Informazione
International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic
www.icdsm.org
=================================
Slobodan Milosevic's Cross-Examination of
Croatian President Stjepan Mesic: PART IV
Because the transcript of the cross-examination
is 150 pages long we have broken it into 12
easy to read segments. If you wish to read the
whole thing at once go to:
http://www.icdsm.org/more/mesic.htm
=================================
Page 10647
1 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
2 Q. Was that when Ante Markovic established his own party?
3 A. On the 27th of July, 1990, the Serb assembly passed its so-called
4 decision on Serb autonomy in Croatia. On the 1st of July, 1990 in
Kosovo
5 by Knin, an official statement was made that the Serb Autonomous
Krajina
6 was established in Croatia, its president being Milan Babic. On the
17th
7 of August, the first roadblocks were on the road in Benkovac, Knin
and
8 Gradacac. On the 13th of September, there were meetings and rallies
of
9 persons in Dvor and in various other places. In towns and in
10 municipalities in Croatia where there is a predominantly Serb
population,
11 there were inscriptions saying: "This is Serbia." So it is persons
who
12 came from Serbia who manipulated the Serb masses in Serbia? Why?
Because
13 Milosevic needed to bring about an insurgency of the Serbs in
Croatia so
14 that he would light the initial fuse for setting Bosnia-Herzegovina
on
15 fire, because he needed Bosnia-Herzegovina. That's what the accused
16 actually did. That is why he should be held accountable. These
radical
17 statements, regrettably, are only in response to statements made by
the
18 accused.
19 Q. Mr. Mesic, do you see that you're not testifying about anything
20 here except your political and propaganda activities all this time?
21 Because you do not have a single fact here; you only have your own
22 positions and your attacks against Milosevic.
23 A. This is the trial of the accused Slobodan Milosevic. I have
24 sufficient facts in order to believe that he is guilty because he
planned
25 war, he carried out war, and he built into this plan a crime that
he
Page 10648
1 should be held accountable for.
2 Q. Very well.
3 JUDGE MAY: Let us get back to the subject-matter of the trial.
4 Yes. You are asking about the statements, Mr. Milosevic.
5 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
6 Q. I put a question. I said: These laws and the atmosphere in
7 parliament, the atmosphere in Croatia, the dismissals of thousands
of
8 persons from the administration, from the police, from the media,
even
9 from the health sector, is that the kind of atmosphere that caused
concern
10 among the Serbs, or was it, as Mr. Mesic just put it now, was it
Milosevic
11 who caused concern and who led to this insurgency? Were these facts
of
12 life the thing that caused concern among them or did Milosevic come
from
13 Serbia to make them start a rebellion, now that I've quoted all of
this?
14 A. It wasn't the accused Milosevic who came. His emissaries came,
15 and they were the ones who started the insurgency in Croatia.
16 JUDGE MAY: Can you deal with the allegations which are made,
17 that, first of all, there were the dismissals of thousands of
persons from
18 the administration and the police and the media and the health
sector?
19 Now, can you deal with that, Mr. Mesic? Were thousands dismissed?
20 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I think that it is an exaggeration
21 to speak of thousands, but that there were dismissals is a fact.
There
22 were unnecessary dismissals. People also took those who dismissed
them to
23 court and won these cases. I think that these statements that are
radical
24 and inadmissible only work to Croatia's detriment, and I always
struggled
25 against that.
Page 10649
1 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
2 Q. All right. So the atmosphere and the statements -- I mean, you
3 say now that it is negative, but the atmosphere was there, wasn't
it? So
4 it's not Milosevic who caused an insurgency among the Serbs; it is
your
5 laws, your pressures, your behaviour, your attacks against people.
Is
6 that right or is that not right, Mr. Mesic?
7 A. I have to reply once again, and I've already said this.
8 Q. If you've already said it, please don't read out what you've
9 already read out, please.
10 A. Those who wanted to cut off parts of Croatia, parts of the
11 Republic of Croatia, those are the ones who are to be blamed for
the
12 radical statements that were made.
13 Q. Well, look, somebody wanted to cut off parts of your territory.
14 Susanne Woodward from the Brooking Institution, an institution of
high
15 renown throughout the world, she says:
16 "Smashed stores fronts, fire bombs thrown and harassed and
17 arrested potential Serb leaders. In many parts of Croatia Serbs
were
18 expelled from jobs because of their nationality."
19 JUDGE MAY: You can call her to give evidence if you want. Yes.
20 Was there an atmosphere, Mr. Mesic, to cause the Serbs to have
21 fear at this time or is that not so?
22 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] It is an exaggeration to say that
23 there was an atmosphere of fear, but that there were improper and
24 inadmissible statements, that is a fact. Also there were dismissals
that
25 were wrong; however, people took those who dismissed them to court
and
Page 10650
1 they won those cases.
2 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
3 Q. You mean those 100,000 Serbs who fled Croatia already in 1990,
4 they won these cases for their own jobs; is that what you're trying
to
5 say?
6 A. The accused is a lawyer, and he knows that only a person who is a
7 plaintiff can win a case.
8 Q. Well, we heard your own statements of a few minutes ago about
9 those murders, what kind of rule of law you had. We're going to hear
10 others later as well. I assume that you're not joking now when
you're
11 referring to --
12 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, the time has come to move on from this
13 sort of argument, which doesn't assist the Court.
14 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
15 Q. Tell me, Mr. Mesic: Do you remember the statement made by the
16 famous artist Edo Murtic in Novi Liste [phoen], a daily from
Rijeka, made
17 in June 2000? I'm quoting him: "I remember how a few months prior
to the
18 elections in 1990" - he is referring to his conversation with
Tudjman -
19 "how he came to me quite delighted, believing that he would turn me
into
20 his Augustincic. He thought that we would now do what the Ustashas
and
21 Pavelic did not do in 1941. He said that he would send 250.000
Serbs
22 packing away and the remaining 250.000 would be killed." So these
are
23 your own newspapers. It's not a Belgrade newspaper. This is Edo
Murtic,
24 a famous artist, painter, a well-known intellectual. Do you
remember that
25 statement of his about this conversation before the elections in
1990?
Page 10651
1 And I quoted Susan Woodward a few minutes ago and she is referring
to the
2 atmosphere before 1990, before the elections.
3 JUDGE MAY: The witness can deal with the conversation by -- or
4 comments by the artist which has been referred to.
5 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] The artist Edo Murtic is a friend of
6 mine, by the way, but I do admit that I haven't read that particular
7 statement of his.
8 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
9 Q. All right. Tell me, please: I'm just going to briefly quote the
10 newspaper Feral Tribune on the 21st of April, 2001, autumn 2001,
there was
11 a hunt against the Serbs in 1991. It says: "Mercep's killers were
12 killing Serbs en masse in Pogracka [phoen], Puljane [phoen], they
were
13 taking people out of their homes in Zagreb and they were trying
them but
14 firing bullets into their heads. Norac Oreskovic and others applied
15 similar methods when dealing with the innocent Serbs of Gospic.
16 Spectacular Crystal Nights were organised in Zadar during which
tens of
17 houses were destroyed whose inhabitants had the wrong chromosomes."
18 Is that correct, Mr. Mesic? Is that what the Croatian newspaper
19 Feral Tribune said or did this Croatian newspaper lie when they
said that?
20 A. There were crimes, and I always asked for them to be
investigated
21 and the perpetrators to be punished. Croatia did not have
sufficient rule
22 of law, and after all, that is how I won the election, because I
have been
23 calling for true rule of law in Croatia. Crimes were committed and
24 perpetrators should be brought to justice. But that is no reason
for
25 destroying Dubrovnik, for destroying Vukovar, for destroying
Croatian
Page 10652
1 cities. Criminals should be prosecuted, but towns should not be
2 destroyed.
3 Q. Correct. Perpetrators should be prosecuted, perpetrators should
4 be tried, but the only question is: Who criminals were. Who were the
5 criminals? That's the only question. And criminals should certainly
be
6 prosecuted and brought to justice, certainly.
7 So that is the whole point. That is the inversion that was made,
8 Mr. Mesic; isn't that right? You are testifying here that I was the
one
9 who broke up Yugoslavia and you were in favour of Yugoslavia and any
child
10 in Yugoslavia knows --
11 A. I think that we can reach agreement on one thing very quickly
12 here. I am not the person on trial here.
13 Q. Well, that's the point.
14 JUDGE MAY: We're going to adjourn now. It's time, Mr. Milosevic.
15 Half past. Twenty minutes.
16 --- Recess taken at 10.29 a.m.
17 --- On resuming at 10.54 a.m.
18 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.
19 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
20 Q. I'm going to show you now that you weren't speaking the truth a
21 moment ago when we were discussing an issue and questions about the
people
22 who were fighting in Bosnia who were not volunteers. And when I
asked you
23 about your nephew, who was also in Bosnia, a Croatian soldier
there, and
24 he was not a volunteer. He was born in Slavonia so he was not from
Bosnia
25 either and had nothing to do with Bosnia, and you said that that
was not
Page 10653
1 true, not correct; isn't that so? Now take a look at your own
testimony
2 in a case - or rather, when you speak about this same subject, it is
page
3 7266 of the transcript - while you were testifying here in this same
4 building --
5 JUDGE MAY: This is, so we've got it, is this in -- not in
6 Dokmanovic?
7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] No, it isn't. It's in the other
8 case, the other trial, where Mr. Mesic was a protected witness. And
so I
9 wish to adhere to the rules, although the Slobodna Dalmacija paper
did
10 publicise this. I don't want to make explicit mention of it. And
11 Mr. Mesic, as we can see, is a witness, has been a witness in many
cases,
12 a witness for the Prosecution, which also demonstrates this
inversion.
