
Criminal celebrity, like any other celebrity, operates at the junction between public personality, intensive media attention, and high resonance with an audience. Boorstin (2006) famously defined celebrities as “those who are well known for being well known” (p. 79), thereby distinguishing between “heroes” known for their deeds and celebrities known for being known. Instead, it is intensive media attention, the rupture between the public and vernacular selves, and the constant attempt to grasp the person behind the public image, which drive the construction of celebrity. Celebrities are no accidental outcome of mass media but emerge in specific historical circumstances: democratic (or at least popular) regimes, in ambiguous relationship with the consumerism of late capitalism and widespread mass media, transforming people into commodities (Marshall, 1997; Penfold-Mounce, 2009). Moreover, celebrities are usually carefully prepared by a whole series of entrepreneurs like agents, publicists, promoters, photographers—in a word, a whole set of “cultural intermediaries” (Rojek, 2001, p. 10) supporting their emergence into the limelight. The final element needed for the emergence of celebrities is a strong resonance encouraging the audience to emotionally “interact, respond and relate to” the public personality (Penfold-Mounce, 2009, p. 69). It is important to stress that resonance is an active construct of the audience–subject, as Marshall (1997) calls this active interconnection, where an audience is central for constituting celebrity, because celebrities “represent subject positions that audiences can adopt or adapt in their formation of social identities” (p. 65). This attraction is usually seen as an identification, with a strong emotional bond (Penfold-Mounce, 2009, p. 65), where celebrities appear as “nothing greater than a publicized version of us” (Boorstin, 2006, p. 83). Such an interpretation might fall short of explaining the phenomena of criminal celebrity, hence in the following section, I deal with this concept in more detail.
Criminal Hero and Criminal Celebrity
The definition of the celebrity as opposed to the hero, disguises the fact that the border between the two is not so clear-cut. Rojek (2001), for example, differentiates between three ways of obtaining celebrity status: ascribed, achieved, and attributed celebrity (p. 17). The first form, “ascribed celebrity,” is the celebrity of heritage or lineage, as in membership of an aristocracy. The second form of celebrity, “achieved celebrity,” comes for some extraordinary achievement, be it heroic deed, professional performance, or special skill. Finally, “attributed celebrity” is not supported by any kind of special skills or deeds but results from media sensationalism and “the concentrated representation of an individual as noteworthy or exceptional by cultural intermediaries” (Rojek, 2001, p. 18).
Fame of criminals, or “notoriety” in Rojek’s (2001) terminology, is based on “unfavorable public recognition” (p. 10). In other words, “celebrity” confirms the moral framework of society, while “notoriety” “usually connotes transgression, deviance and immorality” (Rojek, 2001, p. 33).
The focus on heroes, rather than on criminality, creates an alternative reading of criminal celebrity. Building on Hobsbawm’s (2000) work on “Social Bandits” as the cultural outcome of specific economic structures, Kooistra (1990) argues that the social creation of the “heroic criminal” could emerge in any system where concepts of law and justice are not equivalent. The “social bandit”, or “heroic criminal”, is “a political figure who symbolizes extra-legal justice” (p. 221). They become symbols of the justice which is outside of the legal system, since “people must find some symbolic meaning in his criminality and identify with him rather than with his victim” (Kooistra, 1990, p. 226). Kooistra (1990) notes that the social bandit reverses the categories of victimhood, and instead of direct victims, claims that the only victims of his acts are “those institutions that are seen as the ‘true’ perverters of legal justice” (p. 233)—in other words, the “criminal hero” becomes a symbol of “real” justice, a rebel against “unjust authority.”
