Informazione
Da: ICDSM Italia
Data: Mar 10 Feb 2004 10:51:21 Europe/Rome
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Oggetto: [icdsm-italia] Appeal of Sloboda and Milosevic family to UN
and human rights organizations
[L'Associazione SLOBODA-Liberta' (sezione belgradese dell'ICDSM) e la
famiglia di Slobodan Milosevic hanno inviato all'ONU ed alle principali
istituzioni internazionali un Memorandum intitolato: “Misure dirette
contro il solo Slobodan Milosevic prese nella prigione di Scheveningen
e dal Tribunale dell'Aia, in contravvenzione delle loro stesse regole,
garanzie e diritti"...]
SLOBODA | FREEDOM
udruzenje | association
Member of the World Peace Council
YUGOSLAV COMMITTEE FOR THE LIBERATION OF
SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC
Belgrade, Rajiceva 16,tel./fax +381 11 630 549
---
Belgrade, 09 February 2004
TO THE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS – TO ALL ITS ORGANS, AGENCIES
AND BODIES;
TO THE GOVERNMENTS AND PARLIAMENTS
OF ALL UN MEMBER STATES;
TO ORGANIZATIONS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, LAW AND PEACE;
TO POLITICAL PARTIES, MEDIA AND GENERAL PUBLIC
Freedom Association from Belgrade, acting as National Committee for the
Liberation of President Slobodan Milosevic has honour to submit to your
attention the document entitled “MEASURES TAKEN ONLY AGAINST SLOBODAN
MILOSEVIC IN THE SCHEVENINGEN PRISON AND AT THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL, IN
CONTRAVENTION OF THEIR OWN RULES, GUARANTEES AND RIGHTS” written by our
organization and by the family of President Milosevic.
For the sake of peace, human rights, legality and justice, in the name
of the International Law and democracy in the international relations,
respecting the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and other international instruments protecting human rights and
principles of judiciary and for the pure humanitarian reasons, we
expect your immediate reaction to the facts described in the document.
We call upon the UN Security Council to act now against the severe
violations of human rights performed by its subsidiary organ, ICTY. We
will welcome all reactions aiming to accelerate such a move of the
Security Council.
Please inform us about your reactions. Our contacts: phone: +381 63 88
62 301; fax: +381 11 630 549 and e-mail: slobodavk@... are 24
hours available also for obtaining additional information.
With due respect, on behalf of the Freedom Association Managing Board
Bogoljub Bjelica, President
www.wpc-in.org
www.sloboda.org.yu
www.icdsm.org
---
MEASURES TAKEN ONLY AGAINST SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC IN THE SCHEVENINGEN
PRISON AND AT THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL, IN CONTRAVENTION OF THEIR OWN RULES,
GUARANTEES AND RIGHTS
Obstructing and avoiding visits of physicians.
Banning the physicians from publishing their findings on his health
condition and on the causes of its deterioration.
Preventing the family from visiting in the duration allowed to all
other detainees (between 7 and 15 days a month) and reducing it to 3
days a month.
Refusing almost all visits of the world public figures, acquaintances,
friends, politicians etc.
Censoring and restricting visits from Yugoslavia – of friends, Party
colleagues, SLOBODA National Committee members engaged in defending
Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia.
Preventing the members of ten different national committees for the
defence of Slobodan Milosevic that have been established in the world,
as well as the members and the leadership of the International
Committee for his defence from contacting and visiting
Preventing the family from being alone with him, which is not otherwise
a practice when other detainees are concerned.
Banning the family from visiting at the time of the Serbian elections.
Banning all telephone communications before, during and after the
Serbian elections, except with the family.
Obstructing contacts and the work with lawyers.
Listening in to conversations with the lawyer.
Deliberately keeping him for many hours within the court building with
the explanation that “the transportation was being late”.
Unannounced alterations in the sequence of witnesses.
Closing the proceedings for the public during the examination of
witnesses who might compromise NATO and the Tribunal.
For nearly two years the trial is being held day in and day out. Such a
practice has never been recorded in the history of the judiciary since
it came into existence. Only as of a month ago the trial was being held
for three days a week, after the physicians had emphasized that he
cannot withstand it, but he is hardly withstanding even that effort,
because his health has been severely damaged in prison.
On account of the whole-day sojourn at the court, he has no time at all
to rest during the trial days, nor to go out and have some fresh air
and walk (exercise), nor to have regular meals.
He has no conditions for work and trial preparations either. His cell
has been swamped with trial materials, often received in the evening,
on the eve of a trial day. This excludes the possibility of a timely
and proper preparation for the trial. At the same time, such practice
is in contravention of the Tribunal’s rules.
He has been often given materials in English, although according to
their own rules each detainee has to be given materials required for
his defence in his mother tongue.
The trial materials are of such volume that he would need another 50
years to make a full use of it.
Preventing the Defence from preparing, as compared to the preparation
of the Prosecution. The preparation of the Prosecution lasted at least
4 years, he was allotted 3 months to prepare! In addition to this, the
Prosecution was being prepared by several hundreds of people, and him
alone is to prepare the Defence.