13 JUDGE MAY: No. That's just --
14 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] That I was talking about. All
15 right. But this is what it says here. May I read it out?
16 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
17 Q. And I'm reading out your own transcript, not mine, when you're
18 talking about whether they were in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He says the
19 following: "Whether there were any, I cannot tell [In English] I
was not
20 an inspector, nor was it up to me to establish it. But my nephew
Vlatko
21 Mesic, who was a Croat soldier, he was in Bosnia. He came back from
there
22 and he was not a volunteer in Bosnia. He was born in Slavonia. He
has
23 nothing in common with Bosnia, but he was there."
24 Therefore, you told an untruth a moment ago. You even said that
25 your nephews were too young, whereas here in this transcript from
your
Page 10654
Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the
French and English transcripts.
Page 10655
1 testimony which was given under oath, you are saying something quite
2 different, in fact. Is that right, Mr. Mesic, or is it not?
3 A. My two nephews live in France, and two of them live in Belgrade.
4 And during the war, they were minors. It is a relation of mine, a
distant
5 cousin. The interpretation of that was probably erroneous. Who said
6 that -- who told me he was in Bosnia. That is what he told me and
that is
7 what I said.
8 Q. Very well.
9 MR. NICE: Your Honour, can I -- I didn't want to interrupt that
10 last exchange, given that it had started, but any further reference
to
11 protected testimony should itself be given in private session.
12 JUDGE MAY: Yes. Very well.
13 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I don't see why this should be given
14 in private session, Mr. May, when I am making no mention here of --
15 JUDGE MAY: It doesn't matter.
16 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] -- what it refers to, actually.
17 JUDGE MAY: Those are the Rules. Any reference to private-session
18 matters should be in private session. Yes, let's go on.
19 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I don't see that I have infringed
20 upon your procedure in any way by having brought that up.
21 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
22 Q. When you were asked by a representative of the accused, did you
as
23 a speaker take any steps for this matter to be investigated?
Because of
24 course [In English] It is the assembly's responsibility regarding
the use
25 of the army outside its border. Did you form a commission? Did you
put
Page 10656
1 this issue on agenda --
2 JUDGE MAY: We'll go into private session.
3 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Don't, please. I don't want to
4 waste time. I won't carry on with that.
5 JUDGE MAY: Very well.
6 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
7 Q. So when weren't you speaking the truth, Mr. Mesic: Now or then,
8 when you made that statement which was under oath again?
9 JUDGE MAY: He's given his explanation. If there's anything you
10 want to add, Mr. Mesic, you can.
11 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] The direct question was whether my
12 nephew was there, and I said no. A relative, a relation of mine,
was,
13 which means that individuals were there who were not born in
Bosnia. But
14 apart from that one individual that I did know, I wasn't able to
ascertain
15 who was there.
16 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
17 Q. Now, whether you say nephew or relative or distant cousin or
18 whatever I read out here, that's what it said, so there can be no
dilemmas
19 there or confusion. Let's move on.
20 Is it true that in your presence Tudjman said that at the end of
21 the war there would be 5 per cent of Serbs in Croatia, by the end
of the
22 war?
23 A. Yes, that is what he said. He said that was his assumption.
24 Q. Is it also true that he said that Tudjman thought that the 1938
25 solution for Croatia was the best one when it was the banovina of
Croatia?
Page 10657
1 A. No. It was Tudjman's position that as Vojvodina had been attached
2 to Serbia, and it was never under Serbia, even during World War II,
3 Vojvodina was under the main staff and headquarters of Croatia
because
4 Serbia did not have one. And he therefore considered that Avnoj, the
5 anti-fascist World War II council had made a mistake when to
6 Bosnia-Herzegovina as a historical Croatian province had not been
7 envisioned as autonomous province within Croatia. So that position
was
8 one that he always stood by, and he considered that
Bosnia-Herzegovina had
9 to be a whole, a whole entity, and that it must be within the
frameworks
10 of Croatia. But Avnoj, the anti-fascist council, did not take that
into
11 account. However, in the electoral campaign, he stated the facts
and said
12 that Croatia represented an oblong role with one section cut off.
But in
13 that way, he did not move any proceedings to put that right and to
ask for
14 alien territory to be attached to Croatia. After he returned from
15 Karadjordjevo, he said that Croatia was to receive the banovina
borders
16 plus Cazin and Bihac, Kladusa, and he said, as Milosevic had told
him, he
17 said: "Listen, Franjo." That's what he said. You take Cazin,
Kladusa and
18 Bihac. I don't need that. That is what we refer to as Turkish
Croatia.
19 That's what he told us. Now, whether that was what actually took
place,
20 the accused knows that better himself.
21 Q. Well, of course there was no discussion about carving up Bosnia.
22 We have already had that discussion here. But your explanations are
23 becoming relevant for you. So to recap: You weren't telling the
truth
24 with respect to the presence in Bosnia, and later on I am going to
call
25 evidence --
* Continued at: http://www.icdsm.org/more/mesic-5.htm
***** Urgent Message from Sloboda (Freedom) Association and the
International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic!
The Freedom Association in Belgrade and the ICDSM, based outside
Yugoslavia, are the two organizations formed at the request of
Slobodan
Milosevic to aid in his defense.
Up until now our main work has been threefold. We have publicized the
truth about The Hague's phony trial. We have organized research to
help President Milosevic expose NATO's lies. And we have initiated
legal action in the Dutch and European Courts.
Now our job has increased. The defense phase of the "trial" starts in
May 2003. No longer will Mr. Milosevic be limited to cross-examining
Hague witnesses. The prosecution will be forced further onto the
defensive as victims of NATO's aggression and experts from Yugoslavia
and
the NATO countries tell what really happened and expose media lies.
Moreover, Mr. Milosevic will call leaders, from East and West, some
friendly and some hostile to the truth.
The controlled mass media will undoubtedly try to suppress this
testimony as they have tried to suppress Mr. Milosevic's
cross-examinations. Nevertheless this phase of the "trial" will be the
biggest international forum ever to expose NATO's use of racism,
violence and lies to attack Yugoslavia.
We urgently need the help of all people who care about what is
happening in The Hague. Right now, Nico Steijnen , the Dutch lawyer in
the
ICDSM, is waging legal battles in the Dutch courts and before the
European Court, about which more news soon. These efforts urgently
require financial support. We now maintain a small staff of Yugoslav
lawyers in Holland, assisting and advising Mr. Milosevic full-time. We
need to expand our Dutch facilities, perhaps bringing in a
non-Yugoslav attorney full-time. Definitely we must guarantee that we
have an
office and office manager available at all times, to compile and
process evidence and for meetings with witnesses and lawyers and as a
base
for organizing press conferences.
All this costs money. And for this, we rely on those who want Mr.
Milosevic to have the best possible support for attacking NATO's lies.
************
Here's how you can help...
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For now, you can contribute by credit card in two ways: *
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=================================
Slobodan Milosevic's Cross-Examination of
Croatian President Stjepan Mesic: PART IV
Because the transcript of the cross-examination
is 150 pages long we have broken it into 12
easy to read segments. If you wish to read the
whole thing at once go to:
http://www.icdsm.org/more/mesic.htm
=================================
Page 10647
1 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
2 Q. Was that when Ante Markovic established his own party?
3 A. On the 27th of July, 1990, the Serb assembly passed its so-called
4 decision on Serb autonomy in Croatia. On the 1st of July, 1990 in
Kosovo
5 by Knin, an official statement was made that the Serb Autonomous
Krajina
6 was established in Croatia, its president being Milan Babic. On the
17th
7 of August, the first roadblocks were on the road in Benkovac, Knin
and
8 Gradacac. On the 13th of September, there were meetings and rallies
of
9 persons in Dvor and in various other places. In towns and in
10 municipalities in Croatia where there is a predominantly Serb
population,
11 there were inscriptions saying: "This is Serbia." So it is persons
who
12 came from Serbia who manipulated the Serb masses in Serbia? Why?
Because
13 Milosevic needed to bring about an insurgency of the Serbs in
Croatia so
14 that he would light the initial fuse for setting Bosnia-Herzegovina
on
15 fire, because he needed Bosnia-Herzegovina. That's what the accused
16 actually did. That is why he should be held accountable. These
radical
17 statements, regrettably, are only in response to statements made by
the
18 accused.
19 Q. Mr. Mesic, do you see that you're not testifying about anything
20 here except your political and propaganda activities all this time?
21 Because you do not have a single fact here; you only have your own
22 positions and your attacks against Milosevic.
23 A. This is the trial of the accused Slobodan Milosevic. I have
24 sufficient facts in order to believe that he is guilty because he
planned
25 war, he carried out war, and he built into this plan a crime that
he
Page 10648
1 should be held accountable for.
