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Slobodan Milošević Quotes

Slobodan Milošević was a Yugoslav and Serbian politician and the President of Serbia from 1989 to 1997 and President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000. He also led the Socialist Party of Serbia from its foundation in 1990. He rose to power as Serbian President after he and his supporters claimed the need to reform the 1974 Constitution of Yugoslavia due to both the marginalization of Serbia and its political incapacity to deter Albanian separatist unrest in the Serbian province of Kosovo.

Milošević's presidency of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was marked by several major reforms to Serbia's constitution in the 1980s to the 1990s that reduced the powers of the autonomous provinces in Serbia and in 1990 transitioned Serbia from a Titoist one-party system to a multi-party system, attempted reforms to the 1974 Constitution of Yugoslavia, the breakup of Yugoslavia and the outbreak of the subsequent wars, the founding of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia by the former SFRY republics of Serbia and Montenegro, negotiating the Dayton Agreement on behalf of the Bosnian Serbs that ended the Bosnian War in 1995, and his overthrow in 2000.

In the midst of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, Milošević was charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia with war crimes in connection to the wars in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo. Milošević resigned from the Yugoslav presidency amid demonstrations, following the disputed presidential election of 24 September 2000. He was arrested by Yugoslav federal authorities on 31 March 2001 on suspicion of corruption, abuse of power, and embezzlement. The initial investigation into Milošević faltered for lack of evidence, prompting the Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić to extradite him to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to stand trial for charges of war crimes instead. At the outset of the trial, Milošević denounced the Tribunal as illegal because it had not been established with the consent of the United Nations General Assembly; therefore he refused to appoint counsel for his defence. Milošević conducted his own defence in the five-year-long trial, which ended without a verdict when he died in his prison cell in The Hague on 11 March 2006. Milošević, who suffered from heart ailments and hypertension, died of a heart attack. The Tribunal denied any responsibility for Milošević's death and stated that he had refused to take prescribed medicines and medicated himself instead.After Milošević's death, the International Court of Justice concluded separately in the Bosnian Genocide Case that there was no evidence linking him to genocide committed by Bosnian Serb forces during the Bosnian War. However, the Court did find that Milošević and others in Serbia had committed a breach of the Genocide Convention by failing to prevent the genocide from occurring and for not cooperating with the ICTY in punishing the perpetrators of the genocide, in particular General Ratko Mladić, and for violating its obligation to comply with the provisional measures ordered by the Court.

✵ 20. August 1941 – 11. March 2006
Slobodan Milošević photo
Slobodan Milošević: 14   quotes 2   likes

Famous Slobodan Milošević Quotes

“Yugoslavia cannot exist without Kosovo! Yugoslavia will become disintegrated without Kosovo! Yugoslavia and Serbia will never give up Kosovo!”

Slobodan Milošević

Kosovo Polje Speech (24 April 1987)

“If we legalised this state of lawlessness, then all those who are exposed to lawlessness are endangered. Today it is the Serbs and Montenegrins that suffer most from that, but tomorrow this could be the Albanians, too, and that is why, unless law and order is introduced and respected in the broader social and historical sense, this will be the interest of all of the inhabitants of Kosovo.”

Slobodan Milošević

Kosovo Polje Speech (24 April 1987)

“We'll do the same that we did in Drenica in 1945 or 1946.… We got them together and we shot them.”

Slobodan Milošević

Testimony of Gen. Klaus Naumann at the Former Yugoslavia Tribunal, attributed as a remark, spoken in English, during a meeting on the Kosovo refugee situation (25 October 1998). According to Naumann, Milosevic was describing a solution to the higher birth rate of Albanian Kosovars compared to Serbs. Milosevic denied both accounts in court.
At all events and categorically, I did not say that we would gather them and kill them in Drenica because that would be quite absurd.… Neither in 1945 or in 1946 did anybody collect Albanians in Drenica to kill them. But in 1945 and 1946, there was still [a conflict] going on with the vestiges of the Hitler army which was made up of Albanian army called the Ballist.
Disputed

“This is your country. These are your houses. These are your cultivated fields and gardens, and your memories lie here. You are not going to leave your country, are you, just because you live hard there or because you have been weighed down by the injustices and humiliation? It has never been typical of the Serbian and Montenegrin people to yield before obstacles and to become demoralized when facing a problem, when coming upon hard times.”

