The funeral of late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic was also the funeral of Yugoslavia, the recipient of this year’s Nobel Prize for literature, Peter Handke, told German weekly 'Die Zeit' on Wednesday, defending his wartime writing about the Balkan wars and saying that he “never bowed before” Milosevic.
The news that Handle would receive the Nobel Prize sparked criticism from Bosnian officials and numerous associations of victims of the war crimes committed in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995.
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The Austrian writer was widely criticised for his support for Milosevic, who died as he was awaiting a trial for genocide and crimes against humanity.
Handke also spoke at Milosevic’s funeral in 2006.
“He voted against the dissolution of Yugoslavia at one of the last votes. His funeral was also the funeral of Yugoslavia. Did people forget that this was a state founded on the resistance to Hitler’s Reich?” Handke asked.
The writer said he “never bowed before” to Milosevic.
He did not express any regret for what he wrote in the past, despite being accused of minimising Serb war crimes in his 1997 book ‘A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia’.
“Not one word I wrote about Yugoslavia can be condemned,” he said, adding that “that is literature.”
Handke said that, during the war, “reporting on Serbia was monotonous and one-sided.”
Associations of victims of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide and other war crimes committed in Bosnia gathered earlier this month in front of the Swedish Embassy in Sarajevo to protest the Swedish Royal Academy’s decision to award Handke with the Nobel Prize. The activists said they will continue their protests until December 10, when the Austrian writer will be handed the Prize.
“The Nobel Prize for Handke is a voice for our humiliation from the deniers of the genocide,” mothers of those who were killed in the Srebrenica genocide wrote in a letter to Sweeden’s King.