Moreover, he has been brought to The Hague by force, illegally and in
contravention of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia. The materials had been handed over to him, requiring by its
volume a multi-year labour of a large expert team, as was the case with
the Prosecution, prepared for at least 4 years with the logistic,
financial, organizational and personnel support of the governments of
NATO member states. The Prosecution’s case has been prolonged several
times, and he was allotted three months to prepare his defence alone,
in prison, without personal and telephone contacts and with no time nor
conditions for medical treatment. A large number of witnesses were
employees of the Prosecution, which is in contravention of their own
rules. Even larger number of witnesses was bribed or blackmailed
people. Without adjudication, the Tribunal reached a decision to
prevent his Party from contacting him at the time of the elections,
which is a direct interference of an institution otherwise illegitimate
with the politics and the internal affairs of a sovereign state and in
this case with its citizens’ will. Visits and contacts assessed as
unsuitable by the Tribunal are banned with no explanation, again in
contravention of their own rules. Slobodan Milosevic has been brought
to The Hague with poor health condition, and in the Scheveningen prison
it has been ignored, inadequately treated and drastically deteriorated
under the inhuman treatment (for several months, cameras and spotlights
had been constantly on in his cell) and by the lack of medical
treatment during his stay there. Nothing has been done to improve his
health condition, quite the contrary. The Tribunal banned all the
physicians, the Yugoslav as well as the Dutch ones, from publishing
their reports on his condition. Only after the physicians’ warning that
his life has been directly threatened the workload at the Tribunal
itself was reduced. For what reason such savage and inhuman measures
were taken consciously and deliberately under the auspices and in the
name of the United Nations?
For what reason his defence has been prevented so obviously and
brutally? Why ONLY he has the right to visits for just three days a
month when all other detainees at The Hague have 15 days each
month? Why the Tribunal officials have to be present ONLY at his
visits? Has the United Nations given the mandate to the Tribunal and
entitled it to interfere also with the internal Yugoslav politics and
even with the election? If The Hague Tribunal is a UN institution, is
this organization aware of the treatment given in its name to a human
being, a sick man, a former head of state? As a founder of The Hague
Tribunal, the Organization of the United Nations is directly
responsible for the operations, operating procedures and methods
applied by its institution. Therefore, it bears responsibility also for
any wrong done and harm caused by its institution to any one man and
people in general. The Organization of the United Nation is obliged to
provide public answers to these questions.
The UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva has not done much for the
protection of human rights over the past years, but while “protecting”
this heritage it has caused a lot of misfortune throughout the world.
We demand for this institution to speak out now in relation to the
illegal, inhuman treatment of Slobodan Milosevic in their own
institution. How is justice being defended by the United Nations with
publishing every word presented by the Prosecution and its
collaborators and at the same time hiding and censoring everything
coming from the Defence? Complete testimonies of the witnesses for the
Prosecution have been published, blackmailed and corrupt as a rule and
mainly untruthful individuals, and the public has been denied the
expounding of Slobodan Milosevic, a brilliant defence admired by anyone
who heard it. On this occasion we are not raising a question of the
rationale and legitimacy of The Hague Tribunal, because it has no
legitimacy, its rationale is nowadays already clear to everybody and it
will go into history as black as it is, together with all its
protagonists. We demand for the UN and the UN Commission for Human
Rights, as well as all international organizations for the protection
of human rights to react to a crime that was being perpetrated against
Slobodan Milosevic in its most brutal form, unknown to modern
civilization.
In Belgrade, 09 February 2004
SLOBODA/Freedom Association
–
National Committee for the Liberation
of President Slobodan Milosevic
and
the family of President Milosevic
---
STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM AND TRUTH ABOUT THE SERBIAN PEOPLE AND YUGOSLAVIA
IS IN THE CRUCIAL PHASE. NATO AND ITS SERVICES IN BELGRADE AND THE
HAGUE HAVE NO INTEREST TO SUPPORT IT.
SO IT TOTALLY DEPENDS ON YOU!
A SMALL TEAM OF PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC'S ASSISTANTS, WHICH IS BECOMING
INTERNATIONAL, HAS TO HAVE CONDITIONS TO WORK AT THE HAGUE IN THE TIME
OF INTENSIVE PREPARATIONS FOR THE FINAL PRESENTATION OF TRUTH AND
DURING THAT PRESENTATION.
TO DONATE, PLEASE CONTACT SLOBODA OR THE NEAREST ICDSM BRANCH, OR
find the instructions at:
http://www.sloboda.org.yu/pomoc.htm
To join or help this struggle, visit:
http://www.sloboda.org.yu/ (Sloboda/Freedom association)
http://www.icdsm.org/ (the international committee to defend Slobodan
Milosevic)
http://www.free-slobo.de/ (German section of ICDSM)
http://www.icdsm-us.org/ (US section of ICDSM)
http://www.icdsmireland.org/ (ICDSM Ireland)
http://www.wpc-in.org/ (world peace council)
http://www.geocities.com/b_antinato/ (Balkan antiNATO center)
==========================
ICDSM - Sezione Italiana
c/o GAMADI, Via L. Da Vinci 27
00043 Ciampino (Roma)
email: icdsm-italia@...
Conto Corrente Postale numero 86557006
intestato ad Adolfo Amoroso, ROMA
causale: DIFESA MILOSEVIC
Data: Mar 10 Feb 2004 10:51:21 Europe/Rome
A: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Cc: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Oggetto: [icdsm-italia] Appeal of Sloboda and Milosevic family to UN
and human rights organizations
[L'Associazione SLOBODA-Liberta' (sezione belgradese dell'ICDSM) e la
famiglia di Slobodan Milosevic hanno inviato all'ONU ed alle principali
istituzioni internazionali un Memorandum intitolato: “Misure dirette
contro il solo Slobodan Milosevic prese nella prigione di Scheveningen
e dal Tribunale dell'Aia, in contravvenzione delle loro stesse regole,
garanzie e diritti"...]