Slobodan Milošević

Kosovo Polje Speech (24 April 1987)

“We know how to handle these murderers, these rapists, these criminals. We've done this before … in Drenica in 1946. We killed them. We killed them all. Of course we did not do it all at once. It took some time.”

Slobodan Milošević

Testimony of Gen. Wesley Clark at the Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Disputed

“I do not suggest to you, Comrades, that in staying you put up with the suffering and the situation that you're not satisfied with. Quite the contrary. You must change the situation together with all other progressive people here in Serbia and Yugoslavia.… We in Serbia and everybody else in Yugoslavia will strive to change the situation.”

Slobodan Milošević

Kosovo Polje Speech (24 April 1987)

Slobodan Milošević Quotes

“Borders are always dictated by the strong, never by the weak.… We simply consider it as a legitimate right and interest of the Serb nation to live in one state. This is the beginning and the end.… If we have to fight, by God we are going to fight. I hope that they will not be so crazy as to fight against us. If we do not know how to work properly or run an economy, at least we know how to fight properly.”

Slobodan Milošević

Remarks at a meeting with Serb leaders (16 March 1991), as quoted in Doder and Branson (1999) Milosevic: Portrait of a Tyrant

God , Hope , Strong , Fight

“I tell you, Izetbegović has earned Sarajevo by not abandoning it. He's one tough guy. It's his.”

Slobodan Milošević

Remark at the Dayton Conference (November 1995), quoted in Richard Holbrooke, To End a War, p. 291

Guy

“Remark to Serbs in Kosovo Polje (24 April 1987)”

Slobodan Milošević

“This is a political trial. What is at issue here is not at all whether I committed a crime. What is at issue is that certain intentions are ascribed to me from which consequences are later derived that are beyond the expertise of any conceivable lawyer. The point here is that the truth about the events in the former Yugoslavia has to be told here. It is that which is at issue, not the procedural questions, because I’m not sitting here because I was accused of a specific crime. I’m sitting here because I am accused of conducting a policy against the interests of this or another party. The nature of he proceedings here is such that a lawyer cannot deal with it.”

Slobodan Milošević

Slobodan Milošević (2004) International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia https://www.icty.org/x/cases/slobodan_milosevic/trans/en/041021DR.htm

Truth , Question , Nature

“I read to you parts of the indictment claiming that I was part of a joint criminal enterprise to expel Croatians from Croatia, Muslims from Bosnia, Albanians from Kosovo, in order to create some sort of Greater Serbia. Now, if you have in mind that the greatest part of that Greater Serbia would be precisely the Republic of Serbia, which did not see any expulsions at all throughout the crisis, do you find it logical that Serbia should initiate expulsions from territories outside of Serbia?”

Slobodan Milošević

Slobodan Milošević (2004) International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia https://www.icty.org/x/cases/slobodan_milosevic/trans/en/041116IT.htm

Parting , Reading

“So in addition to what I’ve quoted to you just now, in Prizren, I say particularly in this place and in this town, I want to tell you something that I consider to be the most important in this town, because in it, there are Serbs, Albanians, Muslims, Turks, Roma, and others. Every one of the ethnic groups, to a large proportion. That is why I believe that this town and this region should be an example of carrying out the policy of national equality of rights, a policy that would make it possible for all people to give — to live on a footing of equality and under humane conditions, that there should be a high degree of mutual understanding and that a joint life of all citizens should be built successfully.”

Slobodan Milošević

Slobodan Milošević (2002) International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia https://www.icty.org/x/cases/slobodan_milosevic/trans/en/020516IT.htm

Understanding , People , Life , Making love

“By adding three lies, one does not get the truth — only a bigger lie.”

Slobodan Milošević

Slobodan Milošević (2002) International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic https://web.archive.org/web/20030204145956/http://www.icdsm.org/milosevic/30jan.htm

Truth , Lie

“I can tell Albanians in Kosovo that in Serbia, no one had trouble living for not being Serbian. Serbia has always been opened for all, and for those who had no other place to go—and for those who had no other place to go, for the poor and rich, for those who are happy and sad, and for those who are only passing through, and for those who wish to stay. Serbia only doesn’t want evil people, even if they be Serbian.”

Slobodan Milošević

Slobodan Milošević (1988), Слободан Милошевић Ушће https://www.youtube.com/embed/iyj4l3cH2Pc

Sadness , People , Evil , Happiness

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