Yugoslavian president/
dictator (1941-2006). He was born in
Pozarevac, a town in the
Yugoslavian republic of
Serbia. Both of his parents committed
suicide, his father in 1962 and his mother in 1973. He graduated from the
University of Belgrade with a
law degree and was active in the
Communist Party, working his way up to become
Belgrade's party chief.
In 1987, Milosevic appeared before a
demonstration at
Kosovo Polje, a site near
Pristina where the
Battle of Kosovo took place, to tell angry minority
Serbs, "No one will ever
beat you again!" With that statement, he became a
champion of
Serbian nationalism, and his
support base among the Serbs allowed him to become party president mere months later. In pursuit of his goal of
annexation of Kosovo, he incited frequent pro-Serbian rallies and got the Yugoslavian
press to spread questionable
rumors about crimes committed by the
Albanian majority against the Serbs (most of those rumors, it should be noted, had been around for a while before Milosevic pushed them). He was elected president of
Serbia in May of 1989.
Disliking Serbia's growing power, the other
Yugoslavian republics began to break away, starting with
Slovenia in 1991. Eventually, only
Montenegro was to remain with Serbia. As Yugoslavia fell apart, there were a series of
wars pitting the Serbs against the
Slovenes, the
Croats, and the
Bosnian Muslims. While trying to keep Kosovo from breaking away, Serbian forces
killed or
evicted a few hundred thousand
Albanian Kosovars (exact numbers are way
sketchy).
Much of the world objected to the
harsh treatment dealt out by Milosevic's forces, but his
negotiations with
NATO were marked by his
unpredictable and rarely
cooperative behavior, leading to
air strikes in 1999, led by the
United States and
Great Britain. Milosevic managed to hold onto
power much longer than you would've expected, mainly because he held onto the
loyalty of the Serbs, many of whom considered him a Serbian saviour.
Milosevic was finally
deposed in October 2000 in a mostly
peaceful uprising by his own people. He was transported to
the Hague to stand
trial for
war crimes. After five years in prison, with about 50 weeks of testimony left until the end of his trial, Milosevic died on
March 11, 2006 of a
heart attack.
Milosevic was a
genocidal fucknozzle, and I'm glad the son-of-a-bitch is dead.
Thanks to CatherineB for fact-checking me.