December 01, 2004
Fugitive Karadzic makes stage debut
From Nick Hawton in Sarajevo
A PLAY written by Radovan Karadzic, the fugitive Bosnian Serb leader, is to be produced soon in Belgrade.
Dr Karadzic, who is accused of genocide for his role during the Bosnian war, has been on the run from Nato peacekeepers in Bosnia for the past seven years.
The stage production is the latest step in an amateur literary career that has yielded a number of books, two of which have been published during his years in hiding.
Dr Karadzic, a psychiatrist, who is accused of masterminding the massacre of 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995, has managed to evade numerous attempts by Nato to arrest him.
The play set for the stage in Belgrade, according to the Serbian media, is entitled Situation, and was published in 2002. Dr Karadzic began writing it at the start of the war but only completed it during his years on the run.
The work, whose title is a play on two words in Serbo-Croat – "sit" and "ovacia" mean "sick and tired of ovations" – is set during the Bosnian war and tells the story of a man chosen to become a leader of his people. Among the characters are a UN peacekeeper, a Muslim translator and a gay waiter. A theatre in Belgrade called Modern Garage, which doubles as a vintage car museum during the day, has been selected as the venue. "We have been discussing this project. If we go ahead, rehearsals will begin in about a month's time," said Milan Kalinic, one of the actors.
Dr Karadzic's daughter, Sonja, who ran the press office for her father during the war, said: "This play is a black comedy, telling the story of how someone becomes a leader. But the message is that the leader cannot have his own mind and make his own decisions. The international community does not want that. They want someone who does what he is told. It could be set any time, in any country."
News of the performance was reported in the daily "Blic."
Ms Karadzic claims she has not seen her father since 1997. The former Bosnian Serb leader is believed to travel around the mountains of southeast Bosnia accompanied by bodyguards and political and military figures within the self-styled "Serb Republic" in Bosnia.
Dr Karadzic, who had his first book published in 1968, liked to surround himself with poets during the war. One of his closest colleagues was a Shakespearean academic. His literary works, which have always received a mixed reception, includeBlack Fairy Tale and Slav Guest. In 1982 Dr Karadzic won a Yugoslav literary award for a children's book There are miracles, there are no miracles. One of the poems in the book is entitled "War Shoes."
WAR SHOES
When the time comes for the barrel of a gun to talk,
Heroic days, knight's nights,
When a foreign army floods the country,
And does damage and mistakes,
That situation must be repaired:
Then you sail on foot through your homeland
Even your shoes are fighting along with you
Radovan Karadzic, 1982
