Informazione
Gli USA finanziano gruppi terroristici in Iran
di William Lowther in Washington DC e Colin Freeman, Sunday Telegraph
L'America sta segretamente finanziando gruppi etnici armati separatisti in Iran nel tentativo di far montare la pressione contro il regime islamico perché abbandoni il suo programma nucleare.
In una mossa che riflette la crescente preoccupazione di Washington per il fallimento delle iniziative diplomatiche, si ritiene che gli ufficiali CIA corrano in aiuto di milizie di opposizione presenti fra i numerosi gruppi di minoranza etnica stanziati nelle regioni di confine dell'Iran.
Le operazioni sono controverse perché comportano relazioni con movimenti che, per ottenere ragione delle proprie istanze, ricorrono a metodi terroristi contro il regime iraniano.
L'anno passato si è verificata un'ondata di tumulti nelle zone di confine abitate dalle minoranze etniche dell'Iran, con una campagna di attentati anche dinamitardi contro soldati e rappresentanti governativi.
Questi incidenti sono stati eseguiti dai Curdi nell'ovest, gli Azeri nel nord-ovest, gli Ahwazi (arabi-iraniani) nel sud-ovest e dai Baluchi nel sud-est. Quasi il 40% dei 69 milioni di abitanti dell'Iran non sono persiani, con circa 16 milioni di Azeri, sette milioni di Curdi, cinque milioni di Ahwazis ed un milione di Baluchi. La maggior parte di Baluchi vive sul confine col Pakistan.
Fondi per le cause separatiste provengono direttamente dal bilancio riservato della CIA ma questo non è più "un grande segreto", secondo un ex alto ufficiale delle fila della CIA di Washington che anonimamente ne ha parlato a The Sunday Telegraph.
Le sue dichiarazioni sono supportate da quelle di Fred Burton, un ex agente del dipartimento di stato per il contro-terrorismo USA, che disse: "Gli ultimi attacchi verificatisi in Iran hanno visto il coinvolgimento statunitense nell'approvvigionamento e la formazione delle minoranze etniche iraniane per destabilizzare il regime."
Anche se Washington ufficialmente nega, Teheran sostiene da molto tempo di aver scoperto la mano statunitense ed inglese sotto gli attacchi della guerriglia contro le forze di sicurezza interne. Lunedì scorso, l'Iran ha pubblicamente giustiziato un uomo, Nasrollah Shanbe Zehi, per la sua partecipazione ad un attacco bomba che ha ucciso 11 Guardie Rivoluzionarie nella città di Zahedan nel Sistan-Baluchistan. Un anonimo ufficiale locale ha detto all'agenzia stampa Fars che le armi usate nell'attacco erano di costruzione britannica e USA.
Ieri, forze iraniane hanno rivendicato l'uccisione di 17 ribelli descritti come "mercenari" in scontri vicino al confine turco, roccaforte del Pejak, partito armato curdo collegato al PKK, il Kurdistan Workers' Party fuori legge in Turchia.
John Pike, capo dell'influente think tank Sicurezza Globale di Washington ha dichiarato: "Le attività dei gruppi etnici si sono surriscaldate negli ultimi due anni e sarebbe uno scandalo se non fosse almeno in parte il risultato dell'attività della CIA".
E' però una politica carica di rischi. La maggior parte di questi gruppi hanno poco in comune con la causa di Washington se non l'opposizione al Presidente Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, accusato di reprimere cultura e diritti delle minoranze.
La "Brigata di Dio" dei Baluchi, che l'anno scorso rapì ed uccise otto soldati iraniani, è un'organizzazione sunnita dagli obiettivi incerti e che potrebbe, dopo averne preso i danari, rivoltarsi contro Washington.
E' anche in corso una dura polemica a Washington se sguinzagliare o meno il braccio armato del Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), un gruppo di opposizione iraniano con una lunga e insanguinata storia di opposizione armata al regime.
Il gruppo è attualmente nell'elenco delle organizzazioni terroriste del dipartimento di stato USA, ma Pike ha detto che una fazione del Dipartimento della Difesa li vuole usare perché anche se non sono in grado di rovesciare il regime iraniano possono comunque provocare molto danno.
Attualmente nessuno dei gruppi di opposizione costituisce una vera preoccupazione per Teheran, ma gli analisti USA credono possano essere rinvigoriti da un attacco statunitense e israeliano al regime. Questa prospettiva è diventata più probabile nel corso della scorsa settimana, quando il Consiglio di Sicurezza dell'ONU ha fissato il termine ultimo entro il quale l'Iran deve sospendere il suo programma di arricchimento dell'uranio ed una seconda portaerei americana ha raggiunto il concentramento delle forze navali statunitensi nelle acque litoranee meridionali dell'Iran.
Gli Stati Uniti hanno inoltre trasferito sei caccia bombardieri pesanti dalla base britannica dell'isola Diego Garcia nel Pacifico alla base di Al Udeid nel Qatar, che permetterebbe loro di sferrare attacchi contro l'Iran senza cercare l'autorizzazione di Downing Street.
Mentre Tony Blair la settimana scorsa ribadiva che l'Inghilterra vuole ancora una soluzione diplomatica alla crisi, il vice-presidente USA Dick Cheney ieri ha sottolineato come l'intervento militare costituisca una alternativa realistica.
"Sarebbe un grave errore se una nazione come l'Iran divenisse una potenza nucleare" ha ammonito Cheney durante una visita in Australia. "Tutte le opzioni sono ancora possibili."
I cinque membri permanenti del Consiglio di Sicurezza dell'ONU più la Germania si incontreranno a Londra domani per decidere nuove sanzioni contro l'Iran. In dicembre erano state imposte misure per impedire il trasferimento di tecnologie e know-how nucleari. È probabile che nuove sanzioni includano il divieto di viaggio per gli ufficiali superiori iraniani e restrizioni economiche.
Traduzione dall'inglese a cura del CCDP per www.resistenze.org
"NULLA ALLA SINISTRA ESTREMA"
Da La Repubblica del 14/03/2007, pag. 32
Il leader dell associazione Illiria
L INTERVISTA
"Gli albanesi? Sceglierebbero il centrodestra"
Mancano personalità del mio paese in grado di candidarsi Il voto poi
può essere pilotabile
ROMA - «Gli albanesi voterebbero centrodestra». Vladimir Kosturi,
presidente dell associazione Illiria, azzarda la sua previsione e
aggiunge: «Io, però, mi candiderei con la sinistra al Comune di Roma».
La futura legge Amato-Ferrero introduce il diritto di voto
amministrativo per gli immigrati, dopo cinque anni di residenza.
Contenti?
«E un principio sacrosanto: si ammette alle elezioni chi ha
combattuto a lungo con la burocrazia italiana e ha ottenuto con
difficoltà la carta di soggiorno. In Italia, saranno meno del 20%,
gli immigrati regolari ammessi al voto».
Come crede sia orientato il voto della comunità albanese?
«In Italia ci sono oltre 300mila albanesi: la comunità più ampia dopo
quella dei romeni (ammessi già al voto amministrativo in quanto
comunitari dal primo gennaio 2007, ndr). Quello albanese sarà un voto
per lo più di centrodestra: Udc e Forza Italia, per intenderci.
Qualche preferenza potrebbe andare alla Margherita. Nulla alla
sinistra estrema. Sarà, però, una partecipazione passiva».
Perché?
«Perché la comunità albanese non è ancora pronta a votare e rischia
di essere pilotata. Mancano, infatti, personalità albanesi in grado
di candidarsi».
Lei rappresenta oltre mille albanesi in Italia. Perché non si candida?
«Potrei, in effetti».
Con chi?
«Senz altro con la sinistra».
Ma come?
«Sì, è vero, rischierei di non essere eletto. Ma non importa. Il mio
cuore batte a sinistra».
(vla. po.)
http://www.tesseramento.it/immigrazione/pagine52298/newsattach796_Da%
20La%20Repubblica%20del%2014-03%20b.pdf
Da La Repubblica del 14/03/2007, pag. 32
Il leader dell associazione Illiria
L INTERVISTA
"Gli albanesi? Sceglierebbero il centrodestra"
Mancano personalità del mio paese in grado di candidarsi Il voto poi
può essere pilotabile
ROMA - «Gli albanesi voterebbero centrodestra». Vladimir Kosturi,
presidente dell associazione Illiria, azzarda la sua previsione e
aggiunge: «Io, però, mi candiderei con la sinistra al Comune di Roma».
La futura legge Amato-Ferrero introduce il diritto di voto
amministrativo per gli immigrati, dopo cinque anni di residenza.
Contenti?
«E un principio sacrosanto: si ammette alle elezioni chi ha
combattuto a lungo con la burocrazia italiana e ha ottenuto con
difficoltà la carta di soggiorno. In Italia, saranno meno del 20%,
gli immigrati regolari ammessi al voto».
Come crede sia orientato il voto della comunità albanese?
«In Italia ci sono oltre 300mila albanesi: la comunità più ampia dopo
quella dei romeni (ammessi già al voto amministrativo in quanto
comunitari dal primo gennaio 2007, ndr). Quello albanese sarà un voto
per lo più di centrodestra: Udc e Forza Italia, per intenderci.
Qualche preferenza potrebbe andare alla Margherita. Nulla alla
sinistra estrema. Sarà, però, una partecipazione passiva».
Perché?
«Perché la comunità albanese non è ancora pronta a votare e rischia
di essere pilotata. Mancano, infatti, personalità albanesi in grado
di candidarsi».
Lei rappresenta oltre mille albanesi in Italia. Perché non si candida?
«Potrei, in effetti».
Con chi?
«Senz altro con la sinistra».
Ma come?
«Sì, è vero, rischierei di non essere eletto. Ma non importa. Il mio
cuore batte a sinistra».
(vla. po.)
http://www.tesseramento.it/immigrazione/pagine52298/newsattach796_Da%
20La%20Repubblica%20del%2014-03%20b.pdf
(english / italiano / srpskohrvatski)
FATHER AND SON
(Sul numero di ieri del Washington Post Richard Hoolbrooke tesseva
sperticati elogi del nuovo inviato speciale USA in Kosovo, Frank
Wisner. Rick Rozoff è andato a trovare la biografia del padre di
questi: alto funzionario della CIA, ebbe un ruolo centrale tra
l'altro nei piani di "sovversione contro Stati ostili" - testuale -
nel corso della Guerra Fredda...)
---
U danasnjem broju Vassington Post-a Ricard Holbruk u rubrici za
"goste" odnosno spoljne saradnike, naveliko hvali novog severno-
americkog "vrlog specijalnog izaslanika, ambasadora Frenka Visnera.
Evo ssta "Wikipedia" belezi o ocu tog "vrlog izaslanika".
Ukratko, otac je radio za CIA (Centrala spijunske agenture) i bio
nacelnik njene Direkcije za Planove.
Spijunirao je kao pocetnik protiv SSSR-a u Turskoj i Rumuniji.
Kasnije na najodgovornijem polozaju u Centrali, nalazimo ga u
prvorazrednoj ulozi nosioca strategije miniranja demokratskog poretka
u Iranu (Mosadeka) i u Guatemali (Jacopa Arbenca).
Kao nacelnik pomenute direkcije, 1952. je smislio svojevrsni program
pod nazivom "Mokingb'rd" (u prevodu :"laz-ptica") prosto receno, plan
za stratesko dezinformisanje, domace i strane javnosti. Planom su
bili obuhvaceni svi scenariji subverzivnog i teroristickog delovanja,
doslovce: "propaganda, ekonomski rat, preventivna neposredna
delatnost, kao sto su sabotaza i kontra-sabotaza, miniranje i
evakuacija, zatim subverzivna delatnost protiv neprijateljskih
drzava, sto ukljucuje jos i pomoc ilegalnim grupama i
antikomunistickim elementima u zemljama slobodnog sveta."
(OJ 14/3/07)
---
From: r_rozoff
Subject: US Kosovo Plot: Frank Wisner, Senior And Junior
Date: March 14, 2007 2:26:32 AM GMT+01:00
In a 'guest' feature in today's Washington Post the
sociopath and twice-almost US secretary of state
Richard Holbrooke lauded the US's current hitman on
Kosovo as "superb special envoy, Ambassador Frank
Wisner."
Here is some background on the father of the 'superb
envoy':
Frank Gardiner Wisner (1910 – October 29, 1965) was
the head of the Directorate of Plans of the Central
Intelligence Agency.
After graduating Wisner worked as a Wall Street
lawyer. However, he soon became bored and enlisted in
the United States Navy. He worked in the Navy's
censor's office until he was able to get a transfer to
the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). He was
stationed first in Turkey, and then in Romania, with
his main assignement being to spy on the Soviet Union.
He was recruited in 1947 by Dean Acheson to join the
State Department's Office of Occupied Territories.
In 1948, the CIA created a covert action wing,
innocuously called the Office of Policy Coordination.
Frank Wisner was put in charge of the operation and
recruited many of his old friends from Carter Ledyard
[law firm].
According to its secret charter, its responsibilities
include "propaganda, economic warfare, preventive
direct action, including sabotage, antisabotage,
demolition and evacuation procedures; subversion
against hostile states, including assistance to
underground resistance groups, and support of
indigenous anti-communist elements in threatened
countries of the free world."
Later that year Wisner established Operation
Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic and
foreign media. In 1952, he became head of the
Directorate of Plans, with Richard Helms as his chief
of operations. This office had control of 75% of the
CIA budget. In this position, he was instrumental in
bringing about the fall of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran
and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Wisner
===========================
Stop NATO
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato
To subscribe, send an e-mail to:
Ova adresa el. pošte je zaštićena od spambotova. Omogućite JavaScript da biste je videli.
==============================
FATHER AND SON
(Sul numero di ieri del Washington Post Richard Hoolbrooke tesseva
sperticati elogi del nuovo inviato speciale USA in Kosovo, Frank
Wisner. Rick Rozoff è andato a trovare la biografia del padre di
questi: alto funzionario della CIA, ebbe un ruolo centrale tra
l'altro nei piani di "sovversione contro Stati ostili" - testuale -
nel corso della Guerra Fredda...)
---
U danasnjem broju Vassington Post-a Ricard Holbruk u rubrici za
"goste" odnosno spoljne saradnike, naveliko hvali novog severno-
americkog "vrlog specijalnog izaslanika, ambasadora Frenka Visnera.
Evo ssta "Wikipedia" belezi o ocu tog "vrlog izaslanika".
Ukratko, otac je radio za CIA (Centrala spijunske agenture) i bio
nacelnik njene Direkcije za Planove.
Spijunirao je kao pocetnik protiv SSSR-a u Turskoj i Rumuniji.
Kasnije na najodgovornijem polozaju u Centrali, nalazimo ga u
prvorazrednoj ulozi nosioca strategije miniranja demokratskog poretka
u Iranu (Mosadeka) i u Guatemali (Jacopa Arbenca).
Kao nacelnik pomenute direkcije, 1952. je smislio svojevrsni program
pod nazivom "Mokingb'rd" (u prevodu :"laz-ptica") prosto receno, plan
za stratesko dezinformisanje, domace i strane javnosti. Planom su
bili obuhvaceni svi scenariji subverzivnog i teroristickog delovanja,
doslovce: "propaganda, ekonomski rat, preventivna neposredna
delatnost, kao sto su sabotaza i kontra-sabotaza, miniranje i
evakuacija, zatim subverzivna delatnost protiv neprijateljskih
drzava, sto ukljucuje jos i pomoc ilegalnim grupama i
antikomunistickim elementima u zemljama slobodnog sveta."