A similar overlap between hero and criminal is present in Penfold-Mounce’s (2009) category of the “criminal celebrity,” which includes the “social bandit,” “criminal hero,” “underworld exhibitionist” and “iniquitous criminal” (pp. 83–91). While the social bandit exemplifies the lawbreaking person supported by the community, often because of his avoidance of violence and gentlemanly behavior toward the victims, the “criminal hero” does not refrain from violence but is famous for his “daring, audacity, recklessness, pursuit of profit” (Penfold-Mounce, 2009, p. 84). “Underworld exhibitionists” is the term to be applied to the group of criminals who are willing to sell their life stories in an attempt “to enter the celebrity realm” (Penfold-Mounce, 2009, p. 118). Finally, iniquitous criminals, the exemplars of notoriety in Rojek’s terminology, are the “anti-celebrities,” infamous for committing horrible crimes. By including the social bandit or heroic criminal in the group of “criminal celebrities,” Penfold-Mounce deletes the border between heroes and celebrities, in an attempt to capture the relation between fame and crime. Penfold-Mounce provides the most comprehensive categories of criminal celebrity. At the same time, neither of these categories are exclusive, and in several examples, she shows overlaps between categories.
On the basis of this literature, I have selected three cases of underworld exhibitionists, asking to which other category of “criminal celebrities” war criminals in Serbia might belong. Applying Rojek’s distinction between “achieved” and “attributed” celebrity, I ask if war criminals really are heroes as the literature reviewed assumes (in the sense of social bandits or heroic criminals), or criminal heroes (in the sense of perpetrators of daring crimes) or simply iniquitous criminals (infamous for terrifying crimes). In conclusion, I develop a new category of “ICTY celebrity,” as an attributed celebrity, which could be distinguished from the social bandit mainly for lack of heroic acts, and emerging from the relation with judicial institutions on the one hand, and flattering and consoling narratives about the past with wide public resonance, on the other.
In the mediation of criminals into fame, both Kooistra and Penfold-Mounce focus on three elements which enable the transformation of a criminal into a popular figure: (i) the nature of the crime, (ii) the context of the crime, and (iii) the image of the offender. In the analysis of the memoirs, I look at each of these elements, asking how each of the three war criminals has attempted to reframe their own criminal responsibility. In the analysis of the media, in addition to the three elements by which war criminals reframe their responsibility in their memoirs, I also look at media attention, cultural intermediaries, and resonance as necessary conditions for the emergence of celebrity. Finally, in the conclusion, I show what kind of reframing is publicly accepted, and what kind of celebrity has emerged in this process.
Before this analysis, in the following section, I will explain in more detail the method used for the analysis of ego-documents and media outlets.
Method
CDA has been employed here for the analysis of primary sources, three memoirs, and press articles in the Serbian media. The analysis of ego-documents explores the framing of crimes, wars, and image of the author.
The media analysis looks at the way the Serbian press portray these war criminals, and their postverdict lives and writings, taking intensive media portrayal as a sign of the celebrity status of the convict. Employing CDA (van Dijk, 1991; Fairclough, 1989; van Leeuwen, 2008), I analyze the media portrayal of war criminals, focusing on how the media portray these actors—whether as war criminals or as innocent scapegoats—their actions—foregrounding their criminal or writing records—and their publications—as the sincere testimonies of war participants or falsified accounts for purposes of self-justification. Following Hall (1973), I distinguish between three different media strategies in reporting on war criminals: (i) the dominant strategy, which accepts the main claims of the ego-documents’ authors, further promoting their innocence and celebrity status; (ii) the negotiated, which acknowledges the contradictions inherent in their claims, bearing in mind the ICTY judgments; and (iii) the oppositional, which rejects any claims of innocence, invoking the ICTY verdicts as the only relevant source for the evaluation of their social position. Media reporting within the dominant strategy promotes the celebrity status of war criminals, while those within the oppositional strategy are promoting the image of notoriety. In the negotiated strategy, the media demonstrate ambivalence toward the claims of the memoirs, contrasting them with the ICTY judgments. By applying Hall’s distinctions to the way media are encoding war criminals, this article stresses the heterogeneous media landscape in Serbia, showing subtle differences in reporting about the war criminals and the consequences of these differences.
Media articles were selected from the online archives of the daily newspapers Politika, Blic, Kurir, Večernje Novosti, Danas and from the online portals E-novine, Peščanik, and Radio Free Europe (RSE). 6 All articles were available online, and selected according to relevance to the topic, inserted in the MaxQDA 11, and coded. The total number of analyzed articles has been 237—for Plavšić 102, for Šljivančanin 71, and for Lukić 64, covering media events like the year of memoir publication, ICTY sentence, release from prison, and public book promotions, for the period from 2005 to 2017.
