Don’t cry for me Serbia…
March 20, 2006 1 Comment
On Saturday, I stopped by the ‘meeting’ to commemorate the death of Miloesvic in front of the Parliament of Serbia and Montenegro. Although the numbers were impressive (80,000 according to police, 500,000 according to SPS), the gathering was pretty pathetic. The atmosphere was too pathetic for a meeting or protest, and too angry for a funeral.
Particularly striking were the women who cried at the manifestation for Milosevic’s funeral not for Slobo, but for themselves. They cried over their own misery and poverty. The tragedy lies in the fact that they do not realize that the one they are formally crying for is the one mostly responsible for their misery.
Florian Bieber's Notes from Syldavia 
There are two cases to be distinguished when people face somebody’s else death:
1. …Even when you loved someone so much you could not live without, you blame him for not surviving. You choose to hate him bit by bit because this way you can make your pain painless, you can forget him easier and start living your life without him…
2. When facing the death of a hated person like Milosevic was for many, you don’t know what to think about first; blaming him for all that has been done although knowing time can never be turned back or praising his death although knowing that nothing worse but death can come to a person.
The general cannot be such without an army, and Milosevic could not be responsible for other people’s fate without having people being responsible for their fates first.
Having other Milosevics still living around us would cause you cry even more.
As irrational as it may seem, the death ritual is a tradition that for the Balkan peoples does not always require rationality and/ or feelings…