(OJ 14/3/07)
---
From: r_rozoff
Subject: US Kosovo Plot: Frank Wisner, Senior And Junior
Date: March 14, 2007 2:26:32 AM GMT+01:00
In a 'guest' feature in today's Washington Post the
sociopath and twice-almost US secretary of state
Richard Holbrooke lauded the US's current hitman on
Kosovo as "superb special envoy, Ambassador Frank
Wisner."
Here is some background on the father of the 'superb
envoy':
Frank Gardiner Wisner (1910 – October 29, 1965) was
the head of the Directorate of Plans of the Central
Intelligence Agency.
After graduating Wisner worked as a Wall Street
lawyer. However, he soon became bored and enlisted in
the United States Navy. He worked in the Navy's
censor's office until he was able to get a transfer to
the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). He was
stationed first in Turkey, and then in Romania, with
his main assignement being to spy on the Soviet Union.
He was recruited in 1947 by Dean Acheson to join the
State Department's Office of Occupied Territories.
In 1948, the CIA created a covert action wing,
innocuously called the Office of Policy Coordination.
Frank Wisner was put in charge of the operation and
recruited many of his old friends from Carter Ledyard
[law firm].
According to its secret charter, its responsibilities
include "propaganda, economic warfare, preventive
direct action, including sabotage, antisabotage,
demolition and evacuation procedures; subversion
against hostile states, including assistance to
underground resistance groups, and support of
indigenous anti-communist elements in threatened
countries of the free world."
Later that year Wisner established Operation
Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic and
foreign media. In 1952, he became head of the
Directorate of Plans, with Richard Helms as his chief
of operations. This office had control of 75% of the
CIA budget. In this position, he was instrumental in
bringing about the fall of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran
and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Wisner
===========================
Stop NATO
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato
To subscribe, send an e-mail to:
Ova adresa el. pošte je zaštićena od spambotova. Omogućite JavaScript da biste je videli.
==============================
----- Original Message -----
From: "Forlibertaria" <forlibertaria@...>
To: <forlibertaria@...>
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 9:20 PM
Subject: 24 Marzo: LA PULIZIA ETNICA FASCISTA NELLA JUGOSLAVIA OCCUPATA
Sabato 24 Marzo, ore 15:00
presso il circolo ARCI Nuova Resistenza
Viale Spazzoli, 51 - Forlì
***LA PULIZIA ETNICA FASCISTA NELLA JUGOSLAVIA OCCUPATA***
"rimozioni storiche e mito delle foibe per alimentare il nuovo
espansionismo revanscista italiano"
Alessandra Kersevan presenta il suo libro:
"Un campo di concentramento fascista: Gonars, 1942-1943"
l'organizzazione è curata dal Partito Comunista dei Lavoratori e da
Forlibertaria.
###
Alessandra Kersevan è stata invitata dal locale Istituto storico e dal
comune di Bellaria per tenere una conferenza sui campi di
concentramento fascisti situati lungo il confine italiano orientale.
Pochi giorni prima dell'evento, previsto per il 15 Febbraio 2007,
l'Istituto Storico di Bellaria ha annullato l'incontro a causa delle
forti pressioni politiche esercitate da esponenti locali di Alleanza
Nazionale.
Se ignorare in silenzio il liquame revanscista che ci ha lambiti durante
la cosiddetta "Giornata del Ricordo" c'è costato un notevole sforzo,
non potevamo restare impassibili davanti a questo stupefacente esempio
di censura fascista. Per questo motivo e per porre un freno alla
sordida arroganza dei nazionalisti di ogni schieramento abbiamo
invitato Alessandra Kersevan a Forlì.
La partecipazione all'evento è molto IMPORTANTE: il 10 Febbraio una
conferenza di Alessandra Kersevan tenutasi a La Spezia è stata
interrotta dai fascisti.
--
Forlibertaria
Contatto: 3383261171
http://forlibertaria.ath.cx
From: "Forlibertaria" <forlibertaria@...>
To: <forlibertaria@...>
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 9:20 PM
Subject: 24 Marzo: LA PULIZIA ETNICA FASCISTA NELLA JUGOSLAVIA OCCUPATA
Sabato 24 Marzo, ore 15:00
presso il circolo ARCI Nuova Resistenza
Viale Spazzoli, 51 - Forlì
***LA PULIZIA ETNICA FASCISTA NELLA JUGOSLAVIA OCCUPATA***
"rimozioni storiche e mito delle foibe per alimentare il nuovo
espansionismo revanscista italiano"
Alessandra Kersevan presenta il suo libro:
"Un campo di concentramento fascista: Gonars, 1942-1943"
l'organizzazione è curata dal Partito Comunista dei Lavoratori e da
Forlibertaria.
###
Alessandra Kersevan è stata invitata dal locale Istituto storico e dal
comune di Bellaria per tenere una conferenza sui campi di
concentramento fascisti situati lungo il confine italiano orientale.
Pochi giorni prima dell'evento, previsto per il 15 Febbraio 2007,
l'Istituto Storico di Bellaria ha annullato l'incontro a causa delle
forti pressioni politiche esercitate da esponenti locali di Alleanza
Nazionale.
Se ignorare in silenzio il liquame revanscista che ci ha lambiti durante
la cosiddetta "Giornata del Ricordo" c'è costato un notevole sforzo,
non potevamo restare impassibili davanti a questo stupefacente esempio
di censura fascista. Per questo motivo e per porre un freno alla
sordida arroganza dei nazionalisti di ogni schieramento abbiamo
invitato Alessandra Kersevan a Forlì.
La partecipazione all'evento è molto IMPORTANTE: il 10 Febbraio una
conferenza di Alessandra Kersevan tenutasi a La Spezia è stata
interrotta dai fascisti.
--
Forlibertaria
Contatto: 3383261171
http://forlibertaria.ath.cx
(english / italiano)
17 marzo 2007: TUTTI A ROMA CONTRO LA GUERRA / NEW YORK, MARCH ON THE PENTAGON!
---
IL 17 MARZO TUTTI A ROMA!
MANIFESTAZIONE NAZIONALE
Per il ritiro delle truppe dall’Afghanistan e da tutti i fronti di guerra Piazza della Repubblica ore 15
Il testo dell’appello nazionale:
Per il 17 marzo è stata lanciata dal Forum Sociale Mondiale a Nairobi la Giornata mondiale contro la guerra, nell’anniversario dell’invasione USA dell’Iraq. In tutto il mondo, milioni di persone chiederanno la fine delle guerre, a partire da Iraq e Afghanistan, la chiusura delle basi, il disarmo atomico. In quei giorni, il Parlamento italiano voterà sul rifinanziamento delle missioni, Afghanistan in primis. Per questo invitiamo tutte/i coloro che condividono il sogno della pace e della giustizia ad essere in piazza a Roma, nella Giornata mondiale contro la guerra, per dire NO al rifinanziamento delle missioni di guerra, NO alle basi e alle spese militari.
Il movimento contro la nuova base USA di Vicenza ha segnato con la straordinaria manifestazione del 17 febbraio una svolta contro le politiche belliche del governo, per una nuova stagione di lotte che rompa la complicità dell’Italia con la guerra permanente. Ma il governo Prodi-bis, rimesso in piedi con ulteriori contributi da destra, sfida il movimento no-war, affermando piena fedeltà a Usa e Nato, confermando le missioni belliche e la base a Vicenza. Viene meno l’illusione del “governo amico” e nasce per chi ama la pace la responsabilità di costruire una nuova opposizione sociale alle politiche di guerra, dando continuità al movimento dopo il 17 febbraio e contestando la politica estera del Prodi-bis. E il primo obiettivo, oltre a vincere la lotta contro il Dal Molin, è il ritiro delle truppe dall’Afghanistan, annullando la complicità con la guerra Nato. La lotta di Vicenza è diventata di tutti/e: così deve essere per quella contro l’intera politica di guerra, partendo da chi sul territorio contesta la militarizzazione crescente.
La manifestazione del 17 vuole congiungere il NO ALLE BASI al NO ALLE MISSIONI MILITARI, le lotte sui territori all’opposizione nazionale e internazionale alla guerra, accompagnandola con la forte richiesta ai parlamentari di votare contro il decreto e il rifinanziamento della missione in Afghanistan.
PER IL RITIRO IMMEDIATO DELLE TRUPPE DALL'AFGHANISTAN E DAGLI ALTRI FRONTI DI GUERRA.
PER LA CHIUSURA DELLE BASI MILITARI USA-NATO,
PER VINCERE LA LOTTA CONTRO LA BASE DAL MOLIN.
NO ALLE SPESE MILITARI.
SOSTEGNO ALLA RESISTENZA DELLE POPOLAZIONI IN LOTTA, DA VICENZA AI PAESI INVASI E OCCUPATI.
Comitato 17 marzo
adesioni : Nowar17marzo@...
---
Lettera aperta per il 17 marzo
Tutti/e a Roma P.della Repubblica ore 15
Ritirare subito le truppe dall’Afghanistan e dagli altri fronti di guerra, chiudere le basi, tagliare le spese militari
Se la momentanea risoluzione della crisi fa cadere i veli sulle intenzioni del governo Prodi, i sanguinosi e atroci eventi di questi giorni confermano le peggiori previsioni, ridicolizzando i tentativi di presentare la guerra in Afghanistan come missione di pace. La manifestazione del 17 marzo assume dunque un’importanza cruciale, ed è essenziale che sia fatta propria dal maggior numero di persone impegnate contro la guerra.
I “12 punti” del governo Prodi non sono una novità ma il nocciolo duro del programma pre-elettorale, in continuità con le politiche neoliberiste e belliciste dei governi precedenti. Sono però, nel contempo, una chiara sfida ai movimenti in lotta e alle opposizioni di sinistra. Viene preso di petto il movimento contro la guerra con la riconferma delle missioni e della base di Vicenza; e con esso i No-TAV, i No-VAT, gli ambientalisti; e analoga funzione ha l’espulsione dal Prc di Turigliatto e il linciaggio dei pochissimi parlamentari che non appoggiano il bellicismo governativo.
Tale sfida non è puramente politica. Essa si accompagna ad un tentativo di criminalizzazione del dissenso ad ampio raggio. La gran parte dei massmedia è attivissima in tal senso. Lo abbiamo visto in maniera eclatante alla manifestazione per la Palestina del 18 novembre quando l’incendio di alcuni pupazzi che rappresentavano militari (da parte di uno sparuto e marginale gruppo di manifestanti) è stato usato per denigrare l’intera manifestazione, per nasconderne i contenuti e criminalizzare i partecipanti. Persino a Vicenza, dopo settimane di “terrorismo” preventivo da parte di ministri e mass-media, uno striscione sugli arresti dei presunti BR è stato usato, senza altrettanto successo, per attaccare l’enorme mobilitazione.
E’ il caso, dunque, di sottolineare, per tutti/e coloro che parteciperanno alla manifestazione del 17 marzo, che tali tentativi di oscuramento degli obiettivi dell’iniziativa si potrebbero ripetere. La grande maggioranza del mondo politico istituzionale e del sistema massmediatico cerca appigli ovunque, con l’insopportabile ipocrisia di chi si scandalizza per uno slogan sbagliato o per l’incendio di simulacri cartacei di militari mentre accetta il massacro di centinaia di migliaia di persone reali.
Dunque, invitiamo tutte le forze e i singoli partecipanti alla massima responsabilità, ad interpretare nella maniera più coerente ed efficace, con slogan, striscioni o cartelli, la piattaforma di convocazione dell’iniziativa, affinché risaltino i comuni obiettivi e non si diano opportunità a chi intendesse usarla per speculare sulle strumentalizzazioni dei massmedia e oscurarne i contenuti.
La manifestazione del 17 sarà pacifica e popolare, un corteo di donne e uomini a viso aperto, al quale invitiamo tutte le forze e i singoli/e che ne condividono i contenuti, i caratteri e lo spirito, per costruire insieme un corteo di massa, colorato, pacifico ma determinato e intransigente contro la guerra e chi la fa, la copre, la vota. Come a Vicenza vogliamo ritrovare il popolo della pace, le sue parole e le sue pratiche.
Comitato 17 marzo
PER ADESIONI ALLA MANIFESTAZIONE: nowar17marzo@...
---
IL 17 MARZO TUTTI A ROMA !
GLI APPUNTAMENTI DELLA
RETE NAZIONALE “DISARMIAMOLI! “
Fervono i preparativi per la manifestazione internazionale di sabato 17 marzo, che vedrà sfilale i nowar italiani a Roma (ore 15, Piazza della Repubblica) per il ritiro delle truppe dall’Afghanistan e da tutti i fronti di guerra.
La Rete nazionale Disarmiamoli aderisce e parteciperà a questa importante manifestazione, inseritasi in una delicata fase della vita politica nazionale, nella quale la “crisi pilotata” del Prodi 1 ha tolto ogni alibi alle varie “sinistre radicali” di governo rispetto a scelte e decisioni, in politica estera come in quella nazionale.
L’assenso al dodecalogo prodiano e Il voto alla Camera di questi giorni lo confermano, così come quello previsto per il 27 marzo al Senato, per il quale i vari leader di sinistra chiamano alla disciplina di governo i propri senatori, ordinando così un definitivo voltafaccia verso quei movimenti che hanno contribuito in maniera determinante alla loro elezione.
La manifestazione italiana di sabato prossimo acquista così un “valore aggiunto” di autonomia ed indipendenza dal quadro politico determinatosi con l’avvento del governo di centro sinistra.
Data l’importanza dell’appuntamento facciamo un pressante appello perchè in questi pochi giorni che ci separano dal 17 marzo sui vari territori ci si mobiliti per far conoscere le ragioni della manifestazione e, soprattutto, per convincere il maggior numero di persone a partecipare al corteo di Roma
Infine, come indicato nell’incontro della Rete Disarmiamoli svoltosi lo scorso 4 marzo a Firenze, ricordiamo a tutti gli interessati che:
1) Il gruppo di lavoro sulla legge di iniziativa popolare per il disarmo si incontrerà sabato 17 marzo ore 10-13, Casa dei diritti sociali, via dei Mille, 6 - 2° piano (nei pressi di piazza Indipendenza, vicino alla stazione Termini, uscendo sulla destra)
2) L’appuntamento per tutti coloro che sfileranno insieme a noi è il seguente: lo striscione “DISARMIAMOLI! “ si posizionerà in Piazza Esedra, davanti al portone di S. Maria degli Angeli, dalle ore 14
Rete nazionale Disarmiamoli!
www.disarmiamoli.org info@... 3389255514 3381028120
===
March on the Pentagon - Saturday, March 17
The Troops Out Now Coalition is organizing buses, vans, and car caravans from more than 20 cities for the March on the Pentagon, organized by the Answer Coalition. If you haven't gotten your bus ticket yet, contact a local organizing center, or call 212.633.6646.
Now, more than ever, we must do everything possible to work together for a massive outpouring on the streets of Washington. Look for the Troops Out Now Coalition banners and placards -- join us in the "Stop the War at Home" Contingent in the March on the Pentagon.
- find a transportation center near you!
- download leaflet
- Troops Out Now Coalition call for a massive, united demonstration - "Back to the Streets" - issued Nov. 7, 2006
Encampment to Stop the War -
Starts Tomorrow, Monday, March 12
Momentum is growing for the Encampment to Stop the War --it is clear that the central struggle of the day is to force Congress to cut off war funding.