The analysis contains two main parts: In the first, I analyze the self-justifying accounts offered by the convicts in their memoirs, looking at the way they correct verdicts and reject accusations and their responsibility for the crimes—in other words, how they are reframing their criminal responsibility. In the second section, I focus on the media, and on the different ways the war criminals reappear in media discourses, looking how the media negotiate the reframings in the memoirs, and the intensity of the media attention and resonance with the audience which the different narratives are creating.
Rewriting Criminal Responsibility in Memoirs
As a retrieval of power, ego-documents constitute specific kinds of resistance acts—they serve to reassert or reconstitute identity, to draw on the healing power of language, and to fight imprisonment (Bielby, 2014). Prison writings from the ICTY convict reassert individual identity and rewrite ICTY judgments with narratives of innocence. Cultural criminology identifies three main elements which go toward reframing the criminal as a celebrity: (i) the nature of the crime, (ii) the context of the crime, and (iii) the image of the offender. In the following chapter, the memoirs are compared with respect to each of these elements, showing that the convicts, unified in claiming their innocence, differently relate to the crimes they were accused of, and to the context in which the crimes happened.
Nature of Crime: Individual Criminal Responsibility
All three convicts reject the Prosecution’s claims about their participation in the crimes, at the same time morally condemning any person who would commit such crimes. In other words, they all recognize that the convicted person, as portrayed by the ICTY, is morally unacceptable.
Šljivančanin (2012), for example, says, “If I’m really this, as it says in the indictment, I don’t deserve to live one day!” 7 (p. 65). The person described by the Prosecution is clearly outside of the moral order but also a caricature of a real human being: “If there is a man like Šljivančanin from (Prosecutor) Moore’s closing statement, (…) that kind of monster is hard to imagine on the film screen, because such an amount of evil the viewer couldn’t stand” (Šljivančanin, 2012, p. 200). Similarly, Lukić (2011) notes that the Prosecution created an image of “a villain”, an individual exhibiting “a criminal nature, bestial cruelty and sadism” (p. 219). Exaggeration of the ICTY claims serves to ridicule the image it has created and to dismiss it as obviously false: “My indictment was worse than Eichmann’s; I had allegedly committed more individual crimes than half of Hitler’s general staff” (Lukić, 2011, p. 191). The notion of the ICTY as an “enemy court” is used to explain their convictions despite their innocence, as the Tribunal was established to punish Serbs in accordance with the predetermined ascription of Serbian collective guilt. For example, Plavšić (2005b) speaks about a plan to establish tribunals and declare Serbs guilty for the war crimes even before the war broke out (p. 73); Lukić (2011) creates a lineage from Nazi Germany to the New World Order, with parallels between the ICTY and Nazi extermination camps, claiming, “Scheveningen is only a renewed Hitler concentration camp, full of Serbs” (p. 220).
The ICTY processes are framed as political trials against Serbs, with their main aim being to prove that “Serbs are ‘monsters’” and “to convict Serbs collectively” (Lukić, 2011, p. 204). The accusations are presented as having been manufactured by the alleged victims—“Bakira’s raped brides” 8 (Lukić, 2011, p. 202), or professional rape victims staging testimonies for camera (Plavšić, 2005a, p. 111). Other witnesses are disregarded as “Muslim terrorists” providing false testimonies, or false witnesses who either never existed (Lukić, 2011, pp. 205–210), or simply manufactured false testimonies (Plavšić, 2005a, p. 69; Šljivančanin, 2012, p. 182). At the same time, they treat the crimes they were accused of differently—Lukić denies the burned houses, while Plavšić (2005b), although acknowledging that ethnic cleansing took place in Bosnia, finds that it was a natural process of ethnic homogenization, because “Birds of a feather flock together” (p. 103). It is actually only Šljivančanin (2012) who does not deny that the massacre in Ovčara was a shameful crime, which “only inhuman persons could commit,” (p. 104); however, he refuses to assume any personal responsibility for it.
