PEN Slovakia, a division of International PEN, has denounced "from an ethical and moral point of view" a Slovakian literary journal for publishing poems by indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic, the Guardian reported. Earlier this month, the magazine Dotyky published works by the Bosnian Serb writer, who has been charged with genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes related to the Bosnian conflict of the 1990s, without acknowledging in an editorial note Karadzic’s history.
PEN Slovakia, of which the journal’s editor, Boris Brendza, is a member, made a statement saying that it would punish Brendza by rescinding his membership for a year. Criticism of the poems’ publication has also come from foreign minister Miroslav Lajcak and the Slovakian ministry of culture, which funds the Slovakian Writers Society, publisher of Dotyky.
Karadzic, a former psychiatrist who went on to become a Bosnian Serb leader, had been in hiding for twelve years when he was captured by Serbian intelligence last July and is now imprisoned at the Hague. While a fugitive, he was able to publish a book of poems, Under the Left Breast of the Century, in 2005.
In his poetry, according to Heather McRobie of the Guardian's Books blog, Karadzic often "rewrites nationalist myths and stitches himself into a mythologized modern history," which many see as an affront. In defense of the decision to publish the recent works in Dotyky, Brendza issued a statement saying that the poems were "high-quality" and that “the damage would be if they were not to be published."
