Google – AFP, Aleksandra Niksic (AFP), 26 October 2013
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Members of
a military honour guard stand next to the casket containing the remains
of
Jovanka Broz, the late widow of former Yugoslav communist leader Josip Broz
Tito,
during a funeral ceremony in Belgrade on October 26, 2013 (AFP, Andrej
Isakovic)
|
Belgrade —
The widow of former Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito was buried in Belgrade
Saturday with full state honours as the last symbol of the communist federation
that broke up in the 1990s.
Once described
as the most elegant first lady of the Eastern bloc, Jovanka Broz, who died of
heart failure at the age of 88 on Sunday, was buried in the mausoleum House of
Flowers in Belgrade, where the communist strongman was laid to rest in 1980.
In a sombre
atmosphere on a sunny autumn day, some 4,000 people attended the ceremony held
with no religious service in a vast green complex of the mausoleum.
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An admirer
of former Yugoslav Communist
leader Josip Broz Tito arrives for a funeral
ceremony in honour of Jovanka Broz, the
late widow of Tito, at a Tito memorial
complex in Belgrade on October 26, 2013
(AFP, Andrej Isakovic)
|
A military
guard fired honorary shots as Broz was a decorated member of the Yugoslav
anti-fascist partisan movement in World War II.
A simple
wooden coffin without a state flag was put under the white marble lid engraved
with "Jovanka Broz, 1924-2013" in golden letters.
Serbian
Prime Minister Ivica Dacic bid an official farewell to "the first lady of
Yugoslavia... the woman we have committed the sin against."
"Rest
in peace, next to the man you dedicated your life to," said Dacic, whose
party traces its roots to Tito's communist party, while many shouted "Long
live Yugoslavia".
Once a
symbol of elegance and adored in the former Yugoslavia, Broz lived the last
three decades of her life as an outcast.
Blamed by
Tito's political allies of plotting a coup, she was placed under virtual house
arrest a few years before her husband's death.
Many among
the mourners, mostly elderly former partisans who proudly carried their World
War II decorations, dismissed such charges, solemnly waving red, white and blue
flags of the former Yugoslav federation that broke apart in a series of bloody
conflicts in the 1990s.
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Picture
taken on October 25, 1977 shows
Yugoslav leader Tito with his wife Jovanka
Broz who will be buried on Saturday
(AFP/File)
|
"I
wanted to say goodbye to her as I did for Tito, because for me, they were like
a family," said 84-year old Minka Jovanovic, who could hardly hide her
tears.
Broz's last
public appearance was at Tito's state funeral in May 1980, which was attended
by more than 200 world leaders, including Margaret Thatcher, Saddam Hussein and
Leonid Brezhnev.
After
Tito's death, she was forced to leave the former Serbian royal palace where the
couple lived in splendour, and spent the following years in isolation and
poverty.
"They
chased me out ... in my nightgown, without anything, not allowing me even to
take a photo of the two of us, or a letter, a book," Broz said in a rare
interview in 2009.
A symbol of
elegance
Since that
time, "I was in isolation and treated like a criminal," she told the
Politika daily.
Her
identity papers were confiscated and only returned by Serbian authorities in
2009, when she was given a pension.
A symbol of
elegance
Broz, who
was Tito's third wife, met the charismatic communist leader after she had
joined the partisans at the age of 17.
She
remained in the trenches until the end of World War II, attaining the rank of
captain.
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Picture taken in November 1952 shows the
wife of Yugoslav leader Tito, Jovanka Broz,
who will be buried in a Belgrade
mausoleum on Saturday (AFP/File)
|
As
Yugoslavia began turning its back on its wartime ally Russia, then under
Stalin's rule, Broz was hired as Tito's secretary in 1948.
The date of
their marriage remains unclear, as are most details of Tito's private life.
Some biographers set it in 1952.
Tito was 31
years her senior and the couple had no children.
With her
voluminous raven black hair always swept up in a bun, Broz quickly became a
symbol of elegance in a country impoverished by the war, with communist leaders
focused on strengthening the new Yugoslav state.
Often
described as the "first lady of the Non-Aligned Movement" -- a group
of states advocating a middle course for developing countries between the
Eastern and Western bloc, founded by Tito and the leaders of India, Indonesia,
Ghana and Egypt -- she toured the world with her husband.
Broz and
Tito were both film buffs, dining with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton,
among other international movie stars filming in Yugoslavia in the 1960s.
She and
other Tito heirs initiated an inheritance procedure, although the size of his
estate has never been made public and the claims are still pending.
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Police hold
back people hoping to visit the grave of Jovanka Broz, the late widow
of former
Yugoslav communist leader Josip Broz Tito, following a funeral ceremony
in her
honour in Belgrade on October 26, 2013 (AFP, Andrej Isakovic)
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