Dieci anni fa, la guerra, che avrebbe bombardato, fra i tanti obiettivi militari e non, il palazzo della televisione jugoslava con dentro molti operatori fra i quali16 persone che rimasero uccise.
Si è detto che quelle persone sono state ammazzate due volte ma, forse, non sono d'accordo. Le bombe hanno nomi e cognomi e non ammettono distrazioni o concorsi di colpa.
E si è detto pure che quello poteva essere obiettivo reale perchè la televisione faceva propaganda al dittatore Milosevic ma, forse, non sono d'accordo. Milosevic, dittatore anomalo,novello Hitler che lasciava alle opposizioni il governo delle maggiori città serbe, che lasciava manifestare tutti i giorni contro se stesso, senza polizia a caricare i manifestanti come farebbe qualunque buon governo democratico nostrano, che lasciava il potere dietro una sommossa detta troppo in fretta popolare contro la legge elettorale che prevedeva il turno di ballottaggio... e che si è fatto ammazzare, lui solo, da un tribunale davvero troppo speciale...
No, non sono d'accordo.
Se la propaganda può essere motivo per ricevere bombe allora, a quel tempo, in Italia un vero dio, se fosse esistito, ci avrebbe fulminato all'istante. Perchè la propaganda di guerra veniva fatta ogni giorno, in modo sistematico e scientifico, preparando coscienze sulla necessità di bombardare. Il gioco era truccato, bisogna non dimenticarlo mai. Registi nemmeno tanto occulti, uomini di Nato e di Cia riuscivano a manipolare a loro piacimento l'andamento del teatrino dei pupi politici italiani.
Allora, come ora...
Nel frattempo, il Kosovo è un narcostato, le mafie fanno affari, la Serbia è in ginocchio e l'Albania chiede di appropriarsi dei monasteri ortodossi, mentre il circo degli illusionisti organizza viaggi nella terra dei misteri, dove puoi assaporare, dicono...
"l'atmosfera del monastero ortodosso e dei monaci coi loro canti, e la poesia del minareto musulmano, perchè il Kosovo è la terra non solo della violenza ma della convivenza e della coesistenza...".
Maledetto gioco di equilibrismo che tutto nasconde, tutto salta e tutto dimentica, come se nulla fosse mai successo.
Intanto la gente continua a morire di guerra. In Serbia, ora, in Jugoslavia, prima... La Jugoslavia, da dove tutti, uno a uno, si sono staccati lasciando Serbia sola. Con i problemi della Jugoslavia. Profughi, sfollati, malati, disoccupati, fabbriche disfatte, lavoro e dignità calpestati. In tutto questo, ancora multietnica.
Intanto, a Bond Steel, ex Kosovo, c'è la più grande base americana, pardon... della Nato in Europa, che veglia su di noi, forse...
Guarda caso in un posto nemmeno sfiorato dai bombardamenti. Forse lo sapevano già che lì non avrebbero bombardato, inquinato, distrutto, devitalizzato? Si, lo sapevano già.
Sapevano che truccavano il gioco. Ma noi, nei rari incontri, facciamo finta di dimenticarlo. E andiamo avanti.
No, il vero scempio è questo. Lo scempio della devastazione delle parole, città che cambiano nome, calpestando la propria storia con il circo degli illusionisti che si accoda, nel nome dell'equidistanza.
Così le città si chiamano col nome albanese, città serbe, diventano albanesi in tutto. La parola Liberazione, usata per eserciti di terroristi ammaestrati, corrotti, criminali che non dovevano liberarsi da nessun invasore, da nessun esercito nemico, perde di significato. Ci si può, quindi, liberare dalla storia, dalla tradizione, dalla cultura, da una terra che non ci piace più.
Ormai il circo è partito, non si fermerà. La vera lotta va fatta nello smascherare questi circensi. Sono loro che stanno continuando il gioco sporco e truccato della guerra, iniziato molto più di dieci anni fa. Questo lo sanno molto bene le donne rimaste vedove già nel 98, a guerra lontana, i loro mariti fatti a pezzi da eserciti criminali che chiamavano di Liberazione. Scempio dello scempio.
----------------------- ooooooooOOOOOOOOoooooooo -----------------------
visita: http://unsorrisoperognilacrima.blogspot.com/
"Deve esserci, lo sento, in terra o in cielo un posto
dove non soffriremo e tutto sarà giusto..."
(francesco guccini - cyrano)
Un ponte per... associazione di volontariato per la solidarietà internazionale
Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, 132 - 00185 - Roma
tel 06-44702906 e-mail: posta@... web: www.unponteper.it
=== 2 ===
NATO murdered journalists, then jailed TV director
An international movement has been established to protest the already seven-year-long imprisonment of Dragoljub Milanovic, a target of NATO’s effort to blame the victim following its U.S.-led bombing campaign against Yugoslav civilians 10 years ago.
