BONDSTEEL BASE TO BE CLOSED

CLOSE BONDSTEEL!

Rising tensions in the global relations and hot beds of old and new crisis call for unity and efforts of all peace forces for closing foreign military bases, particularly U.S. and NATO foreign military bases, around the globe. The peace forces are obligated to send clear message that U.S. and NATO foreign military bases represent the tools of hegemonism, aggression, occupation, and that as such must be closed.

    Peace and inclusive development, elimination of hunger and misery require redistribution of spending for maintence of military bases in favor of development needs, education and heath services. After the end of the Cold War the whole humanity expected stability, peace and justice in the world of equal states and nations. Such expectations, however, turned to be futile beliefs.

    In the last two decades, instead of closing U.S. and NATO military bases in Europe, the continent has been interneted by whole chain new U.S. military bases in Bulgaria, Rumania, Poland, Baltic states. As a consequence there are today more U.S. military bases in Europe than at the pick of the Cold War. Peace and security have become more fragile and quality of life jeopardized.

    This dangerous development was triggered in 1999 by NATO-US led aggression against Serbia (FR Yugoslavia). At the end of the aggression US established military base in the occupied part of the Serbian territory Kosovo and Metohija, called Bondsteel, which is one of the most expensive and the largest USA military bases, established after the Vietnam War. It was not only an illegal, but brutal act of disrespect of sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia and other basic principles of international law. Now, there is even plan to expand the base Bondsteel trabsforming it into a permanent location of American troops and a hub of U.S. military presence in South East Europe for geostrategic purposes and conmfrontations.

We demand that the Bondsteel military base be closed as well as all other U.S.  military bases in Europe and in the World. Preparations for furthering confrontation and new wars are sensless waste of money, energy and development opportunities.

    The Belgrade forum  as an integral part of the world peace movement, stands firmly by the initiative to close all  military bases in the world and redirect resources to rising development needs and people yearnings for better life.

THE BELGRADE FORUM FOR A WORLD OF EQUALS

Belgrade, January 12, 2018

Illegal Occupation Of Southern Serbia: Kosovo – Analysis

By Dr. Parasaran Rangarajan*

Serbia today is a member-State of United Nations (U.N.), after the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was split into several nations during the early 1990’s when war broke out between Serbian General Milosevic and neighboring nations. After partition, Serbia is still the most powerful “state” of the former Yugoslavia.

“Kosovo”, the term used for the territory of southern Serbia, is de-jure recognised as a “state” by over 110+ “states”, but is not a “state” itself, as per the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (1933), and is not a “state” at the U.N. where 2/3rd positive vote is required by the U.N. General Assembly for “statehood”.

Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (1933) requires that a “state” must have the “capacity to enter into relations with other states” and be a “government”. The entity of the self-termed “government of Kosovo” has neither. The “Declaration of Independence” of “Kosovo” was upheld by an “advisory opinion” at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2010, but an ICJ “advisory opinion” is not legally binding upon any member-State.

ICJ “advisory opinion” on “Kosovo” expressly states that the Court has not made any determination on whether “Kosovo” is a “state”, within the definition of international law or at the U.N., as stated in paragraphs 49-56 of the ICJ advisory opinion.

Furthermore, a “Declaration of Independence” does not mean that the entity has legal rights to exercise control over the territory it claims or even the self-termed “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”, or the Afghan Taliban’s “Declaration of Independence” would be valid for control of the nation today, since the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution to assist the Afghan Taliban in 1992, for state-building, when they were controlling Afghanistan.

Since “Kosovo” is not a “state” at the U.N. as it does not have the required 2/3rd majority diplomatic recognition, it is in direct violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Conventions (1949), Article 8 (b) (viii) of the Rome Statute (2002), as well as Article 85 (4) of the Additional Protocol I (1977) since Serbia is a “state” and “Kosovo” is conducting:

“The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory”

Therefore, the self-termed “government of Kosovo” is not a “government” for the purpose of being a “state” as per the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (1933), but an “Occupying power” of Serbia. The entity of “Kosovo” does not have the “capacity to enter into relations with other states” as only “governments” do, in most cases.

Key word here proving that “Kosovo” does not meet the qualifications for a “state” as per the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (1933), as mentioned in Article 1 is it mentions “other states”, implying that “Kosovo” must be a “state” itself to enter into relations with “other states”.

