Informazione
EMBEDDED
Il calendario 2006 delle Forze Armate ha 12 volti televisivi
come testimonial. Si veda al link:
http://www.esercito.difesa.it/root/chisiamo/promo_calen2006.asp
Guardare chi sono può essere istruttivo ed inquietante. L'iniziativa è
stata presentata nell'ambito di un programma in cui si chiedeva un
impegno per sostenere le spese militari. Il "Calendesercito2006" è
articolato su una prefazione a cura del Capo di Stato Maggiore
dell'Esercito, Generale di Corpo d'Armata Filiberto Cecchi, e su 12
tavole che riportano le fotografie e le testimonianze di giornalisti
professionisti, corrispondenti delle reti televisive
nazionali.
I 12 volti noti sono quelli di Franco Di Mare, Toni Capuozzo, Letizia
Leviti, Gabriella Simoni, Fabio Chiucconi, Francesco Cito, Ennio
Remondino, Anna Migotto, Luca del Re, Carmen Lasorella, Mauro Maurizi
e Giovanna Botteri.
Completano l'opera altrettante immagini di donne ed uomini in servizio
nell'Esercito. Il calendario infatti si ispira agli uomini e alle
donne dell'Esercito, soldati del terzo millennio, dotati di molte
capacità, prima fra tutte quella di riuscire a coniugare valori,
ideali e tradizioni che affondano le radici nell'umanesimo
rinascimentale, con materiali e mezzi frutto della tecnologia di
ultima generazione, e bla bla bla.
"Agli operatori della comunicazione - dice il Generale Cecchi - "va il
ringraziamento dell'Esercito per aver compreso e fatto comprendere
l'incessante opera della Forza Armata e la sua evoluzione verso
livelli di efficienza, modernità e credibilità che fanno onore a tutto
il Paese, valorizzando l'importantissimo compito svolto dai nostri
Soldati a difesa della Patria e a salvaguardia della pace e della
democrazia nel mondo". Ci mancherebbe. D'altronde, per quanto riguarda
la democrazia nel nostro paese, siamo "in una botte di ferro": ne
abbiamo così tanta che quella che avanza possiamo persino esportarla
altrove.
Il calendario 2006 delle Forze Armate ha 12 volti televisivi
come testimonial. Si veda al link:
http://www.esercito.difesa.it/root/chisiamo/promo_calen2006.asp
Guardare chi sono può essere istruttivo ed inquietante. L'iniziativa è
stata presentata nell'ambito di un programma in cui si chiedeva un
impegno per sostenere le spese militari. Il "Calendesercito2006" è
articolato su una prefazione a cura del Capo di Stato Maggiore
dell'Esercito, Generale di Corpo d'Armata Filiberto Cecchi, e su 12
tavole che riportano le fotografie e le testimonianze di giornalisti
professionisti, corrispondenti delle reti televisive
nazionali.
I 12 volti noti sono quelli di Franco Di Mare, Toni Capuozzo, Letizia
Leviti, Gabriella Simoni, Fabio Chiucconi, Francesco Cito, Ennio
Remondino, Anna Migotto, Luca del Re, Carmen Lasorella, Mauro Maurizi
e Giovanna Botteri.
Completano l'opera altrettante immagini di donne ed uomini in servizio
nell'Esercito. Il calendario infatti si ispira agli uomini e alle
donne dell'Esercito, soldati del terzo millennio, dotati di molte
capacità, prima fra tutte quella di riuscire a coniugare valori,
ideali e tradizioni che affondano le radici nell'umanesimo
rinascimentale, con materiali e mezzi frutto della tecnologia di
ultima generazione, e bla bla bla.
"Agli operatori della comunicazione - dice il Generale Cecchi - "va il
ringraziamento dell'Esercito per aver compreso e fatto comprendere
l'incessante opera della Forza Armata e la sua evoluzione verso
livelli di efficienza, modernità e credibilità che fanno onore a tutto
il Paese, valorizzando l'importantissimo compito svolto dai nostri
Soldati a difesa della Patria e a salvaguardia della pace e della
democrazia nel mondo". Ci mancherebbe. D'altronde, per quanto riguarda
la democrazia nel nostro paese, siamo "in una botte di ferro": ne
abbiamo così tanta che quella che avanza possiamo persino esportarla
altrove.
--- In icdsm-italia @yahoogroups.com, "icdsm_italia" ha scritto:
[ Il testo integrale della dichiarazione di Slobodan Milosevic in
apertura del "processo di difesa" dinanzi al "Tribunale ad hoc per i
crimini commessi sul territorio della ex Jugoslavia" dell'Aia (31
agosto - 2 settembre 2004 -- vedi in fondo per i dettagli sulla
edizione italiana) è finalmente DISPONIBILE ANCHE IN LINGUA INGLESE ]
The Defense Speaks for History and the Future
Opening Defense Statement at the Hague by
President of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic
With an introduction by Ramsey Clark
The U.S./NATO court trying Slobodan Milosevic was always totally
illegitimate. It could never be taken seriously as a court of justice.
Milosevic's defense is powerful, convincing, persuasive and impossible
to dismiss.
--Harold Pinter, author, playwright and winner of 2005 Nobel Prize in
Literature
This book is a vital antidote to the demonizing calumny heaped on the
defenders of Yugoslavia. Many misled people would benefit greatly if
they gave some respectful attention to the side that tried to avoid
war and save a multi-ethnic social democracy.
--Michael Parenti, author of Superpatriotism and To Kill a Nation: The
Attack on Yugoslavia
In Iraq, the whole world now knows, the charge of weapons of mass
destruction - WMD - was a fraud and war propaganda. How many people
know that the 78-day bombing of all of Yugoslavia, based on the charge
of 'mass graves' in Kosovo, was also a fraud and war propaganda - a
weapon of mass deception - to justify the U.S. military and corporate
takeover of the entire region.
List Price $19.95, But at Leftbooks.com
Only $15.00
IAC, 2006, 120pp, Index, Appendices, Chronology, softcover
Price: $ 15.00
TO ORDER THE BOOK:
http://www.leftbooks.com/cgi-local/SoftCart.exe/online-store/scstore/p-biac2006ds.html?E+scstore
------
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/icdsm-italia/message/204
------
IN DIFESA DELLA JUGOSLAVIA
IL J'ACCUSE DI SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC DI FRONTE AL "TRIBUNALE AD HOC" DELL'AIA
Zambon Editore (Frankfurt, 2005)
240 pagine, 10 euro, ISBN 88-87826-33-1
Il testo integrale, in lingua italiana, della dichiarazione di
Slobodan Milosevic in apertura del "processo di difesa" dinanzi al
"Tribunale ad hoc per i crimini commessi sul territorio della ex
Jugoslavia" dell'Aia (31 agosto - 2 settembre 2004), ed altri testi
inediti di Slobodan Milosevic.
A cura della Sezione Italiana del Comitato Internazionale per la
Difesa di Slobodan Milosevic (ICDSM Italia)
Da capro espiatorio ad accusatore: Milosevic punta il dito sulle
potenze che hanno voluto la distruzione della Jugoslavia – vera prima
tappa della "guerra permanente" per il Nuovo Ordine Mondiale.
Distribuzione:
- per l'Italia
# distribuzione militante: rivolgersi ad
ICDSM-Italia
c/o GAMADI, Via L. Da Vinci 27
00043 Ciampino (Roma)
tel. +39-339-3873909 fax +39-06-4828957
email: icdsm-italia @ libero.it
+++ ICDSM-Italia è contattabile anche per organizzare
iniziative-dibattito e presentazioni del libro +++
# nelle librerie:
CDA – Bologna
# altri:
Achab
Via Caroto 2/a – 37131 Verona
Tel.: 045 8489196 – Fax: 045 8403149
info @ edizioni-achab.it – www.edizioni-achab.it
- per l'estero
rivolgersi a Zambon Editore, Francoforte sul Meno (Germania)
zambon @ zambon.net - Tel. 069/779223 Fax 069/773054
"Tra le idiozie e le infamie messe in circolazione dall'ideologia che
ha accompagnato la guerra contro la Jugoslavia, una spicca in modo
particolare: il processo all'Aia contro Milo?sevi´c [...] A
pronunciare tale requisitoria è in primo luogo un paese che, ancora
nel secondo dopoguerra, non è indietreggiato dinanzi ad alcuna infamia
nel tentativo (fallito) di assogettare i popoli dell'Indocina: qui,
ancora ai giorni nostri, innumerevoli bambini, donne e uomini
continuano a portare nel loro corpo martoriato i segni
dell'indscriminata guerra chimica condotta dagli aspiranti padroni del
pianeta. D'altro canto, per ironia della storia, la farsa giudiziaria
contro Milo?sevi´c va avanti mentre, nonostante la censura, trapelano
particolari agghiaccianti su Guantanamo e Abu Ghraib..." (Domenico
Losurdo)
"...Determinanti per la istituzione del Tribunale Internazionale per i
Crimini in Jugoslavia (in sigla: ICTY) le pressioni esercitate da
Madeleine Albright quale ambasciatore USA alle Nazioni Unite. Quegli
stessi USA che si sono sempre opposti alla costituzione del Tribunale
Penale Internazionale (in sigla: TPI), non consentendo che i cittadini
degli Stati Uniti vengano sottoposti al giudizio di autorità
giudiziarie diverse dalle loro, in ossequio alle ambizioni
imperialistiche degli USA. In Italia ne abbiamo avuto (fra gli altri)
un doloroso esempio per l'eccidio del Cermis ad opera di piloti USA
sottratti al giudizio dell'autorità giudiziaria italiana e
sostanzialmente assolti negli USA.
Per quanto riguarda la costituzione dell'ICTY va osservato che la
Carta dell'ONU non consente la possibilità, per il Consiglio di
Sicurezza, di creare "tribunali ad hoc" da ritenere discriminatori ed
organizzati per colpire i nemici USA..." (Giuseppe Mattina)
INDICE:
Introduzione: Domenico
Losurdo........................................................3
Processo Milosevic: un "processo alle
intenzioni"..........................9
(a cura di ICDSM-Italia)
Lettera al Presidente
Milosevic.......................................................37
di Miriam Pellegrini Ferri e Spartaco Ferri
Sulle illegalità del processo contro Slobodan Milosevic:
Giuseppe
Mattina.................................................................................39
DICHIARAZIONE DI SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC......................45
in apertura del "processo di difesa" dinanzi
al "Tribunale ad hoc per i crimini commessi
sul territorio della ex-Jugoslavia" dell'Aia (Olanda)
31 agosto-2 settembre 2004
Legenda: nomenclatura ed acronimi:
............................................199
Allegato 1:
Discorso di Milosevic a Campo dei Merli, 28 giugno 1989........211
Allegato 2:
Slobodan Milosevic si rivolge alla nazione, 2 ottobre 2000........219
Allegato 3:
Lettera di Milosevic all'opinione pubblica, agosto 2003.............229
SCHEDA: ICDSM
..............................................................................239
Questo testo è stato realizzato interamente grazie al lavoro
volontario dei membri e dei simpatizzanti dell'ICDSM e grazie ai
proventi della sottoscrizione popolare per la difesa di Slobodan
Milosevic. Il ricavato della vendita di questo libro va a copertura
delle spese dell'ICDSM e della difesa legale di Milosevic.
Per il contributo prezioso, fornito per la realizzazione di questo
libro, ringraziamo tra gli altri: A. Amoroso, C. Bettio, O. Daric , C.
Ferretti, S. Ferri, D. Losurdo, M. Marianetti, A. Martocchia, G.
Mattina, I. Pavicevac, B. Stradcutter, F. Zuddas.
La traduzione è basata sulle trascrizioni "ufficiali" in lingua
inglese e francese, che si possono reperire al sito internet del
"Tribunale ad hoc":
31 agosto 2004: http://www.un.org/icty/transe54/040831ED.htm
1 settembre 2004: http://www.un.org/icty/transe54/040901IT.htm
2 settembre 2004: http://www.un.org/icty/transe54/040902IT.htm
In lingua francese: http://www.un.org/icty/transf54/transf54.htm
Uvodna rec Predsednika Milosevica u Hagu 31. avgusta i 1. septembra 2004.:
http://www.sloboda.org.yu/uvodnarecC.htm - cirilica;
http://www.sloboda.org.yu/uvodnarecL.htm - latinica.
Invitiamo il lettore a seguire le udienze del "Tribunale ad hoc" anche
via internet sui siti:
http://www.domovina.net/Icty/eng/room1.ram
http://hague.bard.edu/video.html
http://tribunal.freeserbia.com
LE TRASCRIZIONI "UFFICIALI" DEL "PROCESSO" SI TROVANO AI SITI:
http://www.un.org/icty/transe54/transe54.htm (IN ENGLISH)
http://www.un.org/icty/transf54/transf54.htm (EN FRANCAIS)
Ulteriori informazioni ed aggiornamenti ai siti internet:
http://www.sloboda.org.yu/ (Associazione Libertà/Sloboda)
http://www.icdsm.org/ (Comitato internazionale per la difesa di
Slobodan Milosevic)
http://www.pasti.org/milodif.html (sezione italiana dell'ICDSM)
http://www.free-slobo.de/ (sezione tedesca dell'ICDSM)
http://www.free-slobo-uk.org/ (sezione britannica dell'ICDSM)
http://www.icdsm-us.org/ (sezione statunitense dell'ICDSM)
http://www.icdsmireland.org/ (sezione irlandese dell'ICDSM)
http://www.wpc-in.org/ (Consiglio mondiale per la pace/World Peace
Council)
http://www.geocities.com/b_antinato/ (Centro antiNATO dei Balcani)
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/jugoinfo (Notiziario JUGOINFO del
Coordinamento Nazionale per la Jugoslavia, Italia)
---
COMITATO INTERNAZIONALE PER LA DIFESA DI SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC
ICDSM Sofia - New York - Mosca www.icdsm.org
* * *
Velko Valkanov, Ramsey Clark, Alexander Zinoviev (Co-Presidente),
Klaus Hartmann (Presidente del Comitato), Vladimir Krsljanin
(Segretario), Christopher Black (Presidente, Comitato Giuridico),
Tiphaine Dickson (Portavoce Legale)
* * *
--- Fine messaggio inoltrato ---
[ Il testo integrale della dichiarazione di Slobodan Milosevic in
apertura del "processo di difesa" dinanzi al "Tribunale ad hoc per i
crimini commessi sul territorio della ex Jugoslavia" dell'Aia (31
agosto - 2 settembre 2004 -- vedi in fondo per i dettagli sulla
edizione italiana) è finalmente DISPONIBILE ANCHE IN LINGUA INGLESE ]
The Defense Speaks for History and the Future
Opening Defense Statement at the Hague by
President of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic
With an introduction by Ramsey Clark
The U.S./NATO court trying Slobodan Milosevic was always totally
illegitimate. It could never be taken seriously as a court of justice.