2 Q. Very well.
3 JUDGE MAY: Let us get back to the subject-matter of the trial.
4 Yes. You are asking about the statements, Mr. Milosevic.
5 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
6 Q. I put a question. I said: These laws and the atmosphere in
7 parliament, the atmosphere in Croatia, the dismissals of thousands
of
8 persons from the administration, from the police, from the media,
even
9 from the health sector, is that the kind of atmosphere that caused
concern
10 among the Serbs, or was it, as Mr. Mesic just put it now, was it
Milosevic
11 who caused concern and who led to this insurgency? Were these facts
of
12 life the thing that caused concern among them or did Milosevic come
from
13 Serbia to make them start a rebellion, now that I've quoted all of
this?
14 A. It wasn't the accused Milosevic who came. His emissaries came,
15 and they were the ones who started the insurgency in Croatia.
16 JUDGE MAY: Can you deal with the allegations which are made,
17 that, first of all, there were the dismissals of thousands of
persons from
18 the administration and the police and the media and the health
sector?
19 Now, can you deal with that, Mr. Mesic? Were thousands dismissed?
20 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I think that it is an exaggeration
21 to speak of thousands, but that there were dismissals is a fact.
There
22 were unnecessary dismissals. People also took those who dismissed
them to
23 court and won these cases. I think that these statements that are
radical
24 and inadmissible only work to Croatia's detriment, and I always
struggled
25 against that.
Page 10649
1 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
2 Q. All right. So the atmosphere and the statements -- I mean, you
3 say now that it is negative, but the atmosphere was there, wasn't
it? So
4 it's not Milosevic who caused an insurgency among the Serbs; it is
your
5 laws, your pressures, your behaviour, your attacks against people.
Is
6 that right or is that not right, Mr. Mesic?
7 A. I have to reply once again, and I've already said this.
8 Q. If you've already said it, please don't read out what you've
9 already read out, please.
10 A. Those who wanted to cut off parts of Croatia, parts of the
11 Republic of Croatia, those are the ones who are to be blamed for
the
12 radical statements that were made.
13 Q. Well, look, somebody wanted to cut off parts of your territory.
14 Susanne Woodward from the Brooking Institution, an institution of
high
15 renown throughout the world, she says:
16 "Smashed stores fronts, fire bombs thrown and harassed and
17 arrested potential Serb leaders. In many parts of Croatia Serbs
were
18 expelled from jobs because of their nationality."
19 JUDGE MAY: You can call her to give evidence if you want. Yes.
20 Was there an atmosphere, Mr. Mesic, to cause the Serbs to have
21 fear at this time or is that not so?
22 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] It is an exaggeration to say that
23 there was an atmosphere of fear, but that there were improper and
24 inadmissible statements, that is a fact. Also there were dismissals
that
25 were wrong; however, people took those who dismissed them to court
and
Page 10650
1 they won those cases.
2 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
3 Q. You mean those 100,000 Serbs who fled Croatia already in 1990,
4 they won these cases for their own jobs; is that what you're trying
to
5 say?
6 A. The accused is a lawyer, and he knows that only a person who is a
7 plaintiff can win a case.
8 Q. Well, we heard your own statements of a few minutes ago about
9 those murders, what kind of rule of law you had. We're going to hear
10 others later as well. I assume that you're not joking now when
you're
11 referring to --
12 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, the time has come to move on from this
13 sort of argument, which doesn't assist the Court.
14 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
15 Q. Tell me, Mr. Mesic: Do you remember the statement made by the
16 famous artist Edo Murtic in Novi Liste [phoen], a daily from
Rijeka, made
17 in June 2000? I'm quoting him: "I remember how a few months prior
to the
18 elections in 1990" - he is referring to his conversation with
Tudjman -
19 "how he came to me quite delighted, believing that he would turn me
into
20 his Augustincic. He thought that we would now do what the Ustashas
and
21 Pavelic did not do in 1941. He said that he would send 250.000
Serbs
22 packing away and the remaining 250.000 would be killed." So these
are
23 your own newspapers. It's not a Belgrade newspaper. This is Edo
Murtic,
24 a famous artist, painter, a well-known intellectual. Do you
remember that
25 statement of his about this conversation before the elections in
1990?
Page 10651
1 And I quoted Susan Woodward a few minutes ago and she is referring
to the
2 atmosphere before 1990, before the elections.
3 JUDGE MAY: The witness can deal with the conversation by -- or
4 comments by the artist which has been referred to.
5 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] The artist Edo Murtic is a friend of
6 mine, by the way, but I do admit that I haven't read that particular
7 statement of his.
8 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
9 Q. All right. Tell me, please: I'm just going to briefly quote the
10 newspaper Feral Tribune on the 21st of April, 2001, autumn 2001,
there was
11 a hunt against the Serbs in 1991. It says: "Mercep's killers were
12 killing Serbs en masse in Pogracka [phoen], Puljane [phoen], they
were
13 taking people out of their homes in Zagreb and they were trying
them but
14 firing bullets into their heads. Norac Oreskovic and others applied
15 similar methods when dealing with the innocent Serbs of Gospic.
16 Spectacular Crystal Nights were organised in Zadar during which
tens of
17 houses were destroyed whose inhabitants had the wrong chromosomes."
18 Is that correct, Mr. Mesic? Is that what the Croatian newspaper
19 Feral Tribune said or did this Croatian newspaper lie when they
said that?
20 A. There were crimes, and I always asked for them to be
investigated
21 and the perpetrators to be punished. Croatia did not have
sufficient rule
22 of law, and after all, that is how I won the election, because I
have been
23 calling for true rule of law in Croatia. Crimes were committed and
24 perpetrators should be brought to justice. But that is no reason
for
25 destroying Dubrovnik, for destroying Vukovar, for destroying
Croatian
Page 10652
1 cities. Criminals should be prosecuted, but towns should not be
2 destroyed.
3 Q. Correct. Perpetrators should be prosecuted, perpetrators should
4 be tried, but the only question is: Who criminals were. Who were the
5 criminals? That's the only question. And criminals should certainly
be
6 prosecuted and brought to justice, certainly.
7 So that is the whole point. That is the inversion that was made,
8 Mr. Mesic; isn't that right? You are testifying here that I was the
one
9 who broke up Yugoslavia and you were in favour of Yugoslavia and any
child
10 in Yugoslavia knows --
11 A. I think that we can reach agreement on one thing very quickly
12 here. I am not the person on trial here.
13 Q. Well, that's the point.
14 JUDGE MAY: We're going to adjourn now. It's time, Mr. Milosevic.
15 Half past. Twenty minutes.
16 --- Recess taken at 10.29 a.m.
17 --- On resuming at 10.54 a.m.
18 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.
19 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
20 Q. I'm going to show you now that you weren't speaking the truth a
21 moment ago when we were discussing an issue and questions about the
people
22 who were fighting in Bosnia who were not volunteers. And when I
asked you
23 about your nephew, who was also in Bosnia, a Croatian soldier
there, and
24 he was not a volunteer. He was born in Slavonia so he was not from
Bosnia
25 either and had nothing to do with Bosnia, and you said that that
was not
Page 10653
1 true, not correct; isn't that so? Now take a look at your own
testimony
2 in a case - or rather, when you speak about this same subject, it is
page
3 7266 of the transcript - while you were testifying here in this same
4 building --
5 JUDGE MAY: This is, so we've got it, is this in -- not in
6 Dokmanovic?
7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] No, it isn't. It's in the other
8 case, the other trial, where Mr. Mesic was a protected witness. And
so I
9 wish to adhere to the rules, although the Slobodna Dalmacija paper
did
10 publicise this. I don't want to make explicit mention of it. And
11 Mr. Mesic, as we can see, is a witness, has been a witness in many
cases,
12 a witness for the Prosecution, which also demonstrates this
inversion.
13 JUDGE MAY: No. That's just --
14 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] That I was talking about. All
15 right. But this is what it says here. May I read it out?
16 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
17 Q. And I'm reading out your own transcript, not mine, when you're
18 talking about whether they were in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He says the
19 following: "Whether there were any, I cannot tell [In English] I
was not
20 an inspector, nor was it up to me to establish it. But my nephew
Vlatko
21 Mesic, who was a Croat soldier, he was in Bosnia. He came back from
there
22 and he was not a volunteer in Bosnia. He was born in Slavonia. He
has
23 nothing in common with Bosnia, but he was there."
24 Therefore, you told an untruth a moment ago. You even said that
25 your nephews were too young, whereas here in this transcript from
your
Page 10654
Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the
French and English transcripts.
Page 10655
1 testimony which was given under oath, you are saying something quite
2 different, in fact. Is that right, Mr. Mesic, or is it not?
3 A. My two nephews live in France, and two of them live in Belgrade.
4 And during the war, they were minors. It is a relation of mine, a
distant
5 cousin. The interpretation of that was probably erroneous. Who said
6 that -- who told me he was in Bosnia. That is what he told me and
that is
7 what I said.
8 Q. Very well.
9 MR. NICE: Your Honour, can I -- I didn't want to interrupt that
10 last exchange, given that it had started, but any further reference
to
11 protected testimony should itself be given in private session.