During March and April 1999, the Yugoslav television station RTS’s dedicated workers willingly risked danger to transmit to the world words and images about the US/NATO bombardment that was targeting the Serbian infrastructure and slaughtering Yugoslav civilians. Early NATO statements focused on the need to “degrade” the Yugoslav government’s “ability to transmit their version of the news.” (NATO press briefing, April 23, 2000)
NATO bombs and rockets destroyed 10 private radio and television stations and 50 TV transmitters and relay stations during the 78 days of air war. On April 23, 1999, a single NATO rocket—it was a U.S. rocket—hit RTS headquarters in Belgrade, killing 16 people and severely wounding 19 of the 120 workers in the building.
To cover its own role in this murder, NATO used the court that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright had pushed to establish in 1993. As President Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, Albright promoted the 1999 war on Yugoslavia. The U.S. and its NATO allies funded this court, called the International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia and based in The Hague, Netherlands.
The ICTY’s goal was to blame all the fighting in the Balkans on the peoples of the Balkans, especially the government in Belgrade.
The ICTY’s role starting in 1999 was to blame the victims—that is, to cover up NATO’s aggression by blaming Yugoslav leaders. Before the bombing ended, the ICTY had charged Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic with war crimes. It is notable that Milosevic waged a successful defense against these charges until his suspicious death in captivity in 2006, frustrating the ICTY’s goals.
In 2001, ICTY Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte claimed that Milosevic and Milanovic had been “warned” about the bombings of the TV headquarters, and were thus responsible for the deaths.
It’s true there were weeks of threats and rumors that NATO would attempt such a violation of the Geneva Convention. But the RTS reporters and staff, like many other Yugoslav patriots, voluntarily stayed at their posts.
By 2001, a NATO-organized coup had overthrown the Milosevic government and put NATO puppets in power in Belgrade, and a Belgrade court tried and found Milanovic guilty of the deaths of the RTS workers. Milanovic, a Yugoslav patriot, was the only person to be imprisoned for NATO’s war crimes.
Free Milanovic
Activists from Europe and North America, including representatives of the U.S.-based International Action Center, met March 25 in Pozarevac, Serbia, where Milanovic is imprisoned, to organize a campaign to free him.
Renowned Serbian Journalist Liljana Milanovic spoke at the meeting, noting that RTS was “deliberately bombed” according to the NATO commander in Europe at the time, Gen. Wesley Clark.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted that NATO bombed the station after it showed the carnage from the bombing of the passenger train on the bridge in the Grdelička Gauge where 75 civilians were killed.
Thus NATO’s primary goal in attacking the broadcasting facility was not to disable the Serbian military command and control system, as NATO statements later claimed, but an attempt to stifle the truth. This makes the assault a war crime, as even Amnesty International charged in 2000 and repeated just this April.
On April 23 NATO again rejected the AI charge, claiming that the ICTY—itself a NATO creation—had absolved NATO of war crimes in the past.
The ICTY was never a neutral, unbiased body. When NATO spokesperson Jamie Shea was asked whether NATO leaders could ever be indicted by the ICTY, he said, “Without NATO there would be no tribunal because NATO countries are in the forefront of those who have established the Tribunal, who fund this Tribunal and who support its activities on a daily basis.” (IPS, July 1, 1999)
Thus the decision was no surprise. The ICTY exonerated NATO of responsibility for the crimes against humanity the U.S.-led alliance committed in Yugoslavia. These included deliberately bombarding vital civilian infrastructure, conspiracy to initiate a war of aggression, lethally targeting journalists, using depleted uranium and anti-personnel weapons such as cluster bombs in areas of high civilian concentration, and bombing with the intent and effect of unleashing environmental catastrophe.
No to NATO
Washington and the Western European colonial powers set up NATO in 1949 to prevent workers’ revolutions and to threaten the USSR and its allies. NATO’s first “out of area” war was against Yugoslavia, the only country in its region that was still resisting domination from the West.
Today there are 28 NATO members, including many former socialist countries in the east that are now semi-colonies of the U.S. and Western Europe. NATO, still under Washington’s leadership, backs up the investors and predators that exploit the human, mineral and strategic resources of the world. NATO has encircled Russia, sent its navies to the Arctic and to South America, is in the Horn of Africa and has occupied Afghanistan.
Milanovic’s continued imprisonment would allow the United States and other NATO governments to commit crimes against humanity, bomb and kill with immunity, and jail those who tell the truth. The current Serbian government is obediently re-trying Milanovic, adding years to his sentence in the service of its NATO paymasters.
Taking up the cause of Dragoljub Milanovic is not only to free an innocent person, it is to vindicate truth. At the meeting in Pozarevac, Vladimir Krsljanin, a political leader in Serbia, said, “This case is about freedom, truth and resistance to NATO.”
The writer represented the International Action Center in Yugoslavia at the Pozarevac meeting. For more information on the 1999 war and the ICTY, see “Hidden Agenda: the U.S./NATO Takeover of Yugoslavia,” at leftbooks.com.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@...
