Biljana Plavsic in The Hague

AIM Banja Luka, January 10, 2001

While the officials of Republika Srpska were celebrating the Day of the Republic (January 9) and alongside a rich buffet table drinking champagne, Biljana Plavsic, the first elected president of RS, was on her way to The Hague to put herself at the disposal of the International Tribunal for War Crimes on the Territory of Former Yugoslavia. She is indicted for war crimes, genocide, crime against humanity and violation of Geneva Conventions. That is how the ten-year long political career of this retired university professor came to an end along with another tumultuous chapter of the latest history of the Serb people.

The departure of Biljana Plavsic to The Hague was organised by the Government of RS. She was seen off at Banja Luka airport by the departing Prime Minister Milorad Dodik, who was entrusted with the mandate to form the cabinet three years ago by Plavsic herself, which ended the rule of the hardcore faction from Pale.

To the request of journalists to comment on Plavsic's departure to The Hague, the newly elected President of RS Mirko Sarovic and the Chairman of the People's Assembly Dragan Kalinic, replied something in the sense 'we have more important matters to attend to'. Mladen Ivanic, candidate for prime minister of the new government of RS, manifested again much more political delicacy and culture than his coalition partners from the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) which is in power again. Ivanic said that Plavsic should be supported for the courage to voluntarily appear at the Tribunal and added that the authorities of RS have the moral obligation to help the former president of the Republic in the attempt to prove her innocence.

The stories that the name of Biljana Plavsic was on the list of The Hague indictments appeared in the media in the end of December. Allegedly, Thomas Miller, Ambassador of the USA in B&H stated this to her, in person in her apartment in Banja Luka. Biljana Plavsic had a few days before that already withdrawn from the public. Guesses whether she had received an invitation from The Hague or not, whether she was summoned to the Tribunal as a witness or as an indicted, remained unanswered. Prior to that, before the constitutive session of the People's Assembly of RS, in the middle of December, Plavsic had returned her deputy's mandate explaining it with the reasons of health.

During Christmas, journalists waited in vain for Biljana Plavsic who never misses mass to appear at Banja Luka St. Trinity Cathedral. Wishing to avoid the pressure of the public, Plavsic spent Christmas holidays at her brother Zdravko's in Belgrade, surrounded by family and friends. She returned to Banja Luka just a day before her journey. While she was packing her suitcases cannon salute echoed through Banja Luka to honour the holiday...

That same evening when Biljana Plavsic arrived in The Hague, her lawyer Krstan Simic, who is also a high official of Dodik's Party of Independent Social Democrats, confirmed that Plavsic was indicted 'for all the crimes from the jurisdiction of the Tribunal'. He added that her indictment was quite similar to that of Momcilo Krajisnik, former member of B&H Presidency. The first appearance of Biljana Plavsic at the Tribunal, as Simic stated, is expected by the end of this week.

If she declares not guilty, the lawyer believes, Plavsic might be tried together with Krajisnik. However, if she pleads guilty, Simic says, a punishment might be pronounced without a trial. Apart from the fact that she voluntarily responded to the summons of the Tribunal, a significant extenuating circumstance for Biljana Plavsic could be her testimonies in other trials in The Hague.

The statements of lawyer Simic confirms the very probable assumption that Biljana Plavsic is much more valuable to the Tribunal as a witness than as a defendant. That is why many compare her case with the case of Drazen Erdemovic who confessed about 30 murders, but was sentenced to only five years in prison because his testimonies were the ones that 'opened' the case of Srebrenica.

Biljana Plavsic started her political career quite late: when she was sixty. Before she had, at invitation by a friend, joined SDS in 1990 she was a world known and recognised biologist, dynamic, successful and courageous, but extremely apolitical. She regularly went to church and had never been a member of the communist party. As a recipient of Fulbright scholarship she was invited to remain in the USA in the fifties, but being a Serb patriot and Sarajevan local-patriot she categorically refused the offer. She has travelled a lot and was one of the founders of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Sarajevo.

She was for fourteen years married to Zarko Banjac, a lawyer from Sarajevo, and then for several decades they remained great friends which has not ended to this day. Banjac will, together with Simic, be one of the lawyers of the defence of Biljana Plavsic at The Hague Tribunal.