12 JUDGE MAY: Yes. Very well.
13 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I don't see why this should be given
14 in private session, Mr. May, when I am making no mention here of --
15 JUDGE MAY: It doesn't matter.
16 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] -- what it refers to, actually.
17 JUDGE MAY: Those are the Rules. Any reference to private-session
18 matters should be in private session. Yes, let's go on.
19 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I don't see that I have infringed
20 upon your procedure in any way by having brought that up.
21 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
22 Q. When you were asked by a representative of the accused, did you
as
23 a speaker take any steps for this matter to be investigated?
Because of
24 course [In English] It is the assembly's responsibility regarding
the use
25 of the army outside its border. Did you form a commission? Did you
put
Page 10656
1 this issue on agenda --
2 JUDGE MAY: We'll go into private session.
3 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Don't, please. I don't want to
4 waste time. I won't carry on with that.
5 JUDGE MAY: Very well.
6 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
7 Q. So when weren't you speaking the truth, Mr. Mesic: Now or then,
8 when you made that statement which was under oath again?
9 JUDGE MAY: He's given his explanation. If there's anything you
10 want to add, Mr. Mesic, you can.
11 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] The direct question was whether my
12 nephew was there, and I said no. A relative, a relation of mine,
was,
13 which means that individuals were there who were not born in
Bosnia. But
14 apart from that one individual that I did know, I wasn't able to
ascertain
15 who was there.
16 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
17 Q. Now, whether you say nephew or relative or distant cousin or
18 whatever I read out here, that's what it said, so there can be no
dilemmas
19 there or confusion. Let's move on.
20 Is it true that in your presence Tudjman said that at the end of
21 the war there would be 5 per cent of Serbs in Croatia, by the end
of the
22 war?
23 A. Yes, that is what he said. He said that was his assumption.
24 Q. Is it also true that he said that Tudjman thought that the 1938
25 solution for Croatia was the best one when it was the banovina of
Croatia?
Page 10657
1 A. No. It was Tudjman's position that as Vojvodina had been attached
2 to Serbia, and it was never under Serbia, even during World War II,
3 Vojvodina was under the main staff and headquarters of Croatia
because
4 Serbia did not have one. And he therefore considered that Avnoj, the
5 anti-fascist World War II council had made a mistake when to
6 Bosnia-Herzegovina as a historical Croatian province had not been
7 envisioned as autonomous province within Croatia. So that position
was
8 one that he always stood by, and he considered that
Bosnia-Herzegovina had
9 to be a whole, a whole entity, and that it must be within the
frameworks
10 of Croatia. But Avnoj, the anti-fascist council, did not take that
into
11 account. However, in the electoral campaign, he stated the facts
and said
12 that Croatia represented an oblong role with one section cut off.
But in
13 that way, he did not move any proceedings to put that right and to
ask for
14 alien territory to be attached to Croatia. After he returned from
15 Karadjordjevo, he said that Croatia was to receive the banovina
borders
16 plus Cazin and Bihac, Kladusa, and he said, as Milosevic had told
him, he
17 said: "Listen, Franjo." That's what he said. You take Cazin,
Kladusa and
18 Bihac. I don't need that. That is what we refer to as Turkish
Croatia.
19 That's what he told us. Now, whether that was what actually took
place,
20 the accused knows that better himself.
21 Q. Well, of course there was no discussion about carving up Bosnia.
22 We have already had that discussion here. But your explanations are
23 becoming relevant for you. So to recap: You weren't telling the
truth
24 with respect to the presence in Bosnia, and later on I am going to
call
25 evidence --
* Continued at: http://www.icdsm.org/more/mesic-5.htm
***** Urgent Message from Sloboda (Freedom) Association and the
International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic!
The Freedom Association in Belgrade and the ICDSM, based outside
Yugoslavia, are the two organizations formed at the request of
Slobodan
Milosevic to aid in his defense.
Up until now our main work has been threefold. We have publicized the
truth about The Hague's phony trial. We have organized research to
help President Milosevic expose NATO's lies. And we have initiated
legal action in the Dutch and European Courts.
Now our job has increased. The defense phase of the "trial" starts in
May 2003. No longer will Mr. Milosevic be limited to cross-examining
Hague witnesses. The prosecution will be forced further onto the
defensive as victims of NATO's aggression and experts from Yugoslavia
and
the NATO countries tell what really happened and expose media lies.
Moreover, Mr. Milosevic will call leaders, from East and West, some
friendly and some hostile to the truth.
The controlled mass media will undoubtedly try to suppress this
testimony as they have tried to suppress Mr. Milosevic's
cross-examinations. Nevertheless this phase of the "trial" will be the
biggest international forum ever to expose NATO's use of racism,
violence and lies to attack Yugoslavia.
We urgently need the help of all people who care about what is
happening in The Hague. Right now, Nico Steijnen , the Dutch lawyer in
the
ICDSM, is waging legal battles in the Dutch courts and before the
European Court, about which more news soon. These efforts urgently
require financial support. We now maintain a small staff of Yugoslav
lawyers in Holland, assisting and advising Mr. Milosevic full-time. We
need to expand our Dutch facilities, perhaps bringing in a
non-Yugoslav attorney full-time. Definitely we must guarantee that we
have an
office and office manager available at all times, to compile and
process evidence and for meetings with witnesses and lawyers and as a
base
for organizing press conferences.
All this costs money. And for this, we rely on those who want Mr.
Milosevic to have the best possible support for attacking NATO's lies.
************
Here's how you can help...
************
* You may contribute by credit card. By the end of September we will
have an ICDSM secure server so you can contribute directly on the
Internet.
For now, you can contribute by credit card in two ways: *
You can Contribute by Credit Card over the Telephone by calling:
ICDSM office, USA: 1 617 916-1705
SLOBODA (Freedom) Association office, Belgrade: 381 63 279 819
You can Contribute using PayPal at:
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PayPal accepts VISA and MasterCard
You can Contribute by mail to:
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- OR -
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Account with:
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Thank you!
http://www.icdsm.org
1. The 'job offer' that led to years of sex slavery (The Daily
Telegraph)
2. In Europe, Sex Slavery Is Thriving Despite Raids (The New York
Times)
3. Investigative Report: KOSOVO SEX INDUSTRY (IWPR)
Una sintesi in lingua italiana dell'ultimo documento si puo' trovare
su: http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/1920
Altri articoli recenti sul problema della "tratta delle bianche" nei
Balcani si possono trovare su:
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/1912
=== 1 ===
http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$
GWYSBEGGIXKI1QFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=%2F
news%2F2002%2F10%2F21%2Fwbalk21.xml&secureRefresh=true&
_requestid=207679
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH (London)
(Filed: 21/10/2002)
The 'job offer' that led to years of sex slavery
Eve-Ann Prentice in Podgorica reports on attempts to
clamp down on the trade of young women as sex slaves
in the Balkans
Elena was a naive 19-year-old when a man started
flirting with her in the market place of her home town
in Moldova.
She and her mother were near destitute after her
father had left home and she believed the handsome
stranger when he offered her a job as a waitress at a
coastal resort in Montenegro.
Instead, she was taken to the Serbian town of Novi
Sad, where she was drugged, beaten and repeatedly
raped.
After a couple of weeks of relentless abuse, stupefied
by drink and drugs, she was taken to northern
Montenegro, where she was sold as a sex slave.
Elena is just one of countless thousands of young
women, some as young as 14, who every year become
victims of human trafficking.
It is big business for the gangsters who kidnap the
women off the streets of impoverished towns in eastern
Europe and the Balkans, or lure them with false
promises of work, then beat them into becoming unpaid
prostitutes.
Many are taken across the Adriatic to Italy, from
where they are transported to the brothels of
north-western Europe, including Britain.
Some are increasingly being held as captives in
brothels used by the army of foreign aid workers now
working across the region. Elena was luckier than
most.
After three years of being sold from one owner to
another, police raided the bar where she was
imprisoned this summer and she grabbed her chance to
escape. She was taken to a secret shelter for victims
of trafficking on the outskirts of Podgorica in
Montenegro.
Two men were arrested in the bar, including a
policeman, Vladan Bakic, who is awaiting trial. This
weekend, Elena is on her way back home to Moldova,
after spending several weeks at a high-security
shelter run by the International Organisation for
Migration.
Here the lucky few who either escape from their
captors or are rescued in police raids can find
counselling, medical care and help to return home.
Even then, the women often face hostility from their
own families, as they are forever afterwards regarded
as soiled.
Most of the victims of the trade in humans have been
from Moldova, Romania and other countries outside
Montenegro but now an increasing number are from
within the tiny mountain republic which, with Serbia,
makes up what remains of federal Yugoslavia.
"This is because standards of living have become worse
and worse here and all criminal trades flourish in
such an atmosphere," says Zana Pevicevic, who runs the
IOM's operation in Podgorica. Cuddly toys and pop star
posters testify to the youth of the victims at the
shelter.
It is dangerous work for Zana and her two assistants
who run the shelter at a modern, clean and
well-equipped house guarded by security cameras and
with a fast-response alarm system linked to the local
police.
