Dunjic slobodan milosevic biography youtube
Milosevic, Slobodan
BORN: August 29, • Pozarevac, Serbia
DIED: March 11, • The Hague, Netherlands
Serbian political leader
Slobodan Milosevic was a political leader of Serbia and a key figure in the Yugoslav ethnic wars of the s and the breakup of the socialist federation of Yugoslavian states.
Milosevic led Serbia's Socialist Party from to He maintained power by suppressing political opponents and controlling the media. Milosevic pursued nationalist policies involving strong ethnic prejudice.
Dunjic slobodan milosevic biography wikipedia Slobodan Milošević (Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic: Слободан Милошевић, pronounced [slobǒdan milǒːʃevitɕ] ⓘ; 20 August – 11 March ) was a Yugoslav and Serbian politician who was the President of Serbia between – and President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from until his оverthrow inHe was the first sitting head of state in history to be charged by an international tribunal for alleged war crimes (violating international laws of war). He was indicted (formally charged with a crime) by an international tribunal in May for crimes against humanity (murder of large groups of people) and later charges were added for genocide (the deliberate destruction of a racial, religious, or cultural group).
"We are not angels.
Nor are we the devils you have made us out to be."
An educated background
Milosevic was born in August in Pozarevac, Serbia, at a time when the region was occupied by German forces during World War II (–45). His parents were both of Montenegrin background. His father, Svetozar Milosevic, was a deacon in the Serbian Orthodox Church.
His mother, Stanislava Milosevic, was a schoolteacher. They separated shortly after Milosevic's birth. Both later committed suicide. His father died in and his mother hanged herself in
Milosevic studied law at Belgrade University, where he became active in politics. At eighteen years of age he joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, which later in became known as the League of Communists of Yugoslavia.
Communism is a system of government in which the state controls the economy and a single party holds power. Milosevic became head of the ideology (guiding ideas) committee of the student branch. During this time, he made friendships through the party that would be critical to his later climb to political prominence.
One key friend was Ivan Stambolic (–), president of Serbia in the s.
Entering the business world
Following graduation with his law degree, Milosevic became an economic advisor to the mayor of Belgrade in In , he married a childhood friend, Mirjana Markovic. Mirjana was a professor and also politically active in the League of Communists.
She would serve as one of Milosevic's political advisors throughout his career. They had two children, a son and a daughter.
In , Milosevic went to work in an executive position for Tehnogas, a state-owned natural gas company. In just five years, he became its president. By , Milosevic became head of one of Yugoslavia's largest banks, Beobanka.
His banking business took him on frequent travels to the United States and France, where he learned English and French.
A political rising star
As he did in business, Milosevic rose fast in politics. He became a member of the Serbian Communist Party's central committee and then in a member of the presidium, the Party's top decision-making authority.
Serbia had long been in a region of political instability.
Following World War I (–18) and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Serbian kingdom joined the kingdom of Montenegro and various ethnic groups who had been ruled by the Ottomans. Among them were the Slovenes, Croats, Slavic Muslims, and Serbs. Together these groups formed Yugoslavia. The Serbs held political dominance.
When World War II broke out in , the German army and its allies overran Yugoslavia and divided it for military occupation. In , Communist forces pushed the Germans out, and a new Yugoslavian government formed; it was composed of six republics. Josip Tito (–) strictly ruled the new Yugoslavia, suppressing all ethnic hostilities, until his death in Mounting ethnic tensions led to an eight-person shared presidential position.
Milosevic became active full time in the League of Communists by , when he began serving as an advisor to former law school friend Stambolic.
Milosevic was elected to follow Stambolic as chairman of the Belgrade City Committee of the League of Communists in April In that position, Milosevic became a prominent leader in Serbian politics.
Dunjic slobodan milosevic biography Slobodan Milosevic, politician who, as Serbia’s president (–97), pursued nationalist policies that contributed to the breakup of the Yugoslav federation. He was tried by the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.He gained much popularity among Serbs by publicly protesting the treatment of Serbs in Kosovo, a southern province of Serbia dominated by ethnic Albanians who controlled local governments. Milosevic charged ethnic persecution including police brutality.
Gains political leadership
Milosevic's public charges fueled confrontations between Serbs and Albanians.
Milosevic claimed Serbian leaders—including Stambolic, who was now head of the League of Communists of Serbia—were not doing enough to protect Serbs. Milosevic's constant attacks finally led to the resignation of Stambolic as leader of the League of Communists in December He remained president of Serbia. In February , Milosevic replaced Stambolic as head of the Communists of Serbia.