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@...
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php
By Dusan Stojanovic, Associated Press Writer | April 23, 2009
BELGRADE, Serbia --An international human rights group demanded Thursday that NATO be held accountable for civilian casualties in the bombing of Serbia's state television headquarters a decade ago, calling the attack a "war crime."
Sixteen civilians were killed and 16 others injured during the attack on April 23, 1999, on the headquarters and studios of Radio Television Serbia in central Belgrade.
Amnesty International called on NATO and its member states to ensure independent investigations, full accountability and redress for victims and their families.
A NATO official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with standing regulations, said the U.N.'s International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia had already assessed those allegations and found the alliance had no case to answer.
"The ICTY has looked into this. They did not accept Amnesty's arguments at the time," the official said. "The accusations have been dealt with."
At the time of the bombing, NATO officials said the TV headquarters was a legitimate target because of the station's relentless war propaganda that contributed to the ethnically-inspired bloodshed in the Balkans.
The bombing was a part of a 78-day air-raid campaign against then-President Slobodan Milosevic to halt his onslaught against Kosovo Albanian separatists in the former Serbian province.
"The bombing of the headquarters of Serbian state radio and television was a deliberate attack on a civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime," Sian Jones, Amnesty International' s Balkans expert, said in a statement.
"Even if NATO genuinely believed RTS was a legitimate target, the attack was disproportionate and hence a war crime," Jones said.
The families of the victims gathered in front of the bombed TV headquarters early Thursday to demand why there was no advance warning that the attack would occur.
They believe top Serbian TV officials deliberately sacrificed their staff for propaganda purposes, even though they knew the building would be attacked.
Amnesty International said in the statement that NATO officials confirmed that no specific warning of the attack was given, even though they knew many civilians would be in the RTS building.
Beta News Agency/Politika - May 4, 2009
AI: Who will judge NATO's crimes?
BELGRADE - An Amnesty International representative says this organization is "seeking mechanisms" so that NATO is tried for the crimes committed in Serbia and Afghanistan.
Sian Jones told Belgrade daily Politika that AI “is looking go mechanisms for NATO to answer for their crimes, because no world organization currently has jurisdiction over the most powerful military alliance on the planet.”
“We will continue to put pressure on NATO, because over the last ten years there has been clear proof that in 1999, during the bombing of Yugoslavia, there was a violation of human rights,” Jones said.
AI stated in its 2002 report that the NATO bombing of Radio Television Serbia, RTS, in which 16 people were killed, should be seen as a war crime and a serious violation of international humanitarian law.
“NATO is now immune to prosecution, whether for killing civilians in Serbia, or the killing of civilians, which we believe is still going on, in Afghanistan,” Jones said.
She said that the reason can be found in the “complicated fact that the Alliance is at the same time an organization of individual countries, but an entity itself.”
The European Director of the International Federation of Journalists, Marc Gruber, told Politika that the fact that NATO has not faced any legal responsibility for what it did in Serbia ten years after the fact is “a big problem which is not easy to solve at all”.
“No court can start a trial against NATO, as there is no basis for it in international law, because the North Atlantic Alliance is an international coalition of states,” Gruber said.
“We strongly condemn this crime. The least that NATO could do is offer an apology. We have been protesting for ten years against the fact that NATO targeted a television station, knowing there were journalists inside. The media can never be a military target,” Gruber told Politika.
Makfax
April 24, 2009
NATO says RTS was legitimate target
Brussels - NATO rejected a demand by Amnesty International that it be held accountable for civilian deaths caused by the bombing of Serbian television building 10 years ago.
NATO's spokeswoman Carmen Romero said the incident has been investigated thoroughly by the international war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia as part of the overall investigation into the 1999 campaign. "The main conclusion was that NATO has no case to answer".
Romero said during the war the station's transmitters formed an integral part of the strategic communications network. On that basis, the war crimes prosecutor concluded that there was no basis into any of the allegations or into other incidents related to NATO air campaign, she added.
Human rights watchdog Amnesty International (AI) said in a statement issued on Thursday that NATO's bombing was a deliberate attack on civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime. It called on NATO to launch a war crimes probe into the attack, in which 16 media workers were killed, to ensure full accountability and redress for victims and their families.
Serbian Radio - April 23, 2009
Remembrance of the victims of the NATO bombing of RTS
Ten years have elapsed today since the NATO bombing of the Radio Television Serbia building, when 16 employees were killed and another 16 were injured.
NATO bombed the building, in downtwon Belgrade, on the night between 22 and 23 April 1999, at 02.06 a.m.
It was for the first time in the history of war that a media house, previously proclaimed as a military target, was bombed.
The victims’ families and their colleagues from Radio Television Serbia have held a service today, laying flowers and lighting candles, on the monument dedicated to the victims of the NATO bombing of Radio Television Serbia.