Activists are coming from as far away as Washington State, Jamaica, Maine, and Hawaii to join the Encampment. We will be there --right on the Mall -- with tents, banners, placards, signs, noisemakers, etc. demanding that Congress stop the political posturing and simply cut off the war funding, end the war now and bring the troops home. We need you to join us.
If you are in the DC area or are arriving in the area, we need your help with setting up the Encampment tomorrow-- please meet us on the mall directly in front of the Capitol building (3rd street between Constitution and Independence).
For updates, see http://encampmenttostopthewar.blogspot.com/
- Let us know if you are coming to the Encampment. Use the Volunteer form at http://troopsoutnow.org/march12volunteer.shtml.
- Volunteer at the Encampment - we will need hundreds of volunteers during the week of the Encampment let us know how you can help (logistics, security, medical, greeter, etc) - http://troopsoutnow.org/march12volunteer.shtml
- Donate to to help with the enormous costs of the Encampment - http://troopsoutnow.org/donate.shtml. If you are not able to come to the encampment, help send a youth activist to the Encampment to the week- donate for transportation and housing costs here.
Tageszeitung junge Welt
http://www.jungewelt.de/
12.03.2007 / Feuilleton / Seite 13
Antiserbische Blaupause
Wollt ihr den globalen Krieg? Die »freien Medien« sind die
Wegbereiter. Das wurde anhand der Balkan-Kriege durchexerziert. Ein
Buch über die entsprechenden Verflechtungen
Sabine Schiffer
Mit »Operation Balkan: Werbung für Krieg und Tod« hat das Autorenduo
Jörg Becker und Mira Beham eine eminent wichtige Forschungsarbeit
vorgelegt. In konzisen 87 Seiten mit Anhang wird aufgezeigt, wie der
Krieg auf dem Balkan durch die Arbeit von PR-Agenturen wesentlich
beeinflußt, ja mitinitiiert wurde, wie mittels der Zuordnung von
Recht und Unrecht klare Feindbilder geschaffen und widersprechende
Fakten unterschlagen wurden. Die Untersuchung ist ein Lehrstück. Sie
unterstreicht, wie bedeutend es angesichts immer massiver werdender
Instrumentalisierungen ist, daß Medienmacher die Quellen ihrer
Informationen hinterfragen. Die Folgen der Entwicklung hin zu mehr PR-
Stellen, weg von gesicherten Arbeitsverhältnissen im Journalismus,
können für eine Demokratie, die auf öffentliche
Meinungsbildungsprozesse angewiesen ist, nicht unterschätzt werden.
Es braucht etwa deutlich mehr kritische Aufmerksamkeit für die nicht
sonderlich subtilen Sprachregelungen bestimmter Agenturen. Natürlich
ist es entscheidend, ob etwas als »Massaker« oder
»Verteidigungskampf« bezeichnet wird. So wird ein Empfinden von
Legitimität oder Illegitimität erzeugt. Es ist kein Zufallsprodukt,
sondern Ergebnis jahrelanger Propaganda, daß »die Serben« in der
öffentlichen Wahrnehmung in die Nähe der Nazis rückten. Durch die
geschickte Plazierung von Begriffen wie »KZ«, »Völkermord« und
»Auschwitz« wurden auch Pazifisten in die Pflicht für den Krieg auf
dem Balkan genommen.
Die Vernetzungen gehen weit über das Bekannte hinaus. Die
Zusammenarbeit von PR-Akteuren und US-Politikern ist kein Geheimnis.
In »Operation Balkan« geht es auch um die Symbiosen zwischen
hochangesehenen Nichtregierungsorganisationen (NGOs) wie Amnesty
International oder UNICEF und den Spins -- der gelenkten
Kommunikation. Auch hier vermitteln nicht nur Agenturen wie die
bereits im Irak-Krieg von 1991 berühmt gewordene Hill & Knowlton,
sondern auch ethisch angeblich integere wie Ruder Finn und viele
mehr. Das Register am Ende des Buches bietet einen Überblick über
Verteilung der Aufgaben unter den Organisationen. Neben solchen
internen Verflechtungen werden Verflechtungen mit privaten
Militärunternehmen aufgeführt. Insgesamt wird eine Tendenz zur
Privatisierung von Information, Krieg und schließlich auch von
Diplomatie nachgewiesen. Es waren mit der Kriegspropaganda
beauftragte Agenturen, die z. B. die Unabhängigkeitserklärung des
Kosovo entwarfen.
Erfolgreich war der antiserbische Spin vor allem, weil die
Gegenpositionen zum Teil von denselben Agenturen formuliert wurden.
In Serbien gaben widerstreitende Parteien derweil ein uneinheitliches
Bild ab, was einer geschlossenen Meinungsbildung nicht dienlich war.
Die Autoren veranschaulichen den zirkulären Schluß der PR-Aktivitäten
mit einem Schema: Die Argumentationen werden gezielt plaziert, von
Intellektuellen aufgenommen und diskutiert, schließlich auch durch
das Bildmaterial von NGOs vor Ort verstärkt. Die international so
»freien« Medien erscheinen als sich selbst bestätigendes System, das
Kohärenz suggeriert. Wieder und wieder wird die Notwendigkeit des
»humanitären Eingriffs« herausgestellt. Am Ende kann sich der
einzelne Konsument der Kriegsrhetorik kaum noch entziehen. Diese
Techniken der Manipulation dürften in naher Zukunft verstärkt zum
Einsatz kommen. Darauf läßt auch das Weißbuch der Bundeswehr schließen.
»Operation Balkan« arbeitet die zwiespältige Rolle von Organisationen
wie der Schweizer Medienhilfe heraus. Einerseits kann man ihnen
Erfolge im Ausbau eines Mediensystems nicht absprechen, andererseits
ist dieses Mediensystem eben privaten Interessen unterworfen.
Überhaupt wird deutlich, wie gerade NGOs das System der
Privatisierung staatlicher Aufgaben stützen, indem sie die
Notwendigkeit ihrer Existenz und vor allem das Fundraising nur durch
reale und möglichst eskalierende Krisen sichern können.
Für Deutschland werden die Aktivitäten von Moritz Hunzinger
exemplarisch erläutert. Da es in Deutschland keine Meldepflicht für
PR-Aktivitäten entsprechend dem FARA-Register in den USA gibt,
bleiben entsprechende Aktivitäten ausgeblendet, was nicht bedeutet,
daß es sie nicht gibt. Hier wäre etwa die intellektuelle Begleitung
diverser Regime-Change-Aktivitäten durch die Bertelsmann-Stiftung
untersuchenswert. Man kann sich keineswegs mit der Erkenntnis
zufrieden geben, daß wir vor allem von US-Seite aus in die Balkan-
Kriege der 90er Jahre manipuliert wurden. Auch ist der Mythos des
reinen NATO-Interesses so nicht haltbar. Hierzu müßten ergänzend
Schriften wie die des Internationalen Vorbereitungskomitees für ein
europäisches Tribunal über den NATO-Krieg gegen Jugoslawien
herangezogen werden, die von massiven Interessen Deutschlands in Ex-
Jugoslawien ausgehen.
Die Aufarbeitung dessen, was auf dem Balkan und darum herum wirklich
geschah, ist die Pflicht eines jeden Staatsbürgers, der Demokratie,
Menschen- und Völkerrecht etwas abzugewinnen vermag. Die Entwicklung
seither zeigt deutlich, in welche Richtung es gehen soll. Der
Vollständigkeit halber sei sie hier angerissen, auch wenn der
Zusammenhang mit der rezensierten Publikation nur indirekt ist: die
NATO-Doktrin von 1999 nennt drei legitime Gründe für sogenannte
Friedensmissionen: 1. Humanitäre Gründe, 2. Ressourcensicherung und
3. Migrationsbewegungen. Im EU-Verfassungsentwurf ist die Aufrüstung
aller Mitgliedsstaaten Programm und das besagte Weißbuch ist bislang
der Gipfel der Dreistigkeit: Grundrechte werden ausgehebelt und durch
Marktstrategien und das gute alte Konzept des »White-Man's-Burden«
ersetzt. Durch diese Entwicklungen seit den Balkan-Kriegen hat das
Buch von Becker und Beham an Bedeutung gewonnen. Es sollte zur
Pflichtlektüre an Journalistenschulen gemacht werden. Wir werden noch
ganz anders und viel genauer hinschauen müssen, damit wir nicht nach
Jahren der Gewöhnung an Orwellsches »Neusprech« bereit sind, der
rhetorischen Frage zuzustimmen: »Wollt ihr den globalen Krieg?« Wenn
man uns dann überhaupt noch fragt.
Becker, Jörg und Beham, Mira:
Operation Balkan: Werbung für Krieg und Tod.
Nomos Verlag, Baden-Baden, Dezember 2006, 130 Seiten, 17,90 Euro
http://www.jungewelt.de/
12.03.2007 / Feuilleton / Seite 13
Antiserbische Blaupause
Wollt ihr den globalen Krieg? Die »freien Medien« sind die
Wegbereiter. Das wurde anhand der Balkan-Kriege durchexerziert. Ein
Buch über die entsprechenden Verflechtungen
Sabine Schiffer
Mit »Operation Balkan: Werbung für Krieg und Tod« hat das Autorenduo
Jörg Becker und Mira Beham eine eminent wichtige Forschungsarbeit
vorgelegt. In konzisen 87 Seiten mit Anhang wird aufgezeigt, wie der
Krieg auf dem Balkan durch die Arbeit von PR-Agenturen wesentlich
beeinflußt, ja mitinitiiert wurde, wie mittels der Zuordnung von
Recht und Unrecht klare Feindbilder geschaffen und widersprechende
Fakten unterschlagen wurden. Die Untersuchung ist ein Lehrstück. Sie
unterstreicht, wie bedeutend es angesichts immer massiver werdender
Instrumentalisierungen ist, daß Medienmacher die Quellen ihrer
Informationen hinterfragen. Die Folgen der Entwicklung hin zu mehr PR-
Stellen, weg von gesicherten Arbeitsverhältnissen im Journalismus,
können für eine Demokratie, die auf öffentliche
Meinungsbildungsprozesse angewiesen ist, nicht unterschätzt werden.
Es braucht etwa deutlich mehr kritische Aufmerksamkeit für die nicht
sonderlich subtilen Sprachregelungen bestimmter Agenturen. Natürlich
ist es entscheidend, ob etwas als »Massaker« oder
»Verteidigungskampf« bezeichnet wird. So wird ein Empfinden von
Legitimität oder Illegitimität erzeugt. Es ist kein Zufallsprodukt,
sondern Ergebnis jahrelanger Propaganda, daß »die Serben« in der
öffentlichen Wahrnehmung in die Nähe der Nazis rückten. Durch die
geschickte Plazierung von Begriffen wie »KZ«, »Völkermord« und
»Auschwitz« wurden auch Pazifisten in die Pflicht für den Krieg auf
dem Balkan genommen.
Die Vernetzungen gehen weit über das Bekannte hinaus. Die
Zusammenarbeit von PR-Akteuren und US-Politikern ist kein Geheimnis.
In »Operation Balkan« geht es auch um die Symbiosen zwischen
hochangesehenen Nichtregierungsorganisationen (NGOs) wie Amnesty
International oder UNICEF und den Spins -- der gelenkten
Kommunikation. Auch hier vermitteln nicht nur Agenturen wie die
bereits im Irak-Krieg von 1991 berühmt gewordene Hill & Knowlton,
sondern auch ethisch angeblich integere wie Ruder Finn und viele
mehr. Das Register am Ende des Buches bietet einen Überblick über
Verteilung der Aufgaben unter den Organisationen. Neben solchen
internen Verflechtungen werden Verflechtungen mit privaten
Militärunternehmen aufgeführt. Insgesamt wird eine Tendenz zur
Privatisierung von Information, Krieg und schließlich auch von
Diplomatie nachgewiesen. Es waren mit der Kriegspropaganda
beauftragte Agenturen, die z. B. die Unabhängigkeitserklärung des
Kosovo entwarfen.
Erfolgreich war der antiserbische Spin vor allem, weil die
Gegenpositionen zum Teil von denselben Agenturen formuliert wurden.
In Serbien gaben widerstreitende Parteien derweil ein uneinheitliches
Bild ab, was einer geschlossenen Meinungsbildung nicht dienlich war.
Die Autoren veranschaulichen den zirkulären Schluß der PR-Aktivitäten
mit einem Schema: Die Argumentationen werden gezielt plaziert, von
Intellektuellen aufgenommen und diskutiert, schließlich auch durch
das Bildmaterial von NGOs vor Ort verstärkt. Die international so
»freien« Medien erscheinen als sich selbst bestätigendes System, das
Kohärenz suggeriert. Wieder und wieder wird die Notwendigkeit des
»humanitären Eingriffs« herausgestellt. Am Ende kann sich der
einzelne Konsument der Kriegsrhetorik kaum noch entziehen. Diese
Techniken der Manipulation dürften in naher Zukunft verstärkt zum
Einsatz kommen. Darauf läßt auch das Weißbuch der Bundeswehr schließen.
»Operation Balkan« arbeitet die zwiespältige Rolle von Organisationen
wie der Schweizer Medienhilfe heraus. Einerseits kann man ihnen
Erfolge im Ausbau eines Mediensystems nicht absprechen, andererseits
ist dieses Mediensystem eben privaten Interessen unterworfen.
Überhaupt wird deutlich, wie gerade NGOs das System der
Privatisierung staatlicher Aufgaben stützen, indem sie die
Notwendigkeit ihrer Existenz und vor allem das Fundraising nur durch
reale und möglichst eskalierende Krisen sichern können.
Für Deutschland werden die Aktivitäten von Moritz Hunzinger
exemplarisch erläutert. Da es in Deutschland keine Meldepflicht für
PR-Aktivitäten entsprechend dem FARA-Register in den USA gibt,
bleiben entsprechende Aktivitäten ausgeblendet, was nicht bedeutet,
daß es sie nicht gibt. Hier wäre etwa die intellektuelle Begleitung
diverser Regime-Change-Aktivitäten durch die Bertelsmann-Stiftung
untersuchenswert. Man kann sich keineswegs mit der Erkenntnis
zufrieden geben, daß wir vor allem von US-Seite aus in die Balkan-
Kriege der 90er Jahre manipuliert wurden. Auch ist der Mythos des
reinen NATO-Interesses so nicht haltbar. Hierzu müßten ergänzend
Schriften wie die des Internationalen Vorbereitungskomitees für ein
europäisches Tribunal über den NATO-Krieg gegen Jugoslawien
herangezogen werden, die von massiven Interessen Deutschlands in Ex-
Jugoslawien ausgehen.
Die Aufarbeitung dessen, was auf dem Balkan und darum herum wirklich
geschah, ist die Pflicht eines jeden Staatsbürgers, der Demokratie,
Menschen- und Völkerrecht etwas abzugewinnen vermag. Die Entwicklung
seither zeigt deutlich, in welche Richtung es gehen soll. Der
Vollständigkeit halber sei sie hier angerissen, auch wenn der
Zusammenhang mit der rezensierten Publikation nur indirekt ist: die
NATO-Doktrin von 1999 nennt drei legitime Gründe für sogenannte
Friedensmissionen: 1. Humanitäre Gründe, 2. Ressourcensicherung und
3. Migrationsbewegungen. Im EU-Verfassungsentwurf ist die Aufrüstung
aller Mitgliedsstaaten Programm und das besagte Weißbuch ist bislang
der Gipfel der Dreistigkeit: Grundrechte werden ausgehebelt und durch
Marktstrategien und das gute alte Konzept des »White-Man's-Burden«
ersetzt. Durch diese Entwicklungen seit den Balkan-Kriegen hat das
Buch von Becker und Beham an Bedeutung gewonnen. Es sollte zur
Pflichtlektüre an Journalistenschulen gemacht werden. Wir werden noch
ganz anders und viel genauer hinschauen müssen, damit wir nicht nach
Jahren der Gewöhnung an Orwellsches »Neusprech« bereit sind, der
rhetorischen Frage zuzustimmen: »Wollt ihr den globalen Krieg?« Wenn
man uns dann überhaupt noch fragt.
