Mirjana Marković

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Mirjana "Mira" Marković (Serbian Cyrillic: Мирјана Марковић) (born on July 10, 1942 in Požarevac, Serbia, Yugoslavia) is the leader of the Yugoslav Left political party (JUL/ЈУЛ is the Serbian acronym). Marković is the widow of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević. She currently resides in exile in Russia. The authorities of Serbia have issued an arrest warrant for her on fraud charges which has been circulated via Interpol, but the Russian authorities have refused to arrest her. In December 2006, a Serbian court ordered her arrest on charges of ordering the murder of a journalist Slavko Ćuruvija. Minister Vuk Drašković, stated, that Ministry of Foreign Affairs will demand extradition of Mirjana Marković from Russia. In 2008, a Serbian prosecutor announced that Marković may be tried in absentia.^[1]

Marković is the daughter of Moma Marković, a wartime communist partisan and Vera Miletić. Her aunt was Davorjanka Paunović, private secretary and mistress of Josip Broz Tito. Her mother was a member of Tito's partisans during the war. She was captured by German troops and allegedly released sensitive information, under torture. Upon return, she was executed by the partisans, allegedly under the orders of her own father.^[2] However, according to her grandmother, the story is a little different. Her father had betrayed her to Gestapo in order to get rid of her, and she was captured as a Partisan courier, wearing clothes which included a handkerchief with flowers. She was then executed in Banjica prison by the Germans.

Mira Marković's father had fathered five children out of wedlock all around Serbia. He had three legitimate children later on, and his wife made him recognize all of his children after the war. Thus, he finally admitted Mira Marković-Miletić (her mother's maiden name, that she carried until then, after her mother Vera), as his daughter when she was 13. It was then that Slobodan Milosević became interested in her. She wore a flower in her hair in memory of her mother.

Her nickname was "Baca" at the time, that her grandparents gave her. It is because she was dropped ("baciti" means "to drop" in Serbian) by her father into the brook, when their grandparents, who lost all their children, were hiding her from Chetniks in the local mill. When they called him and gave Mira to him, he dropped her shouting "Ne treba mi pasce od kuje!". ("I don't need a hound from the bitch"). She was left scarred at the forehead and this is why she always wore bangs, to hide the scar.

Marković met Milošević when they were in high school together. They married in 1965 and had two children, son Marko and daughter Marija.

She was professor of Sociology at Belgrade University, in which she had PhD. Later on, she became honour member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She had a column in Duga weekly during Milosevic years in power, with often naively poetic, or even bizarre, writing, but also predictions of Serbian political moves to follow. She was considered very powerful and the only person who Milosevic trusted and consulted. Also, as the leader of Yugoslav United Left, she used to have independent political influence. Mira is also the author of numerous books, which are translated and sold in Canada, Russia, China and India.^[3] Mira was despised by a lot of Serbs, who nicknamed her "Red Witch". The foreign press was also very unkind to her.

Mira's political views tended to be hard-line Communist. Although she often claimed that she agreed with her husband on everything, Slobodan seems to have been less of an authoritarian than Mira.^[4] Mira had little respect for the Bosnian Serb leaders. Vojislav Seselj appeared before a court on June 18, 1994 after he broke microphone cables in the Parliament. He read off a statement, saying, "Mr. Judge, all I can say in my defense is that Milošević is Serbia's biggest criminal." Marković replied by calling Seselj a "primitive Turk who is afraid to fight like a man, and instead sits around insulting other people's wives."^[5] Karadzic was apparently unable to telephone Milosević, because Mira would not tolerate his calls. She was also a feminist. For a woman to keep her surname is rare in the Balkans, and her demands for female superiority were not popular in Serbia.^[6]

On the arrest of Milošević, Marija, the daughter of Mira and Milošević, fired five shots into the air from an illegally-possessed handgun. She later appeared in court for endangering public safety and for illegal possession of firearms.

When commenting on her husband's arrest, she said:

Neither East nor West has betrayed him. The only person that can betray him is me. But people have short memories and you have to remind everyone of everything. In the early 1990s, my husband was accused by many circles, in Yugoslavia and abroad, that he wanted to keep Yugoslavia alive, even though it was falling apart and the Croats and the Slovenes wanted to leave. That was his big sin. Crazy Serbs and Crazy Slobo, they said, they want Yugoslavia. Now, in The Hague, they say he broke up Yugoslavia. Let them make their minds up.^[7]

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