The innocence of the convicted war criminals is the main point to be conveyed by the ego-documents—it is their raison d’être, a specific kind of personal defense outside of the courtroom, beyond any evidence or confrontation with witnesses. This is already evident in the books’ titles: “I was defending the truth” is the title of Šljivančanin’s book, while Lukić presents “The Confession of a Prisoner of The Hague.” It is hard to ignore the attempts of these titles to correct the legal verdicts. Especially in the case of Plavšić (2005a), the title “I testify” invokes the wish to replace the guilty plea with new testimony, which is, she adds, “for me obligatory, as if I had sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God” (p. 8).
Context—Wars in Yugoslavia
All three convicts were actively involved in the wars in former Yugoslavia. Nevertheless, they identify the war goals, war enemies, and their own participation in the conflict differently. For Plavšić, the main enemies are the Muslims, and she ascribes all responsibility and guilt for the war to the Muslim leadership. However, she does not make a distinction between political elites, military units, and her former friends and colleagues. Quite the contrary: Their transformation into the enemy, which she observes with surprise and disgust, is nothing but a revelation of their true nature, which is to be found in their hatred of Serbs and cunning treachery, which she interprets as national characteristics of Bosnian Muslims (Plavšić, 2005, pp. 25, 75).
For Šljivančanin, the war enemy was anyone trying to destroy Yugoslavia—Croatian separatists, and Croatian or Serbian paramilitaries; but not the Croatian people, who were Yugoslavs, like him. He oscillates between Serbian and Yugoslav nationalism, which enables him to define an enemy even within the Serbian group—the paramilitaries committing crimes such as the one in Ovčara. But this kind of criticism of a Serbian ethnic group is incomprehensible to Plavšić—even when confronted with examples of individual crimes, she justifies, excuses, or minimizes individual conduct if Serbs are in question (Plavšić, 2005a, p. 72). Lukić (2011), for his part, differentiates between the majority of (innocent) Bosniaks and the Muslim terrorists: “Anyone in his right mind could easily have seen that not all of the Muslims we were arresting were terrorists” (p. 81).
Another distinguishing feature between the three ego-documents is their understanding of the war goals. As a Yugoslav Army officer, Šljivančanin is defending Yugoslavia and none of the events during and after the war make him question this goal. In her first pages, Plavšić (2005a) envisions “change of regime, democratization of society, solution to inter-ethnic relations by democratic means” (p. 19). Quickly, Yugoslavia disappears, leaving the war in Bosnia–Herzegovina solely as a succession of crimes against Serbs. Lukić is the only one explicitly turning away from Yugoslavia—for him, the main goal of the war effort is for Serbs on both sides of the Drina to unite. And although he does not mention directly the Greater Serbia project, it is implied in his depiction of the war goal to “realize the dream of a Serbian state on the banks of the Drina” (Lukić, 2011, p. 164).
Image of the Offender
In the ego-documents, all three convicts portray themselves as defenders of the people 9 and its core values: pride, honor, truthfulness, and courage. Plavšić describes her wartime mission as the great responsibility to sacrifice for the sake of the Serbian people. The needs of the wounded and refugees constitute the most important reason for her political mission, during a period when she did not try to “rule, but serve (my) people” (Plavšić, 2005a, p. 175). Her relation to the people was personal and emotional: “I was a shoulder to cry on and I cried with them (…) they loved me, called me Queen, wrote my name on tanks…(I was) someone who could be their mother or sister” (pp. 126, 127). Her disappointment with individuals and with the state—the corruption, betrayals, lack of patriotism—does not corrode her faith in the Serbian people, an ideal handed down to her by her parents, embedding values more important than life itself: “dignity, honor and the Serbian name” (Plavšić, 2005a, p. 17).