Milosevic's defense is powerful, convincing, persuasive and impossible
to dismiss.
--Harold Pinter, author, playwright and winner of 2005 Nobel Prize in
Literature
This book is a vital antidote to the demonizing calumny heaped on the
defenders of Yugoslavia. Many misled people would benefit greatly if
they gave some respectful attention to the side that tried to avoid
war and save a multi-ethnic social democracy.
--Michael Parenti, author of Superpatriotism and To Kill a Nation: The
Attack on Yugoslavia
In Iraq, the whole world now knows, the charge of weapons of mass
destruction - WMD - was a fraud and war propaganda. How many people
know that the 78-day bombing of all of Yugoslavia, based on the charge
of 'mass graves' in Kosovo, was also a fraud and war propaganda - a
weapon of mass deception - to justify the U.S. military and corporate
takeover of the entire region.
List Price $19.95, But at Leftbooks.com
Only $15.00
IAC, 2006, 120pp, Index, Appendices, Chronology, softcover
Price: $ 15.00
TO ORDER THE BOOK:
http://www.leftbooks.com/cgi-local/SoftCart.exe/online-store/scstore/p-biac2006ds.html?E+scstore
------
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/icdsm-italia/message/204
------
IN DIFESA DELLA JUGOSLAVIA
IL J'ACCUSE DI SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC DI FRONTE AL "TRIBUNALE AD HOC" DELL'AIA
Zambon Editore (Frankfurt, 2005)
240 pagine, 10 euro, ISBN 88-87826-33-1
Il testo integrale, in lingua italiana, della dichiarazione di
Slobodan Milosevic in apertura del "processo di difesa" dinanzi al
"Tribunale ad hoc per i crimini commessi sul territorio della ex
Jugoslavia" dell'Aia (31 agosto - 2 settembre 2004), ed altri testi
inediti di Slobodan Milosevic.
A cura della Sezione Italiana del Comitato Internazionale per la
Difesa di Slobodan Milosevic (ICDSM Italia)
Da capro espiatorio ad accusatore: Milosevic punta il dito sulle
potenze che hanno voluto la distruzione della Jugoslavia – vera prima
tappa della "guerra permanente" per il Nuovo Ordine Mondiale.
Distribuzione:
- per l'Italia
# distribuzione militante: rivolgersi ad
ICDSM-Italia
c/o GAMADI, Via L. Da Vinci 27
00043 Ciampino (Roma)
tel. +39-339-3873909 fax +39-06-4828957
email: icdsm-italia @ libero.it
+++ ICDSM-Italia è contattabile anche per organizzare
iniziative-dibattito e presentazioni del libro +++
# nelle librerie:
CDA – Bologna
# altri:
Achab
Via Caroto 2/a – 37131 Verona
Tel.: 045 8489196 – Fax: 045 8403149
info @ edizioni-achab.it – www.edizioni-achab.it
- per l'estero
rivolgersi a Zambon Editore, Francoforte sul Meno (Germania)
zambon @ zambon.net - Tel. 069/779223 Fax 069/773054
"Tra le idiozie e le infamie messe in circolazione dall'ideologia che
ha accompagnato la guerra contro la Jugoslavia, una spicca in modo
particolare: il processo all'Aia contro Milo?sevi´c [...] A
pronunciare tale requisitoria è in primo luogo un paese che, ancora
nel secondo dopoguerra, non è indietreggiato dinanzi ad alcuna infamia
nel tentativo (fallito) di assogettare i popoli dell'Indocina: qui,
ancora ai giorni nostri, innumerevoli bambini, donne e uomini
continuano a portare nel loro corpo martoriato i segni
dell'indscriminata guerra chimica condotta dagli aspiranti padroni del
pianeta. D'altro canto, per ironia della storia, la farsa giudiziaria
contro Milo?sevi´c va avanti mentre, nonostante la censura, trapelano
particolari agghiaccianti su Guantanamo e Abu Ghraib..." (Domenico
Losurdo)
"...Determinanti per la istituzione del Tribunale Internazionale per i
Crimini in Jugoslavia (in sigla: ICTY) le pressioni esercitate da
Madeleine Albright quale ambasciatore USA alle Nazioni Unite. Quegli
stessi USA che si sono sempre opposti alla costituzione del Tribunale
Penale Internazionale (in sigla: TPI), non consentendo che i cittadini
degli Stati Uniti vengano sottoposti al giudizio di autorità
giudiziarie diverse dalle loro, in ossequio alle ambizioni
imperialistiche degli USA. In Italia ne abbiamo avuto (fra gli altri)
un doloroso esempio per l'eccidio del Cermis ad opera di piloti USA
sottratti al giudizio dell'autorità giudiziaria italiana e
sostanzialmente assolti negli USA.
Per quanto riguarda la costituzione dell'ICTY va osservato che la
Carta dell'ONU non consente la possibilità, per il Consiglio di
Sicurezza, di creare "tribunali ad hoc" da ritenere discriminatori ed
organizzati per colpire i nemici USA..." (Giuseppe Mattina)
INDICE:
Introduzione: Domenico
Losurdo........................................................3
Processo Milosevic: un "processo alle
intenzioni"..........................9
(a cura di ICDSM-Italia)
Lettera al Presidente
Milosevic.......................................................37
di Miriam Pellegrini Ferri e Spartaco Ferri
Sulle illegalità del processo contro Slobodan Milosevic:
Giuseppe
Mattina.................................................................................39
DICHIARAZIONE DI SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC......................45
in apertura del "processo di difesa" dinanzi
al "Tribunale ad hoc per i crimini commessi
sul territorio della ex-Jugoslavia" dell'Aia (Olanda)
31 agosto-2 settembre 2004
Legenda: nomenclatura ed acronimi:
............................................199
Allegato 1:
Discorso di Milosevic a Campo dei Merli, 28 giugno 1989........211
Allegato 2:
Slobodan Milosevic si rivolge alla nazione, 2 ottobre 2000........219
Allegato 3:
Lettera di Milosevic all'opinione pubblica, agosto 2003.............229
SCHEDA: ICDSM
..............................................................................239
Questo testo è stato realizzato interamente grazie al lavoro
volontario dei membri e dei simpatizzanti dell'ICDSM e grazie ai
proventi della sottoscrizione popolare per la difesa di Slobodan
Milosevic. Il ricavato della vendita di questo libro va a copertura
delle spese dell'ICDSM e della difesa legale di Milosevic.
Per il contributo prezioso, fornito per la realizzazione di questo
libro, ringraziamo tra gli altri: A. Amoroso, C. Bettio, O. Daric , C.
Ferretti, S. Ferri, D. Losurdo, M. Marianetti, A. Martocchia, G.
Mattina, I. Pavicevac, B. Stradcutter, F. Zuddas.
La traduzione è basata sulle trascrizioni "ufficiali" in lingua
inglese e francese, che si possono reperire al sito internet del
"Tribunale ad hoc":
31 agosto 2004: http://www.un.org/icty/transe54/040831ED.htm
1 settembre 2004: http://www.un.org/icty/transe54/040901IT.htm
2 settembre 2004: http://www.un.org/icty/transe54/040902IT.htm
In lingua francese: http://www.un.org/icty/transf54/transf54.htm
Uvodna rec Predsednika Milosevica u Hagu 31. avgusta i 1. septembra 2004.:
http://www.sloboda.org.yu/uvodnarecC.htm - cirilica;
http://www.sloboda.org.yu/uvodnarecL.htm - latinica.
Invitiamo il lettore a seguire le udienze del "Tribunale ad hoc" anche
via internet sui siti:
http://www.domovina.net/Icty/eng/room1.ram
http://hague.bard.edu/video.html
http://tribunal.freeserbia.com
LE TRASCRIZIONI "UFFICIALI" DEL "PROCESSO" SI TROVANO AI SITI:
http://www.un.org/icty/transe54/transe54.htm (IN ENGLISH)
http://www.un.org/icty/transf54/transf54.htm (EN FRANCAIS)
Ulteriori informazioni ed aggiornamenti ai siti internet:
http://www.sloboda.org.yu/ (Associazione Libertà/Sloboda)
http://www.icdsm.org/ (Comitato internazionale per la difesa di
Slobodan Milosevic)
http://www.pasti.org/milodif.html (sezione italiana dell'ICDSM)
http://www.free-slobo.de/ (sezione tedesca dell'ICDSM)
http://www.free-slobo-uk.org/ (sezione britannica dell'ICDSM)
http://www.icdsm-us.org/ (sezione statunitense dell'ICDSM)
http://www.icdsmireland.org/ (sezione irlandese dell'ICDSM)
http://www.wpc-in.org/ (Consiglio mondiale per la pace/World Peace
Council)
http://www.geocities.com/b_antinato/ (Centro antiNATO dei Balcani)
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/jugoinfo (Notiziario JUGOINFO del
Coordinamento Nazionale per la Jugoslavia, Italia)
---
COMITATO INTERNAZIONALE PER LA DIFESA DI SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC
ICDSM Sofia - New York - Mosca www.icdsm.org
* * *
Velko Valkanov, Ramsey Clark, Alexander Zinoviev (Co-Presidente),
Klaus Hartmann (Presidente del Comitato), Vladimir Krsljanin
(Segretario), Christopher Black (Presidente, Comitato Giuridico),
Tiphaine Dickson (Portavoce Legale)
* * *
--- Fine messaggio inoltrato ---
--- In yugoslaviainfo @yahoogroups.com, Predrag Tosic wrote:
http://www.globalresearch.ca
The Hague Tribunal: The Political Economy of Sham Justice
Carla Del Ponte Addresses Goldman Sachs on Justice and Profits
By Edward S. Herman
November 20, 2005
On October 6, 2005, Carla Del Ponte, prosecutor of the International
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), gave a talk before an
audience at Goldman Sachs in London that throws light on the role of
the ICTY as well as the character and qualities of Ms. Del Ponte and
her efforts. [1]
Speaking before this business audience, Ms. Del Ponte emphasized that
the ICTY and other UN organizations are not profit-making bodies, but
that they, and the ICTY specifically, facilitate profit-making for
others. "Preventing wars or bringing justice doesn't fill the UN or
anybody's bank accounts," she said. The private sector can't carry
out these functions. But Ms. Del Ponte claims that such services not
only save lives, reduce human suffering and destruction, they also
help bring stability: "This is where the long-term profit of the UN's
work resides. We are trying to create stable conditions so that safe
investments can take place." This will make for "a reasonably
prosperous democracyŠa factor of peace and stability in the world."
In trying to sell the ICTY to this business group as a partner or
servant of neoliberalism, Del Ponte runs into the difficulty that the
actual work of her organization has been highly destabilizing, did
not "save lives" or diminish human suffering and destruction, and that
it has left its main areas of intervention--Bosnia/Herzegovina, Serbia
and Montenegro, and Kosovo-- in a state of semi-permanent crisis and
with conditions singularly unattractive to private investment (except
for the drug and sex trades, which thrive in Kosovo). [2] On the other
hand, insofar as the ICTY contributed to the real ends sought by
Clinton, Blair, and other major NATO powers, which included helping
NATO celebrate its 50th anniversary in 1999 and showing that NATO
still had a role to play, as a U.S.-dominated organization; destroying
an independent and socialist-inclined Yugoslavia and bringing its
constituent parts into the NATO orbit of influence; and preparing the
ground for further "humanitarian interventions," [3] the ICTY could be
said to be an agent of the dominant Western powers and therefore of
neoliberalism broadly viewed.
In her opening remarks, Del Ponte says that the ICTY is tasked with
"bringing peace, security and justice," but shortly thereafter "peace"
and "security" fade out and she asserts that "our primary objective is
to bring justice." Justice ranks high, she says, because it
"contributes to the reconciliation between peoples who have been torn
apart by the wars of the nineties." Before I explain why this is a
fallacy, especially with justice perceived in the one-sided and highly
politicized fashion of Del Ponte, the ICTY and NATO, it should be
recognized that there may be a conflict between pursuing "justice" and
"peace." It is no coincidence that just as the work of the ICTY has
been associated with chronic instability in the ex-Yugoslavia, so also
its work ran parallel with both outbursts of ferocious local warfare
and closely linked Western wars of intervention in those areas, and
certainly failed to contribute to "peace." In fact, an excellent case
can be made that the ICTY's focus on "justice" was well suited to
avoiding peace, and that its very design was to facilitate war, a
dismantling of Yugoslavia, and a specific attack on Serbia.
This case is made compellingly by Michael Mandel in his How America
Gets Away With Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes
Against Humanity (Pluto Press, 2004), where he points out that the
formation of the ICTY was immediately preceded by a December 1992
speech by the U.S. State Department's Lawrence Eagleberger, who named
three top Serb leaders who needed to be brought to justice, and stated
explicitly that "the international community must begin now to think
about moving beyond the London [peace] agreement and contemplate more
aggressive actions." [4] Even before this, the United States had
sabotaged the promising Lisbon agreement of February 1992 by
encouraging Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic to withdraw and
break the plan that the Bosnian Serbs, Croats, and (previously)
Izetbegovic, had accepted. [5] Following Eagleburger's talk, in
February 1993, as Lord David Owen wrote bitterly, ""We have more or
less got a peace settlement but we have a problem. We can't get the
Muslims on board. And that's largely the fault of the Americans,
because the Muslims won't budge while they think that Washington may
come in on their side," so that in reality "the Clinton people block
it." [6] These crucial facts and informed judgments did not interfere
in the least with the established view that it was Milosevic and the
Bosnian Serbs, seeking a "Greater Serbia," that made peace unattainable.