As party leader, Milosevic quickly began orchestrating elections of Serbs into key regional political positions, including in Kosovo itself in early He had an Albanian leader in Kosovo arrested.
With the growth of Milosevic support in Serbian politics, the Serbian assembly ousted Stambolic as president in , replacing him with Milosevic.
In full leadership of the government by , Milosevic led the National Assembly of Serbia in reducing the autonomy (independence) of Serbia's provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina.
This was a very unpopular move in Kosovo, where Albanians greatly outnumbered Serbs. As a result, the new Serbian leaders in Kosovo ruled harshly, so as to keep Albanians under control. This caused alarm in other Yugoslavian provinces and among international human rights organizations.
With a declining economy, there was a growing clamor for economic and political reform in Serbia.
Milosevic wanted to maintain strong government control over the economy, known as socialism. Milosevic adopted populist (promotes the interests of common people) strategies, while at the same time promoted socialist state control of the economy.
Breakup of Yugoslavia
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and European Communist governments in , nationalism (belief that a particular nation and its culture, people, and values are superior to those of other nations) rose in importance as the unifying influence of ethnic groups.
The LCY separated into various political parties. Readily adapting to the changing political conditions in the region, Milosevic led the transition of the Yugoslav League of Communists in Serbia to the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) by July He also guided the adoption of a new Serbian constitution by September that gave the president strong powers.
In December, the first elections under the new constitution were held. Milosevic retained his political leadership of Serbia and his Socialist Party won a large majority of the vote for other elected positions. In the Kosovo province, most ethnic Albanians boycotted the elections. The elections showed that Milosevic was truly a popular leader among Serbs.
Milosevic's plan during this realignment of Yugoslav peoples was to establish a strong Serbian state that included all Serbs in the region, including those in Bosnia and Croatia.
This idea, referred to as Greater Serbia, created an anti-Serbian backlash in other Yugoslav republics. Elections led to new governments in the other Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Slovenia. The new leaders promised greater political independence for their regions. In , Milosevic was unwilling to accept a proposal from leaders of Croatia and Slovenia to create a new Yugoslavia composed of a loose confederation of largely independent states.
The old federation of Yugoslavia had lost political unity. In March of that year, Milosevic declared that the federation was officially dead and Serbia was politically independent. This change gave the Serbs and Milosevic greater domination in domestic politics in their own country.
In response, Slovenia and Croatia both declared their political independence in June Macedonia did the same in September and Bosnia-Herzegovina in March Milosevic's Greater Serbia idea caused the breakup of the Yugoslav federation to speed up.
With the departure of these various former Yugoslav states, the new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was formed in May It included only Serbia and Montenegro. Though Dobrica Cosic was elected the first president of the Federal Republic, Milosevic held the true power from his Serbian president position.
The Srebrenica Massacre
On June 2, , prosecutors presented evidence at the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic concerning the mass murder of Bosnians by Bosnian Serbs known as the Srebrenica Massacre.
Until then, many Serbs had not heard of the extent of the tragedy or had been unwilling to accept that it actually occurred. However, after the evidence was presented at the trial, the Serbian public became outraged by the past actions of their special forces.
Criminal investigators estimated that the Serb special forces under the direct command of General Ratko Mladic (–) murdered 8, Bosnian Muslim males of all ages. It was the largest mass murder in Europe since the Holocaust of World War II.
In the early s, conflicts between various ethnic groups in Yugoslavia escalated.
Once such conflict occurred between the Serbs and Bosnian Muslims, who had begun calling themselves Bosniaks in When Bosnia and Herzegovina declared their political independence from Yugoslavia in October , Serbian president Milosevic vowed to carve out some Bosnian territory for Serbia. Fighting between Bosniaks and Serbs followed.
While the Bosnian Serb forces were well equipped with tanks and artillery, the Bosniaks were poorly armed.
One key area the Serbs wanted was Srebrenica, a Bosnian Muslim area dividing surrounding areas primarily inhabited by Bosnian Serbs. Serbs decided to get rid of all Bosniaks living in Srebrenica. By early , Serbian forces had isolated Srebrenica from other Bosnian Muslim areas.
Its population was running out of food, medicine, and water. The United Nations sent a small contingent of troops to help establish peace and get supplies to Srebrenica.
By the situation was near catastrophic. Citizens were starving to death. In early July, Serbian special forces made their move and entered UN-controlled areas.