Šljivančanin portrays himself as a Yugoslav patriot, a true believer in brotherhood and unity, but this does not exclude his devotion to the Serbian people—on the contrary, the two seem to be in natural symbiosis. The real reason for his arrest and imprisonment, he says, was “my patriotism, my devotion to the Serbian people and Yugoslavism” (Šljivančanin, 2012, p. 193). This sentence, which merges Yugoslav with Serbian nationalism, neatly encapsulates his refusal to abandon Yugoslavism for competing ethnic nationalisms. Šljivančanin (2012) was born in Montenegro, but avoids Montenegrin nationalism, remaining a loyal Serbian, at the same time noting that Montenegrins are a “people with the same language, a similar history, the same enemies….” (p. 55). A similar rejection of ethnic boundaries is present when he is talking about the Croats, people he never hated, “a people with the same habits, language and customs as my people” (Šljivančanin, 2012, p. 72). He removes the boundaries between different ethnic groups easily, ending in some kind of traditional humanism, where “the only real faith is that all humans in the world are brothers” (Šljivančanin, 2012, p. 55). However, boundaries between groups are acknowledged, only they are interpreted as morally irrelevant. But his Yugoslavism is not truly multiethnic—he subscribes to the hypervictimization of Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia, neglecting victims from other groups. The empathy and sorrow he expresses when talking about victims of war are almost exclusively reserved for Serbian victims. Like Plavšić, he makes a distinction between the Serbian state and its people, the former inadequate, corrupt, even oppressive, but the latter a pure idealization, and an object of love. Šljivančanin, betrayed by the state and extradited to The Hague, can still count on the support of the people: “Keep it up! The people are with you!” he repeats to himself as an encouragement in the prison cell (Šljivančanin, 2012, p. 10). “The people” serve as a corrective for any shortcomings of the state, an ideal worth sacrificing for, and also the source of strength and moral encouragement.
Similarly, in the case of Lukić, the Serbian people seems to have played an important role in his enlisting in the Serbian forces in the first place. Moreover, he explains his wish to write his autobiography, as finding a way to express the truth that he owes “to God, the people and my conscience” (Lukić, 2011, p. 122). If the writing of his memoirs was motivated by the wish to narrate the truth about the war, his enrollment in the paramilitary was inspired by his fascination by “the glory of the Serbian Uprisings and pride in the Serbian Army.” (Lukić, 2011, p. 45). Plavšić (2005a) shares Lukić’s fascination with a bellicist historical account and is full of admiration for “the military dignity, honor, courage and chivalry (…) common to our rebels, uprisings, and of course, the Battle of Kosovo” (p. 41).
In all three accounts, the “Serbian people” serves as the point of convergence, fulfilling different functions: a reason for good conduct, a moral encouragement, a source of values, and personal strength. War criminals, self-described as defenders of the people, plead in their memoirs for public recognition of their role as national heroes. Are these pleas accepted and further promoted in the Serbian media, thereby transforming war criminals into national heroes? Are they confronted with the witness testimonies and evidence shown in the courtroom, and consequently rejected as obviously false? Are they treated equally or do some of them achieve greater media prominence? To what extent are the media ready to accept their claims and promote them as war heroes and celebrities? The following section analyzes the media discourses on the three convicts, asking what kind of public self prevails in media presentations of war criminals.
War Criminals in the Media
In the following section, I analyze media portrayal of each of the convicts, looking at the ways, the nature of the crime, context of the war, and image of the offender is presented.
Plavšić’s book was published by the Trioprint publishing house in Banja Luka (BH), in 2005. Twenty excerpts from her book were published in a daily series in Večernje Novosti, from September to October 2005, without any commentary, apart from editorial layout changes, such as inserted headlines, leads, or stylistic adjustments. Nevertheless, the parts selected for publication clearly indicate the main interest of the editors: It is the political relations and grievances between the Serbian leadership in Bosnia and Milošević during the war. The questions of crimes and criminal responsibility are not addressed. The online website Nova Srpska Politička Misao published a book review by Đorđe Jončić, where the thoughts of “the author”—which is how the reviewer introduces Plavšić—are further elaborated and explained and treated as an unquestionable historical source (Jončić, 2005). However, at the time of her return 4 years after the memoirs were published, no daily picked up her memoirs as an interesting