The role of the ICTY in this peace-sabotage business was to indict
Serb leaders in order to demonize them and make them ineligible for
any peace negotiating process-in Mandel's words, the ICTY function was
to help the Americans "justify their intention to go to warŠby
branding their proposed enemies as Nazis." [7] As presiding judge
Antonio Cassese said at the time regarding Bosnian Serb leader Radovan
Karadzic, "Let us see who will sit down at the negotiating table now
with a man accused of genocide." [8] Later, in the 1998-1999 run-up to
the NATO bombing war on Yugoslavia, the ICTY turned unremitting
attention to denouncing Serbs, and as Mandel points out, its work in
this period "had nothing to do with trying and punishing criminals,
and everything to do with lending crucial credibility to NATO's
cause." [9] During the 78-day NATO bombing war, which began on March
24, 1999, the ICTY served as an aggressive public relations arm of
NATO, most dramatically in indicting Milosevic in May 1999 just as
NATO was drawing criticism for extending its bombing targets to
Serbian civilian facilities. In short, the ICTY, serving as an arm of
NATO, helped prevent peace settlements in the Bosnian conflict in
the deadly years 1992-1994, and helped justify and sustain NATO's 1999
assault on Yugoslavia.
This ICTY service was based on structural facts: the institution was
created by the NATO powers, with the United States in the lead; it was
funded heavily by these powers and closely allied NGOs (Soros's Open
Society Institute); it was staffed with NATO country personnel, often
seconded to the ICTY, and its high officials were vetted by NATO-power
leaders; and it depended on NATO for information and police service.
But this meant that NATO itself would be exempt from "justice," and
that it would be difficult to bring to justice NATO clients, even if
they committed crimes similar to or even worse than those committed by
Serbs. Mandel points out that when he presented the ICTY prosecutor
with a three volume dossier and complaint on NATO war crimes in May
1999, it took a year for the prosecutor to decide to reject this
application, without ever having made a formal investigation, whereas
in the case of the alleged Racak massacre, attributable to the Serbs,
the prosecutor declared this a war crime and rushed into action on the
very same day, based solely on information supplied her by the U.S.
representative in the scene, William Walker. [10] Of the leaders in
the Balkan wars, Clinton, Blair, Izetbegovic and Tudjman have never
been indicted by the ICTY, only Milosevic, although on the logic
applied in the Milosevic prosecution, an equal or better case could be
made for each of the exempted leaders. [11]
This highly politicized justice brought by the ICTY not only served
war rather than peace, it cannot be regarded as justice at all.
Justice that is not even-handed is deeply compromised. And if it is
clearly serving a political end and meeting an external political
agenda it is almost certain to be biased and fail to bring justice
even in dealing with politically eligible targets. If it is
politically corrupt it will do its work corruptly and bend its
supposed judicial process to meeting those same political aims. This
has been evident throughout the ICTY's operations-in the case of the
numerous indictments that met a NATO political or PR need of the
moment (e.g., the indictment of the Serb paramilitary leader Arkan in
March 1999, just as the NATO bombing commenced; Milosevic in May 1999,
just as NATO's bombing of civilian sites was creating a PR problem),
its steady resort to publicity that compromised supposed judicial
proceedings, and with endless illustrations of judicial malpractice in
the ICTY proceedings themselves.
According to Michael Scharf, an ICTY supporter, over 90 percent of the
evidence brought forward in the Milosevic trial was hearsay, [12] all
freely admitted into the record by the judge, although almost none of
it had any connection with proving orders or the sanction of war
crimes by the man on trial (and all of which could be readily
duplicated for Bosnian Muslim and Croat treatment of Serbs or U.S.
bombing attacks on the Serbian civilian infrastructure). It did,
however, set a tone in creating a moral environment of target
demonization that served NATO political aims, even if it compromised
the possibility of a fair trial.
From a steady stream of cases, the absence of judicial equity may be
illustrated by the fact that with William Walker on the stand for the
prosecution, Judge Richard May never interrupted him once as he ranged
far and wide, even covering his view of Milosevic's "general
attitude"; and although the "Racak massacre" claim was the basis of 45
charges of murder against Milosevic, and Walker was a key driver of
that claim, May gave the defendant a fixed time limit for questions
and interrupted his questioning over 60 times in the process of
preventing a serious cross-examination. Athough allowing a stream of
hearsay from prosecution witnesses, Judge May refused to permit
Milosevic to enter into the record articles from Le Monde and Figaro
that raised serious doubts about the Walker version of events at
Racak. [13]
With General Wesley Clark testifying for the prosecution, the judge
allowed the U.S. government to force a closed session and to redact
the testimony before release, he permitted Clark to talk about
anything he pleased, including ten minutes of self-adulation (without
judicial interruption), and he was permitted to phone Bill Clinton to
request a letter of support, contrary to the stated rule that no
outside communication was permitted in the midst of testimony; whereas
Milosevic was not permitted to ask questions challenging Clark's
credibility or anything not directly responsive to Clark's verbal
claims. [14] More recently, during the defense's presentation of its
case, the ICTY judge allowed the prosecution to present a video of an
alleged killing of six Bosnian Muslims back in 1995, although it had
no bearing on the ongoing questioning of the defense witness and was
presented without prior notice to the defense, which was not permitted
to question the video presentation. However, introduction of this
video did serve to dramatize claims about the Srebrenica massacre at a
time when that event was being given tenth anniversary memorial
publicity by the Western establishment.
Del Ponte states authoritatively in her Goldman Sachs talk that 8,000
Bosnian Muslims were slaughtered at Srebrenica in the "only genocide"
in Europe since World War II. The 8,000 figure was given by the Red
Cross back in July 1995 based on crude and unverified estimates of
3,000 captured by the Bosnian Serbs plus 5,000 initially claimed to be
"missing." It was very soon recognized by the Red Cross and other
observers that several thousand of the "missing" had escaped to
Bosnian Muslim lines and to Yugoslavia itself, and that several
thousand more were almost surely killed in fighting. But that 8,000
number withstood not only this needed correction, but also the fact
that fewer than 3,000 bodies were found in the Srebrenica area, [15]
with an unknown but probably large fraction killed in the savage July
1995 fighting or earlier. Belated claims of reburials lack
plausibility, and run into the problem that although Madeleine
Albright warned the Serbs that "We will be watching you," no satellite
photos have ever been displayed publicly showing digging, burying, or
trucks moving bodies. In short, the stable figure of 8,000 rests on a
propaganda need that has sustained a politically convenient
myth-inflation, supported by the combination of NATO officials, the
mainstream media, and the ICTY. [16]
Del Ponte's claim in her Goldman Sachs speech that this was a case of
"genocide" follows a pattern of ICTY findings and conclusion that
don't withstand the slightest scrutiny and even suffer from internal
contradiction. ICTY judges repeatedly stated as an established fact
that 7-8,000 Muslim men had been executed, while simultaneously
acknowledging that the evidence only "suggested" that "a majority" of
the 7-8,000 missing had not been killed in combat, [17] which yields a
number substantially lower than 7-8,000, plus uncertainty. Can you
have "genocide" in one small town? The judges suggested that pushing
the Bosnian Muslim inhabitants out of the Srebrenica area while
killing many males was itself genocide, and they essentially equated
genocide with ethnic cleansing.
The Tribunal dealt with the awkward problem of the genocide-intent
Serbs busing Bosnian Muslim women and children to safety by arguing
that they did this for public relations reasons, but as Michael Mandel
points out, failing to do some criminal act despite your desire--in
this case entirely unproven and resting on an ideological/political
premise of ICTY personnel--is called "not committing the crime." [18]
The Tribunal never asked why the genocidal Serbs failed to surround
the town before its capture to prevent thousands of males from
escaping to safety, or why the Bosnian Muslim soldiers were willing to
leave their women and children as well as many wounded comrades to the
mercies of the Serbs; and they failed to confront the fact that
10,000 mainly Muslim residents of Zvornik sought refugee from the
civil war in Serbia itself, as prosecution witness Borisav Jovic
testified.
It is notable that the ICTY has never called Operation Storm, the
August 1995 Croatian ethnic cleansing of some 250,000 Krajina Serbs,
"genocide," although in that case many women and children were killed
and the ethnic cleansing applied to a larger area and larger victim
population than in Srebrenica. It was also preceded by an earlier
series of Croatian army attacks, first on the Serbian villages of
Medak, Citluk and Divoselo in the UN- protected Krajina region back in
1993, in which a hundred or more unarmed civilians were slaughtered,
and then in the brutal ethnic cleansing trial run for Operation Storm
with "Operation Flash" carried out in Western Slavonia in May 1995
with many hundreds killed. There was no ICTY response to any of these
major death-dealing operations, even though a UN dossier was
submitted to the ICTY that described the 1993 crimes. [19]
The ICTY's extreme bias and politically-based double standard in
treating Srebrenica and Krajina is dramatically evident in Del Ponte's
discussion of the two cases before the Goldman Sachs audience. In the
Srebrenica case, she transmits without question a corrupted
interpretation of the word genocide and an inflated and unproven
number of victims, and mentions no context, such as the fact that
Srebrenica had been the base of Bosnian Muslim commander Naser Oric
who had sallied forth from 1992 into 1995 in Serb massacre and
destruction forays that left well over a thousand dead Serb civilians.
Her treatment of Operation Storm and the Krajina massacre makes an
enlightening contrast and is worth quoting at length:
"Another typical case is Ante Gotovina. This Croatian general was
indicted in 2001 for crimes committed against Serbs in 1995 [Operation
Storm]. Over 100 were killed and a hundred thousand forced to leave
their homes while their houses were looted or destroyed. These crimes
were committed in the course of a military operation, undoubtedly
legitimate as such, aimed at re-taking the part of Croatian territory
which was occupied by Serb forces. The operation was a success, and
Croatians remember it as one of their finest hours. Gotovina was one
of the commanders and, quite naturally, he is revered as a hero. The
mere mention of the war crimes committed in the course of the
operation was taboo for years. . The logic was: only enemy forces
committed war crimes, defenders were innocent by definition. It is
only recently that the government has acknowledged that, yes, crimes
were committed, and those responsible for these crimes, including
Gotovina, must be tried in The Hague."
This is straightforward apologetics for ethnic cleansing, with a
number of omissions and serious misrepresentations of fact. She never
mentions that Krajina had been a UN protected area, like Srebrenica,
brazenly violated by the Croatians in 1993; nor does she mention the
May 1995 Operation Flash assault in which the Croats killed many
hundreds of Serb civilians. She doesn't mention the fact that the UN
continued to urge a negotiated settlement of the Krajina dispute,
ignored by the Croats in the massive attack of August 1995. She says
that these crimes "were committed in the course of a military
operation," but so were the Srebrenica crimes, and in fact Srebrenica
was defended (and abandoned) by a military force relatively stronger
than the Krajina Serbs had maintained. Her statement that the Krajina
operation was "legitimate" because it was "aimed at re-taking the part
of Croatian territory which was occupied by Serb forces" gives this
operation an apologetic context that involves serious lying-this was a
carefully planned campaign, not mainly to remove "Serb
forces"-relatively weak in Krajina and arguably there to defend a
civilian population against Croatian army massacres such as occurred
earlier at Medak and in Operation Flash-but to remove the Serb
civilian population that had lived in that area for centuries. This
was deliberate ethnic cleansing, but Del Ponte cannot admit the fact
in this case. Can you imagine Del Ponte saying that the Serb attack on
Srebrenica was to "remove Bosnian Muslim forces," or that the Serb
operations in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999 were to "remove KLA forces"?
Serb actions are invariably ethnic cleansing, Croatian actions of
comparable or greater anti-civilian scope are merely "military
operations," never ethnic cleansing, in accord with a clear political
agenda.
Further misrepresentations are her statement that "over 100 were
killed," and that "a hundred thousand" were "forced to leave their
homes." Just as she swallowed the inflated 8,000 for Srebrenica, so
here Del Ponte grossly underestimates the toll of the politically
inconvenient victims. The Serb human rights organization Veritas
estimated that 1,205 civilians were killed in Operation Storm; [20]
and their list of victims included 368 women and children--the Croats
didn't bus women and children to safety as did the genocidal Serbs at
Srebrenica. Operation Storm may well have involved the killing of
more Serb civilians than Bosnian Muslim civilians killed in the
Srebrenica massacre: most of the Bosnian Muslim victims were fighters,
not civilians (only one of 1,883 bodies in the graves around
Srebrenica was identified as female). [21]
As to numbers expelled, even conventional studies give a figure of
200,000 or more for those driven out of Krajina. [22] Del Ponte
strives to minimize these numbers because 250,000 civilians ethnically
cleansed is hard to explain away as merely part of a "military
operation" to deal with "Serb forces." In contrast with her usual
dramatizing of Serbian violence, Del Ponte uses gentle language in
describing Croatian actions: the 100,000 were "forced to leave their
homes," not "deported," "driven out," or "ethnically cleansed" as she
and her allies would describe comparable Serb actions. She provides no
details on the impressively ruthless Croatian actions, such as: "UN
troops watched horrified as Croat soldiers dragged the bodies of dead
Serbs along the road outside the UN compound and then pumped them full
of rounds from the AK-47s. They then crushed the bullet-ridden bodies
under the tracks of a tank." [23]
So for De Ponte this massive ethnic cleansing of civilians was
reasonably seen by Croats as "one of their finest hours," because it
was a military success, though some incidental "war crimes" were
committed; whereas she would never suggest that the Bosnian Serb
capture of the better defended Srebrenica was a creditable military
success of which Serbs might properly be proud-any such success was
unmentionable in the face of war crimes, and she berates the Serbs
because one-third allegedly don't believe war crimes were committed at
Srebrenica. She gives an apologetic context to Operation Storm to give
it legitimacy; whereas she never mentions the Srebrenica background
of Bosnian Muslim killings of Serbs that might suggest a vengeance
motive and interfere with the ideological/political premise of pure
unprovoked evil. The double standard, based in good part on
misrepresentation of the facts, is gross.
Del Ponte notes that Croatian General Ante Gotovina was indicted in
2001 for war crimes in Operation Storm, but a number of questions
arise: Why did it take six years after the event for Gotovina to be
indicted, whereas Bosnian Serb General Mladic and President Karadzic
were indicted within days of the Srebrenica massacre and before the
facts of the case could be minimally verified? Why has NATO never sent
military forces into Croatia to capture Gotovina as they have done on
several occasions in Bosnia and Serbia seeking Mladic and Karadzic?
Could this indictment have been connected to the seizure of Milosevic
and the need to give the appearance of balance? Why was Croat
President Tudjman not indicted for these war crimes, in parallel with
Milosevic (who the ICTY has striven mightily and unsuccessfully to
link to the Srebrenica massacre, whereas Tudjman's link to Operation
Storm is clear)? Why were Clinton, Albright and Holbrooke not indicted
for documentable approval and support for Operation Storm? [24]
The answers to these questions, and the key to Del Ponte's double
standard and misrepresentations, clearly rest on the fact that the
massive ethnic cleansing operation by the Croats in Krajina was
carried out with U.S. approval and logistical support, whereas the
Serbs were the targeted U.S. enemy. [25] Thus, just as NATO was exempt
by virtue of the structure, control and purpose of the ICTY, so also
are the leaders of client states, though a few bones like Gotovina may
be thrown (belatedly, and with lackadaisical enforcement) to provide a
not very convincing aura of fairness.