Becker, Jörg und Beham, Mira:
Operation Balkan: Werbung für Krieg und Tod.
Nomos Verlag, Baden-Baden, Dezember 2006, 130 Seiten, 17,90 Euro
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20070308&articleId=5021
Yugoslavia: Human Rights Watch in Service to the War Party
by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson and George Szamuely
Global Research, March 9, 2007
Zmag.org - 2007-02-25
Concluding Note
While it has often done valuable service, HRW has failed badly in dealing with the disintegration of Yugoslavia . It supported that dismantlement, its leaders arguing that this would help minorities. They were wrong and thus their stance contributed to an escalation of human rights abuses. Their claim that justice must be given greater weight than peace-making fed into the interests of those eager for war and had disastrous effects on all the “nations” of the former Yugoslavia. Their claim that justice must come first in order to deliver peace of mind to the victims and as essential for peace and reconciliation, which follows the ICTY party line, is untenable and hypocritical in the light of ICTY and HRW practice. A focus on justice merges easily into vengeance and feeds antagonism and hostility, particularly when carried out in a one-sided fashion. The first Milosevic indictment listed 344 Kosovo Albanian victims, so presumably their relatives needed “justice, “ but as noted earlier the ICTY found that 495 Serb victims of NATO bombing did not provide a sufficient “crime base” for any action, so how are the families of these victims to obtain justice? Where is the justice for the victims of Operation Storm, or the scores of thousands of Serbs and Roma ousted from the Kosovo under NATO control? ( Serbia has had to deal with more refugees than any other area in the former Yugoslavia .)
If the Serbs feel—and we believe are fully justified in feeling—that they have been victims of a Great Power assault based on geopolitical considerations, and subjected to extreme and politicized discrimination in the workings of the ICTY, the show trial of their leader will hardly make them more peace-minded. That show trial was also a “travesty” in terms of substance. If it was to educate Serbs by instructing them about their leaders’ guilt, it failed abysmally, and not just because it was managed incompetently. It failed because, at bottom, it was a political trial in which the political case was not only unsustainable, but was shown to be trying the lesser villains—the bigger ones being those guilty of the “supreme international crime”—and it revealed itself throughout to be a “rogue court” serving the bigger villains, violating every legal principle, and moving inexorably toward the pre-determined finding of guilt.
Sadly, HRW has played an important role in this travesty and has therefore been an important contributor to human rights violations in the former Yugoslavia . HRW helped stir up passions in the demonization process from 1992 onward and actively and proudly contributed to preparing the ground for NATO’s “supreme international crime” in March 1999. It has conveniently assumed “neutrality” on matters of aggression, though WTE focuses on Serbia’s cross-border aid to the Bosnian and Krajina Serbs as something to be strongly condemned—so it ceases to be neutral on aggression when the Serbs can be targeted, although, with a droll application of the double standard, U.S. and Croatian aid to their allies in Bosnia are exempt from criticism. There are no holds barred in finding against the bad guys, just as our side only makes regrettable mistakes. This human rights group is even completely oblivious to the violation of Slobodan Milosevic’s human rights as a prisoner. Indicted Croatians are exempted from being put on trial for ill health,[167] indicted Kosovo Albanians are released from Hague incarceration to return to campaign for office in Kosovo,[168] but Milosevic, a very sick man, was not released to get medical attention in Moscow even with Russian assurances of his return.[169] His death just 16 days after this rejection was regretted by Carla Del Ponte because “It deprives the victims of the justice they need and deserve”[170]—but WTE and HRW have no word of criticism for this improper treatment. They are on the team with Carla Del Ponte and the Western establishment.
In the past, two of the present authors have compared the Milosevic trial to the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s.[171] Recalling the Dewey Commission of Inquiry's conclusion that the Moscow trials “served not juridical but political ends,” we observed that, among the parallels between these trials and the bodies conducting them, one that stands out is their public-relations function, and, more broadly, their drafting of a historical record that serves the needs of the dominant political faction, even if executed in juridical form. Here we add the observation that Human Rights Watch's Weighing the Evidence concludes its summary of the Prosecution's case against Milosevic in the same place where it begins, with the affirmation that, going forward, “Trials of high-level suspects will be important for the documentation of events and the role and responsibility of various actors, irrespective of any conclusion relating to the defendant's guilt or innocence.”[172] If this is true, and if we allow the Milosevic trial and the ICTY to become our models for “international justice,” then both the historical record and human rights will suffer damaging blows.
Endnotes
167. In April, 2003, the ICTY suspended its warrant for the arrest of the former Chief of Staff of Croatia's Army, General Janko Bobetko, under indictment by the ICTY since August, 2002. An ICTY-appointed doctor determined the 83-year-old too ill to travel to The Hague, and the previous month, an ICTY judge had declared that if Zagreb agreed to serve the six-month-old indictment on Bobetko, suspension of the arrest warrant would be "effective immediately," thus rendering the whole indictment meaningless. Bobetko died less than three weeks later. See Judge Carmel Agius, Order for Service of Indictment, March 19, 2003; "ICTY Officially Informs Zagreb on Suspension of Arrest Warrant," ONASA News Agency, April 9, 2003; and "Obituary of General Janko Bobetko," Daily Telegraph, April 30, 2003.
168. Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj was indicted in March 2005 (IT-04-84-I) on multiple counts of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war for events that occurred while he was a commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army. He resigned his office and surrendered to ICTY custody. On June 6, 2005, Haradinaj was granted provisional release to return to participation in the political life of Kosovo, pending trial. (See Judge Carmel Agius, Decision on Ramush Haradinaj's Motion for Provisional Release, ICTY, June 6, 2005.) Some 20 months later, Haradinaj remained at large, and with a final date for his trial scheduled for March 2007, he was ordered to return to ICTY custody no later than February 26, 2007. (See Judge Alphons Orie, Order Recalling Ramush Haradinaj from Provisional Release, ICTY, February 1, 2007.)
169. See Judge Patrick Robinson, Decision on Assigned Counsel Request for Provisional Release (IT-02-54-T), ICTY, February 23, 2006. Milosevic's release from custody for special medical care at the Bakoulev Center in Russia was denied because, "notwithstanding the guarantees of the Russian Federation and the personal undertaking of the Accused, the Trial Chamber is not satisfied that the first prong of the test has been met—that is, that it is more likely than not that the Accused, if released, would return for the continuation of his trial" (par. 18).
171. See Ch. 2, "A Study in Propaganda," in Michael Barratt Brown, Edward S. Herman, and David Peterson, The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic (Spokesman, 2004), pp. 31-78. (For an electronic version, see "Marlise Simons on the Yugoslavia Tribunal: A Study in Total Propaganda Service," ZNet, 2004.)
172. WTE, p. 75. Compare the assertion WTE makes in its Introduction: "Human Rights Watch believes the evidence introduced [in the Milosevic trial] should help shape how current and future generations view the wars and in particular Serbia ’s role in them" (p. 5).
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© Copyright Edward S. Herman, Zmag.org, 2007
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20070308&articleId=5021
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Appendix: The “Scorpions” and the Serbian Police
Neither the execution videotape[A1] nor any of the other evidence presented during the trial of Slobodan Milosevic substantiated the prosecution's claim—now repeated by WTE—that the Scorpions were “acting under the aegis of the Serbian police.”[A2]
In fact, the most detailed evidence about the Scorpions to have emerged at the trial occurred nearly two years earlier, during the testimony of prosecution witness Milan Milanovic, a former deputy defense minister of the Republika Srpska Krajina.
Milanovic is a witness on whose word HRW attaches great weight.[A3] When asked by the Prosecution under whom the Scorpions served (i.e., “were subordinated”) during the period they were active in the Bihac Pocket, Milanovic replied: “They were subordinated to the command of the army of the Republic of Serbian Krajina .”[A4] Asked for a second time under whom the Scorpions were subordinated when they subsequently went to Trnovo in eastern Bosnia , Milanovic replied: “To the MUP of the Republika Srpska.”[A5]
Later, during Milanovic's cross-examination by Slobodan Milosevic, the following exchange took place:[A6]
Milosevic: Did you engage them [the Scorpions] in your area?
Milanovic: I proposed to the director of the oil company that they secure the oil fields that were on the separation lines….I proposed Slobodan Medic as the person who should be in charge of that security, and then they were under the director of the oil company.
Milosevic: So this was a security unit for the oil company, the head of which you yourself proposed?
Milanovic: Correct….
Milosevic: But you also sent them to Bosnia and Herzegovina , didn't you?
Milanovic: I didn't send them. The command of the corps sent them to accomplish various assignments, and most of those units that went outside the area I would visit very frequently.
Milosevic: Very well. So the government sent them.
Milanovic: Yes, the government and the army command.
So the Scorpions were recruited by the government of the Republika Srpska Krajina to protect the oil fields. Milanovic, a prosecution witness with no love for the government of Serbia , made no claim about the Scorpions serving under the command of (or having been “subordinated” to) the Serbian MUP. It was the Srpska Krajina government that sent the Scorpions into Bosnia .
Shortly thereafter, Milanovic explained that in 1999, while NATO was bombing Serbia , the Scorpions wanted to go to Kosovo. According to Milanovic's testimony:[A7]
[A]fter the NATO attack on the Federal Republic, seven, eight, or ten days after that he [Slobodan Medic] called me up and told me that he'd rather not go as a reservist to the army of Yugoslavia but as a member of MUP. At the same time…I was called up by General Djordjevic, the head of the public security, saying that he needed volunteers. So I didn't know what to do for three or four days, whether to send him or not, because everything was being monitored. I didn't know whether I should get in touch with the two of them, and three or four days later I did establish—link the two of them up, and two or three days later he went to Kosovo.
Milosevic then asked Milanovic: “Was he returned from there following General Djordjevic's orders? He demanded that he return?” And Milanovic replied: “Yes. He was returned, but he went back and stayed until the end of the bombing raids.”[A8]
Again, we emphasize that Milanovic never made any claim about the Republic of Serbia 's MUP. Were the Scorpions already a unit of the Serbian MUP, it would have made no sense for the Scorpions to ask Milanovic to arrange for them to be sent to Kosovo as members of the Republic of Serbia's MUP.
Appendix Notes
A1. For the passage where Prosecution Geoffrey Nice presents the alleged "Scorpions video," see Milosevic Trial Transcript, June 1, 2005, pp. 40275 ff.
A2. Sara Darehshori, Weighing the Evidence: Lessons from the Slobodan Milosevic Trial, Human Rights Watch, December, 2006, p. 14.
A3. WTE mentions Milan Milanovic's name 16 different times.
A4. Milosevic Trial Transcript, October 14, 2003, p. 27431.
A5. Ibid. "MUP" denotes Ministarstvo Unutrašnjih Polsova, meaning in this instance the Ministry of the Interior of the Republika Srpska—not the MUP of the Republic of Serbia , i.e., under the command of Belgrade and Slobodan Milosevic.
A5. Ibid. "MUP" denotes Ministarstvo Unutrašnjih Polsova, meaning in this instance the Ministry of the Interior of the Republika Srpska—not the MUP of the Republic of Serbia , i.e., under the command of Belgrade and Slobodan Milosevic.
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From: Promemoria <promemoriats @ virgilio.it>Date: March 12, 2007 8:07:16 PM GMT+01:00Subject: l'ass. Promemoria ha informato la magistratura di Trieste sugli avvenimenti in occasione della Giornata del ricordo del 10.2.2007 presso il pozzo della Miniera di BasovizzaAllego un comunicato stampacordiali salutiper PromemoriaSandi Volk
Promemoria
Associazione per la difesa dei valori dell’antifascismo e dell’antinazismo
Društvo za zaščito vrednot protifašizma in protinacizma
Trieste, 12.3.2007
Comunicato stampa – con richiesta di pubblicazione
Qualche tempo fa la nostra associazione aveva fatto pervenire al sindaco di Trieste (e per conoscenza al Prefetto di Trieste) una diffida formale dal permettere che durante iniziative promosse o organizzate dal Comune di Trieste venissero esposte in sua presenza bandiere ed altri simboli che erano palesi infrazioni della legislazione che proibisce l'apologia del fascismo. Gli si comunicava inoltre che nel caso avesse permesso il ripetersi di simili episodi ci saremmo trovati costretti a imformare della cosa la magistratura.
Purtroppo abbiamo dovuto rilevare che in occasione delle celebrazioni del 10 febbraio scorso presso il pozzo della miniera di Basovizza tra il pubblico era presente in luogo ben visibile un tricolore italiano con al centro un aquila che tiene tra gli artigli un fascio littorio, la bandiera cioè dello stato fantoccio creato in Italia durante la guerra dagli occupatori nazisti. Non avendo avuto notizia del fatto che il sindaco, qualche altro pubblico ufficiale o le forze dell'ordine fossero intervenuti per rimuovere l'oltraggiosa bandiera ed identificare coloro che l'avevano esposta ci siamo trovati costretti ad adempiere all'impegno preso. Venerdì 9 marzo la nostra associazione ha così consegnato alla magistratura un esposto con allegata documentazione del fatto, chiedendo ai magistrati di valutare se non si sia trattato dell'infrazione delle leggi che proibiscono l'apologia del fascismo, il vilipendio della bandiera nazionale, l'omissione di atti d'ufficio o di altre fattispecie di reato e l'emanazione dei provvedimenti del caso.
Rimaniamo ora in attesa delle decisioni della magistratura di cui naturalmente informeremo tempestivamente l'opinione pubblica italiana e straniera.