SLOBODA | FREEDOM
udruzenje | association
Member of the World Peace Council
YUGOSLAV COMMITTEE FOR THE LIBERATION OF
SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC
Belgrade, Rajiceva 16,tel./fax +381 11 630 549
---
Belgrade, 09 February 2004
TO THE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS – TO ALL ITS ORGANS, AGENCIES
AND BODIES;
TO THE GOVERNMENTS AND PARLIAMENTS
OF ALL UN MEMBER STATES;
TO ORGANIZATIONS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, LAW AND PEACE;
TO POLITICAL PARTIES, MEDIA AND GENERAL PUBLIC
Freedom Association from Belgrade, acting as National Committee for the
Liberation of President Slobodan Milosevic has honour to submit to your
attention the document entitled “MEASURES TAKEN ONLY AGAINST SLOBODAN
MILOSEVIC IN THE SCHEVENINGEN PRISON AND AT THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL, IN
CONTRAVENTION OF THEIR OWN RULES, GUARANTEES AND RIGHTS” written by our
organization and by the family of President Milosevic.
For the sake of peace, human rights, legality and justice, in the name
of the International Law and democracy in the international relations,
respecting the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and other international instruments protecting human rights and
principles of judiciary and for the pure humanitarian reasons, we
expect your immediate reaction to the facts described in the document.
We call upon the UN Security Council to act now against the severe
violations of human rights performed by its subsidiary organ, ICTY. We
will welcome all reactions aiming to accelerate such a move of the
Security Council.
Please inform us about your reactions. Our contacts: phone: +381 63 88
62 301; fax: +381 11 630 549 and e-mail: slobodavk@... are 24
hours available also for obtaining additional information.
With due respect, on behalf of the Freedom Association Managing Board
Bogoljub Bjelica, President
www.wpc-in.org
www.sloboda.org.yu
www.icdsm.org
---
MEASURES TAKEN ONLY AGAINST SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC IN THE SCHEVENINGEN
PRISON AND AT THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL, IN CONTRAVENTION OF THEIR OWN RULES,
GUARANTEES AND RIGHTS
Obstructing and avoiding visits of physicians.
Banning the physicians from publishing their findings on his health
condition and on the causes of its deterioration.
Preventing the family from visiting in the duration allowed to all
other detainees (between 7 and 15 days a month) and reducing it to 3
days a month.
Refusing almost all visits of the world public figures, acquaintances,
friends, politicians etc.
Censoring and restricting visits from Yugoslavia – of friends, Party
colleagues, SLOBODA National Committee members engaged in defending
Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia.
Preventing the members of ten different national committees for the
defence of Slobodan Milosevic that have been established in the world,
as well as the members and the leadership of the International
Committee for his defence from contacting and visiting
Preventing the family from being alone with him, which is not otherwise
a practice when other detainees are concerned.
Banning the family from visiting at the time of the Serbian elections.
Banning all telephone communications before, during and after the
Serbian elections, except with the family.
Obstructing contacts and the work with lawyers.
Listening in to conversations with the lawyer.
Deliberately keeping him for many hours within the court building with
the explanation that “the transportation was being late”.
Unannounced alterations in the sequence of witnesses.
Closing the proceedings for the public during the examination of
witnesses who might compromise NATO and the Tribunal.
For nearly two years the trial is being held day in and day out. Such a
practice has never been recorded in the history of the judiciary since
it came into existence. Only as of a month ago the trial was being held
for three days a week, after the physicians had emphasized that he
cannot withstand it, but he is hardly withstanding even that effort,
because his health has been severely damaged in prison.
On account of the whole-day sojourn at the court, he has no time at all
to rest during the trial days, nor to go out and have some fresh air
and walk (exercise), nor to have regular meals.
He has no conditions for work and trial preparations either. His cell
has been swamped with trial materials, often received in the evening,
on the eve of a trial day. This excludes the possibility of a timely
and proper preparation for the trial. At the same time, such practice
is in contravention of the Tribunal’s rules.
He has been often given materials in English, although according to
their own rules each detainee has to be given materials required for
his defence in his mother tongue.
The trial materials are of such volume that he would need another 50
years to make a full use of it.
Preventing the Defence from preparing, as compared to the preparation
of the Prosecution. The preparation of the Prosecution lasted at least
4 years, he was allotted 3 months to prepare! In addition to this, the
Prosecution was being prepared by several hundreds of people, and him
alone is to prepare the Defence.