A key theme in Del Ponte's speech was the importance of "justice" for
bringing reconciliation to the area. The guilty must be brought to
trial and punished; the victims and/or their heirs must feel that
justice has been done to their victimizers in order to be reconciled
and ready for peace. This principle is not applied in cases like
Indonesia in East Timor, where a U.S. and British ally engaged in mass
murder; and of course it would never even be thought of where the
United States and its British ally committed aggression and killed
large numbers of civilians, as in Iraq.
It has also not really been applied by the ICTY in its work in the
ex-Yugoslavia, where the ICTY's selective "justice" has shown its true
face as vengeance and a cover for political ends. Ethnic cleansing in
Bosnia was by no means one-sided, and deaths by nationality were not
far off from population proportionality; [26] the Serbs claim and have
documented thousands of deaths at the hands of the Bosnian Muslims and
their imported Mujahedeen cadres, and by the Croatians, and they have
their own group examining and trying to identify bodies at an
estimated 73 mass graves. [27] This victimization has hardly been
noticed by the Western media or ICTY -- the distinguished Yugoslav
forensic expert Dr. Zoran Stankovic observed back in 1996 that "the
fact that his team had previously identified the bodies of 1,000
Bosnian Serbs in the [Srebrenica] region had not interested prosecutor
Richard Goldstone." [28] Instead, there is a steady refrain about the
Serbs tendency to whine, whereas Bosnian Muslim complaints are taken
as those of true victims and are never designated whining. Thus the
question never arises for Del Ponte and her allies (including the
Western media)--if "justice" is required for "reconciliation," what is
to reconcile the victims and heirs of the thousands of Serb victims
of the ethnic cleansing wars, such as the thousand or more killed and
250,000 expelled from Croatian Krajina, if their claims are ignored?
Won't they be even more embittered by a one-sided pursuit of justice?
Apart from this double standard on the need for justice as a means for
producing reconciliation, the claim that ICTY justice will serve that
end is fraudulent anyway. Rather than producing reconciliation the
steady focus on Srebrenica victims and killers has made for more
intense hatred and nationalism on the part of those supposedly
obtaining justice, just as the Kosovo war and its violence exacerbated
hatred and tensions there and showed that Clinton's claimed objective
of a tolerant multi-ethnic Kosovo was a fraud. In Kosovo, this
one-sided propaganda and NATO control has unleashed serious and
unremitting anti-Serb (along with anti-Roma, anti-Turk,
anti-dissident-Albanian) violence, helped along by the willingness of
the NATO authorities to look the other way as their allies -- the
purported victims -- take their revenge and pursue their long-standing
aim of ethnic purification.
In Bosnia, a British foreign office proposal to use the tenth
anniversary commemoration of the Srebrenica massacre for a
"statesmanlike initiative" of public reconciliation among the
different groups reportedly received short shrift from Bosnian
representatives on all sides. [29] David Chandler points out that
"the international community's focus on the war has given succour to
the most reactionary and backward political forces in Bosnia," and
that "those most socially excluded from Bosnian life have been able to
dictate the political agenda and oppose the politics of
reconciliation, because their social weight has been artificially
reinforced by the international dominance over the politics of this
tiny state. Without political, social and economic dependency on
external actors that are legitimized by the idea of Bosnian
victimhood, it is unlikely that the war would have remained so central
in Bosnian life." [30]
In both Bosnia and Serbia, not to mention Kosovo where they are still
under assault after a major bout of ethnic cleansing, the Serbs have
been under steady attack, humiliated, and their leaders and military
personnel punished, while those who stand accused of crimes among the
Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and NATO powers, with minor exceptions suffer
no investigation or penalties and may even be portrayed as dispensers
of justice. The record strongly suggests that the objectives of the
retribution-pushers are not justice and reconciliation - - in addition
to straightforward vengeance, they are to unify and strengthen the
position of the Bosnian Muslims, to crush the Republica Srpska, and
possibly even eliminate it as an independent entity in Bosnia, to keep
Serbia disorganized, weak and dependent on the West, to provide the
basis for the formal removal of Kosovo from Serbia, and to continue to
put the U.S. and NATO attack and dismantlement of Yugoslavia in a
favorable light. The last objective requires diverting attention from
the Clinton/Bosnian Muslim role in giving al Qaeda a foothold in the
Balkans, Izetbegovic's close alliance with Osama bin Laden, his
Islamic Declaration declaring hostility to a multi-ethnic state, the
importation of 4,000 Mujahadeen to fight a holy war in Bosnia, with
active Clinton administration aid, and the KLA-al Qaeda connection. [31]
In sum, the ICTY was created by the NATO powers, not to bring either
peace or justice to Yugoslavia, but to serve the U.S. and NATO aims
there, which called for the dismantlement of Yugoslavia, the crushing
of Serbia, and the conversion of the new mini-states of the
ex-Yugoslavia into NATO-power dependencies. As the Serbs were the main
obstacle to this program, they had to be demonized, their leaders
driven from office and incarcerated, and their people humiliated and
punished. This called for an ICTY focus on "justice" (selective) that
helped demonize and provided the justification for undermining peace
settlements and making war. The ICTY has performed this service
effectively, with the help of a gullible and patriotic Western media
and intellectual class. The trial of Milosevic and continued pursuit
of Mladic and Karadzic are the final efforts of the ICTY: the latter
to justify continued pressure on the Serbs in Bosnia and Serbia and
Montenegro, the former to prove that the NATO wars were based on
justice, and both to put "humanitarian intervention" by the imperial
powers in a good light. Carla Del Ponte and the ICTY have been useful
instruments of these ends.
Notes
1.
http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/2005/speech/cdp-goldmansachs-050610-e.htm
Address at Goldman Sachs, London," Carla Del Ponte, International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, October 6, 2005.
2. Katarina Kratovac, "Five years after Milosevic, Serbs still await a
better life," (A.P.), Philadelphia Inquirer,
Oct. 5, 2005; Ian Traynor, "Nato force 'feeds Kosovo sex trade',"
Guardian, May 7, 2004; ThomasGambill on mafia takeover of Kosovo,
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/9/27/101219.shtml
3. On these objectives, see Diana Johnstone, Fools' Crusade:
Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions (Monthly Review Press: 2002),
Introduction.
4. Quoted in Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder, p. 125.
5. See Johnstone, p. 45.
6. Quoted in Mandel, p. 67.
7. Quoted in ibid., p. 126.
8. Quoted in Johnstone, p. 95.
9. Quoted in Mandel, p. 132; for compelling details, Mandel, pp. 132-146.
10. Ibid, pp. 80, 135.
11. Only in the case of Serbs has the ICTY adopted the notion of
"command responsibility" extending to the highest officials.
12. Michael Scharf, "Accounting for atrocities conference," Bard
College, Oct. 5-6, 1998:
<http://www.bard.edu/hrp/atrocities/index.htm>www.bard.edu/hrp/atrocities/index.htm;
cited in Kirsten Sellars, The Rise and Rise of Human Rights (Sutton
Publishing: 2002), p. 187.
13. The judge's handling of the Walker testimony and cross-examination
are discussed in detail in Mandel, pp. 168-173..
14. Ibid., pp. 174-5.
15. In his testimony at the Milosevic trial on Jan, 26, 2004, ICTY
investigator Dean Manning testified that 2,570 bodies had been found
in total, with only 70 identified. "Milosevic Trial Transcript," Jan.
26, 2004, pp. 31428-31437.
16. See Edward Herman,
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=74&ItemID=8244
Politics of the Srebrenica Massacre," ZNet, July 7, 2005.
17. See Mandel, pp. 155-6.
18. Michael Mandel, "The ICTY Calls It 'Genocide'." in Edward Herman
et al., Srebrenica: The Politics of War Crimes, forthcoming.
19. "The UN dossiers, with their voluminous evidence, have been given
to the Crimes Investigators (of the ICTY) on October 6, 1993. Since
then there has been nothing but silence." Cedric Thornberry, "Saving
the War Crimesa Tribunal: Bosnia Herzegovina," Foreign Policy,
September 1996.
20. See "Croatian Serb Exodus Commemorated," Agence France Press, Aug.
4, 2004; Veritas at http://www.veritas.org.yu/>www.veritas.org.yu.
21. These numbers are given in privately circulated tabulation of the
characteristics of these remains by Dr. Zoran Stankovic, a longtime UN
forensic specialist who worked extensively on the Srebrenica case.
22. Burg and Shoup give "several hundred thousands" as their estimate;
Lord David Owen, 150,000.
23. Tim Ripley, Operation Deliberate Force (Center for Defence and
Security Studies: 1999), p. 192.
24. See footnote 11.
25. On that support, see Raymond Bonner, "War Crimes Panel Finds
Croat Troops 'Cleansed' the Serbs," New York Times,
March 21, 1999.
26. See Ewa Tabeau and Jakub Bijak, "Casualties of the 1990s War in
Bosnia-Herzegovina: A Critique of Previous Estimates and the Latest
Results" (Sept. 23, 2004), Demographic Unit, Office of the Prosecutor,
ICTY, Paper Presented at The IUSSP Seminar on the Demography of
Conflict and Violence Jevnaker, Norway, 8 to 11 November 2003.
27. Slavisa Sabljic , "The Trade in Bodies in Bosnia-Herzegovina":
http://www.serbianna.com/press/010.html Joan Phillips, "Victims and
Villains in Bosnia's War," Southern Slav Journal, Spring-Summer 1992.
28. "Relations with Rest Of Former Yugoslavia: Yugoslav forensic
expert says no proof about Srebrenica mass grave," BBC Summary of
World Broadcasts, July 15, 1996.
29. David Chandler,
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CAC9B.htm>Srebrenica:
Prolonging the Wounds of War," Spiked Online, July 20, 2005
30. Ibid.
31. See Johnstone, pp. 51-64.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole
responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of
the Centre for Research on Globalization.
To become a Member of Global Research
The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at
www.globalresearch.ca grants permission to cross-post original Global
Research articles in their entirety, or any portions thereof, on
community internet sites, as long as the text & title are not
modified. The source must be acknowledged and an active URL hyperlink
address to the original CRG article must be indicated. The author's
copyright note must be displayed. For publication of Global Research
articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites,
contact: crgeditor@...
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which
has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We
are making such material available to our readers under the provisions
of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of
political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you
wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use"
you must request permission from the copyright owner.
To express your opinion on this article, join the discussion at Global
Research's News and Discussion Forum
For media inquiries: crgeditor@...
© Copyright Edward S. Herman, Global Research, 2005
The url address of this article is:
www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=1294
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2005 GlobalResearch.ca
Web site engine by Polygraphx Multimedia Copyright 2005
--- End forwarded message ---
http://www.globalresearch.ca
The Hague Tribunal: The Political Economy of Sham Justice
Carla Del Ponte Addresses Goldman Sachs on Justice and Profits
By Edward S. Herman
November 20, 2005
On October 6, 2005, Carla Del Ponte, prosecutor of the International
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), gave a talk before an
audience at Goldman Sachs in London that throws light on the role of
the ICTY as well as the character and qualities of Ms. Del Ponte and
her efforts. [1]
Speaking before this business audience, Ms. Del Ponte emphasized that
the ICTY and other UN organizations are not profit-making bodies, but
that they, and the ICTY specifically, facilitate profit-making for
others. "Preventing wars or bringing justice doesn't fill the UN or
anybody's bank accounts," she said. The private sector can't carry
out these functions. But Ms. Del Ponte claims that such services not
only save lives, reduce human suffering and destruction, they also
help bring stability: "This is where the long-term profit of the UN's
work resides. We are trying to create stable conditions so that safe
investments can take place." This will make for "a reasonably
prosperous democracyŠa factor of peace and stability in the world."
In trying to sell the ICTY to this business group as a partner or
servant of neoliberalism, Del Ponte runs into the difficulty that the
actual work of her organization has been highly destabilizing, did
not "save lives" or diminish human suffering and destruction, and that
it has left its main areas of intervention--Bosnia/Herzegovina, Serbia
and Montenegro, and Kosovo-- in a state of semi-permanent crisis and
with conditions singularly unattractive to private investment (except
for the drug and sex trades, which thrive in Kosovo). [2] On the other
hand, insofar as the ICTY contributed to the real ends sought by
Clinton, Blair, and other major NATO powers, which included helping
NATO celebrate its 50th anniversary in 1999 and showing that NATO
still had a role to play, as a U.S.-dominated organization; destroying
an independent and socialist-inclined Yugoslavia and bringing its
constituent parts into the NATO orbit of influence; and preparing the
ground for further "humanitarian interventions," [3] the ICTY could be
said to be an agent of the dominant Western powers and therefore of
neoliberalism broadly viewed.
In her opening remarks, Del Ponte says that the ICTY is tasked with
"bringing peace, security and justice," but shortly thereafter "peace"
and "security" fade out and she asserts that "our primary objective is
to bring justice." Justice ranks high, she says, because it
"contributes to the reconciliation between peoples who have been torn
apart by the wars of the nineties." Before I explain why this is a
fallacy, especially with justice perceived in the one-sided and highly
politicized fashion of Del Ponte, the ICTY and NATO, it should be
recognized that there may be a conflict between pursuing "justice" and
"peace." It is no coincidence that just as the work of the ICTY has
been associated with chronic instability in the ex-Yugoslavia, so also
its work ran parallel with both outbursts of ferocious local warfare
and closely linked Western wars of intervention in those areas, and
certainly failed to contribute to "peace." In fact, an excellent case
can be made that the ICTY's focus on "justice" was well suited to
avoiding peace, and that its very design was to facilitate war, a
dismantling of Yugoslavia, and a specific attack on Serbia.