Per l'Associazione Promemoria
Il presidente
Sandi Volk
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20070308&articleId=5021
Yugoslavia: Human Rights Watch in Service to the War Party
by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson and George Szamuely
Global Research, March 9, 2007
Zmag.org - 2007-02-25
Part 3: HRW “Weighs the Evidence”
Weighing the Evidence: Lessons from the Slobodan Milosevic Trial (hereafter, WTE) was drafted under the auspices of HRW's International Justice Program (IJP). Principal author Sara Darehshori is a Senior Counsel with the IJP. The document acknowledges the help (among others) of ten current and former HRW staff members, including the IJP's Director Richard Dicker. Gratitude is expressed toward the ICTY prosecutor Dermot Groome “for reviewing the evidence sections of the paper;” Groome's main responsibility at the Milosevic trial was to make the charge of “genocide” stick to the defendant. Thanks are also given to the Milosevic trial's chief prosecutor Geoffrey Nice, who “was especially generous with his time and insights and deserves special mention.” To Diana Dicklich, the Prosecution's case manager during the Milosevic trial. And to Alexandra Milenov, a Registry Liaison Officer for Serbia and Montenegro . Also, WTE acknowledges the help of unidentified “members of the Office of the Prosecutor, Chambers, Registry, Outreach, and Defense….” Finally, it mentions but does not identify by name the “assistance and leads given us by several journalists who covered the trial closely and provided us with insights from an observer's perspective.”[77]
The IJP's promotional literature tells us that its purpose is “to promote justice and accountability for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in countries where national courts are unable or unwilling to do so.”[78] But whenever we look at the IJP's work, no matter where we turn, we find the former Yugoslavia occupying center stage. Of the 49 full-length “Reports” to have been archived on the IJP's website through December 2006, roughly one-third of them (16) deal with the conflicts over the former Yugoslavia.[79] Similarly, of the 481 documents that the IJP archives “by Region,” 31 percent of them focus on “The Balkans” (i.e., on matters related to the former Yugoslavia, including the performance of the ICTY).[80] In keeping with this focus, the single longest document ever published by HRW (861 pages) was devoted to publicizing the work of the ICTY; as its Preface tells us, it was “intended as an accessible reference tool to assist practitioners and researchers as they familiarize themselves with ICTY case law.”[81] Indeed, HRW's longest-ever study of a particular theater of conflict (623 pages) was devoted to the Serbian province of Kosovo . More precisely, it stated that its aim was “to document the war crimes committed by Serbian and Yugoslav government forces in Kosovo between March 24 and June 12, 1999—the period of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia .”[82] No other theater or theme besides the former Yugoslavia and the work of the ICTY weighs anywhere near as heavily in the IJP's scales. It would not be unfair to say that the former Yugoslavia has served HRW as a kind of real-world laboratory against which to test certain conceptions of human rights and international justice. WTE thus belongs to a lineage that has been years in the making, and this report exhibits the same overall pattern of advocacy and bias that has characterized HRW’s treatment of Balkans issues from 1990 onward.[83]
Surely this extraordinary attention is not justified by the scale of the atrocities. As we noted earlier, HRW avoided reporting current estimates of war-related deaths in Bosnia, even though it acknowledged their “downward revision”—the unacknowledged numbers falling from 200,000 - 300,000 to 100,000 on all sides.[84] Although estimates of the deaths caused by the Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor are commonly in the order of 200,000,[85] the IJP archives only one major report on East Timor, but 16 on Yugoslavia.[86] Clearly, this degree of contrast in levels of attention cannot be correlated with the scale of atrocities under investigation, and flies in the face of HRW’s claim that its aim is “redressing the more grievous human rights crimes.”[87] The contrast can, however, be linked to U.S. foreign policy priorities. Thus, Indonesia was immensely important to Washington, and the U.S. supported its military attack on East Timor, with HRW favorite Richard Holbrooke serving first as the Carter and later the Clinton point man on East Timor, providing cover for Indonesia's genocidal performance.[88] But in the former Yugoslavia, Washington supported Croatia and the Muslims of Bosnia, and assailed the Serbs; and it can hardly be a coincidence that HRW was deeply interested in atrocities committed by Serbs, with Holbrooke again serving as the Democrats' point man, but this time by advocating hard-line policies toward the alleged Serb aggressors. (Holbrooke has been a guest speaker at multiple HRW events held in the United States and abroad.[89] His wife, Kati Marton, serves on the HRW Board of Directors.[90])
In another dramatic illustration of HRW’s adaptation to the U.S. foreign policy agenda, we may contrast HRW's treatment of Serb conduct in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo, on the one hand, to which HRW gives priority, documents extensively, and denounces with great indignation and generous use of the word “genocide,” with HRW's treatment of the Croatian slaughter and ethnic cleansing of Serbs during Operations Flash and Storm in 1995, on the other. These operations were carried out by Croatian forces with the active support of the Clinton administration. Flash itself was a substantial ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Western Slavonia , carried out in May 1995, in which at least 450 Serbs were killed and an estimated 12,000 expelled.[91] As described by Brendan O’Shea, “This was conquest and a 'land grab'. This was precision ethnic cleansing supported and condoned by the United States .”[92]
Operation Storm was a larger-scale action that involved the brutal and carefully planned ethnic cleansing of the entire Serb civilian population of Croatian Krajina, some 250,000 people. Carried out within a month of the Srebrenica massacre in eastern Bosnia, Storm may well have involved the killing of more Serb civilians than Bosnian Muslim civilians killed in the Srebrenica area in July: Most of the Bosnian Muslim victims were fighters, not civilians, as the Bosnian Serbs bused the Srebrenica women and children to safety; the Croatians made no such provision and several hundred women and children were slaughtered in Krajina.[93] The ruthlessness of the Croats was impressive: “UN troops watched horrified as Croat soldiers dragged the bodies of dead Serbs along the road outside the UN compound and then pumped them full of rounds from the AK-47s. They then crushed the bullet-ridden bodies under the tracks of a tank.”[94]
HRW went to great pains to deny that Operation Flash involved serious human rights violations, and its report on the subject chastised the UN for rushing to a hasty negative judgment.[95] In this case, HRW called for great care in dealing with witness evidence of human rights violations, a point that it never once makes in WTE as regards the ICTY’s eminently problematic acceptance of witness evidence of Serb actions.[96] It also singled out for reprimand the UN official Yasushi Akashi for public statements that HRW found “controversial” and unfairly critical of the Croatian military campaign. “[W]e believe that criticism of a government's human rights record should be commensurate with the level of abuse,” HRW countered; “exaggerated and imprudent remarks… can potentially be counterproductive and damaging to respect for human rights.”[97] This report used the phrase “ethnic cleansing” three times, but only in reference to Serb actions, not Croat; and HRW never applies the word “genocide” to Operation Flash or Storm, though it uses this word liberally in remarks about Serb behavior. Keeping to the same line, a much longer 1996 report on Operation Storm limited its use of the phrase to “bureaucratic ethnic cleansing,” and then only in relation to laws enacted by Croatia to discourage the return of Serbs driven out by its military campaign.[98] “The Croatian government has…argued that 'Operation Storm' did not constitute—nor can it be compared to—the abuses associated with the policy of 'ethnic cleansing' of non-Serbs as practiced in Serbian-controlled territories in Croatia and Bosnia since 1991 and 1992,” this report noted. “Unless the Croatian government reverses its recent actions by allowing the safe return of Serbian civilians to the Krajina area…it will also have to answer to the charge of 'ethnic cleansing' that is often levied against Serbian forces.”[99] As regards Serb actions, HRW never makes the use of the phrase “ethnic cleansing” dependent on Serb failure to reverse what has already been done.
Even more dramatic were the gross apologetics for Operation Storm provided in August 1995 by Holly Cartner, then Executive Director of Human Rights Watch/Helsinki.[100] Cartner explained the vast exodus of Serbs from Krajina as resulting from “intensive military operations,” Serbs “encouraged to go by their own leaders,” and Croatia’s anti-Serb propaganda. She writes that Serbs “were able to collect their belongings…and leave in semi-orderly fashion.” She never acknowledges the high-level deliberate planning of this cleansing operation—it was just an inexplicable “military operation”—nor does she mention the active U.S. support for Operation Storm. She calls upon Croatian President Tudjman to send trained people to care for the remaining Serbs, to permit the return of those who fled, and to prosecute soldiers guilty of war crimes. But she doesn’t demand trials for the Croat leaders in the interest of “justice”—these leaders are apparently good folks who had made a little mistake but can get their own house in order. “While all parties to the wars in the former Yugoslavia have committed war crimes,” Cartner asserted, “only one side—the rebel Serbian forces in Bosnia and Croatia—has attempted to eliminate 'in whole or in part' a people on the basis of their ethnicity.” Pushing out 250,000 Serbs while killing over a thousand of them in just a few short days doesn’t qualify as eliminating on the basis of ethnicity!
Shortly before, Peter Galbraith, U.S. Ambassador to Croatia, had also denied that Operation Storm constituted a case of “ethnic cleansing,” telling a BBC radio interviewer that “Ethnic cleansing is a practice sponsored by the leadership in Belgrade, carried out by the Bosnian Serbs and also by the Croatian Serbs,” not by Croatia—a position condemned throughout much of the world.[101] But though Storm was one of the clearest cases—and the largest—of cleansing a geographic space of its people on the basis of their ethnicity during the Balkan conflicts, neither the U.S. Government, HRW, nor Holly Cartner could bring themselves to use such a term to describe this Croatian action. The HRW double standard in word usage as well as in the selection (and misuse) of evidence follows closely the official agenda. Twice over the course of three months in 1995, Croatia had militarily emptied Serb population centers, and HRW principals attacked the critics of Croatia 's offensives for their insensitivity towards the perpetrators, truly a remarkable chapter in the history of this human rights organization.
While WTE pretends to be fair-minded on the Milosevic trial, it is not: It hews closely to the Prosecution's case against Milosevic, takes for granted all the premises of the Prosecution and establishment narrative, and selects and massages evidence on a regular basis to support that narrative. Thus WTE takes it as a simple truism that the ICTY is pursuing justice, and it never addresses ICTY's political origins, purpose, integration into NATO plans and operations, problematic rules and rule-making, staffing, and selectivity.
According to a celebrated maxim: “Justice must not only be done, it must also be seen to be done.” But both the ICTY and WTE postulate Serb and Milosevic guilt; and WTE sees no contradiction between presuming guilt and conducting a fair trial, much less between the integration of the work of the ICTY and U.S.-NATO policy, on the one side, and the likelihood or even the possibility of its rendering justice, on the other. WTE does not find it problematic that Richard May, the Presiding Judge until a fatal illness forced his resignation in late February 2004, Geoffrey Nice, the lead prosecutor, and four of the five amicus curiae appointed by the court heralded from countries that participated in the NATO war against Yugoslavia, or close allies.[102] Similarly, of the 25 judges now serving at the ICTY, 12 are from NATO members; one is from South Korea, a close U.S. ally; three from Jamaica and Guyana, countries having close relations with Great Britain; three from Austria, Sweden and Switzerland, countries generally supportive of NATO in the Balkans; two from Pakistan and Senegal, which are Muslim countries. ICTY President Fausto Pocar is from Italy , a NATO country; and Vice President Kevin Parker is from Australia , a close U.S. ally.[103] One proposed judge from Russia was vetoed on the basis of a potential “pro-Serb bias”! [104]
The ideas stressed in John Laughland’s Travesty, that legal justice requires a lawful base in an enabling statute, a separation between prosecution and judges, a stable body of rules not changeable by the judges in accord with passing convenience,[105] an appeals process outside the body of appointed judges themselves, qualified judges, and independence from powerful interests with a political agenda, are outside HRW’s and WTE’s orbit of thought.[106] This failure to question structured bias is remarkable for a body that claims to support the rule of law—which HRW seems to regard as something that an advanced civilization needs to impose upon backwards peoples. But while HRW allegedly seeks the rule of law and “accountability” in these backward areas, it is extremely cavalier about the lack of rigor of the law, judicial practice, and accountability, in an institution pursuing “justice” in accord with U.S. and NATO priorities. As we have stressed, with HRW’s principals regularly violating the UN Charter prohibition of aggression, that area of justice is set aside, and although it accepts the urgency of the ICTY principle that one can hardly hope to “restore the rule of law [etc.]… if the culprits are allowed to go unpunished,”[107] HRW fails to see the necessity of applying this in the case of those committing the “supreme international crime,” such as Richard Holbrooke, Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton and George Bush.
The most important achievement of the Milosevic trial, WTE declares, was that it “showed how Belgrade enabled the war to happen.”[108] The “JNA, the Serbian Ministry of Interior and other entities…armed Serb civilians and local territorial defense groups in Krajina and Bosnia prior to the start of conflict….”[109] To support this line, WTE cites NATO commander Wesley Clark: “We knew that the Serb military had been…carved out of the Yugoslav military.”[110]
But the armed forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina , Croatia , and even Macedonia were carved out of the JNA no less than were the Serb forces. In a series of civil wars, each rival sought and acquired arms, allies, and sponsors—some more successfully than others. If the JNA helped to create the military formations of the Serbian Krajina and Republika Srpska, it did likewise for the Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat armies, for Fikret Abdic's Muslim troops in Bihac, and for countless paramilitary groupings. Unlike Berlin , Vienna or Washington , however, (or Riyadh , Tehran , Islamabad or Ankara ,) Belgrade was not a foreign power. This point is lost on WTE. As is the fact that if aid to the Croatian and Bosnian Serbs “enabled the war to happen,” so did aid to the Croats and Muslims, with decisive consequences as the wars dragged on.
But the Milosevic trial shed little light on which rival inherited what from the JNA, including its arms, organizational knowledge, plant and infrastructure. The Prosecution showed no interest in this line; nor does WTE. During cross-examination of Morton Torkildsen, a financial “expert” whose testimony figures prominently in WTE (the document cites Torkildsen's name 20 times), Milosevic asked whether the analysis he produced had covered “not just [the] weapons and equipment but entire military factories” left behind in territories “under control of the Croats and Muslims?” “No,” was Torkildsen's reply. His mandate went only as far as “evidence relative to the indictment of the accused.” But no further.[111]
In any case, how the rivals acquired their weapons is secondary to who took up arms first, and for what purposes. Also prominent in WTE (mentioned 15 different times) is the testimony of the former JNA General Aleksandar Vasiljevic. Prosecutor Nice asked Vasiljevic about the JNA's “goals.” “[T]he first and basic objective was…for the JNA to separate the parties in conflict,” Vasiljevic explained, referring to court documents. “Later, the objectives were to protect…the JNA units which were then…in facilities and barracks that were under blockade in the territory of Croatia . And sometime from August or September onwards, 1991…the protection of endangered peoples is referred to, the people in those areas that were attacked by either side, any side. Specifically in that period of time that we're referring to, that is to say September 1991, this had to do with the protection of the Serb people in some areas….” Nice then asked a follow-up question: “Was there, in your opinion, any question of the JNA forcing a political solution to the crisis?” Vasiljevic replied: “Never. Not in any period of time. The JNA never imposed a solution or ways of getting out of the crisis.”[112] But these aspects of Torkildsen's and Vasiljevic's testimony do not interest WTE, and none of it “enabled the war to happen.” Instead, the Serbs were most responsible for the wars in Yugoslavia . The Serbs committed crimes far more horrendous than their rivals. The Serbs, alone, were guilty of genocide.
WTE commits many errors, each invariably supportive of its biased treatment of the issues. For example, following the ICTY and party line narrative, WTE reports that the Serbs “expelled” 800,000 Kosovo Albanians by June 1999.[113] But large numbers fled from fear of NATO bombs and fighting, some were pushed out by the KLA, and literal expulsions by the Yugoslav army were concentrated in areas of strong KLA presence.[114] What is more, the larger fraction of Kosovo Serbs than Kosovo Albanians who fled during that bombing war were hardly “expelled,”[115] although some may have been pushed out by, or fled in fear of, the KLA.
In addition to offering an error-laden history, WTE stops short in its descriptions of events when the story might appear to contradict the benign version of NATO's and the ICTY's supposed campaign for justice. Thus WTE writes that since the end of the bombing war and the withdrawal of FRY and Serb forces from Kosovo on June 20, 1999, the “United Nations has administered Kosovo with support from a NATO-led peacekeeping force, although it formally remains part of Serbia .”[116] But that is all. No mention of the fact that under UN and NATO auspices there were over a thousand killings and disappearances, that over 150,000 Serbs and tens of thousands of Roma were driven out of Kosovo in what Jan Oberg has called the “largest ethnic cleansing [in proportionate terms] in the Balkans,”[117] and that it is a state dominated by fear and chronic low level terror and with a thriving drug and sex trade, but with a huge U.S. military base planted in its center.