Moreover, he has been brought to The Hague by force, illegally and in
contravention of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia. The materials had been handed over to him, requiring by its
volume a multi-year labour of a large expert team, as was the case with
the Prosecution, prepared for at least 4 years with the logistic,
financial, organizational and personnel support of the governments of
NATO member states. The Prosecution’s case has been prolonged several
times, and he was allotted three months to prepare his defence alone,
in prison, without personal and telephone contacts and with no time nor
conditions for medical treatment. A large number of witnesses were
employees of the Prosecution, which is in contravention of their own
rules. Even larger number of witnesses was bribed or blackmailed
people. Without adjudication, the Tribunal reached a decision to
prevent his Party from contacting him at the time of the elections,
which is a direct interference of an institution otherwise illegitimate
with the politics and the internal affairs of a sovereign state and in
this case with its citizens’ will. Visits and contacts assessed as
unsuitable by the Tribunal are banned with no explanation, again in
contravention of their own rules. Slobodan Milosevic has been brought
to The Hague with poor health condition, and in the Scheveningen prison
it has been ignored, inadequately treated and drastically deteriorated
under the inhuman treatment (for several months, cameras and spotlights
had been constantly on in his cell) and by the lack of medical
treatment during his stay there. Nothing has been done to improve his
health condition, quite the contrary. The Tribunal banned all the
physicians, the Yugoslav as well as the Dutch ones, from publishing
their reports on his condition. Only after the physicians’ warning that
his life has been directly threatened the workload at the Tribunal
itself was reduced. For what reason such savage and inhuman measures
were taken consciously and deliberately under the auspices and in the
name of the United Nations?
For what reason his defence has been prevented so obviously and
brutally? Why ONLY he has the right to visits for just three days a
month when all other detainees at The Hague have 15 days each
month? Why the Tribunal officials have to be present ONLY at his
visits? Has the United Nations given the mandate to the Tribunal and
entitled it to interfere also with the internal Yugoslav politics and
even with the election? If The Hague Tribunal is a UN institution, is
this organization aware of the treatment given in its name to a human
being, a sick man, a former head of state? As a founder of The Hague
Tribunal, the Organization of the United Nations is directly
responsible for the operations, operating procedures and methods
applied by its institution. Therefore, it bears responsibility also for
any wrong done and harm caused by its institution to any one man and
people in general. The Organization of the United Nation is obliged to
provide public answers to these questions.
The UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva has not done much for the
protection of human rights over the past years, but while “protecting”
this heritage it has caused a lot of misfortune throughout the world.
We demand for this institution to speak out now in relation to the
illegal, inhuman treatment of Slobodan Milosevic in their own
institution. How is justice being defended by the United Nations with
publishing every word presented by the Prosecution and its
collaborators and at the same time hiding and censoring everything
coming from the Defence? Complete testimonies of the witnesses for the
Prosecution have been published, blackmailed and corrupt as a rule and
mainly untruthful individuals, and the public has been denied the
expounding of Slobodan Milosevic, a brilliant defence admired by anyone
who heard it. On this occasion we are not raising a question of the
rationale and legitimacy of The Hague Tribunal, because it has no
legitimacy, its rationale is nowadays already clear to everybody and it
will go into history as black as it is, together with all its
protagonists. We demand for the UN and the UN Commission for Human
Rights, as well as all international organizations for the protection
of human rights to react to a crime that was being perpetrated against
Slobodan Milosevic in its most brutal form, unknown to modern
civilization.
In Belgrade, 09 February 2004
SLOBODA/Freedom Association
–
National Committee for the Liberation
of President Slobodan Milosevic
and
the family of President Milosevic
---
STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM AND TRUTH ABOUT THE SERBIAN PEOPLE AND YUGOSLAVIA
IS IN THE CRUCIAL PHASE. NATO AND ITS SERVICES IN BELGRADE AND THE
HAGUE HAVE NO INTEREST TO SUPPORT IT.
SO IT TOTALLY DEPENDS ON YOU!
A SMALL TEAM OF PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC'S ASSISTANTS, WHICH IS BECOMING
INTERNATIONAL, HAS TO HAVE CONDITIONS TO WORK AT THE HAGUE IN THE TIME
OF INTENSIVE PREPARATIONS FOR THE FINAL PRESENTATION OF TRUTH AND
DURING THAT PRESENTATION.
TO DONATE, PLEASE CONTACT SLOBODA OR THE NEAREST ICDSM BRANCH, OR
find the instructions at:
http://www.sloboda.org.yu/pomoc.htm
To join or help this struggle, visit:
http://www.sloboda.org.yu/ (Sloboda/Freedom association)
http://www.icdsm.org/ (the international committee to defend Slobodan
Milosevic)
http://www.free-slobo.de/ (German section of ICDSM)
http://www.icdsm-us.org/ (US section of ICDSM)
http://www.icdsmireland.org/ (ICDSM Ireland)
http://www.wpc-in.org/ (world peace council)
http://www.geocities.com/b_antinato/ (Balkan antiNATO center)
==========================
ICDSM - Sezione Italiana
c/o GAMADI, Via L. Da Vinci 27
00043 Ciampino (Roma)
email: icdsm-italia@...
Conto Corrente Postale numero 86557006
intestato ad Adolfo Amoroso, ROMA
causale: DIFESA MILOSEVIC
...RIFERENDOSI ALLA MINORANZA ITALIANA
(QUELLA SERBA E' STATA ELIMINATA NEL FRATTEMPO)
http://www.repubblica.it/news/ired/ultimora/rep_nazionale_n_608148.html
Padova, 14:01
Fini alla Croazia: rispetti le minoranze
"La Slovenia è già in Europa, la Croazia si accinge a farlo. Io mi
auguro che il governo croato sia consapevole del fatto che in Europa
rispettare le minoranze è un obbligo". Lo ha dichiarato oggi il
vicepremier Gianfranco Fini riferendosi alla minoranza italiana.
