“Alleen bij ons was er geen nationale discriminatie”

“They say I was not interested in any borders but just one single border, the border between what was Serbian and not Serbian, the Serb and the non-Serb, although it is precisely Serbia, and indeed Yugoslavia, which throughout those years of the Yugoslav crisis was the sole country, the only country on the territory of the former Yugoslavia in which there was no national discrimination and which wholly preserved its national structure. It is exactly the same as it was 12 years ago when the crisis broke out. Yugoslav reality shows that this terrible position is incorrect, this terrible fabrication. So these nebulous constructions we're going to have to hear here, but we're going to shut our eyes to the Yugoslav reality. And it is not only present-day reality, but it has been reality for more than one decade. And it is precise and completely -- renders null and void nonsense’s of that kind. (pag 249-250)
During the war in Croatia, no Croat was expelled from Serbia, or Bosnian during the Bosnian war. Fifty thousand registered Muslim refugees came to take refuge in Serbia, and here you are turning everything upside down, speaking untruths and lies. 
Everything points to the fact that it is a false indictment, that the Prosecutors are grasping at straws because they have nothing but some psychoanalytical, layman's assertions, and they are attempting to depict me as somebody able to hypnotise people into going to commit crimes. (p448)

De toespraak op het Merelveld

“Legendarisch is zijn redevoering, in juni 1989, waarin hij voluit de nationalistische kaart trek en die door een miljoen Serviërs op het Merelveld in Kosovo bejubeld wordt.” (De Morgen 12 februari) Iedereen kent vandaag deze beschuldiging aan het adres van Milosevic. En toch... Waarom wordt nooit uit die toespraak geciteerd? Aanklager Carla Delponte deed dat wel. Met welgeteld één zin. 
Milosevic antwoordt: “You quoted (…) a small part of a sentence in which I state that “we will have to fight many battles, which of course are not armed, although such battles are not excluded.” (…) So that is one sentence. (…) I'm going to quote just a few more things: "In Serbia, Serbs were not the only people who lived in Serbia." That is what I said before 2 million people. "Today more than ever before we have people of other ethnic groups, ethnicities, living there. And that is not a handicap for Serbia. Serbia is not handicapped by that fact. I am profoundly convinced that it is its advantage. And in that sense, the national composition of practically everybody is being changed, especially the developed countries of the modern world. Evermore and evermore successfully, different ethnic groups are living together, people of different religions and different races. Socialism, as a progressive and just democratic society should not allow itself that people be divided on an ethnic and religious basis. The only differences that can be allowed in socialism, and should be allowed in socialism, are between the honest and the dishonest. That is why everybody living in Serbia, on the basis of their own work, as honest citizens, showing a respect for other people and other ethnic groups and nations in their own republic. Yugoslavia is a multinational community, and it can survive only if there is full and complete equality of all the nations and nationalities living within it. The crisis that has hit Yugoslavia has led to national but also to social, cultural, religious, and many other less important divisions. And amongst all these divisions, the most dramatic were ethnic divisions. And if we do away with ethnic divisions, we shall be able to do away with the other divisions and mitigate the results (…) of those divisions." (…) 
This is what was said. If you don't believe that, you can take the newspapers of the 29th of June, 1989, and you can read all about it. And I wouldn't change a single word in that speech even now, even today. (…) And now you can see the degree of maliciousness that this excerpt, this excerpted quotation was taken, if you look at the whole. (pag270-275)

Citaten zijn afkomstig van de officiële verslagen van de verdediging van Milosevic op 14, 15 en 18 februari 2002. Ze zijn terug te vinden op www.ICTY.org onder ‘Transcripts’. Citaten zijn uittreksels uit de letterlijke transcripties van (de Engelse vertaling van) deze eerste uiteenzetting van ex-president Milosevic,  waarvan de pagina’s zijn genummerd van 225 tot 509.