topic. Instead, trivialization and sensationalism were dominant, as reports focused on her shopping, church visits, exchange of greetings with passersby, reunion with family and friends, future plans (Marković, 2009). She is presented as seen at public events, for example, at the funeral of another ICTY convict, Zdravko Tolimir, or at the airport during the return of the mortal remains of King Petar II Karađorđević to Serbia (Lopušina & Hadžić, 2013). The total absence of crimes and victims’ voices enables the trivialization of her responsibility, reducing the content to gossip and celebrity reporting. She is called “Bilja” in an intimate, familiar, and personalized fashion, characteristically by the right-wing Kurir and Večernje Novosti. A somewhat more critical, or rather disputed image of Plavšić appears in Politika and Blic. Politika, for example, published very strong criticism by Dereta (2009) after Plavšić returned to Belgrade, for “racist theories which called for war and ethnic cleansing, which are returning to our lives with a smile, dressed in furs, and free!” In a response, journalist Miroslav Lazanski (2009) defends Plavšić but not by claiming her innocence—on the contrary, says Lazanski, she is guilty of exactly what she was convicted for—but stating that “no one has the right to judge after The Hague.” 10 Moreover, the author claims that the interview in which Plavšić withdraw her guilty plea was fabricated, that is “fake news,” although Plavšić herself has denied this. The debate over Plavšić’s responsibility continues, as 1 week later, journalist and publicist Rada Saratlić (2009), writes “One does not deny a court judgment! Like it or not, Biljana Plavšić is now a free person.” In both examples, the ICTY conviction is embraced as a protective shield against further examination of Plavšić’s role. Saratlić supports this unconventional reading of a war crime conviction with the general lack of knowledge, evidence, and historical agreement about the wars in former Yugoslavia. She challenges another text published in Politika, by Paković (2009), who had written about the “return of a war criminal,” explaining that for someone “who fought convinced that he is fighting against a genetically modified, dehumanized people, who want to destroy his nation, every aggression on foreign territory is defense, and every murder—self-protection.” Saratlić asks Paković to define the leadership of the “aggressive war” he imputed to Plavšić and to specify who that “aggressor” was and whose territory he was conquering. Two interpretations of the past, that promoted by the Prosecution on the one hand, as encapsulated in the charges of the joint criminal enterprise, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed by Serbian leadership, and on the other hand, the narrative of the need to defend the Serbs in Bosnia, as claimed by Plavšić, continue to haunt the public in Serbia and remain unresolved.
In the case of Šljivančanin, no debate has been taking place in the mainstream media. Večernje Novosti published excerpts from Šljivančanin’s book in 2012, while the first 15 pages are still available online as a teaser. Manojlo Vukotić, then director of the publishing company “Novosti a.d.,” was the main entrepreneur behind both Šljivančanin’s book and the daily Večernje Novosti. The book was published in 20,000 copies and has been sold on news stands all over Serbia. Šljivančanin held promotions of the book in Belgrade and several other cities, like Užice, Vrbas, and Pljevlje. His book promotions gathered a number of public persons, from academics (Prof. Predrag Simić, Dr. Petar Stojić, and Dr. Vasilije Obradović), publicists and journalists (Petar Tešić, Vanja Bulić, and Manojlo Vukotić), to artists who read parts of the book for the public (Gojko Baletić; Tanjug, 2012).
Šljivančanin’s book in the daily Večernje Novosti is presented as a stunning confession, “the long-awaited truth,” raising immense interest among readerships all over Serbia, RS, and Montenegro (Е.V.N., 2012). The book is seen as a clear refutation of the ICTY judgment, and the final “confirmation that the power of the truth is still stronger than all falsifications and false indictments” (V.N., 2012). Šljivančanin’s account is presented as a shared truth about the past, without ever putting his claims to the question. On the contrary, a number of commentators supporting his account have been invited to speak—journalists, army colleagues, and family members. They describe Šljivančanin as a proud, heroic, and truthful individual. Especially important and convincing is his position as a Yugoslav officer and colonel who is celebrated for his heroism, strength, and courage. He is often referred to as “Šljiva” (a nickname, literarily meaning “plum,” evocative of a favorite Serbian plum brandy or “rakija”), creating familiarity and a sense of intimacy. It would be wrong to say that his conviction is forgotten. Šljivančanin is always reminding his readership of the “Calvary” he underwent, at the same time implying that he was acquitted of all charges—as in his own recollection of one of the “happiest moments,” which was when Judge Robinson said: “Mister Šljivančanin, you are not guilty on any of the accounts of the Indictment.” 