Vampire Killer Ends Milosevic’s Political Career
Hoping to stop a Nixonian political comeback, a Serbian man went to the grave of war criminal Slobodan Milosevic on Saturday night and hammered a wooden stake through the dead strongman’s heart. Miroslav Milosevic (no relation to Slobo) was a dissident during Milosevic’s bloody reign and was disgusted by Serb right-wingers’ plans to hold a ceremony at the gravesite on March 11, the anniversary of the ethnic-cleanser’s death. As president, Slobo destroyed Yugoslavia, started several wars, wrecked Serbia’s economy and ordered the genocide of various non-right-wing Orthodox Christian people in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ obviously, he’s a hero to the Serbian far right. It’s a beloved Balkan tradition to put a stake through the hearts of the evil dead; the ritual ensures the corpse will not again be animated by a demon.
Having done my time in the former Yugoslavia, now known as Serbia-Montenegro, I can offer a few tips on how to survive the experience…should you ever decide to follow in my footsteps. My first suggestion, of course, would be DON’T DO IT!! Unless you have the patience of Job, McGyver’s ability to think on your feet, a world-class capacity for enduring bureaucratic sloth and ineptitude, and an appreciation for paranoia the likes of which you’ve never experience…well, frankly, you’d be better off in Paris. The people can be just as surly, but the food’s better, and you can drink yourself unconscious with a far better class of wine.
If you’re like me, though, you’re going to go anyway, so I’d counsel you to check your grip on reality at the Serbian border. IF you manage to make it through, you’ll find yourself in the closest thing to Bizzaro World that you’ll find in Europe. Frankly, Serbia makes Iran look positively sane. If there’s a government and a populace more paranoid, convinced of their own superiority, and more thoroughly corrupt and venal than Serbs…well, I’ve yet to meet them.
I realize that I’m painting an entire people with a very broad brush here, and that can always be problematic. I met some very pleasant, level-headed Serbs doing my time there. Then again, I also met some of the finest minds of the 14th century, people who were convinced that it was their sworn duty to avenge wrongs done to Serbs hundreds of years ago. Yeah, forgiveness isn’t a quality you’ll find in abundance in Serbia, particularly once you get out of Belgrade, which is at least somewhat cosmopolitan.
It also helps to have a rather twisted sense of humor, which is why I appreciate Miroslav Milosevic so much.
Serbian vampire hunters rammed a wooden stake through the heart of former dictator Slobodan Milosevic to stop him ‚Äö√Ñ√≤returning from the dead’. Miroslav Milosevic, no relation to the former president, gave himself up to police who have launched an investigation.
He claimed he and his fellow vampire hunters acted to stop the former dictator returning from the dead to haunt the country. Milosevic’s Socialist Party of Serbia, which led the country to civil war and oversaw the break up of the former Yugoslavia, condemned the desecration of the grave in the eastern town of Pozarevac. The vampire hunters told police the three-foot-long wooden steak had been driven into the ground and through the late president’s heart.
Slobodan Milosevic died on March 11, 2006, while on trial before a UN war crimes tribunal for his role in the 1990s break-up of the former Yugoslavia.
There are times when I miss the wierdness, the paranoia, the open and unabashed ethnic prejudice and fear-mongering, and the comically-inept governance…not enough to go back, necessarily, but it is an experience I treasure. At the very least I can say that I’ve seen Evil up close and personal, and in the case of Serbia, it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Just try telling that to the people of Bosnia and Croatia, though. I can still remember talking to people on the Knez Mihailo in Belgrade who told me in all seriousness that they were heading to Bosnia for the weekend to hunt Muslims. That they told an American this with no hint of shame or any idea that they were eagerly anticipating committing mass murder presented no problem to them. No pangs of conscience, no recognition that murder is a war crime- nothing. It was seemingly the most natural thing in the world to them, what Serbs do to while away a little down time.
Yeah…it’s a )&^%$#@ wierd place. Just don’t come back and tell me you weren’t warned.