“Kosovo” is not allowed to sign any international treaties and conventions, due to the fact that an entity needs to be a “state”, so they have not even signed the Geneva Conventions (1949); one of the most basic conventions of international law, since it is based on many other conventions which preceded in relation to international humanitarian law (IHL) from the 1800’s.

Nevertheless, the entity of “Kosovo” was established by a U.N. Military Observers including the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in 1991, U.N. Transitional Administration for Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium (UNTAES), etc, which were tasked with restoring peace, as well as law and order, without hindering “political independence” in the former Yugoslavia.

The principle of “political independence” was mentioned in one of the first U.N. Peacekeeping Resolutions in 1991 for the former Yugoslavia, as the U.N. Security Council Resolution which “dispatched small group of personnel (Croatia)” stated that:

“…the people of peoples of Yugoslavia to decide upon and to construct their future Yugoslavia, in liaison with the International Committee of the Red Cross”.”

The Geneva Conventions (1949) were in large, drafted by members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which “Kosovo” is not a signatory to, as it cannot sign without “statehood”.

Since Serbia is a member-State of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and “Kosovo” is not a “state”, as per international law; Serbia may file a complaint against the “Occupying power” of “Kosovo” by a “Referral of a situation by a State Party” allowed via Article 14 of the Rome Statute (2002), referring to the “situation” of the war crime of illegal occupation of southern Serbia.

The war crime of illegal occupation is being aided and abetted, in violation of Article 25 of the Rome Statute (2002), by the military alliance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) division for “Kosovo”, also committing the “crime of aggression” since it does not have any U.N. Authorisation to be in Serbia.

This division is called “NATO-KFOR”, which is composed of mostly of United States (U.S.) Armed Forces which are to be prosecuted in an International Criminal Tribunal for the United States of America for crimes against humanity, war crimes, violations of the Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (1997), as well as other serious violations of international law in the near future, as it committed these violations on its own territory as well as territories of many other nations, and where Israel, Canada, including nations are complicit in these violations.

Despite the fact that the ICC has jurisdiction on crimes from 2002 onwards, the bombings by NATO in the 1990’s against civilian targets are not to be taken lightly and can be introduced as evidence, if it is relevant to NATO-KFOR’s war crimes in Serbia today.

Serbia also has the option of charging these individuals at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is not a criminal court to issue arrest warrants, but can issue an order for the illegal war criminals of the war criminal entity of the “government of Kosovo”, the Occupying power, to evacuate the war criminal entity of the “government of Kosovo” of what is considered Serbia for all legal purposes.

This is a comparatively easy case, since the area “Kosovo” is claiming, is still part of southern Serbia. In addition, “Kosovo” has self-admitted to committing “crimes against humanity” as part of an “ethnic cleansing” campaign of Serbians, so many of the belligerent “Kosovo Liberation Army” officials are to face trial in a European Union (E.U.) Tribunal for the same..

Self-admission of “ethnic cleansing” by “Kosovo” only leads us to the human rights violations being committed in southern Serbia today, such as the continuing of the “genocide” against Serbians since there are attacks including disappearances with “discriminatory intent” against Serbians by this war criminal entity; which Serbia can also prosecute at the ICC, as documented by human rights organisations such as Amnesty International.

“Discriminatory intent” is the main criteria distinguishing “crimes against humanity” from “genocide”, and this mens rea or mindstate is easier to prove when there is continuing occurrences of these crimes, especially if it is part of a “policy”.

The ICC is “complimentary” to other national courts, so cases can proceed against this entity at the European Courts and the ICC at the same time, for the same crimes, such as the “ethnic cleansing” against Serbians; a watered-down term for “genocide” against Serbians, for which a case can be made for, against “Kosovo”, at the ICC.

Kosovo is not depicted as a separate “state” on the U.N. World Map (Today), issued by the U.N. Secretariat, nor the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO)’s yearly “World Heritage Maps”. Since Kosovo is not a “state” under international law, “Kosovo” is an Occupying power, committing the war crime of illegal occupation against a “state”; Serbia, as per international law.

Superpower alliance of BRICS (Brasil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and most of its allies do not recognise this war criminal entity.

Despite the fact it is the prerogative of states to recognise other states, it can be argued that the “other states” that have recognised this illegal war criminal entity, have done so under false pretext, thinking it was a “state” as per the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (1933).