HRW's bias and blasé acceptance of abuses of a supposedly judicial process were quickly made evident in their putting forward the “Scorpion video” as a case in which an “important item” of “evidence” came into view through the work of the ICTY.[118] This video, “which showed members of the notorious ‘Scorpion’ unit, believed to have been acting under the aegis of the Serbian police, executing men and boys from Srebrenica at Trnovo. Although the video was never admitted as evidence, it was shown at the trial and would not have become public but for the trial. It had enormous impact….”[119] Contrary to WTE, the statement that this group was “believed to be operating under the aegis of the Serbian police” was convincingly refuted during the Milosevic trial (see Appendix). WTE’s and HRW’s contempt for the rule of law is also displayed by WTE’s failure to mention that the video was shown by the prosecutor during Milosevic’s defense, free of cross-examination, despite its lack of authentication and the absence of any connection between it and the knowledge and testimony of the witness on the stand. As amicus curiae Steven Kay objected in court, it was “sensationalism…not cross-examination,”[120] an unjudicial propaganda contribution to the imminent 10th anniversary memorial to the Srebrenica massacre, and clear evidence of the ICTY’s political role.[121]
But why was this evidence deemed “important” by WTE? There has never been any doubt that Serb paramilitaries executed ”men and boys” during these years of fighting in Bosnia, just as there is no question but that Croat and Bosnian Muslim (and imported Mujahadeen) did the same. Naser Oric, the Bosnian Muslim commander at Srebrenica until shortly before its fall to Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995, proudly showed Western reporters videos of beheaded Serbs that forces under his command had killed during their operations.[122] Back in May 1993, the Yugoslav government submitted to the UN Secretary-General an extensive 132-page dossier titled War Crimes and Crimes and Genocide in Eastern Bosnia...Committed Against the Serb Population from April 1992 to April 1993, listing by name and place hundreds of Serbs killed by Muslim and Mujahadeen forces in that early period.[123] More recently, the Tabeau-Bijak report estimated some 16,000 Serb civilians killed in Bosnia during the 1992-1995 wars.[124] In civil wars people are killed, sometimes using the most heinous methods. So a video record of the execution of six young Bosnian Muslim males is only important for identifying particular individuals as engaging in criminal acts or for propaganda service.
The Prosecution's evidence in the Milosevic trial consisted heavily of witnesses who claimed killings and other abuses by Serb forces, and WTE follows in the same well-worn path. As Laughland notes, however, “Indictments [by the ICTY] are drawn up with little or no reference to the fact that the acts in question were committed in battle: one often has the surreal sensation one would have reading a description of one man beating another man unconscious which omitted to mention that the violence was being inflicted in the course of a boxing match.”[125] At the opening of his trial Milosevic devoted several hours to showing video evidence of deaths and injuries to Serbs from NATO violence,[126] and there is every reason to believe that he could have called several hundred witnesses, and presented a great deal more video evidence of crimes against Serbs. That would have represented a different agenda and political purpose than the trial in place, but only committed partisans like the ICTY and HRW could believe that civil war atrocities were unique to one side and that a video showing six executions was “important” evidence.
In early August 2006, Serbian and Croatian television began playing videotapes that allegedly depict scenes shot at various stages of Operation Storm. One shows the “Croatian army's 'Black Mamba' unit and the Bosnian military's 'Hamze' squad killing and abusing Serb soldiers and civilians,” Agence France Presse reported. A second shows the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina Fifth Corps Commander Atif Dudakovic “ordering his troops to torch Serb villages in northwestern Bosnia in September 1995. 'I'm ordering the village to be torched….Torch everything without exception', Atif Dudakovic…shouted in the film that showed houses in flames.” A BBC report translated Dudakovic ordering: “[B]urn that village….Burn, burn everything….Go on, burn everything in your wake!”[127] The State Department's information bureau acknowledged that “One tape reportedly shows Croat and Bosnian troops harassing and attacking convoys of Serb refugees, in one scene killing a Serb who has surrendered. Another tape shows a prominent Bosnian general apparently ordering his troops to burn Serb villages.”[128]
Bosnia-Herzegovina's Foreign Minister Mladen Ivanic (a Serb) called for an investigation, and said authorities needed to show that they would “treat all war crimes the same way.”[129] But when asked during its weekly press briefing whether the Office of the Prosecutor “was conducting an investigation” into these matters, spokesman Anton Nikiforov “stated that it was regrettable that the tape had surfaced now just as the OTP had finished its investigative mandate.”[l30] Through early 2007, the ICTY had not indicted Dudakovic. Is it not interesting how videotapes such as these, and Naser Oric's, are not “important” to WTE or the ICTY, and allegedly come too late for action, just as the long-awaited (and perhaps nonexistent) indictments of Tudjman and Izetbegovic were never served during their lifetimes?[131]
WTE suggests that the Milosevic trial has served a truth commission-like function on behalf of the historical record, both in its having assembled evidence, decisions, and transcripts of proceedings, and for the news accounts of journalists who reported on what transpired in the courtroom. The “Milosevic trial may be one of the few venues in which a great deal of evidence was consolidated about the conflicts,” WTE affirms. As a result, it “should help shape how current and future generations view the wars and in particular Serbia ’s role in them.”[132] But this is history according to the Office of the Prosecutor, whose lawyers and staff can at least claim that their job was to win a conviction at trial. Not so HRW or its IJP; and yet throughout WTE, the only history that is recounted for future generations is one of countless criminal acts perpetrated by ethnic Serbs. WTE shapes this version of history by reference not to the work of historians, but to the charges and the language adduced by ICTY indictments.[133]
For WTE, the record is not weakened by the Serb-only focus and political aims and structuring of the trial. Nor is it damaged by the fact that the ICTY corrupted the record by allowing hearsay evidence, anonymous testimony, closed sessions, the use of unauthenticated evidence such as illegal interceptions of telephone conversations or diaries that witnesses transcribe from memory; and frequently refused to allow full cross-examination of prosecution witnesses.[134] When NATO's wartime General Wesley Clark testified, strict limits were placed on the questions Milosevic could ask him, and the ICTY permitted the transcript of his testimony to be redacted by U.S. officials, contrary to the ICTY's own rules.[135] When Milosevic cross-examined William Walker, a career U.S. Foreign Service Officer who as head of the Kosovo Verification Mission during the pre-war period was suspected of working at cross-purposes with it, and promoting a war-agenda, the court placed a three-hour limit on Milosevic, and Judge May interrupted him “over 60 times,” while never once interrupting the Prosecution.[136] In one remarkable instance, Milosevic asked Presiding Judge Richard May, “are you prohibiting me from calling in question or challenging the credibility of this witness?” And May replied: “Yes, I am. Now, move on.”[137] When Milosevic was questioning former U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith about his and U.S. co-responsibility for the ethnic cleansing of Krajina Serbs during Operation Storm—a point well-established in the historical record[138]—Judge May declared that this was “a preposterous question” and terminated the inquiry.[139] This trial was engaged in no truth-search under May’s and the ICTY’s auspices.
WTE continues the HRW double standard of allowing NATO to do things for which it condemns Serbia . As noted, the main thrust of WTE is its attempt to summarize the ICTY's records that show that Belgrade provided both the Bosnian and Croatian Krajina Serbs with financial, material, and administrative support.[140] But the United States supplied weapons, training, logistic and diplomatic support to the Bosnian Muslims and Croats; and it created a network for the delivery of weapons and Mujahadeen to the Bosnian Muslims from foreign states such as Iran and Saudi Arabia[141]—all in violation of a Security Council “embargo on all deliveries of weapons and military equipment to Yugoslavia.”[142] These U.S. actions which would seem to be the counterpart of those engaged in by Serbia somehow fall out of the HRW-WTE orbit of the condemned; only one side is guilty of supplying arms and of keeping the war going. Thus, in an Orwellian process, the crime of aggression, which both the ICTY and HRW purport to exempt from their human-rights and war-crimes province, is allowed to come to life when the Belgrade Serbs allegedly do it, and WTE is indignant over this further example of Serb perfidy, although in this case the “aggression” occurred within a disintegrating Yugoslav state and, hence, was civil warfare. On the other hand, massive U.S. support for the Bosnian Muslims and Croats is exempted from the term here, just as the ICTY (and HRW) exempted from any condemnation the 1999 U.S. and NATO attack on Yugoslavia , which was a pure example of aggression across internationally recognized borders.
In portraying the Milosevic trial as “groundbreaking” and a “watershed moment for justice,” WTE states that “With the establishment of the International Criminal Court, no government official, on the basis of his or her position, is beyond the law. The time when being a head of state meant immunity from prosecution is past.”[143] This is untrue. Like the ICTY Statute, the Rome Statute that created the ICC also exempts the “supreme international crime” from its jurisdiction, so U.S. invasions in violation of the UN Charter are beyond the ICC's reach, and U.S. Government officials enjoy complete immunity from prosecution for acts of aggression.[144] Nowhere does WTE mention that the United States refuses to join the ICC, and in fact has formally notified the UN Secretary-General and ICC that it “does not intend to become a party to the treaty,” and therefore “has no legal obligations arising from its signature on December 31, 2000.”[145] What is more, the United States has exploited Article 98 to reach bilateral agreements with over 100 different states, securing their pledges never to surrender U.S. citizens to ICC custody, or to transfer U.S. citizens to states that have not reached similar agreements with the U.S.[146] This behavior, and the different U.S. treatment of the ICTY, might plausibly be seen as based on lesser U.S. power over the ICC as compared with the U.S.-controlled and properly ”politicized” ICTY, points not in accord with WTE and HRW biases.
Trying to suggest an even handedness on the part of the ICTY, after having had to concede that many Serbs were ethnically cleansed from Croatia in 1995, and suffered from “violations of international humanitarian law” in Bosnia as well, WTE notes that these “are the subject of ICTY proceedings.” WTE supports this assertion with footnotes that refer to three additional ICTY cases: Prosecutor v. Ante Gotovina et al. (Croatia), Prosecutor v. Oric (Bosnia), and Prosecutor v. Naletilic and Martinovic (Bosnia).[147] What neither text nor footnotes point out, however, is that only the Serbian head of state, Milosevic, was brought to trial, in accord with the Serb-oriented priorities indicated by U.S. officials from late 1992 onward, just prior to the creation of the ICTY in 1993.
The massive trial of Milosevic, with 295 witnesses and 49,191 pages of testimony, failed to produce a single credible piece of evidence that Milosevic had ordered any killings that might fall under the category of war crimes. But the so-called Brioni Transcript of talks that Croatian President Franjo Tudjman held with his military and political leadership on July 31, 1995, show Tudjman instructing his military leaders to “inflict such a blow on the Serbs that they should virtually disappear.”[148] What followed in Operation Storm in the next month was a massive blow that made the Krajina Serbs “virtually disappear.”[149] Imagine the windfall that a statement such as Tudjman’s would have provided Carla Del Ponte, Geoffrey Nice, Dermot Groome, and HRW, had it been Milosevic instead who uttered a statement linking him directly to criminal activity of this magnitude! But Tudjman was a U.S. ally, and Operation Storm was approved and aided by the United States and some of its corporate mercenaries.[150] As Chief Prosecutor Del Ponte explained in an address before Goldman Sachs-London, “These crimes were committed in the course of a military operation, undoubtedly legitimate as such, aimed at re-taking the part of the Croatian territory which was occupied by Serb forces.”[151] That its clear purpose and result was a major ethnic cleansing is covered over by making it merely a “military operation” that is “legitimate as such,” while avoiding the critical language reserved for Serb military operations.
Were the ICTY honest in its devotion to justice and accountability—and not a political-public relations-”judicial” arm of NATO—then not only Tudjman, but also Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke, and Peter Galbraith would have been indicted as “co-perpetrators” of a “joint criminal enterprise,” the clear purpose of which was the forcible and permanent removal of the majority of ethnic Serbs from large areas of Croatia. But given political realities, Del Ponte finds Operation Storm “legitimate,” and Tudjman would die in bed unindicted, while his co-perpetrators never would be brought to trial either. In the judgment of the ICTY as well as HRW, they were all too busy bringing “justice and accountability” to the Balkans!
But don’t the indictments of the Croatian General Ante Gotovina and the notorious Bosnian Muslim fighter Naser Oric show that the ICTY is even-handed? No, they do not. Gotovina's indictment was not publicized until shortly after the kidnapping of Milosevic, almost surely as a public-relations demonstration of the ICTY’s even-handedness.[152] This was necessary, given the scale of Operation Storm—ignoring it altogether would have been an admission of extreme bias, perhaps too much even for the ICTY to manage. Not only was Tudjman never indicted, in a kindly gesture Carla Del Ponte informed Croat leaders of the still-sealed indictment of Gotovina, giving other Croats time to wash their hands of Gotovina and Gotovina a chance to flee—a gesture that is never extended to Serbs, where very frequently the target of the secret indictment has been seized in raids by NATO troops.[153] Nevertheless, the Croats have been very angry with the ICTY for “betraying” them in the interest of apparent balance, especially in light of the fact that the patron of the ICTY (the United States) was itself an active participant in Operation Storm, and Gotovina’s counsel is sure to raise this close alliance if Gotovina is ever actually tried.
In the case of Naser Oric, it took the ICTY a decade before it got around to indicting him,[154] although his murderous record was clear and the videos he showed reporters of his beheaded Serb victims had belonged to the public record, along with much other evidence, for the entire period. Furthermore, the indictment charged Oric only with abusing eight prisoners, although the evidence of his command-role in hundreds of killings of civilians was solid and long known. His term of imprisonment was modest, although he was an active and direct killer who as General Philippe Morillon said in his testimony to the ICTY, didn’t take prisoners (i.e., he executed all captives).[155]
The key legal concept used by the ICTY to deal with Milosevic’s alleged criminality over not only Kosovo but also—belatedly— Croatia and Bosnia , is the “joint criminal enterprise” (JCE). This concept does not appear in the ICTY Statute or in law tradition—it was an original concoction to fit the needs of this trial. WTE states that “A joint criminal enterprise is a doctrine of liability whereby the accused is individually responsible if he acts in concert with others pursuant to a common criminal purpose with the same criminal intent.”[156] In the ICTY version, the individual doesn’t have to jointly plan with his fellow criminals, and doesn’t even have to know what they are doing, let alone control their activities. The common purpose can be inferred from the fact that they are all fighting a common enemy, and those doing so are collectively guilty. The common “criminal purpose” can even be imputed from this—in the Milosevic trial the alleged quest for a “Greater Serbia,” which can be inferred from the efforts Milosevic made to help Serbs who were losing the protection of a Yugoslav nation to join together in a lesser entity. Thus, if Milosevic was despised by the Bosnian Serbs for his willingness to accept a string of proposed agreements that would have left them outside Serbia, and for even imposing a boycott on them to induce them to sign one such agreement,[157] and the Croatian Serbs were furious at him for failing to help them as they were ethnically cleansed under Operation Storm, still he was occasionally supporting them, along with the Serbs in Kosovo. Hence he was guilty of acting in concert with these other Serb leaders.