Attitudes to the human trafficking are beginning to
change in Montenegro. There are signs that police
raids have forced the criminal gangs behind the trade
to change their main route - south through Serbia,
Montenegro and Albania - to a more northerly path. The
misery will not be ended, it will only be relocated.
letters.online@...
=== 2 ===
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/international/europe/20MIRA.html
THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sunday, October 20, 2002
In Europe, Sex Slavery Is Thriving Despite Raids
By DAVID BINDER
WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 - An intensive European operation conducted with
American assistance to crack down on the trafficking of women for the
sex trade has had mixed success, American officials say.
Preliminary data show that in 20,558 raids conducted from Sept. 7 to
Sept. 16 across Central and Eastern Europe, 237 victims of trafficking
were identified and 293 traffickers were arrested and charged as
criminals.
But little was done in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the focus of the
operation because it is considered a center for international
prostitution and sexual slavery as well as a major transit point to
northern Europe. National and international police officers made just
71 raids on Bosnian nightclubs, hotels and other locations during the
September operation and arrested seven trafficking suspects.
"We are gratified by what was accomplished by some of the
participating countries, but are less satisfied with others who should
have been more involved," said John F. Markey, a United States customs
agent who directs law enforcement assistance programs in the State
Department.
Regionally and globally, the problem is huge. Trafficked women from
poor regions of Ukraine, Romania, Moldova and other Central and
Eastern European countries have been turning up in the United States
as well - in Miami, New York, Los Angeles and even Anchorage.
The International Organization for Migration, an offshoot of the
United Nations, estimates that 700,000 women are transported, mostly
involuntarily, over international borders each year for the sex trade.
As many as 200,000 are taken to or through the Balkans.
The September operation was conducted by the transborder crime center
of the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative in Bucharest,
Romania, bringing together regional law enforcement agencies. The
center receives considerable assistance from the United States Customs
Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the
Secret Service. The crime center is directed by Brig. Gen. Ferenc
Banfi of Hungary, and the antitrafficking task force is led by a
Romanian, Col. Gabriel Sotirescu.
In addition to Bosnia, the operation enlisted the assistance of
Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Yugoslavia, Greece, Hungary,
Moldova, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine.
The operation focused on Bosnia because, since the war there ended
seven years ago, the presence of thousands of NATO troops and civilian
workers for the United Nations and aid agencies has made it a prime
market for both prostitution and sexual slavery, officials said.
Over the past two years, both NATO soldiers and United Nations
officials, including some Americans, have been implicated in the
exploitation of young women held in sexual bondage.
Because of its porous borders - only about 40 of its 432 official
border crossings are guarded - Bosnia is also a major transit country
for trafficked women, narcotics and contraband being sent to Northern
Europe.
On Thursday, the United Nations Mission in Sarajevo dismissed 11
Bosnian police officers, including members of the antitrafficking
squad, after they were apprehended visiting brothels and abusing
prostitutes. One has been sentenced by a Bosnian court to a month's
imprisonment, the mission announced.
By contrast, Bulgaria posted large numbers during the September
operation: in 2,079 individual raids, 258 people were identified as
traffickers and 64 women as trafficking victims. Some of the women
were taken to shelters run by private groups.
Romania reported 2,597 police raids, in which 47 traffickers were
identified and 1,063 women were identified as being in the sex
industry; 37 were classified as sex slaves.
For the other participating countries, the available performance data
declined sharply, officials said.
Among the functions of the Bucharest center's approximately 30
permanent officers is to receive, evaluate and pass on information on
suspected illegal movements of people, narcotics and contraband goods
to bring about transborder law enforcement operations. More than 100
messages were exchanged during the September operation, Colonel
Sotirescu said.
The center, housed in a palace built under Romania's Communist-era
dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, carried out its first joint action last
summer, focusing on narcotics trafficking across 15 countries from
Central Asia to the Balkans. More such operations are in the works.
Mr. Markey said the lack of cooperation the operation sometimes
encountered could be explained by political turmoil surrounding
elections in some countries, including Serbia, Bosnia and Macedonia.
letters@...
=== 3 ===
IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, No. 355, Part II, August 2, 2002
KOSOVO SEX INDUSTRY
There was hardly any prostitution in Kosovo before the war - now it's
booming
By Jeta Xharra in Pristina
Red neon over the Nairobi bar and an arc of light slicing through a
chink in its heavily-draped window are all that illuminate the
entrance to the striptease club, where Naim, a thin Albanian man in
his twenties, stands looking bored. When he sees me he springs into
action, spreading his scrawny chest across the door. "Sorry, women
are not allowed here," he said.
The doorman, Naim, was soon joined by a colleague who said he had
visited similar nightclubs in Sweden, and considers the provision of
such "entertainment" a measure of Kosovo's recent progress. "The real
excitement here is that guys whose first journey beyond their village
was to Stankovac (a refugee camp in Macedonia) can now see women strip
here," he said.
I ask to be let in, saying that I only want to order a drink at the
bar. When that fails, I threaten to complain to the UN police about
the discriminatory entrance policy at the club. Naim will not budge.
"All the girls inside the club are on contract, if the police raid the
place and find uncontracted local girls we'll be in trouble," he said.
"Anyway, this is no place for you 'sister', do you have any idea of
why people come here?" He probably didn't expect an answer, but I
whisper back, "Per kurv'ni?" - a piece of local slang best translated
as "for whoring". Naim does not respond, but his face reddens.
Such prudishness might seem absurd from a man working at a club where
punters can buy sex with the dancers. But this is a traditional
tightly-knit society. Discussing his job with an Albanian woman was
probably as awkward for him as talking about it to his mother, or his
own sister. Naim probably justified his work on the basis that the
club - which has since closed - is staffed entirely by foreign women.
By "importing" Romanian, Moldovan or Ukrainian women, club owners and
their staff can argue that they are shielding "our women" from this
unpleasant, but lucrative business.
Unheard of three years ago, the sex industry is now the fastest
growing "business" in post-war Kosovo, which has undergone
unprecedented social and political upheaval since the 1999 conflict.
Mobilised for over a decade against the Milosevic regime, the
population now plays host to the KFOR peacekeeping force, which
provides a steady stream of clients for the protectorate's 120 or so
strip clubs.
Around 60 per cent of women working in the sex trade come from
Moldova, the others from Romania and Ukraine. However, figures from
the International Organisation of Migration, IOM, counter-trafficking
unit suggest that 70 per cent of the overseas women were lured from
their home countries with promises of jobs as cleaners, waitresses,
baby-sitters or care workers.
While the arrival of 45,000 international peacekeepers has certainly
been a key factor in the sudden growth of the industry, in research
conducted by the IOM Kosovo team last year, victims of trafficking
reported that the bulk of the clientele are local residents.
Sevdije Ahmeti, a human rights activist and director of the Centre for
the Protection of Women and Children, CPWC, also questions the image
of Kosovo as an untainted, traditional society where an imported sex
trade serves the needs of promiscuous foreigners. Traditional
Albanian family structures, in which a male breadwinner provided for
women and children, had started eroding even before the war, she says.
Many Kosovar men emigrated to western Europe during the 1990s, either
to escape the military draft or to earn the hard currency which funded
Kosovo's "parallel economy" in a period when Albanians either
boycotted or were sacked from state jobs. Their absence altered the
traditional balance of roles between the sexes.
Kosovar society was then traumatised by the events of spring 1999, as
the majority of men were left powerless to defend their families in
the face of Serbian army tactics, which included rape and gang rape.
This "weapon" was not only used against women, but also to humiliate
and emasculate the men who were supposed to be their protectors.
Claims by local men that no Kosovar women work in the sex industry are
open to dispute. A local safe house set up by CPWC in 1996, to offer
refuge to Bosnian women who had been raped during the 1991-5 war, has
helped hundreds of women from across the former Yugoslavia, including
a significant number from Kosovo.
Tina, a Kosovar girl who sought sanctuary at the refuge, was kept as a
virtual slave in a Mitrovica nightclub for two years. Her clientele
was divided between locals who visited the club and military personnel
to whom she was "delivered" at checkpoints and barracks across
northern Kosovo.
In practice, the traditional attitudes that are believed to "protect"
Kosovar women from the sex trade leave victims of trafficking and
sexual crimes largely unprotected by the law.
One teenage victim of abduction and gang rape received scant support
from the legal system.
Violeta, 16, was kidnapped by two young Albanian men on her way to
school in Pristina three years ago. She was taken to a bar, which
promptly closed for the day. After drawing the curtains, the men and
their friends raped her repeatedly. She was allowed to return home in
the evenings, but the kidnappers threatened to ruin her reputation if
she said a word to anyone. Terrified, Violeta, did not dare tell her
parents what had happened and her ordeal was repeated several times.
She became pregnant and had an abortion before her abductors were
eventually caught. She testified against them, but they were released
for "lack of evidence".
Three years on, her life is still severely restricted. "My kidnappers
can go wherever they want, I only dare to go out in the company of my
mother or father," she said. "I had to drop out of school, because
they would follow me and ask my teachers where I was."
The first judge Violeta encountered told her to be less emotional and
stop crying about her ordeal, which, he said, was clearly her own
fault. With the support of her parents and the CPWC, she is now
pushing for a new hearing of her case at the Pristina district court,
but her experience shows the attitude rife among local men and even
judges that women willingly engage in sexual activities in the various
strip joints and bars. It is a view that conveniently overlooks the
fact that girls may have been trafficked or abducted.