Once there is “knowledge”, as stated in the Rome Statute (2002), of a war crime, those who continue to supply arms or defence equipment, etc, are “aiding and abetting” those war crimes so therefore; can be held for complicity for the same crime as per Article 25 of the Rome Statute (2002).

Those who recognise “Kosovo” as a separate entity can also be held accountable under Article 25 (3) (d) (i) (ii) since recognition can be considered as an act to:

1. Be made with the aim of furthering the criminal activity or criminal purpose of the group, where such activity or purpose involves the commission of a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court;
2. Be made in the knowledge of the intention of the group to commit the crime;

The presence of NATO-KFOR in “Kosovo”, which consists of mostly U.S. Armed Forces, with the knowledge war crimes are occurring, makes the contingent complicit if it goes to trial at the ICC.

“Kosovo” is a rouge regime committing the war crime of illegal occupation can be prosecuted at the ICC, and should be brought to the attention of the public as well as the concerned, so no further recognitions or aid can be given to the war criminals; “the government of Kosovo” and “NATO-KFOR”, in the absence of any legal authorisation from the U.N. or a bi-lateral treaty with the “state”, which is required to be in southern Serbia, as per international law.

These persons will not be able to travel to any other member-State of the ICC, which is most of Europe, South America, and Africa, or they will be arrested for extradition, for prosecution at the ICC.

The E.U. insisting on Serbia recognising Kosovo as a separate “state”, as a pre-condition for membership, will have to retract this pre-condition, as it is requesting Serbia to recognise war criminals.

If this “situation” is referred to the ICC, Serbia will be able to regain its land back, hold war criminals accountable for serious violations of international human rights law against Serbians, and join the E.U. on new terms.

In the period before the 1999 NATO attack on Yugoslavia, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) waged a campaign to secede and establish an independent Kosovo dominated by Albanians and purged of every other ethnic group. In October 1998, KLA spokesman Bardhyl Mahmuti spelled the KLA’s vision: “We will never change our position. The independence of Kosovo is the only solution…We cannot live together [with Serbs]. That is excluded.”

Once NATO’s war came to an end, the KLA set about driving out of Kosovo every non-Albanian and every pro-Yugoslav Albanian it could lay its hands on. The KLA left in its wake thousands of looted and burning homes, and the dead and dying.

Two months after the end of the war, I visited Hotel Belgrade, located on Mt. Avala, a short distance outside of Belgrade. Those who had been driven from their homes in Kosovo were housed in hotels throughout Yugoslavia, and in this one lived Serbian refugees.

The moment I entered the hotel, the sense of misery overwhelmed me. Children were crying, and the rooms were packed with people. The two delegation members who accompanied me and I were shown all three floors, and the anger among the refugees was so palpable I felt I could reach out in the air and touch it. Nearly everyone here had a loved one who had been killed by the Kosovo Liberation Army. All had lost their homes and everything they owned.

Initially, many of them refused to talk with us, and one refugee demanded of me in a mocking tone, “Can you get my home back?” It was not until a while later that we discovered that due to a misunderstanding, some of the refugees thought the NATO commander of the attack on Yugoslavia, Wesley Clark, had sent us there. We were quick to correct that misapprehension, and then people were more inclined to talk with us. There was still, however, some residual reluctance based on three prior experiences these refugees had with Western visitors, all of whom had treated them with arrogance and contempt. A reporter from the Washington Post was said to have been particularly abusive and insulting.

Several refugees were too upset to talk. The eyes of one woman and her son still haunt me. I could see everything in their eyes – all that they had suffered.

We climbed the stairs to the third floor and began our interviews there. A family of seven people were crowded into the first room we stopped at. We were told that five of them slept at night on the two beds, and the other two on the floor. Goran Djordjevich told us his family left Kosovo on June 13. “We had to leave because of the bandits. They threatened to kill us, so we had to leave. The moment NATO came we knew that we would have to leave.” After having talked with Roma and pro-Yugoslav Albanian refugees on earlier occasions, his family’s story was a familiar one to us by now, in that threats from KLA soldiers had prompted a hasty departure.

“We not only had a house, but also our farm and our property,” Djordjevich continued. “We just let the cattle free and we fled. I drove the tractor from our village to Belgrade for four nights and five days. When our army withdrew and NATO came in, we followed the army. You know, the Albanian bandits were there all the time in the surrounding forest and the moment NATO advanced, they just joined them and started terrorizing us. They were shooting at us but we were the lucky ones because we were with the army; so we were safer, but the ones who left later were in jeopardy. Very soon after we left our house they came to the village and burned the whole village, razing it to the ground. They were firing and burning everything.”