It is obvious that this wonderfully expansive concept makes soldiers who are part of an army engaged in warfare potentially all guilty of being members of a joint criminal enterprise, and they have been found collectively guilty, but only when the Serbs do it.[158] Laughland points out that a strong supporter of the Tribunal, William Schabas, “has ridiculed ‘JCE’ as standing for ‘just convict everyone.’”[159] Thus, as we have pointed out, there could be no clearer case of JCE than the commonly planned and executed Operation Storm, as well as the JCE of NATO leaders in attacking Yugoslavia in violation of the UN Charter. These are a much better fit to the JCE concept than the case against Milosevic. But in these cases NATO or NATO allies were doing the killing or cleansing, so that in this Alice-in-Wonderland tribunal’s quest for justice, while the JCE doctrine is perfectly applicable to these major cases in logic, it does not apply in practice. WTE does not have a word of criticism of this doctrine. Nor does it advance any reason of its own to accept it, other than the fact that the Prosecution happened to make it,[160] and the Appeals Chambers ultimately accepted it.[161]
WTE displays its bias further by alleging Milosevic’s “frequent courtroom grandstanding,”[162] a charge that the establishment narrative has always used to help explain the length of the trial as well as to denigrate the villain. Carla Del Ponte’s periodic wild public statements condemning the man still to be tried, or her appearance before Goldman Sachs-London, begging for money on the grounds that ICTY-style justice will help create a favorable climate of investment,[163] and her apologetics for Operation Storm, are of course unmentioned.[164] The repeated showing of a BBC film The Death of Yugoslavia, “on which the prosecution relied very heavily to make its case” (Laughland), is ignored, and WTE fails to note the numerous times that Geoffrey Nice orated at length without relevance to the charges—Laughland points out that in his opening statement, Nice “had a highly emotive and unverifiable story about a baby crying itself to death during the Bosnian war, absurdly claiming that ‘of course’ Milosevic knew about this.”[165] Nice was given a free hand, while Milosevic was subjected to a stream of interruptions and arbitrary cut-offs by an extremely hostile and impolite Judge May.[166] Most important, May allowed the prosecution to bring on a vast number of witnesses and “experts” offering hearsay or irrelevancies at great length. This resulted from the fact that this was a highly political case, not one dealing with soldiers committing war crimes (the main thrust of laws of war), with the Milosevic indictment almost surely extended to Bosnia and Croatia for fear that with Kosovo alone it would be difficult to answer why NATO’s war crimes in its bombing war did not constitute a “joint criminal enterprise” as much as the Serb war that followed the NATO attack. But the prosecution had not tied Milosevic to the Bosnia/Croatia wars previously, and were grievously unprepared in this political proceeding in which they found guilt first—in fact, knew it back in 1992!—but then a decade later still struggled to find the evidence.
(3 - continues)
Endnotes to Part 3
(Message over 64 KB, truncated)
Horizons et débats, 10 mars 2007
Sommaire (7e année, n°9)
« L’Iran doit se tenir prêt à contrer une attaque nucléaire », par général Leonid Ivashov.
« Nom de code Tirannt : les plans de guerre US contre l’Iran », par Michel Chossudovsky.
« Des bombes en réaction à des violations imaginaires des droits de l’homme : du jamais vu dans l’histoire ».
Livre : Operation Balkan : Werbung für Krieg und Tod de Becker et Beham.
« Démantèlement de la Yougoslavie », par Michel Chossudovsky.
« Une loi américaine à l’origine du démantèlement de la Yougoslavie », par Alexander Dorin.
« Le plan Ahtisaari et le lobbying politique ».
« Mieux vaut dix ans de négociations qu’un jour de guerre civile », entretien avec Thomas Fleiner.
« Faut-il se débarasser de la démocratie directe en Suisse ? », par Markus Erb.
« Engagement du Conseil fédéral lors des votations fédérales », par Philippe Chenaux.
(PDF - 2.5 Mo) http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/HD_09_2007.pdf
http://www.horizons-et-debats.ch/
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Program 13. III. 2007 Programma
Datumi da se ne zaborave
Date da non dimenticare
11.3. 2006. Ubistvo S. Milosevica u Haskom zatvoru
11 marzo '06,Uccisione di S. Milosevic al Tribunale dell'Aia
24.3.1999. barbarski NATO napad na FR Jugoslaviju
24 marzo '99, Barbaro attacco della NATO alla Jugoslavia fed.
"Od Triglava do Vardara..."
"Dal monte Triglav al fiume Vardar..."
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20070308&articleId=5021
Yugoslavia: Human Rights Watch in Service to the War Party
by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson and George Szamuely
Global Research, March 9, 2007
Zmag.org - 2007-02-25
Part 2: HRW as a Campaigner for the NATO Wars in the Balkans
From the very beginning of the contests over the fate of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), HRW challenged its territorial integrity and supported the dismemberment of the unitary state, a militarized response to the armed conflicts that ensued, and most vocally of all, the meting out of “justice” to the wrongdoers. In a commentary in the November 10, 1990 New York Times, Helsinki Watch Executive Director Jeri Laber and Kenneth Anderson urged SFRY’s breakup and the provision of Western aid to any breakaway republics that might “protect the rights of all their citizens.”[46] These authors failed to give the slightest weight to the fact that the declarations of independence within the breakaway republics were contrary to both federal and republican constitutions, not to mention international law—including the Helsinki Final Act.[47]
Most important, Laber and Anderson were blind to the fact that pressures for independence within the republics and provinces expressed a surge of nationalism, rather than any concern for the rights of “all their citizens.” Writing about the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina , Robert Hayden observed that “the free elections that marked the end of Communism, in November 1990,…[were] essentially an ethnic census. Given the chance to vote as Bosnians, the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina chose instead to vote, overwhelmingly, as Muslims, Serbs, and Croats.”[48] Obviously, this did not bode well for the rights of minorities. In a letter responding to Laber and Anderson's call for the dismemberment of the SFRY, Hayden pointed out that “Those who would break up the country are strong nationalists, not likely to treat minorities within their own borders well.” Instead, it was only the unified federal state of Yugoslavia that provided protection for minorities—and very possibly would have continued to do so, had it not been attacked, delegitimized, and dissolved. “It seems truly bizarre,” Hayden noted presciently, “that ‘human rights’ activists so cavalierly advocate policies that are likely to turn Yugoslavia into the Lebanon of Europe.”[49]
Hayden's warning was vindicated by history. The kind of recommendations made by Laber and Anderson , and more important but similar pressures from foreign states, most notably Germany and the United States , proved immensely destructive of human rights. However, although damaging to human rights, HRW’s policies were closely aligned with those of the U.S. government and George Soros, both major drivers of the neoliberal restructuring of Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Soviet bloc, with Soros himself deeply interested in the Balkans, helping to found and to fund media organizations in Kosovo and elsewhere that focus on the Balkans, as well as a major contributor to HRW.[50] Both of these state and non-governmental actors steadily supported the dismemberment of a semi-socialist Yugoslavia and its transformation into mini-states that in turn would be Western clients and open to foreign investment.[51]
The formation of the ICTY, created and effectively controlled by the United States and its allies,[52] has played a vital role in this process as well, and there has been a long tacit mutual support and commonalty of policy and practice among these parties.
An important mechanism of dismantlement of Yugoslavia was to make the Serbs the unique arch-villains and to forestall settlement in the alleged interest of ”justice.”[53] This demonization was strictly politically based—the villainy was broadly based, as many analysts and participants have noted,[54] but the critics of demonization could make no headway against the winds of power and propaganda, to which HRW was a major contributor. It was Milosevic and the Serb drive for a “Greater Serbia” that allegedly explained all,[55] even though Milosevic signed on to each and every peace proposal advanced in the key years 1992-1995,[56] and even though the Clinton administration and Izetbegovic sabotaged them all until Dayton,[57] with the Clinton team eventually using the 1999 Rambouillet Conference strictly as a means of clearing the ground for war.[58]
In December 1992, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger called for a “second Nuremberg ” tribunal to bring justice to the embroiled Yugoslavia , naming Milosevic, six other Serb officials, and three Croats as its proper targets. “We know that crimes against humanity have occurred,” Eagleburger said, “and we know when and where they occurred. We know, moreover, which forces committed those crimes, and under whose command they operated. And we know, finally, who the political leaders are and to whom those military commanders were—and still are—responsible.”[59] Within less than three months, the Security Council adopted the first of its resolutions during 1993 that established an “international tribunal…for the prosecution of persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1991.”[60]
Later that same year, HRW also called for the prosecution of no fewer than 29 different individuals by name, ranging “from the lowest prison guard to the former Yugoslav Minister of Defense and the Chief of Staff of the Yugoslav National Army.”[61] Of course, the Nuremberg tribunal had focused on the “supreme international crime,” but just as HRW has ruled out this crime—of aggression—as part of its list of human rights crimes, so did the founding Statute of the Tribunal,[62] understandably as that Statute was drafted by U.S. officials who wanted to be free of any obstruction to their own cross-border attacks. The point was to focus on the target Serbs and stave-off a negotiated settlement in the alleged interests of “justice,” until a proper political result could be obtained.
Michael Scharf, a former State Department insider, acknowledged that the ICTY was organized as “little more than a public relations device,” a “useful policy tool,” that could “fortify the international political will to employ economic sanctions or use force.”[63] But this only acknowledges what should be obvious from the ICTY’s origins, structure and performance: Namely, that the ICTY was an integral part of war-planning and war-making operations, and that it is neither independent nor designed to produce anything but a strictly politicized “justice” for Yugoslavia. As Michael Mandel argues, the ICTY was used by the U.S. policymakers “to justify their intention to go to war…by branding their proposed enemies as Nazis,” and by this means to “derail the peace process.”[64] HRW has also been a part of this war-making apparatus; as we have seen, its leaders have steadily called for “justice” and if need be war to bring the villains—at least the Arch Villains—to pay for their sins.
HRW regularly cites ICTY findings as unquestionable truth, and it is proud to have helped the ICTY to collect data on Serb crimes, publicize those crimes and the ICTY’s good work—and “to influence the U.S. government to condition financial aid for Yugoslavia on cooperation with the tribunal.”[65] Of course HRW has treated the ICTY as an arm of genuine justice, just as the ICTY has depended on nongovernmental organizations such as HRW as well as NATO officials for supposedly unbiased information. In a commentary titled “Human Rights, American Wrongs,” Kenneth Roth, while assailing the U.S. rejection of the International Criminal Court, stated that “ Washington says it would never deploy US troops where they would be subject to an international tribunal. But…US troops in Bosnia and Kosovo have been subject to the jurisdiction of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal. So were US bombers over Bosnia in 1995 and Serbia and Kosovo in 1999. The crisis over the International Criminal Court is a manufactured one.”[66] This is a clear illustration of Roth’s convenient self-deception, as he fails to recognize that the ICTY was U.S.-controlled and that its failure ever to indict any U.S. officials was a foregone conclusion.
Even Jamie Shea, NATO's chief of public relations during the 1999 war, admitted that “NATO countries are those that have provided the finance to set up the Tribunal,…are amongst the majority financiers….I am certain that when Justice Arbour goes to Kosovo and looks at the facts she will be indicting people of Yugoslav nationality and I don't anticipate any others at this stage.”[67] But nowhere was the truth of this point more dramatically evident than in the ICTY's own performance, as when Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte refused to open an investigation of possible NATO war crimes on the grounds that the 495 dead Serbs documented by the ICTY's investigation were an insufficiently large number—”there is simply no evidence of the necessary crime base for charges of genocide or crimes against humanity,” in the words of the Prosecutor's Final Report.[68] But under the ICTY's Statute, the Prosecutor is obligated not only to investigate but to prepare indictments where a prima facie case for crimes against humanity exists.[69] There is also the awkwardness that Milosevic’s initial indictment rested on a “crime base” of 344 dead Kosovo Albanians, and of these, only 45 were reported to have died prior to the start of NATO's war.[70]
But even more remarkable, the indictment of Milosevic et al. for Kosovo was hastily put together based on unverified information supplied to the ICTY by the U.S. and U.K.; and it was issued two months into NATO's war, just as NATO had begun stepping up its bombing of Serb civilian facilities and was in need of a public relations boost to offset what Amnesty International (but not HRW) called war crimes.[71] So in a tacit alliance with HRW as well as the attacking (and ICTY-funding) countries, the ICTY actively supported commission of both the “supreme international crime” and its plain vanilla derivatives.
Michael Mandel shows that during 1998, just as NATO was building up its forces in preparation for the 1999 military attack on Yugoslavia, the ICTY greatly intensified its investigations and charges against the Serbs.[72] HRW did exactly the same: It had already written to Louise Arbour by early March, 1998, urging the Office of the Prosecutor to open an investigation into Serb-perpetrated atrocities,[73] and HRW was very quick to place monitors on the ground inside Kosovo in early 1998, and to step up its accumulation of evidence against Belgrade. It worked alongside the ICTY as a PR-arm of NATO, helping to create the moral environment for NATO's commission of the supreme international crime on March 24, 1999. It should be noted that, despite a period of intense anti-Serb propaganda that lasted some 12 to 15 months before the bombing war began, NATO Secretary General George Robertson told the British House of Commons that, “until Racak…the KLA were responsible for more deaths in Kosovo than the Yugoslav authorities had been.”[74] And it is now well established that during that period the KLA was getting funds and training from the CIA.[75] These were points of no concern whatsoever to the ICTY and HRW.
In sum, HRW’s performance in the Balkans has been perfectly geared to serve the aims of U.S. policy, but as that policy was one of keeping the pot of armed conflict boiling in order to dismantle the SFRY and to weaken Serbia by putting an alleged pursuit of “justice” ahead of settling a series of grave internal conflicts, the effect of HRW policy has been extremely damaging to human rights. The same was and remains true in the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan . In each instance HRW has not challenged the privileges enjoyed by the aggressor states in their regular commission of the supreme international crime, thereby giving its tacit approval to this most fundamental of human rights violations—and in the case of the SFRY, actively urging aggression.[76] By virtue of biases which regularly underrate U.S. and allied human rights violations and inflate those of their targets, HRW facilitates the supreme international crime.
(2 - continues)
Endnotes to Part 2
46. Jeri Laber and Kenneth Anderson, “Why Keep Yugoslavia One Country?” New York Times, November 10, 1990.
47. See the Declaration on Principles Guiding Relations between Participating States (a.k.a. the Helsinki Final Act), August 1, 1975. As of the date on which the Laber - Anderson commentary appeared in the New York Times (indeed, straight through the Dayton Peace Accords of November 21 1995, which formally brought to an end all but one of the internal wars over the SFRY), the "inviolability of frontiers" (Art. III) and the "territorial integrity of states" (Art. IV) so loudly proclaimed by Helsinki could only refer to the internationally recognized border that separated the SFRY from the other sovereign states that neighbored it—not the internal borders that separated its six republics from one another. For foreign states and non-governmental actors to have regarded the internal republican borders as the relevant "frontiers" under Helsinki principles not only contradicted the actual Declaration at Helsinki, but was a highly provocative interference in the sovereign affairs of the SFRY.
48. Robert M. Hayden, Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts (University of Michigan Press, 1999), pp. 91-92.
49. Robert Hayden, "Don't Turn Yugoslavia Into Europe's Lebanon," Letter, New York Times, December 3, 1990.
50. See notes 4 and 5, above.
48. Robert M. Hayden, Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts (University of Michigan Press, 1999), pp. 91-92.
49. Robert Hayden, "Don't Turn Yugoslavia Into Europe's Lebanon," Letter, New York Times, December 3, 1990.
50. See notes 4 and 5, above.
51. In his book Collision Course: NATO, Russia, and Kosovo (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005), John Norris, a State Department spokesman during the 1999 U.S. war against Yugoslavia, writes that “it was Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform—not the plight of Kosovar Albanians—that best explains NATO’s war” (p. xxiii). Basically, Norris denies that the Clintonites’ war had anything to do with humanitarian principles—the rhetoric of humanitarianism aside.
