SURVIVING THE PEACE The Struggle for Postwar Recovery in Bosnia-Herzegovina

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December 8, 2019
SCANDAL IN THE SWEDISH ACADEMY:
A scandal broke in mid-October when the Swedish Academy awarded the Austrian writer Peter Handke the Nobel Prize for Literature. The award is scandalous because Handke is a genocide denier and supporter of extreme Serbian nationalism. Both his writing and his behavior have demonstrated this to be true.

Handke distinguished himself by collaborating with the prominent film director Wim Wenders on "Wings of Desire." In the 1990s, soon after the end of the Bosnian war, he wrote several pieces glorifying and essentializing Serbs, Serbia, and its aggressive nationalist policies. Handke took the side of the Serb apologists of extreme nationalist politics by supporting the cult of Serb victimhood. He visited Serbia regularly, leading to the 1996 publication of the book A Journey to the Rivers : Justice for Serbia and subsequently the essay "A Summer Addendum to a Winter's Journey." In these and several later essays Handke asserted that all sides were equally guilty of committing war crimes, and that the world was unfairly singling out Serbia under Milošević.

The positions that "all sides do it" and that the world "relentlessly singles out Serbs" are already wrong-headed and objectionable, and to that Handke added the assertion that the Srebrenica massacres (he refuses to admit the fact of genocide) were committed in revenge for Muslim forces' prior killing of Serbs. This disguised language is genocide denial nonetheless.

Handke's writing offends the victims of the genocide and generally of the Serbian aggression against Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Nobel award re-traumatizes so much the moreso. Therein is the scandal; a reputable Academy gave one of the world's most prestigious awards to a genocide denier.

Compounding insult upon insult, Handke glorified Milošević, visiting him in jail during his ICTY trial and, when Milošević died, attending his funeral and eulogizing him. What is equally outrageous is the fact, more recently revealed, that Handke traveled several times to Serbia and Bosnia with one of the most notorious genocide deniers (pertaining to Bosnia), Thomas Deichmann, who initiated infamous lies about the Serb-run concentration camp at Trnopolje near Prijedor, in an attempt to exonerate the Serb separatists. Handke also stayed overnight at Vilina Vlas hotel in Višegrad, eastern Bosnia—a hotel that had been used as a rape camp by local Serb separatists, some of whom were later convicted of war crimes. Very few of at least 200 women abused there survived. Višegrad was the location of some of the most ferocious crimes against Muslims anywhere during the war, including two instances of locking up dozens of Muslims in houses, setting the houses on fire, and shooting at those who tried to break out and escape.

Handke had to have known of this dreadful history at Višegrad. Is such a man worthy of the Nobel Literature Prize?

The Society for Threatened Peoples put out a statement saying, "Confidence in The Nobel Committee has been deeply shaken, in GfbV/STP's considered opinion. It has done itself a considerable disservice in choosing Peter Handke, given that it should have known its decision would serve as an encouragement to the far right, ultranationalists and neo-fascists. Handke's writings, in our view, have used words as weapons against the victims in the Bosnian War and his sympathetic treatment of Serb soldiers and paramilitaries has called into question or sought to relativise the crimes they committed. In his 'search for the truth' he has found himself at odds not only with eye-witnesses, reporters and experts but also with the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague."

Some supporters of the award, including the Swedish Academy, attempt to "separate art from politics," to judge Handke's writing separately from his politics. This is an entirely morally bankrupt, not to say sleazy, position not worthy of the prestigious award. The Academy wrote that "the ambition is to celebrate his extraordinary literary work, not the person," and that "there must be room for different reasonable interpretations of [Handke's'] literary work." But Handke robustly placed himself beyond the boundary where one can ignore his personal positions, which were, in any case, integral to his writing.

Perhaps it is time to abolish the Nobel Committee for Literature (the working body of the Swedish Academy), or disband it completely and start over. It has discredited itself beyond repair.

The award is to be presented in Stockholm on December 10 which is also, as it happens, International Human Rights Day. What an affront to human rights!

By way of background, Handke's positions fit into a campaign of atrocity denial regarding Bosnia and Kosovo that started as soon as the war crimes were committed. That denial has been promoted by the war criminals themselves; their nationalist heirs and supporters; and, sadly, by many lesser (and one or two greater) stars on the Left who have become confused as to right and wrong with regard to the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Historical revisionism regarding the war crimes in former Yugoslavia is an affront to the victims and survivors of those crimes. In this vein Aleksandar Hemon wrote,  "Any survivor of genocide will tell you that disbelieving or dismissing their experience is a continuation of genocide. A genocide denier is an apologist for the next genocide." As such, it is crucial to continue to fight against that revisionism.

For an extensive background on this Left revisionism, see the Balkan Witness web page administered by my brother Roger, especially the section on denial, and the section on Handke You can also read an overview of denial in my book in Chapter 18, "Denial of War Crimes at Srebrenica and Prijedor."

It is notable that leading up to the December 10 award, two members of the five-member Nobel Literature Committee resigned, with one, author Gun-Britt Sundström, saying "that the choice of Handke had been interpreted as if literature stood above politics and [she] did not share that view." In addition, Peter Englund, the former permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, announced that he would not attend the ceremony, saying, "to celebrate Peter Handke’s Nobel prize would be gross hypocrisy on my part." On the other side, Serb member of the Bosnian presidency Milorad Dodik—another genocide denier—unsurprisingly praised the Nobel award, saying that "the Nobel Prize Committee has honoured this extraordinary writer and his work in the best way."

For much more on this scandal, see the ongoing series by Peter Maass in the Intercept (some of which can be found in the Balkan Witness link mentioned above); this article by Aleksandar Hemon; and the excellent and comprehensive Wings of Denial by Adnan Delalić.