One young man who appeared to be about twenty years-old would not give his name, but spoke to us in halting English. “The American leader is very bad. He killed too many children. Too many bombs. Too many old men. He’s guilty for too much death. I was in Kosovo when the American Air Force bombed and killed our children. They wanted to kill our children; not just our soldiers. They wanted to kill our people. For them it was just a game”

The young man witnessed a startling development when he encountered NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR). “When our soldiers, our boys, started to withdraw from Kosovo, KFOR came in. The first soldiers were American soldiers and German soldiers. They took the weapons from the Serbian people, and in front of our eyes, gave them to the Albanian people to kill the Serbian people. We saw that.” I asked, “You saw KFOR turning arms over to the KLA?” The youth replied, “Yes. And giving them to KLA terrorists.”

At the end of the hall, a family of eight was packed into a single room, their mattresses arranged side-by-side from one end of the room to the other. An eighty year-old man reclined on a mattress, his cane nearby. His silence conveyed an aura of deep sorrow. Mitra Dragutinovich said they left Kosovo on June 11. “We knew that the moment the army left Kosovo, then the KLA would take over. The terrorists started threatening, killing, and shooting. Many people were wounded. Our cousin is a pediatrician, and an Albanian woman came to his office with a child and took a gun from her trousers and wounded him, He lost a kidney. Pointing to the eighty year-old man, she said, “The pediatrician who was wounded is his grandson.”

A woman approached, and with rising emotion addressed us in a sharp tone. “Why did the Americans and the Germans come? Why did they come? Did they come to protect us, or did they come to massacre us, to drive us from our homes, to violate our women, and to kill our children? I can’t believe that someone who had first bombed you for three months, every day and for 24 hours, that after that he will come to protect you. I wonder how [US President] Clinton can’t be sorry for the children at least. Are there children in your country? Does he know what it means to be a child? You know, we could retaliate. We could also organize terrorist actions and kill your children in the United States. But we are people with a soul. We would never, never, do that to any American child, because we are people with a soul.”

I asked what life had been like in her village during the bombing, and she answered, “It was awful. We were frightened. We were in our country. We were on our soil. But now, we are no longer on our soil, because we are occupied down there. Whoever they are, be they Americans, British, Germans, French, let them take care of their own problems at home and we shall deal with our problems here, in our country, because this is our country.”

We returned to the first floor, where we found a small crowd gathered in the lobby. Nikola Cheko was from Velika Hocha, near Orahovac.. He had a strikingly expressive manner of speaking that I found quite moving, injecting each word with intense and sincere feeling. “We were surrounded from the very beginning of the aggression on March 24. We were surrounded by the Albanians. No electricity. No water. No bread. None of the conditions necessary for life. No one is taking care of us. KFOR: Nothing! They couldn’t care less for poor Serbs. They think we are stupid farmers; we’ll survive somehow and no one needs us, so KFOR simply forgets us. It’s a shame. It’s a shame for KFOR, for the United States, for Great Britain, for France, for Germany, for NATO, and all the big powers of the world. We are all human beings. We have the right to live. The nationality, the race and the religion are not important at all. A human being should first be a human being. A true human being is the one who is ready to help the victim in need. I think that KFOR should open its eyes and see what’s going on down there and behave according to Resolution 1244 and the documents signed by our Yugoslav representatives and the UN representatives in Kumanovo. In Kosovo, it’s not only Velika Hocha that is in trouble. There are many, many villages where people are absolutely in great need and dying. It’s high time that we become human beings and behave like human beings in the first place.”

Emotions in the room were running quite high and it took considerable prodding and encouragement to get anyone else to talk. My entreaties were met with silent rejection and it was at this point that our translator discovered that everyone thought that NATO general Wesley Clark had sent us. Once our translator cleared up that matter, the people were still disinclined to speak.