This case is made compellingly by Michael Mandel in his How America
Gets Away With Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes
Against Humanity (Pluto Press, 2004), where he points out that the
formation of the ICTY was immediately preceded by a December 1992
speech by the U.S. State Department's Lawrence Eagleberger, who named
three top Serb leaders who needed to be brought to justice, and stated
explicitly that "the international community must begin now to think
about moving beyond the London [peace] agreement and contemplate more
aggressive actions." [4] Even before this, the United States had
sabotaged the promising Lisbon agreement of February 1992 by
encouraging Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic to withdraw and
break the plan that the Bosnian Serbs, Croats, and (previously)
Izetbegovic, had accepted. [5] Following Eagleburger's talk, in
February 1993, as Lord David Owen wrote bitterly, ""We have more or
less got a peace settlement but we have a problem. We can't get the
Muslims on board. And that's largely the fault of the Americans,
because the Muslims won't budge while they think that Washington may
come in on their side," so that in reality "the Clinton people block
it." [6] These crucial facts and informed judgments did not interfere
in the least with the established view that it was Milosevic and the
Bosnian Serbs, seeking a "Greater Serbia," that made peace unattainable.
The role of the ICTY in this peace-sabotage business was to indict
Serb leaders in order to demonize them and make them ineligible for
any peace negotiating process-in Mandel's words, the ICTY function was
to help the Americans "justify their intention to go to warŠby
branding their proposed enemies as Nazis." [7] As presiding judge
Antonio Cassese said at the time regarding Bosnian Serb leader Radovan
Karadzic, "Let us see who will sit down at the negotiating table now
with a man accused of genocide." [8] Later, in the 1998-1999 run-up to
the NATO bombing war on Yugoslavia, the ICTY turned unremitting
attention to denouncing Serbs, and as Mandel points out, its work in
this period "had nothing to do with trying and punishing criminals,
and everything to do with lending crucial credibility to NATO's
cause." [9] During the 78-day NATO bombing war, which began on March
24, 1999, the ICTY served as an aggressive public relations arm of
NATO, most dramatically in indicting Milosevic in May 1999 just as
NATO was drawing criticism for extending its bombing targets to
Serbian civilian facilities. In short, the ICTY, serving as an arm of
NATO, helped prevent peace settlements in the Bosnian conflict in
the deadly years 1992-1994, and helped justify and sustain NATO's 1999
assault on Yugoslavia.
This ICTY service was based on structural facts: the institution was
created by the NATO powers, with the United States in the lead; it was
funded heavily by these powers and closely allied NGOs (Soros's Open
Society Institute); it was staffed with NATO country personnel, often
seconded to the ICTY, and its high officials were vetted by NATO-power
leaders; and it depended on NATO for information and police service.
But this meant that NATO itself would be exempt from "justice," and
that it would be difficult to bring to justice NATO clients, even if
they committed crimes similar to or even worse than those committed by
Serbs. Mandel points out that when he presented the ICTY prosecutor
with a three volume dossier and complaint on NATO war crimes in May
1999, it took a year for the prosecutor to decide to reject this
application, without ever having made a formal investigation, whereas
in the case of the alleged Racak massacre, attributable to the Serbs,
the prosecutor declared this a war crime and rushed into action on the
very same day, based solely on information supplied her by the U.S.
representative in the scene, William Walker. [10] Of the leaders in
the Balkan wars, Clinton, Blair, Izetbegovic and Tudjman have never
been indicted by the ICTY, only Milosevic, although on the logic
applied in the Milosevic prosecution, an equal or better case could be
made for each of the exempted leaders. [11]
This highly politicized justice brought by the ICTY not only served
war rather than peace, it cannot be regarded as justice at all.
Justice that is not even-handed is deeply compromised. And if it is
clearly serving a political end and meeting an external political
agenda it is almost certain to be biased and fail to bring justice
even in dealing with politically eligible targets. If it is
politically corrupt it will do its work corruptly and bend its
supposed judicial process to meeting those same political aims. This
has been evident throughout the ICTY's operations-in the case of the
numerous indictments that met a NATO political or PR need of the
moment (e.g., the indictment of the Serb paramilitary leader Arkan in
March 1999, just as the NATO bombing commenced; Milosevic in May 1999,
just as NATO's bombing of civilian sites was creating a PR problem),
its steady resort to publicity that compromised supposed judicial
proceedings, and with endless illustrations of judicial malpractice in
the ICTY proceedings themselves.
According to Michael Scharf, an ICTY supporter, over 90 percent of the
evidence brought forward in the Milosevic trial was hearsay, [12] all
freely admitted into the record by the judge, although almost none of
it had any connection with proving orders or the sanction of war
crimes by the man on trial (and all of which could be readily
duplicated for Bosnian Muslim and Croat treatment of Serbs or U.S.
bombing attacks on the Serbian civilian infrastructure). It did,
however, set a tone in creating a moral environment of target
demonization that served NATO political aims, even if it compromised
the possibility of a fair trial.
From a steady stream of cases, the absence of judicial equity may be
illustrated by the fact that with William Walker on the stand for the
prosecution, Judge Richard May never interrupted him once as he ranged
far and wide, even covering his view of Milosevic's "general
attitude"; and although the "Racak massacre" claim was the basis of 45
charges of murder against Milosevic, and Walker was a key driver of
that claim, May gave the defendant a fixed time limit for questions
and interrupted his questioning over 60 times in the process of
preventing a serious cross-examination. Athough allowing a stream of
hearsay from prosecution witnesses, Judge May refused to permit
Milosevic to enter into the record articles from Le Monde and Figaro
that raised serious doubts about the Walker version of events at
Racak. [13]
With General Wesley Clark testifying for the prosecution, the judge
allowed the U.S. government to force a closed session and to redact
the testimony before release, he permitted Clark to talk about
anything he pleased, including ten minutes of self-adulation (without
judicial interruption), and he was permitted to phone Bill Clinton to
request a letter of support, contrary to the stated rule that no
outside communication was permitted in the midst of testimony; whereas
Milosevic was not permitted to ask questions challenging Clark's
credibility or anything not directly responsive to Clark's verbal
claims. [14] More recently, during the defense's presentation of its
case, the ICTY judge allowed the prosecution to present a video of an
alleged killing of six Bosnian Muslims back in 1995, although it had
no bearing on the ongoing questioning of the defense witness and was
presented without prior notice to the defense, which was not permitted
to question the video presentation. However, introduction of this
video did serve to dramatize claims about the Srebrenica massacre at a
time when that event was being given tenth anniversary memorial
publicity by the Western establishment.
Del Ponte states authoritatively in her Goldman Sachs talk that 8,000
Bosnian Muslims were slaughtered at Srebrenica in the "only genocide"
in Europe since World War II. The 8,000 figure was given by the Red
Cross back in July 1995 based on crude and unverified estimates of
3,000 captured by the Bosnian Serbs plus 5,000 initially claimed to be
"missing." It was very soon recognized by the Red Cross and other
observers that several thousand of the "missing" had escaped to
Bosnian Muslim lines and to Yugoslavia itself, and that several
thousand more were almost surely killed in fighting. But that 8,000
number withstood not only this needed correction, but also the fact
that fewer than 3,000 bodies were found in the Srebrenica area, [15]
with an unknown but probably large fraction killed in the savage July
1995 fighting or earlier. Belated claims of reburials lack
plausibility, and run into the problem that although Madeleine
Albright warned the Serbs that "We will be watching you," no satellite
photos have ever been displayed publicly showing digging, burying, or
trucks moving bodies. In short, the stable figure of 8,000 rests on a
propaganda need that has sustained a politically convenient
myth-inflation, supported by the combination of NATO officials, the
mainstream media, and the ICTY. [16]
Del Ponte's claim in her Goldman Sachs speech that this was a case of
"genocide" follows a pattern of ICTY findings and conclusion that
don't withstand the slightest scrutiny and even suffer from internal
contradiction. ICTY judges repeatedly stated as an established fact
that 7-8,000 Muslim men had been executed, while simultaneously
acknowledging that the evidence only "suggested" that "a majority" of
the 7-8,000 missing had not been killed in combat, [17] which yields a
number substantially lower than 7-8,000, plus uncertainty. Can you
have "genocide" in one small town? The judges suggested that pushing
the Bosnian Muslim inhabitants out of the Srebrenica area while
killing many males was itself genocide, and they essentially equated
genocide with ethnic cleansing.
The Tribunal dealt with the awkward problem of the genocide-intent
Serbs busing Bosnian Muslim women and children to safety by arguing
that they did this for public relations reasons, but as Michael Mandel
points out, failing to do some criminal act despite your desire--in
this case entirely unproven and resting on an ideological/political
premise of ICTY personnel--is called "not committing the crime." [18]
The Tribunal never asked why the genocidal Serbs failed to surround
the town before its capture to prevent thousands of males from
escaping to safety, or why the Bosnian Muslim soldiers were willing to
leave their women and children as well as many wounded comrades to the
mercies of the Serbs; and they failed to confront the fact that
10,000 mainly Muslim residents of Zvornik sought refugee from the
civil war in Serbia itself, as prosecution witness Borisav Jovic
testified.
It is notable that the ICTY has never called Operation Storm, the
August 1995 Croatian ethnic cleansing of some 250,000 Krajina Serbs,
"genocide," although in that case many women and children were killed
and the ethnic cleansing applied to a larger area and larger victim
population than in Srebrenica. It was also preceded by an earlier
series of Croatian army attacks, first on the Serbian villages of
Medak, Citluk and Divoselo in the UN- protected Krajina region back in
1993, in which a hundred or more unarmed civilians were slaughtered,
and then in the brutal ethnic cleansing trial run for Operation Storm
with "Operation Flash" carried out in Western Slavonia in May 1995
with many hundreds killed. There was no ICTY response to any of these
major death-dealing operations, even though a UN dossier was
submitted to the ICTY that described the 1993 crimes. [19]
The ICTY's extreme bias and politically-based double standard in
treating Srebrenica and Krajina is dramatically evident in Del Ponte's
discussion of the two cases before the Goldman Sachs audience. In the
Srebrenica case, she transmits without question a corrupted
interpretation of the word genocide and an inflated and unproven
number of victims, and mentions no context, such as the fact that
Srebrenica had been the base of Bosnian Muslim commander Naser Oric
who had sallied forth from 1992 into 1995 in Serb massacre and
destruction forays that left well over a thousand dead Serb civilians.
Her treatment of Operation Storm and the Krajina massacre makes an
enlightening contrast and is worth quoting at length:
"Another typical case is Ante Gotovina. This Croatian general was
indicted in 2001 for crimes committed against Serbs in 1995 [Operation
Storm]. Over 100 were killed and a hundred thousand forced to leave
their homes while their houses were looted or destroyed. These crimes
were committed in the course of a military operation, undoubtedly
legitimate as such, aimed at re-taking the part of Croatian territory
which was occupied by Serb forces. The operation was a success, and
Croatians remember it as one of their finest hours. Gotovina was one
of the commanders and, quite naturally, he is revered as a hero. The
mere mention of the war crimes committed in the course of the
operation was taboo for years. . The logic was: only enemy forces
committed war crimes, defenders were innocent by definition. It is
only recently that the government has acknowledged that, yes, crimes
were committed, and those responsible for these crimes, including
Gotovina, must be tried in The Hague."
This is straightforward apologetics for ethnic cleansing, with a
number of omissions and serious misrepresentations of fact. She never
mentions that Krajina had been a UN protected area, like Srebrenica,
brazenly violated by the Croatians in 1993; nor does she mention the
May 1995 Operation Flash assault in which the Croats killed many
hundreds of Serb civilians. She doesn't mention the fact that the UN
continued to urge a negotiated settlement of the Krajina dispute,
ignored by the Croats in the massive attack of August 1995. She says
that these crimes "were committed in the course of a military
operation," but so were the Srebrenica crimes, and in fact Srebrenica
was defended (and abandoned) by a military force relatively stronger
than the Krajina Serbs had maintained. Her statement that the Krajina
operation was "legitimate" because it was "aimed at re-taking the part
of Croatian territory which was occupied by Serb forces" gives this
operation an apologetic context that involves serious lying-this was a
carefully planned campaign, not mainly to remove "Serb
forces"-relatively weak in Krajina and arguably there to defend a
civilian population against Croatian army massacres such as occurred
earlier at Medak and in Operation Flash-but to remove the Serb
civilian population that had lived in that area for centuries. This
was deliberate ethnic cleansing, but Del Ponte cannot admit the fact
in this case. Can you imagine Del Ponte saying that the Serb attack on
Srebrenica was to "remove Bosnian Muslim forces," or that the Serb
operations in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999 were to "remove KLA forces"?
Serb actions are invariably ethnic cleansing, Croatian actions of
comparable or greater anti-civilian scope are merely "military
operations," never ethnic cleansing, in accord with a clear political
agenda.
Further misrepresentations are her statement that "over 100 were
killed," and that "a hundred thousand" were "forced to leave their
homes." Just as she swallowed the inflated 8,000 for Srebrenica, so
here Del Ponte grossly underestimates the toll of the politically
inconvenient victims. The Serb human rights organization Veritas
estimated that 1,205 civilians were killed in Operation Storm; [20]
and their list of victims included 368 women and children--the Croats
didn't bus women and children to safety as did the genocidal Serbs at
Srebrenica. Operation Storm may well have involved the killing of
more Serb civilians than Bosnian Muslim civilians killed in the
Srebrenica massacre: most of the Bosnian Muslim victims were fighters,
not civilians (only one of 1,883 bodies in the graves around
Srebrenica was identified as female). [21]
As to numbers expelled, even conventional studies give a figure of
200,000 or more for those driven out of Krajina. [22] Del Ponte
strives to minimize these numbers because 250,000 civilians ethnically
cleansed is hard to explain away as merely part of a "military
operation" to deal with "Serb forces." In contrast with her usual
dramatizing of Serbian violence, Del Ponte uses gentle language in
describing Croatian actions: the 100,000 were "forced to leave their
homes," not "deported," "driven out," or "ethnically cleansed" as she
and her allies would describe comparable Serb actions. She provides no
details on the impressively ruthless Croatian actions, such as: "UN
troops watched horrified as Croat soldiers dragged the bodies of dead
Serbs along the road outside the UN compound and then pumped them full
of rounds from the AK-47s. They then crushed the bullet-ridden bodies
under the tracks of a tank." [23]
So for De Ponte this massive ethnic cleansing of civilians was
reasonably seen by Croats as "one of their finest hours," because it
was a military success, though some incidental "war crimes" were
committed; whereas she would never suggest that the Bosnian Serb
capture of the better defended Srebrenica was a creditable military
success of which Serbs might properly be proud-any such success was
unmentionable in the face of war crimes, and she berates the Serbs
because one-third allegedly don't believe war crimes were committed at
Srebrenica. She gives an apologetic context to Operation Storm to give
it legitimacy; whereas she never mentions the Srebrenica background
of Bosnian Muslim killings of Serbs that might suggest a vengeance
motive and interfere with the ideological/political premise of pure
unprovoked evil. The double standard, based in good part on
misrepresentation of the facts, is gross.