Urosevac (Ferizaj in Albanian) is a grim little town with a population
of 130,000 in the south-east of Kosovo, bordering Macedonia. Even
before the war the town had a bad reputation, with the level of drug
dealing and underworld activity earning it the title of Kosovo's
gangster capital. The nightclubs here are more relaxed than in
Pristina.
Anyone - including a woman - can walk into the clubs and the owners
seem unconcerned about regulations or the police. Their confidence is
well-placed. "You don't just go and raid off-limits clubs in
Ferizaj," exclaimed Jamie Higgins, head of the UNMIK Trafficking and
Prostitution Unit, TPIU, when I asked if I could join a police swoop
in the town. As a centre of organised crime, a crackdown on the town
would require detailed planning and extensive numbers of police on the
ground - more than the TPIU has at its disposal, he said.
On the outskirts of the Freizaj is the Madonna nightclub, a former
family house turned striptease joint. In the corner, girls were
putting on bikinis, ready to perform. Following a signal from an
Albanian pimp, a blonde girl dancing on the podium made way for a dark
girl, who began an elaborate gyration to Michael Jackson's ballad
"Liberian Girl". A clientele of Albanian men, old and young, relaxed,
surrounded by groups of foreign women.
This is where Gezim, a local resident and acquaintance from high
school, brought me when I asked him to show me the place where he had
tried to "order" a girl for a friend who he thought had "a problem" in
that department.
"We stood outside the club almost all night after the dancing
finished, but we couldn't get anything," he told me. "Other people
were bidding and by the end there were no women left. The demand was
high so I don't think we could have afforded them anyway."
We also visited the Apachi Club, named after the famous US Apache
helicopters and one of the first clubs to open after the NATO action.
Armed with Hellfire amour-piercing missiles, the aircraft were much
vaunted during the war as the only military hardware capable of
stopping the Yugoslav tanks and troops ethnically cleansing the
province. The Americans' reluctance to deploy the helicopters, and
their frequent crashes during training exercises in northern Albania,
did not deter the owners. They probably hoped to attract a clientele
from the US military base Camp Bondsteel, 14 km away.
It seems to have worked. "I drive both civilians and uniformed men to
these clubs," said a taxi driver waiting outside the Apachi club,
sometimes also - confusingly - known as the Arizona club. "Some have
even changed into civilian clothing in my car. Of course, the locals
think this is bad for the area. It's a bad example for the young if
they see these things, but soldiers will be soldiers and they won't
stay on base if there is a night-club outside."
Outside the Apachi, a string of red Christmas lights hang neatly
around the entrance. Inside, the corridor leading to the striptease
room was festooned with pictures of helicopters.
By 2 am, the dancing was over. Semi-naked, heavily made-up girls
accompanied men to different tables, to negotiate "business" for the
night. With heavy local patronage and little international appetite
to take punitive action, scenes like this one look set to continue in
Kosovo for many nights to come.
Jeta Xharra is a freelance researcher/journalist & recent MA graduate
from the War Studies department, at King's College London
[WARNING:
Balkan Crisis Report, by IWPR, is an anti-yugoslav and serbophobic
newsletter supported by the Department for International
Development, the European Commission, the Swedish International
Development and Cooperation Agency, The Netherlands Ministry for
Foreign Affairs, and other funders. IWPR also acknowledges general
support from the Ford Foundation.
For further details on this project, other information services and
media programmes, visit IWPR's website: www.iwpr.net
C.N.J.]
Telegraph)
2. In Europe, Sex Slavery Is Thriving Despite Raids (The New York
Times)
3. Investigative Report: KOSOVO SEX INDUSTRY (IWPR)
Una sintesi in lingua italiana dell'ultimo documento si puo' trovare
su: http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/1920
Altri articoli recenti sul problema della "tratta delle bianche" nei
Balcani si possono trovare su:
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/1912
=== 1 ===
http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$
GWYSBEGGIXKI1QFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=%2F
news%2F2002%2F10%2F21%2Fwbalk21.xml&secureRefresh=true&
_requestid=207679
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH (London)
(Filed: 21/10/2002)
The 'job offer' that led to years of sex slavery
Eve-Ann Prentice in Podgorica reports on attempts to
clamp down on the trade of young women as sex slaves
in the Balkans
Elena was a naive 19-year-old when a man started
flirting with her in the market place of her home town
in Moldova.
She and her mother were near destitute after her
father had left home and she believed the handsome
stranger when he offered her a job as a waitress at a
coastal resort in Montenegro.
Instead, she was taken to the Serbian town of Novi
Sad, where she was drugged, beaten and repeatedly
raped.
After a couple of weeks of relentless abuse, stupefied
by drink and drugs, she was taken to northern
Montenegro, where she was sold as a sex slave.
Elena is just one of countless thousands of young
women, some as young as 14, who every year become
victims of human trafficking.
It is big business for the gangsters who kidnap the
women off the streets of impoverished towns in eastern
Europe and the Balkans, or lure them with false
promises of work, then beat them into becoming unpaid
prostitutes.
Many are taken across the Adriatic to Italy, from
where they are transported to the brothels of
north-western Europe, including Britain.
Some are increasingly being held as captives in
brothels used by the army of foreign aid workers now
working across the region. Elena was luckier than
most.
After three years of being sold from one owner to
another, police raided the bar where she was
imprisoned this summer and she grabbed her chance to
escape. She was taken to a secret shelter for victims
of trafficking on the outskirts of Podgorica in
Montenegro.
Two men were arrested in the bar, including a
policeman, Vladan Bakic, who is awaiting trial. This
weekend, Elena is on her way back home to Moldova,
after spending several weeks at a high-security
shelter run by the International Organisation for
Migration.
Here the lucky few who either escape from their
captors or are rescued in police raids can find
counselling, medical care and help to return home.
Even then, the women often face hostility from their
own families, as they are forever afterwards regarded
as soiled.
Most of the victims of the trade in humans have been
from Moldova, Romania and other countries outside
Montenegro but now an increasing number are from
within the tiny mountain republic which, with Serbia,
makes up what remains of federal Yugoslavia.
"This is because standards of living have become worse
and worse here and all criminal trades flourish in
such an atmosphere," says Zana Pevicevic, who runs the
IOM's operation in Podgorica. Cuddly toys and pop star
posters testify to the youth of the victims at the
shelter.
It is dangerous work for Zana and her two assistants
who run the shelter at a modern, clean and
well-equipped house guarded by security cameras and
with a fast-response alarm system linked to the local
police.
Attitudes to the human trafficking are beginning to
change in Montenegro. There are signs that police
raids have forced the criminal gangs behind the trade
to change their main route - south through Serbia,
Montenegro and Albania - to a more northerly path. The
misery will not be ended, it will only be relocated.
letters.online@...
=== 2 ===
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/international/europe/20MIRA.html
THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sunday, October 20, 2002
In Europe, Sex Slavery Is Thriving Despite Raids
By DAVID BINDER
WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 - An intensive European operation conducted with
American assistance to crack down on the trafficking of women for the
sex trade has had mixed success, American officials say.
Preliminary data show that in 20,558 raids conducted from Sept. 7 to
Sept. 16 across Central and Eastern Europe, 237 victims of trafficking
were identified and 293 traffickers were arrested and charged as
criminals.
But little was done in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the focus of the
operation because it is considered a center for international
prostitution and sexual slavery as well as a major transit point to
northern Europe. National and international police officers made just
71 raids on Bosnian nightclubs, hotels and other locations during the
September operation and arrested seven trafficking suspects.
"We are gratified by what was accomplished by some of the
participating countries, but are less satisfied with others who should
have been more involved," said John F. Markey, a United States customs
agent who directs law enforcement assistance programs in the State
Department.
Regionally and globally, the problem is huge. Trafficked women from
poor regions of Ukraine, Romania, Moldova and other Central and
Eastern European countries have been turning up in the United States
as well - in Miami, New York, Los Angeles and even Anchorage.
The International Organization for Migration, an offshoot of the
United Nations, estimates that 700,000 women are transported, mostly
involuntarily, over international borders each year for the sex trade.
As many as 200,000 are taken to or through the Balkans.
The September operation was conducted by the transborder crime center
of the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative in Bucharest,
Romania, bringing together regional law enforcement agencies. The
center receives considerable assistance from the United States Customs
Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the
Secret Service. The crime center is directed by Brig. Gen. Ferenc
Banfi of Hungary, and the antitrafficking task force is led by a
Romanian, Col. Gabriel Sotirescu.
In addition to Bosnia, the operation enlisted the assistance of
Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Yugoslavia, Greece, Hungary,
Moldova, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine.
The operation focused on Bosnia because, since the war there ended
seven years ago, the presence of thousands of NATO troops and civilian
workers for the United Nations and aid agencies has made it a prime
market for both prostitution and sexual slavery, officials said.
Over the past two years, both NATO soldiers and United Nations
officials, including some Americans, have been implicated in the
exploitation of young women held in sexual bondage.