52. See Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder, Ch. 4, “The War Crimes Tribunal," pp. 117-146; and Köchler, Global Justice or Global Revenge, esp. the Annex: Memorandum “On the Indictment of the President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia…,” pp. 353-356.
53. See, e.g., "No Kosovo Settlement Without Accountability for War Crimes," Human Rights Watch Press release, February 6, 1999.—The earliest high-profile use of the slogan "no peace without justice" in relation to the former Yugoslavia appears to have been a resolution introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives by Rhode Island's Patrick J. Kennedy, War Crimes in Bosnia, November 20, 1995. -- The relevant paragraph stated: "The United States should oppose amnesty for any indicted war criminals. On this anniversary [of the Nuremberg Tribunal], as the world hopes for peace in the Balkans, it is the responsibility of Congress to say unequivocally that there can be no peace without justice." The very same day, the New York Times's veteran columnist Anthony Lewis recounted a discussion he had had with the ICTY's Chief Prosecutor Richard Goldstone: "No Peace Without Justice," it was titled (November 20, 1995). "As the Tribunal's Chief Justice Richard Goldstone has repeatedly said, there can be no peace without justice," the Wall Street Journal editorialized. "On the 50-year anniversary of the Nuremberg trials, that's worth remembering" ("Prisoners of Peace," November 21, 1995). Less than one month later, John Shattuck, the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, picked up the same theme when he noted that one of the positives of the Dayton Accords was its pledge of cooperation with the Yugoslav Tribunal: "There will be no peace without justice." ("U.S. official: No cooperation on human rights issues by Serbs," Deutsche Presse-Agentur, December 13, 1995.)
54. See, e.g., Yossef Bodansky, Some Call It Peace: Waiting for the War in the Balkans (International Media Corp., 1996); Peter Brock, Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting. Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia (GM Books, 2005); David Chandler, "Western Intervention and the Disintegration of Yugoslavia," in Philip Hammond and Edward S. Herman, Eds., Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis (Pluto Press, 2000), pp. 19-30; Robert M. Hayden, Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts (University of Michigan Press, 1999); Brendan O'Shea, The Modern Yugoslav Conflict 1991 - 1995: Perception, deception, dishonesty (Frank Cass, 2005); David Owen, Balkan Odyssey (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1995); Dennison Rusinow, Ed., Yugoslavia: A Fractured Federalism (Wilson Center Press, 1988); Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War (The Brookings Institution, 1995); Warren Zimmerman, Origins of a Catastrophe (Random House, 1996).
55. These sweeping charges represent an amalgam of the no fewer than eight different indictments and amendments thereof of Slobodan Milosevic et al. for Serb conduct in Kosovo (May 22, 1999; June 29, 2001; and October 29, 2001), Croatia (October 8, 2001; October 23, 2002; and July 28, 2004); and Bosnia and Herzegovina (November 22, 2001; November 22, 2002).
52. See Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder, Ch. 4, “The War Crimes Tribunal," pp. 117-146; and Köchler, Global Justice or Global Revenge, esp. the Annex: Memorandum “On the Indictment of the President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia…,” pp. 353-356.
53. See, e.g., "No Kosovo Settlement Without Accountability for War Crimes," Human Rights Watch Press release, February 6, 1999.—The earliest high-profile use of the slogan "no peace without justice" in relation to the former Yugoslavia appears to have been a resolution introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives by Rhode Island's Patrick J. Kennedy, War Crimes in Bosnia, November 20, 1995. -- The relevant paragraph stated: "The United States should oppose amnesty for any indicted war criminals. On this anniversary [of the Nuremberg Tribunal], as the world hopes for peace in the Balkans, it is the responsibility of Congress to say unequivocally that there can be no peace without justice." The very same day, the New York Times's veteran columnist Anthony Lewis recounted a discussion he had had with the ICTY's Chief Prosecutor Richard Goldstone: "No Peace Without Justice," it was titled (November 20, 1995). "As the Tribunal's Chief Justice Richard Goldstone has repeatedly said, there can be no peace without justice," the Wall Street Journal editorialized. "On the 50-year anniversary of the Nuremberg trials, that's worth remembering" ("Prisoners of Peace," November 21, 1995). Less than one month later, John Shattuck, the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, picked up the same theme when he noted that one of the positives of the Dayton Accords was its pledge of cooperation with the Yugoslav Tribunal: "There will be no peace without justice." ("U.S. official: No cooperation on human rights issues by Serbs," Deutsche Presse-Agentur, December 13, 1995.)
54. See, e.g., Yossef Bodansky, Some Call It Peace: Waiting for the War in the Balkans (International Media Corp., 1996); Peter Brock, Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting. Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia (GM Books, 2005); David Chandler, "Western Intervention and the Disintegration of Yugoslavia," in Philip Hammond and Edward S. Herman, Eds., Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis (Pluto Press, 2000), pp. 19-30; Robert M. Hayden, Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts (University of Michigan Press, 1999); Brendan O'Shea, The Modern Yugoslav Conflict 1991 - 1995: Perception, deception, dishonesty (Frank Cass, 2005); David Owen, Balkan Odyssey (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1995); Dennison Rusinow, Ed., Yugoslavia: A Fractured Federalism (Wilson Center Press, 1988); Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War (The Brookings Institution, 1995); Warren Zimmerman, Origins of a Catastrophe (Random House, 1996).
55. These sweeping charges represent an amalgam of the no fewer than eight different indictments and amendments thereof of Slobodan Milosevic et al. for Serb conduct in Kosovo (May 22, 1999; June 29, 2001; and October 29, 2001), Croatia (October 8, 2001; October 23, 2002; and July 28, 2004); and Bosnia and Herzegovina (November 22, 2001; November 22, 2002).
56. Among the ceasefires and peace proposals that Milosevic supported were the Brioni Pact of 1991, the Vance Plan of 1991, the Cutileiro (or Lisbon) Plan of 1992 (vetoed by the Bosnian Muslims), the Vance-Owen Plan of 1993 (a plan eventually sabotaged by U.S. authorities, as Owen describes in his memoirs), the Owen-Stoltenberg Plan of 1993 (vetoed by the United States), the European Action Plan of 1993 (also sabotaged by the United States), the Contact Group Plan of 1994, the extension of the Carter ceasefire beyond May 1, 1995, and, of course, the Dayton process, about which Richard Holbrooke observed of the twentieth, and next-to-last, day, the U.S. was "going to close down in the morning—unless Milosevic could save the negotiations." See To End A War (New York: The Modern Library, Rev. Ed., 1999), pp. 306-312.
57. Writing about the new Clinton Administration's efforts in early 1993 to kill-off the Vance - Owen Peace Plan, which allocated some 42 percent of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Pale Serbs, rather than the 49 percent under Dayton, chief negotiator David Owen explains that Alija Izetbegovic withdrew his signature from the plan because "he felt encouraged by US attitudes to hold out for a better deal." Owen reproduces an excerpt from an early 1993 telegram he sent to an aid in Washington. "We have this Administration briefing the press in a way that could not but stiffen those Muslims who want to continue the war. We have [the Sarajevo Government's UN Representative Muhamed] Sacirbey openly telling everyone that the US Administration has said they should not feel any need to sign the map." Later, Owen adds that "The new administration had already made up their mind and were intent on killing off the [Vance - Owen Peace Plan]….They promised to come up with an alternative policy over the next few weeks, but in the meantime seemed intent on killing off a detailed plan backed by all their allies and close to being agreed by the parties. It was by any standard of international diplomacy outrageous conduct." Balkan Odyssey, pp. 111 - 119. —Here we add simply that this was in early 1993; the Dayton Peace Accords were not signed until nearly three years later, in late 1995.
58. The Rambouillet Conference was held at the Chateau Rambouillet in France from February 6 - 20, 1999. Its ostensible purpose was to negotiate an interim political settlement to the conflict over the Serbian province of Kosovo. But the conference was held under extreme duress, as at no point were the Serb negotiators free from the threat of military attack by NATO, which six days prior to the conference had issued an Activation Order "authoriz[ing] air strikes against targets on [Federal Republic of Yugoslavia] territory" (January 30, 1999). As the former State Department official George Kenney reported shortly after the war, a "senior State Department official had bragged that the United States 'deliberately set the bar higher that the Serbs could accept'. The Serbs needed, according to the official, a little bombing to see reason." See Marc Weller, Ed., The Crisis in Kosovo 1989 - 1999 (Documents and Analysis Publishing Ltd., 1999), Ch. 15, "The Rambouillet Conference," pp. 392-474, which includes a copy of NATO's Activation Order (p. 416); and George Kenney, "Rolling Thunder: the Rerun," The Nation, June 14, 1999.
59. Elaine Sciolino, "U.S. Names Figures It Wants Charged with War Crimes," New York Times, December 17, 1992.
57. Writing about the new Clinton Administration's efforts in early 1993 to kill-off the Vance - Owen Peace Plan, which allocated some 42 percent of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Pale Serbs, rather than the 49 percent under Dayton, chief negotiator David Owen explains that Alija Izetbegovic withdrew his signature from the plan because "he felt encouraged by US attitudes to hold out for a better deal." Owen reproduces an excerpt from an early 1993 telegram he sent to an aid in Washington. "We have this Administration briefing the press in a way that could not but stiffen those Muslims who want to continue the war. We have [the Sarajevo Government's UN Representative Muhamed] Sacirbey openly telling everyone that the US Administration has said they should not feel any need to sign the map." Later, Owen adds that "The new administration had already made up their mind and were intent on killing off the [Vance - Owen Peace Plan]….They promised to come up with an alternative policy over the next few weeks, but in the meantime seemed intent on killing off a detailed plan backed by all their allies and close to being agreed by the parties. It was by any standard of international diplomacy outrageous conduct." Balkan Odyssey, pp. 111 - 119. —Here we add simply that this was in early 1993; the Dayton Peace Accords were not signed until nearly three years later, in late 1995.
58. The Rambouillet Conference was held at the Chateau Rambouillet in France from February 6 - 20, 1999. Its ostensible purpose was to negotiate an interim political settlement to the conflict over the Serbian province of Kosovo. But the conference was held under extreme duress, as at no point were the Serb negotiators free from the threat of military attack by NATO, which six days prior to the conference had issued an Activation Order "authoriz[ing] air strikes against targets on [Federal Republic of Yugoslavia] territory" (January 30, 1999). As the former State Department official George Kenney reported shortly after the war, a "senior State Department official had bragged that the United States 'deliberately set the bar higher that the Serbs could accept'. The Serbs needed, according to the official, a little bombing to see reason." See Marc Weller, Ed., The Crisis in Kosovo 1989 - 1999 (Documents and Analysis Publishing Ltd., 1999), Ch. 15, "The Rambouillet Conference," pp. 392-474, which includes a copy of NATO's Activation Order (p. 416); and George Kenney, "Rolling Thunder: the Rerun," The Nation, June 14, 1999.
59. Elaine Sciolino, "U.S. Names Figures It Wants Charged with War Crimes," New York Times, December 17, 1992.
60. UN Security Council Resolution 808 (S/RES/808), February 22, 1993. The exact same phrasing appears as Article 1 of the Statute of the Tribunal. Also see UN Security Council Resolution 827 (S/RES/827), May 25, 1993.
61. Prosecute Now!, Helsinki Rights Watch, August 1, 1993. As this advocacy document explained, "Helsinki Watch's failure to name other heads of state and top military commanders as defendants in no way is intended to absolve them of responsibility. While we have not presented such information here, we believe that many senior officials should also be found criminally liable for aiding and abetting in the 'planning, preparation, or execution' of war crimes."
62. See Statute of the International Tribunal Adopted May 25, 1993, along with subsequent updates. None of articles 2 through 5, which run the gamut including breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the laws and customs of war, genocide, and crimes against humanity, so much as mentions the "supreme international crime"—or anything remotely like it.
63. Michael P. Scharf, "Indicted for War Crimes, Then What?" Washington Post, October 3, 1999 (as posted to the Public International Law & Policy Group website).
64. Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder, p. 126.
65. “The Milosevic Case,” in When People’s Basic Rights Are Trampled, Human Rights Watch, undated press release.
62. See Statute of the International Tribunal Adopted May 25, 1993, along with subsequent updates. None of articles 2 through 5, which run the gamut including breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the laws and customs of war, genocide, and crimes against humanity, so much as mentions the "supreme international crime"—or anything remotely like it.
63. Michael P. Scharf, "Indicted for War Crimes, Then What?" Washington Post, October 3, 1999 (as posted to the Public International Law & Policy Group website).
64. Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder, p. 126.
65. “The Milosevic Case,” in When People’s Basic Rights Are Trampled, Human Rights Watch, undated press release.
66. Kenneth Roth, “Human Rights, American Wrongs,” Financial Times, July 1, 2002.
67. Press Conference Given by NATO Spokesman Jamie Shea, May 16, 1999.—The very next day, Shea responded to much the same question: "As you know, without NATO countries there would be no International Court of Justice, nor would there be any International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia because NATO countries are in the forefront of those who have established these two tribunals, who fund these tribunals and who support on a daily basis their activities. We are the upholders, not the violators, of international law." (Press Conference Given by NATO Spokesman Jamie Shea, May 17, 1999.)
68. See Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Office of the Prosecutor, ICTY, June, 2000, par. 90. Also see the accompanying Press Statement (PR/P.I.S./510-e), ICTY, June 13, 2000.
69. See Article 18 of the ICTY's Statute, "Investigation and preparation of indictment" (1993, 2006). Par. 4 states: "Upon a determination that a prima facie case exists, the Prosecutor shall prepare an indictment containing a concise statement of the facts and the crime or crimes with which the accused is charged under the Statute."
70. See Louise Arbour, Prosecutor of the Tribunal Against Slobodan Milosevic et al. (IT-99-37), Schedules A - G, May 22, 1999. —These schedules list the names of 344 dead Kosovo Albanians whom, in this particular case, constituted a sufficient "crime base" to bring the indictment. As noted, however, the deaths of only the 45 persons named in Schedule A ("Racak," January 15, 1999) date from prior to the start of NATO's war.
71. See Amnesty International,
67. Press Conference Given by NATO Spokesman Jamie Shea, May 16, 1999.—The very next day, Shea responded to much the same question: "As you know, without NATO countries there would be no International Court of Justice, nor would there be any International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia because NATO countries are in the forefront of those who have established these two tribunals, who fund these tribunals and who support on a daily basis their activities. We are the upholders, not the violators, of international law." (Press Conference Given by NATO Spokesman Jamie Shea, May 17, 1999.)
68. See Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Office of the Prosecutor, ICTY, June, 2000, par. 90. Also see the accompanying Press Statement (PR/P.I.S./510-e), ICTY, June 13, 2000.
69. See Article 18 of the ICTY's Statute, "Investigation and preparation of indictment" (1993, 2006). Par. 4 states: "Upon a determination that a prima facie case exists, the Prosecutor shall prepare an indictment containing a concise statement of the facts and the crime or crimes with which the accused is charged under the Statute."
70. See Louise Arbour, Prosecutor of the Tribunal Against Slobodan Milosevic et al. (IT-99-37), Schedules A - G, May 22, 1999. —These schedules list the names of 344 dead Kosovo Albanians whom, in this particular case, constituted a sufficient "crime base" to bring the indictment. As noted, however, the deaths of only the 45 persons named in Schedule A ("Racak," January 15, 1999) date from prior to the start of NATO's war.
71. See Amnesty International,
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