Del Ponte notes that Croatian General Ante Gotovina was indicted in
2001 for war crimes in Operation Storm, but a number of questions
arise: Why did it take six years after the event for Gotovina to be
indicted, whereas Bosnian Serb General Mladic and President Karadzic
were indicted within days of the Srebrenica massacre and before the
facts of the case could be minimally verified? Why has NATO never sent
military forces into Croatia to capture Gotovina as they have done on
several occasions in Bosnia and Serbia seeking Mladic and Karadzic?
Could this indictment have been connected to the seizure of Milosevic
and the need to give the appearance of balance? Why was Croat
President Tudjman not indicted for these war crimes, in parallel with
Milosevic (who the ICTY has striven mightily and unsuccessfully to
link to the Srebrenica massacre, whereas Tudjman's link to Operation
Storm is clear)? Why were Clinton, Albright and Holbrooke not indicted
for documentable approval and support for Operation Storm? [24]
The answers to these questions, and the key to Del Ponte's double
standard and misrepresentations, clearly rest on the fact that the
massive ethnic cleansing operation by the Croats in Krajina was
carried out with U.S. approval and logistical support, whereas the
Serbs were the targeted U.S. enemy. [25] Thus, just as NATO was exempt
by virtue of the structure, control and purpose of the ICTY, so also
are the leaders of client states, though a few bones like Gotovina may
be thrown (belatedly, and with lackadaisical enforcement) to provide a
not very convincing aura of fairness.
A key theme in Del Ponte's speech was the importance of "justice" for
bringing reconciliation to the area. The guilty must be brought to
trial and punished; the victims and/or their heirs must feel that
justice has been done to their victimizers in order to be reconciled
and ready for peace. This principle is not applied in cases like
Indonesia in East Timor, where a U.S. and British ally engaged in mass
murder; and of course it would never even be thought of where the
United States and its British ally committed aggression and killed
large numbers of civilians, as in Iraq.
It has also not really been applied by the ICTY in its work in the
ex-Yugoslavia, where the ICTY's selective "justice" has shown its true
face as vengeance and a cover for political ends. Ethnic cleansing in
Bosnia was by no means one-sided, and deaths by nationality were not
far off from population proportionality; [26] the Serbs claim and have
documented thousands of deaths at the hands of the Bosnian Muslims and
their imported Mujahedeen cadres, and by the Croatians, and they have
their own group examining and trying to identify bodies at an
estimated 73 mass graves. [27] This victimization has hardly been
noticed by the Western media or ICTY -- the distinguished Yugoslav
forensic expert Dr. Zoran Stankovic observed back in 1996 that "the
fact that his team had previously identified the bodies of 1,000
Bosnian Serbs in the [Srebrenica] region had not interested prosecutor
Richard Goldstone." [28] Instead, there is a steady refrain about the
Serbs tendency to whine, whereas Bosnian Muslim complaints are taken
as those of true victims and are never designated whining. Thus the
question never arises for Del Ponte and her allies (including the
Western media)--if "justice" is required for "reconciliation," what is
to reconcile the victims and heirs of the thousands of Serb victims
of the ethnic cleansing wars, such as the thousand or more killed and
250,000 expelled from Croatian Krajina, if their claims are ignored?
Won't they be even more embittered by a one-sided pursuit of justice?
Apart from this double standard on the need for justice as a means for
producing reconciliation, the claim that ICTY justice will serve that
end is fraudulent anyway. Rather than producing reconciliation the
steady focus on Srebrenica victims and killers has made for more
intense hatred and nationalism on the part of those supposedly
obtaining justice, just as the Kosovo war and its violence exacerbated
hatred and tensions there and showed that Clinton's claimed objective
of a tolerant multi-ethnic Kosovo was a fraud. In Kosovo, this
one-sided propaganda and NATO control has unleashed serious and
unremitting anti-Serb (along with anti-Roma, anti-Turk,
anti-dissident-Albanian) violence, helped along by the willingness of
the NATO authorities to look the other way as their allies -- the
purported victims -- take their revenge and pursue their long-standing
aim of ethnic purification.
In Bosnia, a British foreign office proposal to use the tenth
anniversary commemoration of the Srebrenica massacre for a
"statesmanlike initiative" of public reconciliation among the
different groups reportedly received short shrift from Bosnian
representatives on all sides. [29] David Chandler points out that
"the international community's focus on the war has given succour to
the most reactionary and backward political forces in Bosnia," and
that "those most socially excluded from Bosnian life have been able to
dictate the political agenda and oppose the politics of
reconciliation, because their social weight has been artificially
reinforced by the international dominance over the politics of this
tiny state. Without political, social and economic dependency on
external actors that are legitimized by the idea of Bosnian
victimhood, it is unlikely that the war would have remained so central
in Bosnian life." [30]
In both Bosnia and Serbia, not to mention Kosovo where they are still
under assault after a major bout of ethnic cleansing, the Serbs have
been under steady attack, humiliated, and their leaders and military
personnel punished, while those who stand accused of crimes among the
Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and NATO powers, with minor exceptions suffer
no investigation or penalties and may even be portrayed as dispensers
of justice. The record strongly suggests that the objectives of the
retribution-pushers are not justice and reconciliation - - in addition
to straightforward vengeance, they are to unify and strengthen the
position of the Bosnian Muslims, to crush the Republica Srpska, and
possibly even eliminate it as an independent entity in Bosnia, to keep
Serbia disorganized, weak and dependent on the West, to provide the
basis for the formal removal of Kosovo from Serbia, and to continue to
put the U.S. and NATO attack and dismantlement of Yugoslavia in a
favorable light. The last objective requires diverting attention from
the Clinton/Bosnian Muslim role in giving al Qaeda a foothold in the
Balkans, Izetbegovic's close alliance with Osama bin Laden, his
Islamic Declaration declaring hostility to a multi-ethnic state, the
importation of 4,000 Mujahadeen to fight a holy war in Bosnia, with
active Clinton administration aid, and the KLA-al Qaeda connection. [31]
In sum, the ICTY was created by the NATO powers, not to bring either
peace or justice to Yugoslavia, but to serve the U.S. and NATO aims
there, which called for the dismantlement of Yugoslavia, the crushing
of Serbia, and the conversion of the new mini-states of the
ex-Yugoslavia into NATO-power dependencies. As the Serbs were the main
obstacle to this program, they had to be demonized, their leaders
driven from office and incarcerated, and their people humiliated and
punished. This called for an ICTY focus on "justice" (selective) that
helped demonize and provided the justification for undermining peace
settlements and making war. The ICTY has performed this service
effectively, with the help of a gullible and patriotic Western media
and intellectual class. The trial of Milosevic and continued pursuit
of Mladic and Karadzic are the final efforts of the ICTY: the latter
to justify continued pressure on the Serbs in Bosnia and Serbia and
Montenegro, the former to prove that the NATO wars were based on
justice, and both to put "humanitarian intervention" by the imperial
powers in a good light. Carla Del Ponte and the ICTY have been useful
instruments of these ends.
Notes
1.
http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/2005/speech/cdp-goldmansachs-050610-e.htm
Address at Goldman Sachs, London," Carla Del Ponte, International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, October 6, 2005.
2. Katarina Kratovac, "Five years after Milosevic, Serbs still await a
better life," (A.P.), Philadelphia Inquirer,
Oct. 5, 2005; Ian Traynor, "Nato force 'feeds Kosovo sex trade',"
Guardian, May 7, 2004; ThomasGambill on mafia takeover of Kosovo,
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/9/27/101219.shtml
3. On these objectives, see Diana Johnstone, Fools' Crusade:
Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions (Monthly Review Press: 2002),
Introduction.
4. Quoted in Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder, p. 125.
5. See Johnstone, p. 45.
6. Quoted in Mandel, p. 67.
7. Quoted in ibid., p. 126.
8. Quoted in Johnstone, p. 95.
9. Quoted in Mandel, p. 132; for compelling details, Mandel, pp. 132-146.
10. Ibid, pp. 80, 135.
11. Only in the case of Serbs has the ICTY adopted the notion of
"command responsibility" extending to the highest officials.
12. Michael Scharf, "Accounting for atrocities conference," Bard
College, Oct. 5-6, 1998:
<http://www.bard.edu/hrp/atrocities/index.htm>www.bard.edu/hrp/atrocities/index.htm;
cited in Kirsten Sellars, The Rise and Rise of Human Rights (Sutton
Publishing: 2002), p. 187.
13. The judge's handling of the Walker testimony and cross-examination
are discussed in detail in Mandel, pp. 168-173..
14. Ibid., pp. 174-5.
15. In his testimony at the Milosevic trial on Jan, 26, 2004, ICTY
investigator Dean Manning testified that 2,570 bodies had been found
in total, with only 70 identified. "Milosevic Trial Transcript," Jan.
26, 2004, pp. 31428-31437.
16. See Edward Herman,
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=74&ItemID=8244
Politics of the Srebrenica Massacre," ZNet, July 7, 2005.
17. See Mandel, pp. 155-6.
18. Michael Mandel, "The ICTY Calls It 'Genocide'." in Edward Herman
et al., Srebrenica: The Politics of War Crimes, forthcoming.
19. "The UN dossiers, with their voluminous evidence, have been given
to the Crimes Investigators (of the ICTY) on October 6, 1993. Since
then there has been nothing but silence." Cedric Thornberry, "Saving
the War Crimesa Tribunal: Bosnia Herzegovina," Foreign Policy,
September 1996.
20. See "Croatian Serb Exodus Commemorated," Agence France Press, Aug.
4, 2004; Veritas at http://www.veritas.org.yu/>www.veritas.org.yu.
21. These numbers are given in privately circulated tabulation of the
characteristics of these remains by Dr. Zoran Stankovic, a longtime UN
forensic specialist who worked extensively on the Srebrenica case.
22. Burg and Shoup give "several hundred thousands" as their estimate;
Lord David Owen, 150,000.
23. Tim Ripley, Operation Deliberate Force (Center for Defence and
Security Studies: 1999), p. 192.
24. See footnote 11.
25. On that support, see Raymond Bonner, "War Crimes Panel Finds
Croat Troops 'Cleansed' the Serbs," New York Times,
March 21, 1999.
26. See Ewa Tabeau and Jakub Bijak, "Casualties of the 1990s War in
Bosnia-Herzegovina: A Critique of Previous Estimates and the Latest
Results" (Sept. 23, 2004), Demographic Unit, Office of the Prosecutor,
ICTY, Paper Presented at The IUSSP Seminar on the Demography of
Conflict and Violence Jevnaker, Norway, 8 to 11 November 2003.
27. Slavisa Sabljic , "The Trade in Bodies in Bosnia-Herzegovina":
http://www.serbianna.com/press/010.html Joan Phillips, "Victims and
Villains in Bosnia's War," Southern Slav Journal, Spring-Summer 1992.
28. "Relations with Rest Of Former Yugoslavia: Yugoslav forensic
expert says no proof about Srebrenica mass grave," BBC Summary of
World Broadcasts, July 15, 1996.
29. David Chandler,
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CAC9B.htm>Srebrenica:
Prolonging the Wounds of War," Spiked Online, July 20, 2005
30. Ibid.
31. See Johnstone, pp. 51-64.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole
responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of
the Centre for Research on Globalization.
To become a Member of Global Research
The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at
www.globalresearch.ca grants permission to cross-post original Global
Research articles in their entirety, or any portions thereof, on
community internet sites, as long as the text & title are not
modified. The source must be acknowledged and an active URL hyperlink
address to the original CRG article must be indicated. The author's
copyright note must be displayed. For publication of Global Research
articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites,
contact: crgeditor@...
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which
has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We
are making such material available to our readers under the provisions
of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of
political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you
wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use"
you must request permission from the copyright owner.
To express your opinion on this article, join the discussion at Global
Research's News and Discussion Forum
For media inquiries: crgeditor@...
© Copyright Edward S. Herman, Global Research, 2005
The url address of this article is:
www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=1294
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2005 GlobalResearch.ca
Web site engine by Polygraphx Multimedia Copyright 2005
--- End forwarded message ---
(francais / italiano)
Il "dovere di ingerenza", nuova veste dell'espansionismo
Aprendo la tavola rotonda sull'ingerenza umanitaria alla conferenza
Axis for Peace 2005, il professor Jean Bricmont ha sottolineato che
l'imperativo morale a cui le opinioni pubbliche europee occidentali si
sottomettono non è che un'ingiunzione degli strumenti di
comunicazione, indirizzata a far loro accettare l'espansione
dell'egemonia. Per una comprensione lucida di questi conflitti,
occorre operare un'astrazione dei presupposti morali e ritornare ad
un'analisi politica dei fatti.
di Jean Bricmont
(fonte: www.resistenze.org)
Una delle caratteristiche dei discorsi politici, da destra a sinistra,
è che essi oggi sono interamente dominati da ciò che si potrebbe
chiamare l'imperativo dell'ingerenza. Noi siamo costantemente chiamati
a difendere i diritti di minoranze oppresse in paesi lontani (Cecenia,
Tibet, Kosovo, Kurdistan), a proposito dei quali non conosciamo poi
granché, a protestare contro le violazioni dei diritti umani a Cuba,
in Cina, o nel Sudan, a esigere l'abolizione della pena di morte negli
Stati Uniti, o a denunciare la persecuzione delle donne musulmane. Il
diritto di ingerenza non solo è generalmente ammesso, ma si è spesso
trasformato in "dovere di ingerenza".
Ci viene assicurato che è urgente creare tribunali internazionali, per
giudicare crimini diversi commessi all'interno di Stati-nazione. Si
suppone che il mondo sia diventato un villaggio globale e che nulla di
ciò che vi accade debba lasciarci indifferenti. La saggezza di coloro
che pretendono di "coltivare il proprio giardino" passa per
anacronistico e reazionario. La sinistra eccelle in questo discorso
ancor più della destra, accusata a sua volta di egoismo, e pensa così
di continuare la grande tradizione di internazionalismo del movimento
operaio e della solidarietà ai tempi della guerra di Spagna o delle
lotte anticoloniali. Per altro, la sinistra attuale insiste sul fatto
che in particolare non bisogna "ripetere gli errori del passato",
astenendosi dal denunciare i regimi che si oppongono all'Occidente,
come fecero la sinistra "stalinista" in merito all'Unione Sovietica e
certi intellettuali "terzomondisti" di fronte alla Cambogia dell'epoca
dei Khmer rossi o ad altri regimi usciti dalla decolonizzazione.