(Repubblica online, 10/2/2004)
(QUELLA SERBA E' STATA ELIMINATA NEL FRATTEMPO)
http://www.repubblica.it/news/ired/ultimora/rep_nazionale_n_608148.html
Padova, 14:01
Fini alla Croazia: rispetti le minoranze
"La Slovenia è già in Europa, la Croazia si accinge a farlo. Io mi
auguro che il governo croato sia consapevole del fatto che in Europa
rispettare le minoranze è un obbligo". Lo ha dichiarato oggi il
vicepremier Gianfranco Fini riferendosi alla minoranza italiana.
(Repubblica online, 10/2/2004)
Why do Catherine Samary and the LCR hate Yugoslavia ?
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/feb2004/balk-f09.shtml
------------------------------------------------------------------
WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : The Balkans
Correspondence on the failure of nationalism in Yugoslavia
9 February 2004
-------
Regarding your article, “Milosevic trial sets precedent: US granted
right to censor evidence”
[http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/dec2003/cens-d31.shtml%5d (31 December
2003):
I would be very grateful to Paul Mitchell if he could list the human
rights abuses by Serbia that the USA exploited as a pretext for yet
another proxy war. I was born in 1949 and all my life the USA has been
at war. Do you [portray] Izetbegovic to be a perfect democrat, as does
Catherine Samary, an expert-ignorant and journalist-actionaire of le
monde-diplomatique?
What I cannot figure out is why do the Trotskyists hate Yugoslavia? We
stood against Stalin, didn’t we? All alone! And still all alone
Milosevic stands against American nazi imperialism!
Best regards
OD
------
The United States government and its allies in NATO claimed they bombed
Yugoslavia in 1999 to prevent human right abuses. Politicians and
officials exaggerated figures of Serbian atrocities against ethnic
Albanians and compared the Kosovo civil war to the Nazi Holocaust.
US Defence Secretary William Cohen told CBS News in May 1999 that
100,000 men were missing, and “may have been murdered” and David
Scheffer, US war crimes envoy claimed that more than 225,000 ethnic
Albanian men were missing.
No sooner had the war finished then these lies began to unravel. A
press spokesman at The Hague war crimes tribunal, Paul Risley, told
reporters, “The final number of bodies uncovered will be less than
10,000 and probably more accurately determined as between two and three
thousand.”
There are many articles on the World Socialist Web Site about the lies
put out by Western governments to justify their intervention in
Yugoslavia. You will not find one that suggests “Trotskyists hate
Yugoslavia,” as your email claims. The Marxist movement does not
analyse phenomenon in moralistic terms like hatred. It has always
addressed the terrible legacy of capitalism and Stalinism
scientifically and historically in order to provide the peoples of
Yugoslavia and the Balkans with a perspective to overcome it.
Yugoslavia broke with Stalin in 1948, but its leadership never broke
with the nationalist perspective of Stalinism.
Despite the conflicts between Tito and Stalin, the Communist Party of
Yugoslavia (CPY) still upheld the anti-Marxist and
anti-internationalist perspective of national socialism that
constituted Stalin’s theory of building “socialism in one country.”
This theory was in direct opposition to the perspective of a Socialist
Federation of the Balkans that was formulated by Marxists in the
nineteenth century and developed by Leon Trotsky.
Svetozar Markovic, the founder of the Serbian socialist movement,
developed the concept of a socialist federation of the Balkans in the
1870s. The first congress of Balkan Social Democratic parties in 1910
called for a Balkan federation “to free ourselves from particularism
and narrowness; to abolish frontiers that divide peoples who are in
part identical in language and culture, in part economically bound
together; finally to sweep away forms of foreign domination both direct
and indirect that deprive the people of their right to determine their
destiny for themselves.”
In his theory of Permanent Revolution, Trotsky insisted that in
countries with a belated bourgeois development only the working class
could bring about democracy and national emancipation. Trotsky
elaborated this perspective for the Balkans saying, “The only way out
of the national and state chaos and bloody confusion of Balkan life is
a union of all the peoples of the peninsula in a single economic and
political entity, on the basis of national autonomy of the constituent
parts. Only within the framework of a single Balkan state can the Serbs
of Macedonia, the Sandjak, Serbia and Montenegro be united in a single
national-cultural community, enjoying at the same time the advantages
of a Balkan common market. Only the united Balkan peoples can give a
real rebuff to the shameless pretensions of Tsarism and European
imperialism.”
Stalin and his faction attacked this perspective by claiming that
nationalism in the Balkans was inherently revolutionary because it
rested upon the peasantry. They shifted the CPY from its earlier
proletarian internationalist position towards one that encouraged
national and ethnic separatist movements and in the process deposed the
entire CPY leadership in 1928.
Tito rose to power in the CPY and came to lead the resistance to Nazi
occupation. However, he came into conflict with the proposals to
install a popular front government in Yugoslavia as part of the
redivision of the world agreed between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin
in 1944. With the CPY-led partisans enjoying mass support, the
bourgeois representatives resigned, and in November 1945 the Federal
People’s Republic of Yugoslavia was proclaimed.
Tito started negotiations on a Balkan Federation with Bulgaria and
supported a revolutionary uprising in Greece, but this perspective was
soon abandoned under pressure from Moscow in favour of pan-Yugoslav
nationalism. The prospect that backward Yugoslavia could pursue a
self-contained socialist development in a divided Balkan region was
impossible from the start, as the Trotskyist movement recognised. It
posed the question, “The alternatives facing Yugoslavia, let alone the
Tito regime, are to capitulate either to Washington or to the
Kremlin—or to strike out on an independent road. This road can be only
that of an Independent Workers and Peasant Socialist Yugoslavia, as the
first step towards a Socialist Federation of the Balkan Nations. It can
be achieved only through an appeal to and unity with the international
working class.”