As the group of lightly armed UN troops stood aside, the Serbs began the mass killings of the Bosnian Muslims. The Serbs would move through the crowds of panicked Bosnians, picking out males to be executed. Endless truckloads of males were taken from Srebrenica to killing sites in the country for execution. They were often bound, blindfolded, and shot with automatic rifles.
Then bulldozers pushed the bodies into mass graves. Many people were wounded and buried alive with the dead. Women, children, and the elderly were placed on buses to be displaced to Bosnian territory elsewhere. Hundreds of the women and female children were raped while on their way to other territories.
Thousands of males initially escaped and attempted a long march to safe areas, but most were killed by Serb forces who tracked them down and fired on them with tanks, machine guns, and artillery.
Many committed suicide, sensing the futility of the situation. Within only a few days, the massacre was over. In an effort to hide or destroy the evidence of mass murders, in late Serbs moved many of the graves using heavy equipment.
Reports by the few survivors led to investigations. By , the UN had recovered about six thousand bodies in an effort to document the mass killings.
They searched for and excavated mass graves. Mladic and other Serb military officers were indicted for genocide and various other war crimes. Investigators claimed it took considerable planning to kill so many people in only a few days.
Milosevic further fueled ethnic conflict by charging that the Croats were intent on exterminating Serbs in Croatia.
The Serbs in Croatia began seeking independence from the new Croatia in Milosevic sent Serbian militias (armies composed of citizens who are not professional soldiers) to assist the Serbs in Croatia. This led to open conflict that lasted into early
The ethnic fighting spread in March to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Bosnian Serbs gained control of 70 percent of the country. Hundreds of thousands of non-Serbs were displaced from the Serb-controlled area.
Dunjic slobodan milosevic biography images
Slobodan Milosevic, politician who, as Serbia’s president (–97), pursued nationalist policies that contributed to the breakup of the Yugoslav federation. He was tried by the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.Thousands were killed and raped. One of the war's atrocities was the Srebrenica Massacre (see box). As in Croatia, the Serbian government and its leader Milosevic were directly involved in the fighting.
Alarmed by the deteriorating situation in the former Yugoslav region, the United Nations (UN; an international organization founded in composed of most of the countries in the world) imposed trade sanctions (restrictions) on the new Federal Republic in due to its interference with Croatia and Bosnia.
Additionally, the new Yugoslavia was not admitted to the UN and was excluded from many other international organizations. During this time Milosevic often sought Russian assistance. He even visited leaders in China in November
Fighting continued in Bosnia and Croatia into , as the Serbian economy declined due to the international sanctions.
Finally, Milosevic pulled out Serbian forces and reduced support for the Serbian rebellions. As a result, Croatian forces overran Serbs in August and forced them from Croatia into neighboring Bosnia and Serbia. In September, the Bosnian Serbs were defeated by Croatian and Bosnian ground forces supported by North Atlantic Treaty Organiztion (NATO) air strikes.
NATO is a military defense alliance established in April among Western European and North American nations. Hundreds of thousands of Serbs were displaced.
Ready to see the UN sanctions lifted, Milosevic signed the Dayton Agreement in November along with Bosnian, Croat, Serb, and Muslim leaders and the Croatian president. This officially ended the Bosnian conflict.
While Bosnia remained a single state, it was divided into two ethnic areas to preserve the peace. Milosevic was now considered a peacemaker by many.
War in Kosovo
By , Milosevic's second term of office as president of Serbia was running out and the constitution did not allow a third term. Therefore, seeking to retain control, he ran for the less important position of president of Yugoslavia.
He won easily and assumed his new office in July A friend and supporter of Milosevic won his former Serbian office.
The long-standing conflict between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo finally broke into open hostilities in The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an armed Albanian group seeking independence for Kosovo from Serbia, began attacks against Serbian security forces and politicians.
The fighting continued to escalate into , when Serbian forces retaliated with greater intensity by launching a major offensive. Several thousand Albanians were killed and most of the Albanian population in Kosovo was displaced. In response, NATO launched numerous air strikes for ten weeks in the spring of , forcing back the Serbian forces in Kosovo.
Kosovo came under control of the United Nations and its peacekeeping force. Many Serbs now fled Kosovo, fearing retaliation by Albanians. During the Kosovo War, about ten thousand people were killed and four thousand remained missing.
War crimes charges
In May , the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) located in The Hague, Netherlands, indicted (formally charged with a crime) Milosevic and four other top Serbian officials on war crimes and crimes against humanity (murder of groups of people) allegedly committed in Kosovo.