In conseguenza di tale situazione, i movimenti pacifisti non sono che
l'ombra di ciò che rappresentarono ad esempio al momento della crisi
dei missili negli anni '80, e il movimento terzomondista è
praticamente scomparso. Non si è manifestata praticamente opposizione
alla guerra alla Jugoslavia nel 1999, che fu la guerra "umanitaria"
per eccellenza, è molto poca opposizione vi è stata al tempo
dell'invasione dell'Afghanistan nel 2001. E' vero che ci sono state
manifestazioni gigantesche, uniche nella storia e portatrici di
speranze, contro la guerra in Iraq. Ma bisogna riconoscere che, con la
proclamazione della vittoria da parte dell'amministrazione Bush, le
opinioni pubbliche, almeno in Occidente, sono state relativamente
mute, sebbene in Iraq continuino combattimenti che non sono certamente
di retroguardia.
Inoltre, Fallujah è stata una Guernica senza Picasso. Una città di
300.000 anime privata dell'acqua, dell'elettricità e dei viveri,
sgombrata dei suoi abitanti che sono stati in seguito parcheggiati in
campi. Poi il bombardamento metodico, la ripresa della città,
quartiere per quartiere. Quando un ospedale è occupato, il New York
Times giustifica l'accaduto dicendo che serviva da centro di
propaganda, per gonfiare le cifre delle vittime. Per l'appunto, quante
sono le vittime della guerra in Iraq? Non se ne sa nulla, non si fanno
body count (per gli Iracheni). Quando delle stime sono pubblicate,
persino dalle più prestigiose riviste scientifiche, come Lancet,
vengono denunciate come esagerate.
Di fronte a quanto accade, quante proteste? Quante manifestazioni
davanti alle ambasciate americane? Quante petizioni per chiedere ai
nostri governi che impongano agli Stati Uniti di fermarsi? Quanti
editoriali nei giornali per denunciare questi crimini? Chi, tra i
partigiani della "società civile" e della non violenza, ricorda che le
sventure di Fallujah sono cominciate quando, poco dopo l'invasione, i
suoi abitanti hanno manifestato pacificamente e gli statunitensi hanno
sparato sulla folla, uccidendo 16 persone? E non c'è solo Fallujah: ci
sono anche, tra altri, Najaf, Al Kaim, Haditha, Samarra, Bakouba, Hit,
Bouhriz. Il tribunale di Bruxelles, un tribunale di opinione che
esamina i crimini statunitensi in Iraq e di cui fa parte l'autore,
riceve frequentemente informazioni su sparizioni e assassini in Iraq.
Ma a chi trasmettere queste informazioni? A chi interessano?
Questa doppia constatazione dell'onnipresenza dell'ideologia
dell'ingerenza da una parte e della debolezza dell'opposizione alle
guerre imperiali dall'altra, ci induce a rivolgere uno sguardo critico
sui pregiudizi che sottendono l'ideologia dell'ingerenza e a sollevare
un certo numero di questioni che sono raramente enunciate e a cui
ancora più raramente viene data una risposta: qual è la natura
dell'agente che supponiamo operi l'ingerenza? Siccome si tratta in
pratica di paesi potenti, quali ragioni abbiamo per credere alla
sincerità dei loro proclami umanitari? Qual è l'effetto nel lungo
periodo delle ingerenze occidentali nel terzo mondo? La visione
tradizionale del diritto internazionale, che proibisce l'ingerenza
unilaterale, è veramente sorpassata? La nostra storia e il nostro modo
di sviluppo ci danno il diritto di dire agli altri paesi cosa devono
fare? Quando si parla di diritti dell'uomo, si pensa anche ai diritti
economici e sociali? Se si, questi diritti sono sempre compatibili con
i diritti politici e individuali? E se non lo sono, come stabilire le
priorità tra differenti tipi di diritti?
Per altro, si può anche porre un certo numero di domande ai movimenti
progressisti, pacifisti o ecologisti. Questi movimenti non prendono
forse troppo velocemente per oro colato le dichiarazioni dei media e
dei dirigenti occidentali? In particolare, i dirigenti del terzo mondo
demonizzati dall'Occidente sono veramente dei nuovi Hitler, nei cui
confronti qualsiasi compromesso equivarrebbe ad una nuova Monaco? La
costruzione europea offre forse una speranza d'alternativa di fronte
all'egemonia statunitense? La politica dell'ingerenza è realmente
internazionalista?
In definitiva, è possibile proporre una pratica politica diversa da
quella dell'ingerenza, fondata su una visione radicalmente differente
dei rapporti Nord-Sud e sulla volontà di rimettere la critica
dell'imperialismo al centro delle nostre preoccupazioni politiche.
Tale pratica potrebbe contribuire alla rinascita di un'opposizione
ferma e senza complessi alle aggressioni americane presenti e future.
Jean Bricmont
Figura del movimento antimperialista, Jean Bricmont è professore di
fisica teorica all'Università di Louvain (Belgio).
Ha appena pubblicato Impérialisme humanitaire. Droits de l'homme,
droit d'ingerence, droit du plus fort? (Editions Aden, 2005)
da "Reseau Voltaire", 23 novembre 2005
http://www.voltairenet.org/article131461.html
Traduzione dal francese a cura del Centro di Cultura e Documentazione
Popolare
--- FRANCAIS ---
http://www.voltairenet.org/article131461.html
Alibi humanitaire
Le « devoir d'ingérence », nouvel habit de l'expansionnisme
par Jean Bricmont*
Ouvrant la table ronde sur l'ingérence humanitaire à la conférence
Axis for Peace 2005, le professeur Jean Bricmont a souligné que
l'impératif moral auquel les opinions publiques ouest-européennes se
soumettent n'est qu'une injonction de communication pour leur faire
accepter l'expansion de l'hégémonie. Pour une compréhension lucide de
ces conflits, il convient de faire abstraction des présupposés moraux
et de revenir à une analyse politique des faits.
23 novembre 2005
Depuis Bruxelles (Belgique)
Toutes les versions de cet article :
Español - http://www.voltairenet.org/article131585.html
русский - http://www.voltairenet.org/article131621.html
Thèmes
Axis for Peace - http://www.voltairenet.org/mot120393.html?lang=fr
Une des caractéristiques du discours politique, de la droite à la
gauche, est qu'il est aujourd'hui entièrement dominé par ce qu'on
pourrait appeler l'impératif d'ingérence. Nous sommes constamment
appelés à défendre les droits des minorités opprimées dans des pays
lointains (Tchétchénie, Tibet, Kosovo, Kurdistan), à propos desquels
il faut bien reconnaître que la plupart d'entre nous ne connaissent
pas grand-chose, à protester contre les violations des droits de
l'homme à Cuba, en Chine ou au Soudan, à exiger l'abolition de la
peine de mort aux États-Unis, ou à dénoncer la persécution des femmes
musulmanes. Le droit d'ingérence humanitaire est non seulement très
généralement admis, mais il est souvent devenu un « devoir d'ingérence ».
On nous assure qu'il est urgent de créer des tribunaux internationaux
pour juger divers crimes commis à l'intérieur d'États-nations. Le
monde est supposé être devenu un village global et rien de ce qui s'y
passe ne doit nous laisser indifférent. La sagesse de ceux qui
prétendent « cultiver leur jardin » passe pour anachronique et
réactionnaire. La gauche excelle dans ce discours encore plus que la
droite, accusée alors d'égoïsme, et pense continuer ainsi la grande
tradition d'internationalisme du mouvement ouvrier et de solidarité
lors de la guerre d'Espagne ou des luttes anticoloniales. Par
ailleurs, la gauche actuelle insiste sur le fait qu'il ne faut surtout
pas « répéter les erreurs du passé » en s'abstenant de dénoncer les
régimes opposés à l'Occident, comme la gauche « stalinienne » l'a fait
dans le temps à propos de l'Union soviétique ou à l'instar de certains
intellectuels « tiers-mondistes », vis-à-vis du Cambodge à l'époque
des Khmers rouges ou d'autres régimes issus de la décolonisation.
Corrélativement à cette situation, les mouvements pacifistes ne sont
que l'ombre de ce qu'ils étaient, par exemple lors de la crise des
missiles dans les années 80, et les mouvements tiers-mondistes ont
pratiquement disparu. Il n'y eut pratiquement pas d'opposition à la
guerre à la Yougoslavie en 1999, qui fut la guerre « humanitaire » par
excellence, et très peu lors de l'invasion de l'Afghanistan en 2001.
Il est vrai qu'il y a eu des manifestations gigantesques, uniques dans
l'histoire et porteuses d'espoirs certains, contre la guerre en Irak.
Mais il faut reconnaître qu'une fois la victoire proclamée par
l'administration Bush, les opinions publiques, en Occident du moins,
sont devenues relativement muettes, alors que continuent en Irak des
combats qui sont loin d'être d'arrière-garde.
De plus, Fallujah a été un Guernica sans Picasso. Une ville de 300 000
âmes privée d'eau, d'électricité et de vivres, vidée de ses habitants
qui sont ensuite parqués dans des camps. Puis le bombardement
méthodique, la reprise de la ville, quartier par quartier. Quand un
hôpital est occupé, le New York Times justifie cela en disant qu'il
servait de centre de propagande, en gonflant le chiffre des victimes.
Justement, combien y a-t-il de victimes de la guerre en Irak ? Nul ne
le sait, on ne fait pas de body count (pour les Irakiens). Quand des
estimations sont publiées, même par les revues scientifiques les plus
réputées, telles le Lancet, elles sont dénoncées comme exagérées.
Face à cela, combien de protestations ? Combien de manifestations
devant les ambassades américaines ? Combien de pétitions pour appeler
nos gouvernements à exiger des États-Unis qu'ils arrêtent ? Combien
d'éditoriaux dans les journaux qui dénoncent ces crimes ? Qui, parmi
les partisans de la « société civile » et de la non-violence, rappelle
que les malheurs de Fallujah ont commencé lorsque, peu après
l'invasion, ses habitants ont manifesté pacifiquement et que les
États-uniens ont tiré dans la foule, tuant 16 personnes ? Il n'y a pas
que Fallujah ; il y a aussi, entre autres, Najaf, Al Kaïm, Haditha,
Samarra, Bakouba, Hit, Bouhriz. Le BRussels tribunal, un tribunal
d'opinion qui examine les crimes états-uniens en Irak et dont fait
partie l'auteur, reçoit fréquemment des informations sur des
disparitions et des assassinats en Irak. Mais à qui transmettre ces
informations ? Qui s'intéresse à cela ?
Cette double constation, l'omniprésence de l'idéologie de l'ingérence
d'une part et la faiblesse de l'opposition aux guerres impériales
d'autre part, nous amène à jeter un regard critique sur les préjugés
qui sous-tendent l'idéologie de l'ingérence et à soulever un certain
nombre de questions qui sont rarement énoncées et auxquelles il est
encore plus rarement répondu : quelle est la nature de l'agent qui est
supposer s'ingérer ? Comme il s'agit en pratique des pays puissants,
quelles raisons a-t-on de croire à la sincérité de leurs proclamations
humanitaires ? Quel est l'effet sur le long terme des ingérences
occidentales dans le tiers monde ? La vision traditionnelle du droit
international, qui interdit l'ingérence unilatérale, est-elle vraiment
dépassée ? Notre histoire et notre mode de développement nous
donnent-t-ils le droit de dire aux autres pays ce qu'ils doivent
faire ? Lorsque l'on parle de droits de l'homme, pense-t-on aussi aux
droits économiques et sociaux ? Si oui, ces droits sont-il toujours
compatibles avec les droits politiques et individuels ? Et s'ils ne le
sont pas, comment établir des priorités entre différents types de droits ?
Par ailleurs, on peut également poser un certain nombre de questions
aux mouvements progressistes, pacifistes ou écologistes. Ces
mouvements ne prennent-ils pas trop vite pour argent comptant les
déclarations des médias et des dirigeants occidentaux ? En
particulier, les dirigeants du tiers monde démonisés par l'Occident
sont-ils vraiment de nouveaux Hitler, face auxquels toute
compromission équivaudrait à un nouveau Munich ? La construction
européenne offre-t-elle un espoir d'alternative face à l'hégémonie
états-unienne ? La politique d'ingérence est-elle réellement
internationaliste ?
Finalement, on peut proposer une autre démarche politique que celle de
l'ingérence, fondée sur une vision radicalement différente des
rapports Nord-Sud et sur une volonté de remettre la critique de
l'impérialisme au centre de nos préoccupations politiques. Cette
démarche peut contribuer à la renaissance d'une opposition ferme et
sans complexe aux agressions américaines présentes et futures.
Jean Bricmont
Figure du mouvement anti-impérialiste, Jean Bricmont est professeur de
physique théorique à l'Université de Louvain (Belgique). Il vient de
publier Impérialisme humanitaire. Droits de l'homme, droit
d'ingérence, droit du plus fort ? (Éditions Aden, 2005) [
http://www.rezolibre.com/librairie/detail.php?article=98 ].
[PHOTO: Conférence Axis for Peace 2005, table ronde sur l'ingérence
humanitaire
Nedal Al-Khodari, Jean Bricmont, Diana Johnstone et François Houtard]
Il "dovere di ingerenza", nuova veste dell'espansionismo
Aprendo la tavola rotonda sull'ingerenza umanitaria alla conferenza
Axis for Peace 2005, il professor Jean Bricmont ha sottolineato che
l'imperativo morale a cui le opinioni pubbliche europee occidentali si
sottomettono non è che un'ingiunzione degli strumenti di
comunicazione, indirizzata a far loro accettare l'espansione
dell'egemonia. Per una comprensione lucida di questi conflitti,
occorre operare un'astrazione dei presupposti morali e ritornare ad
un'analisi politica dei fatti.
di Jean Bricmont
(fonte: www.resistenze.org)
Una delle caratteristiche dei discorsi politici, da destra a sinistra,
è che essi oggi sono interamente dominati da ciò che si potrebbe
chiamare l'imperativo dell'ingerenza. Noi siamo costantemente chiamati
a difendere i diritti di minoranze oppresse in paesi lontani (Cecenia,
Tibet, Kosovo, Kurdistan), a proposito dei quali non conosciamo poi
granché, a protestare contro le violazioni dei diritti umani a Cuba,
in Cina, o nel Sudan, a esigere l'abolizione della pena di morte negli
Stati Uniti, o a denunciare la persecuzione delle donne musulmane. Il
diritto di ingerenza non solo è generalmente ammesso, ma si è spesso
trasformato in "dovere di ingerenza".