Because of its porous borders - only about 40 of its 432 official
border crossings are guarded - Bosnia is also a major transit country
for trafficked women, narcotics and contraband being sent to Northern
Europe.
On Thursday, the United Nations Mission in Sarajevo dismissed 11
Bosnian police officers, including members of the antitrafficking
squad, after they were apprehended visiting brothels and abusing
prostitutes. One has been sentenced by a Bosnian court to a month's
imprisonment, the mission announced.
By contrast, Bulgaria posted large numbers during the September
operation: in 2,079 individual raids, 258 people were identified as
traffickers and 64 women as trafficking victims. Some of the women
were taken to shelters run by private groups.
Romania reported 2,597 police raids, in which 47 traffickers were
identified and 1,063 women were identified as being in the sex
industry; 37 were classified as sex slaves.
For the other participating countries, the available performance data
declined sharply, officials said.
Among the functions of the Bucharest center's approximately 30
permanent officers is to receive, evaluate and pass on information on
suspected illegal movements of people, narcotics and contraband goods
to bring about transborder law enforcement operations. More than 100
messages were exchanged during the September operation, Colonel
Sotirescu said.
The center, housed in a palace built under Romania's Communist-era
dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, carried out its first joint action last
summer, focusing on narcotics trafficking across 15 countries from
Central Asia to the Balkans. More such operations are in the works.
Mr. Markey said the lack of cooperation the operation sometimes
encountered could be explained by political turmoil surrounding
elections in some countries, including Serbia, Bosnia and Macedonia.
letters@...
=== 3 ===
IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, No. 355, Part II, August 2, 2002
KOSOVO SEX INDUSTRY
There was hardly any prostitution in Kosovo before the war - now it's
booming
By Jeta Xharra in Pristina
Red neon over the Nairobi bar and an arc of light slicing through a
chink in its heavily-draped window are all that illuminate the
entrance to the striptease club, where Naim, a thin Albanian man in
his twenties, stands looking bored. When he sees me he springs into
action, spreading his scrawny chest across the door. "Sorry, women
are not allowed here," he said.
The doorman, Naim, was soon joined by a colleague who said he had
visited similar nightclubs in Sweden, and considers the provision of
such "entertainment" a measure of Kosovo's recent progress. "The real
excitement here is that guys whose first journey beyond their village
was to Stankovac (a refugee camp in Macedonia) can now see women strip
here," he said.
I ask to be let in, saying that I only want to order a drink at the
bar. When that fails, I threaten to complain to the UN police about
the discriminatory entrance policy at the club. Naim will not budge.
"All the girls inside the club are on contract, if the police raid the
place and find uncontracted local girls we'll be in trouble," he said.
"Anyway, this is no place for you 'sister', do you have any idea of
why people come here?" He probably didn't expect an answer, but I
whisper back, "Per kurv'ni?" - a piece of local slang best translated
as "for whoring". Naim does not respond, but his face reddens.
Such prudishness might seem absurd from a man working at a club where
punters can buy sex with the dancers. But this is a traditional
tightly-knit society. Discussing his job with an Albanian woman was
probably as awkward for him as talking about it to his mother, or his
own sister. Naim probably justified his work on the basis that the
club - which has since closed - is staffed entirely by foreign women.
By "importing" Romanian, Moldovan or Ukrainian women, club owners and
their staff can argue that they are shielding "our women" from this
unpleasant, but lucrative business.
Unheard of three years ago, the sex industry is now the fastest
growing "business" in post-war Kosovo, which has undergone
unprecedented social and political upheaval since the 1999 conflict.
Mobilised for over a decade against the Milosevic regime, the
population now plays host to the KFOR peacekeeping force, which
provides a steady stream of clients for the protectorate's 120 or so
strip clubs.
Around 60 per cent of women working in the sex trade come from
Moldova, the others from Romania and Ukraine. However, figures from
the International Organisation of Migration, IOM, counter-trafficking
unit suggest that 70 per cent of the overseas women were lured from
their home countries with promises of jobs as cleaners, waitresses,
baby-sitters or care workers.
While the arrival of 45,000 international peacekeepers has certainly
been a key factor in the sudden growth of the industry, in research
conducted by the IOM Kosovo team last year, victims of trafficking
reported that the bulk of the clientele are local residents.
Sevdije Ahmeti, a human rights activist and director of the Centre for
the Protection of Women and Children, CPWC, also questions the image
of Kosovo as an untainted, traditional society where an imported sex
trade serves the needs of promiscuous foreigners. Traditional
Albanian family structures, in which a male breadwinner provided for
women and children, had started eroding even before the war, she says.
Many Kosovar men emigrated to western Europe during the 1990s, either
to escape the military draft or to earn the hard currency which funded
Kosovo's "parallel economy" in a period when Albanians either
boycotted or were sacked from state jobs. Their absence altered the
traditional balance of roles between the sexes.
Kosovar society was then traumatised by the events of spring 1999, as
the majority of men were left powerless to defend their families in
the face of Serbian army tactics, which included rape and gang rape.
This "weapon" was not only used against women, but also to humiliate
and emasculate the men who were supposed to be their protectors.
Claims by local men that no Kosovar women work in the sex industry are
open to dispute. A local safe house set up by CPWC in 1996, to offer
refuge to Bosnian women who had been raped during the 1991-5 war, has
helped hundreds of women from across the former Yugoslavia, including
a significant number from Kosovo.
Tina, a Kosovar girl who sought sanctuary at the refuge, was kept as a
virtual slave in a Mitrovica nightclub for two years. Her clientele
was divided between locals who visited the club and military personnel
to whom she was "delivered" at checkpoints and barracks across
northern Kosovo.
In practice, the traditional attitudes that are believed to "protect"
Kosovar women from the sex trade leave victims of trafficking and
sexual crimes largely unprotected by the law.
One teenage victim of abduction and gang rape received scant support
from the legal system.
Violeta, 16, was kidnapped by two young Albanian men on her way to
school in Pristina three years ago. She was taken to a bar, which
promptly closed for the day. After drawing the curtains, the men and
their friends raped her repeatedly. She was allowed to return home in
the evenings, but the kidnappers threatened to ruin her reputation if
she said a word to anyone. Terrified, Violeta, did not dare tell her
parents what had happened and her ordeal was repeated several times.
She became pregnant and had an abortion before her abductors were
eventually caught. She testified against them, but they were released
for "lack of evidence".
Three years on, her life is still severely restricted. "My kidnappers
can go wherever they want, I only dare to go out in the company of my
mother or father," she said. "I had to drop out of school, because
they would follow me and ask my teachers where I was."
The first judge Violeta encountered told her to be less emotional and
stop crying about her ordeal, which, he said, was clearly her own
fault. With the support of her parents and the CPWC, she is now
pushing for a new hearing of her case at the Pristina district court,
but her experience shows the attitude rife among local men and even
judges that women willingly engage in sexual activities in the various
strip joints and bars. It is a view that conveniently overlooks the
fact that girls may have been trafficked or abducted.
Urosevac (Ferizaj in Albanian) is a grim little town with a population
of 130,000 in the south-east of Kosovo, bordering Macedonia. Even
before the war the town had a bad reputation, with the level of drug
dealing and underworld activity earning it the title of Kosovo's
gangster capital. The nightclubs here are more relaxed than in
Pristina.
Anyone - including a woman - can walk into the clubs and the owners
seem unconcerned about regulations or the police. Their confidence is
well-placed. "You don't just go and raid off-limits clubs in
Ferizaj," exclaimed Jamie Higgins, head of the UNMIK Trafficking and
Prostitution Unit, TPIU, when I asked if I could join a police swoop
in the town. As a centre of organised crime, a crackdown on the town
would require detailed planning and extensive numbers of police on the
ground - more than the TPIU has at its disposal, he said.
On the outskirts of the Freizaj is the Madonna nightclub, a former
family house turned striptease joint. In the corner, girls were
putting on bikinis, ready to perform. Following a signal from an
Albanian pimp, a blonde girl dancing on the podium made way for a dark
girl, who began an elaborate gyration to Michael Jackson's ballad
"Liberian Girl". A clientele of Albanian men, old and young, relaxed,
surrounded by groups of foreign women.
This is where Gezim, a local resident and acquaintance from high
school, brought me when I asked him to show me the place where he had
tried to "order" a girl for a friend who he thought had "a problem" in
that department.
"We stood outside the club almost all night after the dancing
finished, but we couldn't get anything," he told me. "Other people
were bidding and by the end there were no women left. The demand was
high so I don't think we could have afforded them anyway."
We also visited the Apachi Club, named after the famous US Apache
helicopters and one of the first clubs to open after the NATO action.
Armed with Hellfire amour-piercing missiles, the aircraft were much
vaunted during the war as the only military hardware capable of
stopping the Yugoslav tanks and troops ethnically cleansing the
province. The Americans' reluctance to deploy the helicopters, and
their frequent crashes during training exercises in northern Albania,
did not deter the owners. They probably hoped to attract a clientele
from the US military base Camp Bondsteel, 14 km away.
It seems to have worked. "I drive both civilians and uniformed men to
these clubs," said a taxi driver waiting outside the Apachi club,
sometimes also - confusingly - known as the Arizona club. "Some have
even changed into civilian clothing in my car. Of course, the locals
think this is bad for the area. It's a bad example for the young if
they see these things, but soldiers will be soldiers and they won't
stay on base if there is a night-club outside."