The charges cited mass population displacements and murder of three hundred ethnic Albanians. Despite the charges and military loss in Kosovo, Milosevic still received strong popular support in Serbia. Milosevic and his supporters claimed the ICTY had no legal basis to charge him and others for crimes.
On September 24, , Milosevic ran for reelection as president.
Yugoslav's economic problems had worsened and Milosevic's popularity was declining.
Slobodan milosevic trial Slobodan Milosevic was president of Serbia (a republic, or member state, of Yugoslavia) from to and president of Yugoslavia from to In he was sent to stand trial at the international war crimes tribunal (court) in The Hague, Netherlands, for his actions during the civil war that occurred in Yugoslavia during the s.Despite losing the election, he refused to accept the results. A mass public demonstration against Milosevic in Belgrade on October 5 led him to concede the end of his political career. With Milosevic gone, the UN added the new Yugoslavia as a member state on November 1.
Following his departure from office, Yugoslavia's new administration charged Milosevic with corruption and abuse of power.
His actual arrest did not come until some time later on April 1, , when he surrendered to Yugoslav authorities after an armed standoff at his fortified Belgrade rural home.
Enticed by Western countries offering large amounts of financial aid, the Yugoslav authorities turned Milosevic over to the ICTFY for his war crimes trial on June The resulting public outrage that Milosevic had been sent away forced Yugoslav officials to resign the following day.
Within days, war crimes investigators began finding mass graves in Kosovo. On October 1, the ICTFY added further charges of genocide in Bosnia and war crimes in Croatia.
The trial
Milosevic's trial began on February 12, With his training as a lawyer and unwillingness to accept the legitimacy of the court, Milosevic served as his own lawyer.
Many of his supporters in Serbia agreed with Milosevic's opinion of ICTFY, and his popularity rose again. A legal team located back in Belgrade assisted in pulling together documents for him.
The lawyers for the prosecution had to prove that Milosevic as president of Serbia had direct responsibility for the events that unfolded within Croatia and Bosnia.
The prosecution took two years in presenting its case against Milosevic. Throughout that period, they provided detailed summaries of the wars in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo. The recounting of events drew much attention from the populations of the former Yugoslav federation. Despite this ongoing trial and publicity of the prosecution's evidence, Milosevic ran for a seat in Serbia's parliament in December ; he was defeated.
As the trial progressed, Milosevic's health steadily declined.
He suffered from high blood pressure and experienced a severe case of influenza. The illnesses led to repeated delays in the trial. As time came for him to provide his defense to the court, the judge required that he use the services of two court-appointed British attorneys due to his poor health. Always known for his stubbornness and unwillingness to compromise on issues, the defense attorneys found that not only was Milosevic uncooperative, but many defense witnesses refused to appear due to their disdain for the court proceedings.
In December , the judge ordered the two lawyers to continue despite Milosevic's lack of cooperation with them.
Other criminal investigations also took place. In the summer of , Stambolic was kidnapped. His body was not found until Milosevic was accused of ordering Stambolic's murder. In , former members of the Serbian secret police, along with several criminal gang members, were convicted of various murders including Stambolic's.
Milosevic's trial came to an abrupt end on March 11, , when Milosevic was found dead in his detention cell.
He died of a heart attack. Just before his death, Milosevic had requested another delay in his trial so he could travel to see a physician in Russia. However, ICTY was hesitant to approve such a request for fear he would escape while under Russian supervision. Supporters claimed the tribunal hastened his death due to less than adequate medical attention.
Opponents lamented that he avoided punishment and embarrassment.
A memorial ceremony was held in Belgrade. It was attended by tens of thousands of supporters. Milosevic was buried in his hometown of Pozarevac.
For More Information
BOOKS
Cohen, Lenard J. Serpent in the Bosom: The Rise and Fall of Slobodan Milosevic.
Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
Doder, Dusko, and Louise Branson. Milosevic: Portrait of a Tyrant. New York: Free Press,
Lebor, Adam. Milosevic: A Biography. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
Sell, Louis. Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
Silber, Laura, and Allan Little.
Dunjic slobodan milosevic biography wife: Slobodan Milošević (Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic: Слободан Милошевић, pronounced [slobǒdan milǒːʃevitɕ] ⓘ; 20 August – 11 March ) was a Yugoslav and Serbian politician who was the President of Serbia between – and President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from until his оverthrow in
Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation. New York: Penguin Books,
WEB SITES
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. United Nations. (accessed on December 11, ).
Prejudice in the Modern World Reference Library