Ci viene assicurato che è urgente creare tribunali internazionali, per
giudicare crimini diversi commessi all'interno di Stati-nazione. Si
suppone che il mondo sia diventato un villaggio globale e che nulla di
ciò che vi accade debba lasciarci indifferenti. La saggezza di coloro
che pretendono di "coltivare il proprio giardino" passa per
anacronistico e reazionario. La sinistra eccelle in questo discorso
ancor più della destra, accusata a sua volta di egoismo, e pensa così
di continuare la grande tradizione di internazionalismo del movimento
operaio e della solidarietà ai tempi della guerra di Spagna o delle
lotte anticoloniali. Per altro, la sinistra attuale insiste sul fatto
che in particolare non bisogna "ripetere gli errori del passato",
astenendosi dal denunciare i regimi che si oppongono all'Occidente,
come fecero la sinistra "stalinista" in merito all'Unione Sovietica e
certi intellettuali "terzomondisti" di fronte alla Cambogia dell'epoca
dei Khmer rossi o ad altri regimi usciti dalla decolonizzazione.
In conseguenza di tale situazione, i movimenti pacifisti non sono che
l'ombra di ciò che rappresentarono ad esempio al momento della crisi
dei missili negli anni '80, e il movimento terzomondista è
praticamente scomparso. Non si è manifestata praticamente opposizione
alla guerra alla Jugoslavia nel 1999, che fu la guerra "umanitaria"
per eccellenza, è molto poca opposizione vi è stata al tempo
dell'invasione dell'Afghanistan nel 2001. E' vero che ci sono state
manifestazioni gigantesche, uniche nella storia e portatrici di
speranze, contro la guerra in Iraq. Ma bisogna riconoscere che, con la
proclamazione della vittoria da parte dell'amministrazione Bush, le
opinioni pubbliche, almeno in Occidente, sono state relativamente
mute, sebbene in Iraq continuino combattimenti che non sono certamente
di retroguardia.
Inoltre, Fallujah è stata una Guernica senza Picasso. Una città di
300.000 anime privata dell'acqua, dell'elettricità e dei viveri,
sgombrata dei suoi abitanti che sono stati in seguito parcheggiati in
campi. Poi il bombardamento metodico, la ripresa della città,
quartiere per quartiere. Quando un ospedale è occupato, il New York
Times giustifica l'accaduto dicendo che serviva da centro di
propaganda, per gonfiare le cifre delle vittime. Per l'appunto, quante
sono le vittime della guerra in Iraq? Non se ne sa nulla, non si fanno
body count (per gli Iracheni). Quando delle stime sono pubblicate,
persino dalle più prestigiose riviste scientifiche, come Lancet,
vengono denunciate come esagerate.
Di fronte a quanto accade, quante proteste? Quante manifestazioni
davanti alle ambasciate americane? Quante petizioni per chiedere ai
nostri governi che impongano agli Stati Uniti di fermarsi? Quanti
editoriali nei giornali per denunciare questi crimini? Chi, tra i
partigiani della "società civile" e della non violenza, ricorda che le
sventure di Fallujah sono cominciate quando, poco dopo l'invasione, i
suoi abitanti hanno manifestato pacificamente e gli statunitensi hanno
sparato sulla folla, uccidendo 16 persone? E non c'è solo Fallujah: ci
sono anche, tra altri, Najaf, Al Kaim, Haditha, Samarra, Bakouba, Hit,
Bouhriz. Il tribunale di Bruxelles, un tribunale di opinione che
esamina i crimini statunitensi in Iraq e di cui fa parte l'autore,
riceve frequentemente informazioni su sparizioni e assassini in Iraq.
Ma a chi trasmettere queste informazioni? A chi interessano?
Questa doppia constatazione dell'onnipresenza dell'ideologia
dell'ingerenza da una parte e della debolezza dell'opposizione alle
guerre imperiali dall'altra, ci induce a rivolgere uno sguardo critico
sui pregiudizi che sottendono l'ideologia dell'ingerenza e a sollevare
un certo numero di questioni che sono raramente enunciate e a cui
ancora più raramente viene data una risposta: qual è la natura
dell'agente che supponiamo operi l'ingerenza? Siccome si tratta in
pratica di paesi potenti, quali ragioni abbiamo per credere alla
sincerità dei loro proclami umanitari? Qual è l'effetto nel lungo
periodo delle ingerenze occidentali nel terzo mondo? La visione
tradizionale del diritto internazionale, che proibisce l'ingerenza
unilaterale, è veramente sorpassata? La nostra storia e il nostro modo
di sviluppo ci danno il diritto di dire agli altri paesi cosa devono
fare? Quando si parla di diritti dell'uomo, si pensa anche ai diritti
economici e sociali? Se si, questi diritti sono sempre compatibili con
i diritti politici e individuali? E se non lo sono, come stabilire le
priorità tra differenti tipi di diritti?
Per altro, si può anche porre un certo numero di domande ai movimenti
progressisti, pacifisti o ecologisti. Questi movimenti non prendono
forse troppo velocemente per oro colato le dichiarazioni dei media e
dei dirigenti occidentali? In particolare, i dirigenti del terzo mondo
demonizzati dall'Occidente sono veramente dei nuovi Hitler, nei cui
confronti qualsiasi compromesso equivarrebbe ad una nuova Monaco? La
costruzione europea offre forse una speranza d'alternativa di fronte
all'egemonia statunitense? La politica dell'ingerenza è realmente
internazionalista?
In definitiva, è possibile proporre una pratica politica diversa da
quella dell'ingerenza, fondata su una visione radicalmente differente
dei rapporti Nord-Sud e sulla volontà di rimettere la critica
dell'imperialismo al centro delle nostre preoccupazioni politiche.
Tale pratica potrebbe contribuire alla rinascita di un'opposizione
ferma e senza complessi alle aggressioni americane presenti e future.
Jean Bricmont
Figura del movimento antimperialista, Jean Bricmont è professore di
fisica teorica all'Università di Louvain (Belgio).
Ha appena pubblicato Impérialisme humanitaire. Droits de l'homme,
droit d'ingerence, droit du plus fort? (Editions Aden, 2005)
da "Reseau Voltaire", 23 novembre 2005
http://www.voltairenet.org/article131461.html
Traduzione dal francese a cura del Centro di Cultura e Documentazione
Popolare
--- FRANCAIS ---
http://www.voltairenet.org/article131461.html
Alibi humanitaire
Le « devoir d'ingérence », nouvel habit de l'expansionnisme
par Jean Bricmont*
Ouvrant la table ronde sur l'ingérence humanitaire à la conférence
Axis for Peace 2005, le professeur Jean Bricmont a souligné que
l'impératif moral auquel les opinions publiques ouest-européennes se
soumettent n'est qu'une injonction de communication pour leur faire
accepter l'expansion de l'hégémonie. Pour une compréhension lucide de
ces conflits, il convient de faire abstraction des présupposés moraux
et de revenir à une analyse politique des faits.
23 novembre 2005
Depuis Bruxelles (Belgique)
Toutes les versions de cet article :
Español - http://www.voltairenet.org/article131585.html
русский - http://www.voltairenet.org/article131621.html
Thèmes
Axis for Peace - http://www.voltairenet.org/mot120393.html?lang=fr
Une des caractéristiques du discours politique, de la droite à la
gauche, est qu'il est aujourd'hui entièrement dominé par ce qu'on
pourrait appeler l'impératif d'ingérence. Nous sommes constamment
appelés à défendre les droits des minorités opprimées dans des pays
lointains (Tchétchénie, Tibet, Kosovo, Kurdistan), à propos desquels
il faut bien reconnaître que la plupart d'entre nous ne connaissent
pas grand-chose, à protester contre les violations des droits de
l'homme à Cuba, en Chine ou au Soudan, à exiger l'abolition de la
peine de mort aux États-Unis, ou à dénoncer la persécution des femmes
musulmanes. Le droit d'ingérence humanitaire est non seulement très
généralement admis, mais il est souvent devenu un « devoir d'ingérence ».
On nous assure qu'il est urgent de créer des tribunaux internationaux
pour juger divers crimes commis à l'intérieur d'États-nations. Le
monde est supposé être devenu un village global et rien de ce qui s'y
passe ne doit nous laisser indifférent. La sagesse de ceux qui
prétendent « cultiver leur jardin » passe pour anachronique et
réactionnaire. La gauche excelle dans ce discours encore plus que la
droite, accusée alors d'égoïsme, et pense continuer ainsi la grande
tradition d'internationalisme du mouvement ouvrier et de solidarité
lors de la guerre d'Espagne ou des luttes anticoloniales. Par
ailleurs, la gauche actuelle insiste sur le fait qu'il ne faut surtout
pas « répéter les erreurs du passé » en s'abstenant de dénoncer les
régimes opposés à l'Occident, comme la gauche « stalinienne » l'a fait
dans le temps à propos de l'Union soviétique ou à l'instar de certains
intellectuels « tiers-mondistes », vis-à-vis du Cambodge à l'époque
des Khmers rouges ou d'autres régimes issus de la décolonisation.
Corrélativement à cette situation, les mouvements pacifistes ne sont
que l'ombre de ce qu'ils étaient, par exemple lors de la crise des
missiles dans les années 80, et les mouvements tiers-mondistes ont
pratiquement disparu. Il n'y eut pratiquement pas d'opposition à la
guerre à la Yougoslavie en 1999, qui fut la guerre « humanitaire » par
excellence, et très peu lors de l'invasion de l'Afghanistan en 2001.
Il est vrai qu'il y a eu des manifestations gigantesques, uniques dans
l'histoire et porteuses d'espoirs certains, contre la guerre en Irak.
Mais il faut reconnaître qu'une fois la victoire proclamée par
l'administration Bush, les opinions publiques, en Occident du moins,
sont devenues relativement muettes, alors que continuent en Irak des
combats qui sont loin d'être d'arrière-garde.
De plus, Fallujah a été un Guernica sans Picasso. Une ville de 300 000
âmes privée d'eau, d'électricité et de vivres, vidée de ses habitants
qui sont ensuite parqués dans des camps. Puis le bombardement
méthodique, la reprise de la ville, quartier par quartier. Quand un
hôpital est occupé, le New York Times justifie cela en disant qu'il
servait de centre de propagande, en gonflant le chiffre des victimes.
Justement, combien y a-t-il de victimes de la guerre en Irak ? Nul ne
le sait, on ne fait pas de body count (pour les Irakiens). Quand des
estimations sont publiées, même par les revues scientifiques les plus
réputées, telles le Lancet, elles sont dénoncées comme exagérées.
Face à cela, combien de protestations ? Combien de manifestations
devant les ambassades américaines ? Combien de pétitions pour appeler
nos gouvernements à exiger des États-Unis qu'ils arrêtent ? Combien
d'éditoriaux dans les journaux qui dénoncent ces crimes ? Qui, parmi
les partisans de la « société civile » et de la non-violence, rappelle
que les malheurs de Fallujah ont commencé lorsque, peu après
l'invasion, ses habitants ont manifesté pacifiquement et que les
États-uniens ont tiré dans la foule, tuant 16 personnes ? Il n'y a pas
que Fallujah ; il y a aussi, entre autres, Najaf, Al Kaïm, Haditha,
Samarra, Bakouba, Hit, Bouhriz. Le BRussels tribunal, un tribunal
d'opinion qui examine les crimes états-uniens en Irak et dont fait
partie l'auteur, reçoit fréquemment des informations sur des
disparitions et des assassinats en Irak. Mais à qui transmettre ces
informations ? Qui s'intéresse à cela ?
Cette double constation, l'omniprésence de l'idéologie de l'ingérence
d'une part et la faiblesse de l'opposition aux guerres impériales
d'autre part, nous amène à jeter un regard critique sur les préjugés
qui sous-tendent l'idéologie de l'ingérence et à soulever un certain
nombre de questions qui sont rarement énoncées et auxquelles il est
encore plus rarement répondu : quelle est la nature de l'agent qui est
supposer s'ingérer ? Comme il s'agit en pratique des pays puissants,
quelles raisons a-t-on de croire à la sincérité de leurs proclamations
humanitaires ? Quel est l'effet sur le long terme des ingérences
occidentales dans le tiers monde ? La vision traditionnelle du droit
international, qui interdit l'ingérence unilatérale, est-elle vraiment
dépassée ? Notre histoire et notre mode de développement nous
donnent-t-ils le droit de dire aux autres pays ce qu'ils doivent
faire ? Lorsque l'on parle de droits de l'homme, pense-t-on aussi aux
droits économiques et sociaux ? Si oui, ces droits sont-il toujours
compatibles avec les droits politiques et individuels ? Et s'ils ne le
sont pas, comment établir des priorités entre différents types de droits ?
Par ailleurs, on peut également poser un certain nombre de questions
aux mouvements progressistes, pacifistes ou écologistes. Ces
mouvements ne prennent-ils pas trop vite pour argent comptant les
déclarations des médias et des dirigeants occidentaux ? En
particulier, les dirigeants du tiers monde démonisés par l'Occident
sont-ils vraiment de nouveaux Hitler, face auxquels toute
compromission équivaudrait à un nouveau Munich ? La construction
européenne offre-t-elle un espoir d'alternative face à l'hégémonie
états-unienne ? La politique d'ingérence est-elle réellement
internationaliste ?
Finalement, on peut proposer une autre démarche politique que celle de
l'ingérence, fondée sur une vision radicalement différente des
rapports Nord-Sud et sur une volonté de remettre la critique de
l'impérialisme au centre de nos préoccupations politiques. Cette
démarche peut contribuer à la renaissance d'une opposition ferme et
sans complexe aux agressions américaines présentes et futures.
Jean Bricmont
Figure du mouvement anti-impérialiste, Jean Bricmont est professeur de
physique théorique à l'Université de Louvain (Belgique). Il vient de
publier Impérialisme humanitaire. Droits de l'homme, droit
d'ingérence, droit du plus fort ? (Éditions Aden, 2005) [
http://www.rezolibre.com/librairie/detail.php?article=98 ].
[PHOTO: Conférence Axis for Peace 2005, table ronde sur l'ingérence
humanitaire
Nedal Al-Khodari, Jean Bricmont, Diana Johnstone et François Houtard]