This question and the analysis made by the Trotskyist movement can be
found in The Heritage We Defend—A Contribution to the History of the
Fourth International by David North.
Faced with growing economic problems and increasing threats from
Moscow, the Tito leadership at first tried to accommodate itself to
imperialism, and later to manoeuvre between the two superpowers. In
1950 Tito’s government supported US imperialism in the Korean War and
also supported Moscow’s suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956.
When Tito died the bureaucracy increasingly turned to free market
policies with Slobodan Milosevic, a protégé of the West, setting up the
Milosevic Commission in 1987 to justify the introduction of IMF
“structural adjustment” programmes. The austerity measures sparked off
strikes and other mass protests by the Yugoslav working class. Seeking
to divert the class struggle, ex-Stalinist bureaucrats such as
Milosevic, Tudjman in Croatia and Izetbegovic in Bosnia promoted
nationalist sentiments, while seeking support from Western governments.
Despite his elevation to guarantor of the Dayton Accords that ended the
Bosnian conflict, Milosevic came into conflict with the US. Washington
had concluded that the dissolution of Yugoslavia could not proceed
whilst the Serbian ruling elite strove to preserve a unitary state in
which it played the dominant role.
This brings us to your criticism of Katharine Samary, a supporter and
election candidate for the French Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire
(LCR, Revolutionary Communist League). The origins of the LCR lie in a
split in the Fourth International in 1953, a few years after Tito split
with Stalin. Michel Pablo was a leader of the Fourth International in
the late 1940s and early 1950s who, under the difficult circumstances
facing the Marxist movement at the time, developed the theory that
Trotskyism could never win the leadership of the working class and
could only act as advisers and “left” critics of the existing social
democratic, Stalinist and petty bourgeois nationalist organisations.
The dissolution of the Trotskyist movement was prevented by the
intervention of James P. Cannon and the American Socialist Workers
Party and the publication of the “Open Letter” opposing Pablo in
November 1953, which led to the establishment of the International
Committee that today publishes the World Socialist Web Site.
The LCR and its co-thinkers in the United Secretariat have followed
Pablo’s liquidationist and demoralised course for half a century and
Samary is no exception. In 1992, just as Yugoslavia descended into
civil war the United Secretariat magazine proclaimed, “The wretched
people of Bosnia await their relief from the troops of the United
Nations.”
In her book Yugoslavia Remembered published in 1995 Samary blamed the
dissolution of Yugoslavia on its ethnic differences saying, “The
creation of a Yugoslav state should have brought an end to the rivalry
between the communities but the religious, cultural and linguistic
differences were too great to maintain peace.”
Rather than identifying the failure to establish a socialist federation
as the main lesson to be learnt from the destruction of Yugoslavia
Samary concluded, “the main lesson here is that no serious alternative
politics in this region can avoid explicit support for the right of
self determination for all the peoples of former Yugoslavia.”
During the Kosovo civil war, Samary and other LCR members sent a letter
to Le Monde declaring, “Stop the bombings, self determination for
Kosova!” It complained that “not one of the governments which have
supported the NATO air strikes are willing to wage war against the Serb
regime to impose independence for Kosova” and argued for the creation
of “a multinational police force (including Serbs and Albanians) within
the framework of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in
Europe, which would oversee the application of a transitional
agreement.”
In an interview during the Kosovo crisis with the International
Socialist Group in Britain led by Alan Thornett, Samary said, “It is
impossible to present any kind of coherent and progressive ‘solution’
at the moment. Every day brings fresh evidence of an uncontrolled
dynamic which is degrading the conditions for progressive struggles. So
we should busy ourselves with the urgent solidarity tasks, and maintain
our critical spirit in the face of all proposals for ‘action’ which
actually make the disaster worse. And, at the back of our minds, we
should continue working on a number of long-term questions which are
essential to a solution to the whole Yugoslav crisis.”
Since the civil war Bosnia and Kosovo, as the World Socialist Web Site
foresaw, have become ethnically pure statelets run as Western
protectorates and subject to local mafias. Learning nothing, Samary
merely complained to delegates at last year’s European Social Forum
that the Balkans were subject once again to the same “structural
adjustment programs” previously imposed by the IMF.
However one cannot counterpoise to Samary’s support for Bosnian and
Kosovar separatism the rosy picture you paint of little Yugoslavia
standing all alone against Stalin, still less Serbia (or even
Milosevic) standing against US imperialism. The future of the peoples
of what was Yugoslavia depends on the struggle for the socialist
federation of the Balkans in unity with the working class of Europe and
throughout the world.
Sincerely,
Paul Mitchell
See Also:
Why is NATO at war with Yugoslavia? World power, oil and gold
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/may1999/stat-m24.shtml
[24 May 1999]
How the WRP joined the NATO camp
Imperialist war in the Balkans and the decay of the petty-bourgeois left
http://www.wsws.org/polemics/1995/dec1995/balkan.shtml
[14 December 1995]
Marxism, Opportunism and the Balkan Crisis
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/apr1999/balk-m07.shtml
[7 May 1994]
The Balkans
http://www.wsws.org/sections/category/news/eu-balk.shtml
[WSWS Full Coverage]
Readers: The WSWS invites your comments. Please send e-mail.