A woman in her thirties shouted out, “I don’t want to talk because no one will help. Two of my brothers have been kidnapped.” It was an opening, and I explained that the American people were unaware of what was happening, and that is why we wanted these interviews. Her name was Biljana Lazich, from Sopin, and pretty soon she began to talk more freely. “You know, we are all dressed in black [for mourning]. When Kosovo was part of Serbia and when our army was there, the KLA took my brothers prisoner. They were farmers and they were kidnapped from their homes. We didn’t hear anything from them for a whole year. My mother did everything possible and impossible, through the tracing service of the Yugoslav Red Cross and International Red Cross. The International Red Cross informed us that my brothers were alive and that they would be exchanged. It was in July last year, ten days after they had been taken prisoner.”

But nothing happened. Months passed and one day Lazich’s mother visited William Walker, who had been installed at U.S. insistence as head of the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission. The ostensible purpose of the OSCE mission was to reduce the level of conflict between the Yugoslav security forces and the KLA, but the signed agreement applied only to Yugoslavia. The KLA was not part of the agreement, and was free to run wild. Walker packed the mission with CIA agents, who were busy marking targets for the impending NATO attack and providing military training to the KLA. Shortly before departing Kosovo, they handed communications and satellite global positioning equipment to the KLA.

Walker was unresponsive to the pleas, Biljana Lazich told us, and “didn’t say anything.” He was just “beating around the bush,” and “nothing happened.”

Life during the bombing was “awful, awful,” she continued. “We were frightened, both of the bombs coming from the sky and of the KLA. Before the war and the bombing, we had good relations with our neighbors. But when the bombing started, we knew what was in store for us, because we knew the intent of the KLA. We were afraid of the KLA and we wouldn’t allow our kids to leave our houses. They were all locked inside. We didn’t allow the children to play outside at all. We were particularly afraid for the children. The situation was unbearable! We had to flee, to save the children at least.”

Lazich introduced her mother-in-law, Dobrila Lazich, who told us what the KLA had done to her brother’s 13-year-old son in September 1998. The boy “came to see his relatives. First, he came to see one aunt and uncle and then he went to visit the other aunt and uncle, and between the two houses he was kidnapped and killed.” The boy’s mother was reluctant to talk to us, but her relatives pushed her forward and she spoke in a barely audible voice. Her name was Stana Antich and she told us how she sought help from William Walker, but he would not do anything.

At this point, Biljana stepped forward and interjected, “The boy was only 13-years-old. How could he be guilty to anyone? He’s just 13. I have a brother-in-law who was beaten to death, in Dragobilje.” The OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission “knew they were taken prisoner and they communicated to us that they were alive and well, but finally we got their dead bodies.” A third man “was returned alive, but unconscious and very severely beaten.”

Despite some honest members, as a general rule nothing could have been expected from the leadership of an OSCE mission that was riddled with CIA agents. I asked the question that I already could guess the answer to. What did the OSCE Verification mission do in response to these murders? “Nothing,” Biljana responded. “Nothing. They were just sitting idle, waiting for them to beat them to death. They didn’t intervene. They didn’t come to help us. They just came to help the KLA.” Biljana spoke of how people disappeared or were killed outright. “The whole world knew that, but no one wanted to condemn the KLA for these crimes. They put all blame on the Serbian police, constantly accusing them of persecuting the Albanians.”

Dostena Filipovich appeared to be in her sixties and wore a scarf over her head. She told us how she had sent her three children out of Kosovo to ensure their safety. “My husband and I, as elderly people, stayed back to protect and defend the house. Since there were few Serbs who stayed behind in our village, some Albanians started molesting us, threatening and firing guns in front of our windows, so we decided to leave our village. We took only hand luggage and our cow and went to a neighboring village. We have only what we are wearing. We had a lot of poultry. We had a lot of cattle. We didn’t let them loose. We just locked them in the stable and the chicken coop, expecting to return. You remember I said that we decided to go to another Serbian village, but when we arrived there, the people were also fleeing. Since the roads were jammed, we couldn’t move fast and we wanted to go to Brecovica but the roads were so jammed we couldn’t move from Prizren. Even though KFOR was in Prizren, the KLA attacked us in Prizren, firing on our column.” I asked, “And KFOR did nothing?” The tone of Filopovich’s response indicated that she was still astonished to that day. “Nothing! Nothing! Just watching and laughing, watching and laughing.”

The column of refugees eventually made their way to another Serbian village to stay overnight, but at 3:00 AM they heard gunfire in the surrounding area and decided to leave. They arrived at another village, populated by both Serbs and Albanians. “When we arrived in that village, three KLA soldiers wearing different colors of caps came, together with KFOR.” Never

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