11 (Babović, 2012). Less intimate or familiar, but equally friendly reporting about Šljivančanin could be noticed in the more politically centre Politika and Blic. Again, although a former convict, he is not presented as a war criminal, as the total absence of crimes and victims’ voices confirms, but as a former officer of the Yugoslav Army, mainly invited to talk about life in Scheveningen, or comment on the other ICTY judgments or his book promotions. He repeats his firm belief in Yugoslavia, and love for all the people, stressing that he never hated anyone, but that he was only defending his country. He is the person chosen to give an interview on the 20th anniversary of the ICTY; he is hunted by the paparazzi, a common TV guest in popular talk shows, 12 and a celebrity whose selfie is worth posting on Twitter. 13
This kind of promotion in the case of Milan Lukić is absent. Milan Lukić’s book was published by the Serbian Radical Party in 2011, while the leader of the party, Vojislav Šešelj, was still a Hague prisoner himself. A well-attended book promotion, held on the premises of the Orthodox Church in Belgrade, gathered together the ghostwriter Rajko Đurđević, some low-profile church members, and Serbian Progressive Party Member Bratislav Petković, later Minister of Culture and Information in Dačić’s government (Autonomija, 2012). Although the promotion was excoriated by the opposition media, the mainstream media basically avoided reporting it. Even the right mainstream press, like Kurir and Večernje Novosti, avoids any positive portrayal of Lukić, or a minimization of his criminal responsibility. As a member of The Hague convicts group, Lukić appears as yet another Serb who is serving a draconian sentence (Kurir, 2012). At the same time, individually, he is never excused or justified for the crimes he was convicted of. There is no attempt to reinterpret his sentence as based on falsified indictment or fabrication of evidence or to provide some positive reading of his judgments or memoirs. On the contrary, articles about his judgment contain the list of the crimes he committed almost copy-pasted from the ICTY judgment, detailing the crimes—from the two houses where people were burned alive, to rapes and extortion (Vukosavljević, 2009). Most often, he appears in the media in relation to his crimes in Sjeverin, for which he was sentenced in absentia to 20 years of prison by the Serbian War Crimes Chamber (Tanjug, 2012). In the case of Lukić, the generalization that the ICTY failed to establish the facts about the past and in judging individual criminal responsibility is not held to be true—Lukić is considered mainly as a war criminal, whose responsibility and crimes are not questioned, and he is not promoted even in the right-wing newspapers. Whether owing to the severity of the crimes, the judgment by a Serbian court in the Sjeverin Case, or the fact of his low rank, the mainstream media simply do not argue for his innocence.
The media analysis has focused on the mainstream media with the largest readerships, covering most of the print in circulation, from the right Kurir and Večernje Novosti to center Politika and Blic. There is another group of internet portals (E-novine, Peščanik, RSE) and the daily Danas, which are constantly denouncing the authors as war criminals, whose writings should be rejected on moral grounds. Journalists in this group reject any self-justifying claims any of them might have made. They reinforce the ICTY war criminal frame by printing victims’ testimonies and excerpts from judgments, while denouncing the war criminals’ celebrity status as “a collapse of moral values.” Publicist Mirko Đorđević (2011) denounces their publicity maneuvers, comparing them to vampires, and describing Lukić’s book as “a black book of our madness.” Journalist Miloš Vasić (2011) sees Lukić as “a bloodthirsty criminal,” explaining his crimes as works of evil, rather than symptoms of mental illness. Dejan Ilić (2011), publicist and editor in the Publishing House “Fabrika Knjiga,” attacks in several articles the new “celebrity system” created by the media and pop culture, where the “anti-Hague book market” is flourishing. He confronts the justificatory account of the Yugoslav People’s Army (YPA) created by Šljivančanin, stating, as a YPA soldier himself, that the Army was committing crimes, organizing plunder and paramilitary activities, and wasting soldiers’ lives rather than saving them (Ilić, 2013). The authors of these texts mostly insist that the convicts are war criminals (E-novine uses expressions like “Chetnik monster,” “mass murderer,” “maniac,” “slaughterer”), and that the war was the result of Serbian aggression or the Greater Serbia project, hence siding with the ICTY narrative of the war. Apart from the daily Danas, these kinds of reading of the ICTY convicts can only be found in the online media, with a limited reach and small audience. Hence, it could be safely concluded that the dominant discourse about war criminals is created in the mainstream print media.