[mailto:editor@...]
Copyright 1998-2004
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/feb2004/balk-f09.shtml
------------------------------------------------------------------
WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : The Balkans
Correspondence on the failure of nationalism in Yugoslavia
9 February 2004
-------
Regarding your article, “Milosevic trial sets precedent: US granted
right to censor evidence”
[http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/dec2003/cens-d31.shtml%5d (31 December
2003):
I would be very grateful to Paul Mitchell if he could list the human
rights abuses by Serbia that the USA exploited as a pretext for yet
another proxy war. I was born in 1949 and all my life the USA has been
at war. Do you [portray] Izetbegovic to be a perfect democrat, as does
Catherine Samary, an expert-ignorant and journalist-actionaire of le
monde-diplomatique?
What I cannot figure out is why do the Trotskyists hate Yugoslavia? We
stood against Stalin, didn’t we? All alone! And still all alone
Milosevic stands against American nazi imperialism!
Best regards
OD
------
The United States government and its allies in NATO claimed they bombed
Yugoslavia in 1999 to prevent human right abuses. Politicians and
officials exaggerated figures of Serbian atrocities against ethnic
Albanians and compared the Kosovo civil war to the Nazi Holocaust.
US Defence Secretary William Cohen told CBS News in May 1999 that
100,000 men were missing, and “may have been murdered” and David
Scheffer, US war crimes envoy claimed that more than 225,000 ethnic
Albanian men were missing.
No sooner had the war finished then these lies began to unravel. A
press spokesman at The Hague war crimes tribunal, Paul Risley, told
reporters, “The final number of bodies uncovered will be less than
10,000 and probably more accurately determined as between two and three
thousand.”
There are many articles on the World Socialist Web Site about the lies
put out by Western governments to justify their intervention in
Yugoslavia. You will not find one that suggests “Trotskyists hate
Yugoslavia,” as your email claims. The Marxist movement does not
analyse phenomenon in moralistic terms like hatred. It has always
addressed the terrible legacy of capitalism and Stalinism
scientifically and historically in order to provide the peoples of
Yugoslavia and the Balkans with a perspective to overcome it.
Yugoslavia broke with Stalin in 1948, but its leadership never broke
with the nationalist perspective of Stalinism.
Despite the conflicts between Tito and Stalin, the Communist Party of
Yugoslavia (CPY) still upheld the anti-Marxist and
anti-internationalist perspective of national socialism that
constituted Stalin’s theory of building “socialism in one country.”
This theory was in direct opposition to the perspective of a Socialist
Federation of the Balkans that was formulated by Marxists in the
nineteenth century and developed by Leon Trotsky.
Svetozar Markovic, the founder of the Serbian socialist movement,
developed the concept of a socialist federation of the Balkans in the
1870s. The first congress of Balkan Social Democratic parties in 1910
called for a Balkan federation “to free ourselves from particularism
and narrowness; to abolish frontiers that divide peoples who are in
part identical in language and culture, in part economically bound
together; finally to sweep away forms of foreign domination both direct
and indirect that deprive the people of their right to determine their
destiny for themselves.”
In his theory of Permanent Revolution, Trotsky insisted that in
countries with a belated bourgeois development only the working class
could bring about democracy and national emancipation. Trotsky
elaborated this perspective for the Balkans saying, “The only way out
of the national and state chaos and bloody confusion of Balkan life is
a union of all the peoples of the peninsula in a single economic and
political entity, on the basis of national autonomy of the constituent
parts. Only within the framework of a single Balkan state can the Serbs
of Macedonia, the Sandjak, Serbia and Montenegro be united in a single
national-cultural community, enjoying at the same time the advantages
of a Balkan common market. Only the united Balkan peoples can give a
real rebuff to the shameless pretensions of Tsarism and European
imperialism.”
Stalin and his faction attacked this perspective by claiming that
nationalism in the Balkans was inherently revolutionary because it
rested upon the peasantry. They shifted the CPY from its earlier
proletarian internationalist position towards one that encouraged
national and ethnic separatist movements and in the process deposed the
entire CPY leadership in 1928.
Tito rose to power in the CPY and came to lead the resistance to Nazi
occupation. However, he came into conflict with the proposals to
install a popular front government in Yugoslavia as part of the
redivision of the world agreed between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin
in 1944. With the CPY-led partisans enjoying mass support, the
bourgeois representatives resigned, and in November 1945 the Federal
People’s Republic of Yugoslavia was proclaimed.
Tito started negotiations on a Balkan Federation with Bulgaria and
supported a revolutionary uprising in Greece, but this perspective was
soon abandoned under pressure from Moscow in favour of pan-Yugoslav
nationalism. The prospect that backward Yugoslavia could pursue a
self-contained socialist development in a divided Balkan region was
impossible from the start, as the Trotskyist movement recognised. It
posed the question, “The alternatives facing Yugoslavia, let alone the
Tito regime, are to capitulate either to Washington or to the
Kremlin—or to strike out on an independent road. This road can be only
that of an Independent Workers and Peasant Socialist Yugoslavia, as the
first step towards a Socialist Federation of the Balkan Nations. It can
be achieved only through an appeal to and unity with the international
working class.”
This question and the analysis made by the Trotskyist movement can be
found in The Heritage We Defend—A Contribution to the History of the
Fourth International by David North.
