Ladies and gentlemen, dear guests, friends of The Nippon
Foundation and The Tokyo Foundation, it has been fifteen years
since I was honored to receive a SYLFF fellowship as a
postgraduate student in the Law School at the University of
Belgrade. The title of this fellowship at my alma mater, "For the
future leaders of the world," was very tempting and promising,
particularly for a young lawyer at the very beginning of his
university career. And I was proud.

At that time I dreamed of becoming a full
professor of law, teaching Civil Procedure.
Therefore, I used the fellowship to spend some
time at the University of Saarbruecken in
Germany to gather literature for my master's
thesis under the title "A Proposition for
Renewal of Litigation Procedure." I am
grateful to you for providing for me this
opportunity.

But one's life is not to be predicted and not all dreams are to be
fulfilled. The river of life sometime goes beyond our
expectations, beyond our dreams. The Federation of Yugoslavia,
that was putting together 22 million people of different
ethnicities, six republics, two autonomous provinces, was
splitting as a result of substantial changes in Europe--the fall
of the Berlin Wall and break-up of the Soviet Union. The country's
elite in every republic and in every province was faced with the
choice to introduce changes in society that would replace the
socialist economy with a market economy, that would restructure
not only the economy, but would also unavoidably reorganize the
sharing of power in society and bring democracy to the people.
Instead, they chose to introduce nationalist rhetoric in politics.
They chose to reveal the beast of national hatred. While claiming
they were fighting for their people, their nations and their
territories, they were fighting for their privileged position in
society--against any changes, against the future of millions. The
Federation of Yugoslavia was splitting along the lines of the
republic borders, through a very bloody war that shook Europe in
the 90's. In Serbia alone, where I live, this war brought 1
million refugees, and thousands killed and wounded. Even more
people were killed in Bosnia and in Croatia.

Local elites' propaganda was successful in explaining all of these
atrocities that brought misery to the people's lives as a result
of the actions of "others," those who belong to another nation, to
another ethnic group. There was always somebody else to blame. In
1993, I joined the Center for Antiwar Action in Belgrade. It was a
non-governmental organization that put together a group of people
who wanted to stop the war, to raise their voices against the
nationalistic propaganda, to act and help those whose basic human
rights were violated--only because they belonged to another ethnic
group, and because they were different--and to help those who were
threatened because they did not want to go to war.