Conclusion: The ICTY Celebrity
Considering the three aspects of media celebrity identified in the theoretical framework, namely, the intensity of media attention and public personality, cultural intermediaries ready to accelerate the story further, and the extent to which narratives of war criminals resonate with the public, who of these three war criminals qualifies for celebrity status in Serbia?
Judging by the intensity of the media attention and public personality, only Šljivančanin remains positively portrayed in the mainstream print media, without any exceptions—Plavšić is contested in the center media, while Lukić oscillates between silence and a contested presentation in the right-wing press. Furthermore, Šljivančanin is able to gather the highest number of public figures—academics, journalists, politicians, and artists, who are ready to support and further promote his status. This kind of support is limited in the case of Plavšić, and almost absent for Lukić, who is supported only by far right circles, like the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) or “Zavetnici.”
As regards types of popularity, Plavšić’s celebrity status has been gained through her political career as an “achieved celebrity.” In her case, the ICTY judgment does not seem to have determined the public persona—she is primarily the former president of RS and continues to function in this role despite her guilty plea and the ICTY verdict. Lukić, on the other hand, does not seem to have any celebrity status at all. Lack of interest in his personal story and refusal to repeat his defense from the memoir, render his case publicly irrelevant. Šljivančanin, on the other hand, manages to attract intensive media attention and to remain in the focus of the media, which entirely sides with his framing of the past. Although there is no real content to his celebrity status, no deed he is famous for, the media and other cultural intermediaries use his diary and his biography to create a public persona attracting high media attention—an attention which is reinforced by his public resonance, an example of Rojek’s attributed celebrity.
What kind of criminal celebrity is Veselin Šljivančanin? He is neither notorious, associated with horrific crimes, nor heroic criminal, symbol of an extralegal justice committing crimes against unjust authority. The main point around which his celebrity status revolves is the fact that he was imprisoned by The Hague Tribunal. It is his “Hague Calvary” that attracts media attention—the imprisonment itself constitutes his greatest source of popularity. “ICTY celebrity” status emerges from his relation to legal authority, not from him symbolizing some kind of extralegal justice. This status has been constituted through the response to transnational legal institutions, which are perceived as unjust, rather than around the crime, which is acknowledged, but declared irrelevant.
Resonance between the public and celebrity persona, which motivates further interest creating a celebrity, is constituted through the general acceptance of a shared war narrative. Both Plavšić and Lukić offer relatively consistent, nationalist readings of the past, where the war was fought for the survival of the Serbian people. Šljivančanin, on the other hand, provides a more ambiguous narrative about the past, merging Serbian and Yugoslav nationalism and loyalties, and subscribing to the war as the defense of Yugoslavia, while declaring the West and Croatian separatists responsible for the conflict. The only sign of Serbian nationalism in his account is the unrestrained acceptance of an inflated, melodramatic Serbian victimhood, presented as the systematic victimization of the Serbian people throughout history. In a purely nationalist, anticommunist reading, Šljivančanin would be the least likely to satisfy the metonymic function of the public celebrity. The resonance of Šljivančanin’s account with the audience indicates a shared war narrative—defense of Yugoslavia during the civil war, a condemnation of individual crimes committed by paramilitaries, and a distancing from aggressive Serbian nationalism. The popularity of this interpretation, however inconsistent, was gained during the war, as it was the backbone of Milošević’s war politics, and it was reiterated further in his defense at The Hague. Unlike the ICTY narrative, which was built around aggressive Serbian nationalism, and the intention to create a Greater Serbia through ethnic cleansing and genocide, the defensive war narrative is morally unproblematic and secures a positive role for Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and all its citizens in those wars. The cognitive dissonance this narrative creates every time it gets challenged by regional politics and ICTY judgments is a small price to pay, compared to the moral abyss of aggressive war and genocidal politics. Hence, Šljivančanin’s readiness to offer this particular image of the conflict is embraced and further advanced, creating a high level of resonance and transforming a minor army officer into a Serbian celebrity.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was partially supported by German Foundation for Peace Research (DSF).