Faced with growing economic problems and increasing threats from
Moscow, the Tito leadership at first tried to accommodate itself to
imperialism, and later to manoeuvre between the two superpowers. In
1950 Tito’s government supported US imperialism in the Korean War and
also supported Moscow’s suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956.
When Tito died the bureaucracy increasingly turned to free market
policies with Slobodan Milosevic, a protégé of the West, setting up the
Milosevic Commission in 1987 to justify the introduction of IMF
“structural adjustment” programmes. The austerity measures sparked off
strikes and other mass protests by the Yugoslav working class. Seeking
to divert the class struggle, ex-Stalinist bureaucrats such as
Milosevic, Tudjman in Croatia and Izetbegovic in Bosnia promoted
nationalist sentiments, while seeking support from Western governments.
Despite his elevation to guarantor of the Dayton Accords that ended the
Bosnian conflict, Milosevic came into conflict with the US. Washington
had concluded that the dissolution of Yugoslavia could not proceed
whilst the Serbian ruling elite strove to preserve a unitary state in
which it played the dominant role.
This brings us to your criticism of Katharine Samary, a supporter and
election candidate for the French Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire
(LCR, Revolutionary Communist League). The origins of the LCR lie in a
split in the Fourth International in 1953, a few years after Tito split
with Stalin. Michel Pablo was a leader of the Fourth International in
the late 1940s and early 1950s who, under the difficult circumstances
facing the Marxist movement at the time, developed the theory that
Trotskyism could never win the leadership of the working class and
could only act as advisers and “left” critics of the existing social
democratic, Stalinist and petty bourgeois nationalist organisations.
The dissolution of the Trotskyist movement was prevented by the
intervention of James P. Cannon and the American Socialist Workers
Party and the publication of the “Open Letter” opposing Pablo in
November 1953, which led to the establishment of the International
Committee that today publishes the World Socialist Web Site.
The LCR and its co-thinkers in the United Secretariat have followed
Pablo’s liquidationist and demoralised course for half a century and
Samary is no exception. In 1992, just as Yugoslavia descended into
civil war the United Secretariat magazine proclaimed, “The wretched
people of Bosnia await their relief from the troops of the United
Nations.”
In her book Yugoslavia Remembered published in 1995 Samary blamed the
dissolution of Yugoslavia on its ethnic differences saying, “The
creation of a Yugoslav state should have brought an end to the rivalry
between the communities but the religious, cultural and linguistic
differences were too great to maintain peace.”
Rather than identifying the failure to establish a socialist federation
as the main lesson to be learnt from the destruction of Yugoslavia
Samary concluded, “the main lesson here is that no serious alternative
politics in this region can avoid explicit support for the right of
self determination for all the peoples of former Yugoslavia.”
During the Kosovo civil war, Samary and other LCR members sent a letter
to Le Monde declaring, “Stop the bombings, self determination for
Kosova!” It complained that “not one of the governments which have
supported the NATO air strikes are willing to wage war against the Serb
regime to impose independence for Kosova” and argued for the creation
of “a multinational police force (including Serbs and Albanians) within
the framework of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in
Europe, which would oversee the application of a transitional
agreement.”
In an interview during the Kosovo crisis with the International
Socialist Group in Britain led by Alan Thornett, Samary said, “It is
impossible to present any kind of coherent and progressive ‘solution’
at the moment. Every day brings fresh evidence of an uncontrolled
dynamic which is degrading the conditions for progressive struggles. So
we should busy ourselves with the urgent solidarity tasks, and maintain
our critical spirit in the face of all proposals for ‘action’ which
actually make the disaster worse. And, at the back of our minds, we
should continue working on a number of long-term questions which are
essential to a solution to the whole Yugoslav crisis.”
Since the civil war Bosnia and Kosovo, as the World Socialist Web Site
foresaw, have become ethnically pure statelets run as Western
protectorates and subject to local mafias. Learning nothing, Samary
merely complained to delegates at last year’s European Social Forum
that the Balkans were subject once again to the same “structural
adjustment programs” previously imposed by the IMF.
However one cannot counterpoise to Samary’s support for Bosnian and
Kosovar separatism the rosy picture you paint of little Yugoslavia
standing all alone against Stalin, still less Serbia (or even
Milosevic) standing against US imperialism. The future of the peoples
of what was Yugoslavia depends on the struggle for the socialist
federation of the Balkans in unity with the working class of Europe and
throughout the world.
Sincerely,
Paul Mitchell
See Also:
Why is NATO at war with Yugoslavia? World power, oil and gold
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/may1999/stat-m24.shtml
[24 May 1999]
How the WRP joined the NATO camp
Imperialist war in the Balkans and the decay of the petty-bourgeois left
http://www.wsws.org/polemics/1995/dec1995/balkan.shtml
[14 December 1995]
Marxism, Opportunism and the Balkan Crisis
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/apr1999/balk-m07.shtml
[7 May 1994]
The Balkans
http://www.wsws.org/sections/category/news/eu-balk.shtml
[WSWS Full Coverage]
Readers: The WSWS invites your comments. Please send e-mail.
[mailto:editor@...]
Copyright 1998-2004
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved
SER i MO
http://www.exju.org/images/uploads/exju_04feb03.JPG
"Serbia e Montenegro" - ma "serimo" in serbocroato significa
"caghiamo"...
http://www.exju.org/images/uploads/exju_04feb03.JPG
"Serbia e Montenegro" - ma "serimo" in serbocroato significa
"caghiamo"...