In the first elections in B&H held in 1990, Biljana Plavsic was elected together with the late Nikola Koljevic to be a member of B&H Presidency to protect the interests of the Serb people. In the beginning of 1992, when sabre-rattling in B&H had become quite serious, Plavsic travelled with Fikret Abdic on a specific mission in Bosanski Brod and Bijeljina. The mission, as known, was not successful, but cameras recorded that Plavsic kissed Zeljko Raznjatovic Arkan, which was later interpreted as her 'blessing of genocide'.

What was happening in B&H Presidency in those dramatic days is still a mystery for the public. Notes from tumultuous pre-war sessions of the 'collective head of B&H state' appear here and there in the press. Could the subsequent massacre in B&H have been avoided or were there no political will for that? Biljana Plavsic is certainly one of the few persons who can give an answer to this and numerous similar questions – to the public and the Tribunal.

In May 1992, Biljana Plavsic and Nikola Koljevic submitted resignation to the posts of members of B&H Presidency. This happened after the Assembly of the Serb People had been constituted as the result of 'secession' of Serb deputies from the Assembly of B&H. This assembly proclaimed Serb Republic of Bosnia & Herzegovina, the predecessor of Republika Srpska, and proclaimed Koljevic and Plavsic vice-presidents of the Republic. What the true power of these two university professors in the administration of RS was like is, among other, illustrated by the fact that in SDS and the state agencies they were addressed by 'professor'.

During the war Biljana Plavsic was in charge of humanitarian work. As she herself claims, she learnt about many decisions of the administration in wartime RS only subsequently: from the official gazette, from newspapers or books which were published after the war by foreign diplomats who were discharging various duties during wartime nineties in B&H. In an interview she declared that she was astonished how little she knew about the events which she had believed she had participated in.

Momcilo Mandic, high police official of the wartime Republika Srpska has once ironically said that 'Biljana Plavsic is a professor in politics who, while important decisions were being made, escorted Princess Linda Karadjordjevic on a tour of monasteries'.

What the attitude of Karadzic, Krajisnik and other power-wielders of the wartime SDS was like towards Plavsic is demonstrated by the fact that at the first postwar elections in 1996 they nominated her for president of RS, because they were convinced that she would just formally be the president who would enable Karadzic to continue ruling Republika Srpska. Biljana Plavsic won the elections, but decided to really be the president. Of course, she would have probably never succeeded if it had not been for the support of the international community.

In the very beginning of her presidential term in office, the other wartime vice-president of RS Nikola Koljevic tragically ended his own life. The secret of his suicide has never been clarified, but all those who knew him remember him as a highly moral and decent man.

The hot summer of 1997 followed and the protests of the people of RS, after which Biljana Plavsic, the first elected president of RS, finally took over power. She dissolved the assembly, scheduled early elections, offered the opportunity to Milorad Dodik to become the prime minister with just two deputies in the parliament, and tried to introduce the rule of institutions into Republika Srpska.

The presidential elections that followed brought defeat to Biljana Plavsic. With just 40 thousand votes more, Seselj's Radical and joint candidate of the Serb Radical Party and the Serb Democratic Party Nikola Poplasen won although the elections were supervised by OSCE. When in the very beginning of Poplasen's presidential term High Representative Carlos Westerndorp relieved the President of RS, Biljana Plavsic commented on it by saying: 'Thank God at least this one thing has not happened to me'.

After failure in presidential elections in 1998, political power of Biljana Plavsic rapidly declined. The Serb People's League (SNS), her party formed by secession from the SDS, split and majority of the members abandoned Plavsic joined the newly established Democratic People's League. In the past elections the SNS of Biljana Plavsic won just two seats in the Assembly. Nowadays it is a question whether SNS will survive at all or experience the destiny of the People's Party of RS which died down after its leader Radoslav Brdjanin had been arrested and taken to The Hague.

Indeed, Biljana Plavsic was not arrested, she has gone to The Hague voluntarily and, according to certain sources, she will not end up in Scheveningen. According to the rules of the Tribunal, there is a possibility for a defendant, with a special permit from the President of the Tribunal, to stay outside the prison unit, in 'special conditions'. In order to achieve that two conditions must be met: that the Netherlands as the host country agrees to this and that somebody pays for these special conditions of 'house arrest', because it is not an obligation of the Tribunal, i.e. the budget of the UN. There is also the theoretical possibility that Biljana Plavsic be permitted to defend herself from freedom, but with special guarantees of the Government of RS.

Milkica Milojevic

(AIM)