Outside the Apachi, a string of red Christmas lights hang neatly
around the entrance. Inside, the corridor leading to the striptease
room was festooned with pictures of helicopters.
By 2 am, the dancing was over. Semi-naked, heavily made-up girls
accompanied men to different tables, to negotiate "business" for the
night. With heavy local patronage and little international appetite
to take punitive action, scenes like this one look set to continue in
Kosovo for many nights to come.
Jeta Xharra is a freelance researcher/journalist & recent MA graduate
from the War Studies department, at King's College London
[WARNING:
Balkan Crisis Report, by IWPR, is an anti-yugoslav and serbophobic
newsletter supported by the Department for International
Development, the European Commission, the Swedish International
Development and Cooperation Agency, The Netherlands Ministry for
Foreign Affairs, and other funders. IWPR also acknowledges general
support from the Ford Foundation.
For further details on this project, other information services and
media programmes, visit IWPR's website: www.iwpr.net
C.N.J.]
International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic
www.icdsm.org
=================================
Slobodan Milosevic's Cross-Examination of
Croatian President Stjepan Mesic: PART V
Because the transcript of the cross-examination
is 150 pages long we have broken it into 12 easy
to read segments. If you wish to read the whole thing
at once go to: http://www.icdsm.org/more/mesic.htm
=================================
Page 10658
1 JUDGE MAY: Just a moment. Just a moment. The witness has said
2 he's telling the truth. Now, don't misrepresent the evidence. If
you've
3 got a question, you can ask it.
4 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I think that we differ because of
5 the translation in your transcript, where it says nephew, and he
says
6 relative or distant cousin, whereas otherwise there is no
difference.
7 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
8 Q. Now, to get back to what you were just saying, that you had no
9 intentions of any kind, Globus, the paper, this is a special
edition,
10 November 1, 1999, which says the following:
11 "Tudjman was in Canada, paid a state visit to Canada in 1988 and
12 1989 [As interpreted] -- 1998 and 1999, and dovetailed concepts,
first
13 that Croatia had to be independent and autonomous, and so on and so
14 forth. Third, that the Serbs must be brought to the level of a
national
15 minority, which meant that Croatia should have been more or less
16 ethnically pure. And fourth, if there are Serbs in
Bosnia-Herzegovina to
17 the extent that they cannot all be expelled to Serbia, all that
remains is
18 to carve up Bosnia-Herzegovina, which will ensure pure Croatian
regions
19 and certain restructuring, and this would be joined onto an
ethnically
20 pure Croatian state." Isn't that right, Mr. Mesic?
21 A. I don't know who said that.
22 Q. This is something that can be read in Globus about a plan that
was
23 dovetailed in 1988 and 1989 [As interpreted] in Canada with the
Ustasha
24 émigrés. Do you know at all about that?
25 A. I know nothing about that plan whatsoever.
Page 10659
1 Q. All right. Thank you. Now, on the basis of what you were saying
2 a moment ago, is it true and correct that Tudjman considered the
3 territories that belonged to the 1938 banovina, that it should be
annexed
4 to Croatia? Is that what he thought? Is that right or not? Annexed.
5 A. He said that that was what Milosevic had proposed.
6 Q. Just a minute. I'm speaking about something else now. I don't
7 want to show you the transcript once again, but you can look at the
8 transcript from that same trial where you testified and the number
of the
9 transcript line is 7130. But to avoid having to go into private
session,
10 I just want to jog your memory and tell you that you did speak
about the
11 subject at that particular time.
12 And just as like a moment ago, when you challenged the fact that
13 Tudjman thought that for Croatia the best solution would be the
1938
14 banovina solution, also from your testimony, on page 7129 and 7130,
you
15 said what you said. So tell me now: Is it true that the HDZ party
for
16 you was an extremist nationalistic --
17 MR. NICE: If this line of questioning is to be of any value at
18 all --
19 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please, Mr. Nice.
20 MR. NICE: If this is to be of any value at all, the following
21 thing should happen: The Chamber will have to go into private
session,
22 not because itself necessarily wants to. It simply that this was
23 protected evidence of another Chamber and we don't have rights to
do
24 anything else. Second, the transcript will then have to be examined
25 properly with the witness being in a position to read it and the
Chamber
Page 10660
1 being able to see the full context.
2 JUDGE MAY: At the moment I do not wish to go into private
3 session. It cuts up the cross-examination, makes it very difficult
for
4 everybody else to follow. If there is a significant point here, no
doubt
5 our attention can be drawn to it.
6 MR. NICE: Can I simply also then ask that the accused reminds me,
7 or through the Chamber, of what page he says its was on which the
first
8 reference was to be found. He says 7266 but it doesn't match my page
9 numbering.
10 JUDGE MAY: That's the note we have, 7266.
11 Mr. Milosevic, you will have -- if you want to quote from the
12 transcript, if there's any significance in what was said earlier,
do you
13 want to quote from the transcript, we have to go into private
session.
14 Those are the rules which we have to follow. Now, if we can avoid
doing
15 that, we should do so.
16 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Yes, Mr. May, but it is not proper
17 and correct that the public should not be able to see this, that
18 Mr. Mesic, for the most part --
19 JUDGE MAY: It doesn't matter about that. It is the Rules which
20 we have to follow. This was private session evidence, therefore it
should
21 be dealt with in private session. Now, do you want to ask anything
more
22 about that transcript or not?
23 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] All right. I'll ask him something
24 about -- something else from the transcript in the Dokmanovic
trial, where
25 he wasn't a protected witness.
Page 10661
1 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
2 Q. Is it correct that the HDZ is an extremist nationalistic party
3 which introduced a uniform, unilateral way of thought that captured
people
4 in this way? Is that what you think? And you expressed words to that
5 effect in the Dokmanovic trial, where you were not a protected
witness.
6 The transcript page is 1714 in the testimony against him, and that
is
7 where you made a statement to that effect. You said that that was
your
8 opinion later on, not straight away, not from the very outset. So
when
9 did you come to think that way?
10 JUDGE MAY: Wait a moment. In order that the witness can deal
11 with this properly, have we got a copy of the transcript, Mr. Nice?
First
12 of all, have we got a copy of the transcript.
13 MR. NICE: Yes.
14 JUDGE MAY: Secondly, can the witness follow it?
15 MR. NICE: It's in English, I'm afraid, so he probably can't
16 follow it, because his English is not probably at the level to deal
with
17 that. But we have a copy for Your Honours if Your Honours haven't
seen
18 it.
19 JUDGE MAY: We, we have it here.
20 Mr. Mesic -- I'll deal with it. Mr. Mesic, what is being put to
21 you in the passage which the accused is asking you about is counsel
says,
22 counsel Mr. Fila, put: "We read that for you the HDZ is an
extremist
23 nationalist party, a hindrance to democracy which introduced a
single way
24 of thinking and which robbed the people. Is that what you really
meant?"
25 And you replied: To look at this in terms of the period -- time
period
Page 10662
Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the
French and English transcripts.
Page 10663
1 involved. "Okay," said witness. "Have you said something like this?"
2 And you replied: "The statement of yours calls for clarification,
namely,
3 when the HDZ was established first, when I was its member, when its
4 programme was elaborated, that was a party that was in favour of a
5 multiparty system for democratisation of free society. When the
balance
6 of political forces in the HDZ changed, I left the HDZ and I became
7 critical of the policy."
8 So counsel then put: That is to say that this statement,
9 obviously referring to his earlier statement, is from the latter
period.
10 And you replied: Yes, from the latter period.
11 Now, you're being asked about the comment that the HDZ was or
12 became an extreme nationalist party, a hindrance to democracy,
introducing
13 a single way of thinking. Can you help us as to whether you said
that,
14 and if you wish to elaborate on it, do.
15 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] When the HDZ was formed, just like
16 the other parties in Croatia, after the socialist model, I wanted
to have
17 a multiparty system. That's what I was in favour of, of a contest
of
18 opinion of democracy. That's what I wanted. Now, as the threats
were
19 coming from Serbia, threats which the accused himself, via his
rallies,
20 was sending out to Croatia, and they were coming from Vojvodina,
from
21 Serbia, and from Kosovo, the so-called rallies for truth, where it
was
22 stated that the people attending the rallies would go as far as
Ljubljana
23 and that what they would do was to stop over in Zagreb, topple the
24 government there, and carry on by way of passing. I considered that
the
25 HDZ could mobilise in Croatia people for setting up resistance to
that
Page 10664
1 kind of policy on the part of Milosevic, and I joined the HDZ
because I
2 considered that we would be able to protect the interests of the
Republic
3 of Croatia. However, because of the erroneous policy which prevailed
4 later on, or rather, the erroneous policy towards and vis-a-vis
5 Bosnia-Herzegovina, the wrong model of privatisation which was seen
and
6 the insufficient functioning of the rule of law in the country, the
7 insufficient functioning of the institutions inherent in the rule of
law,
8 I left that policy behind. I stepped down from it, because finally I
9 could still go on being the president of the Sabor parliament. I had
to
10 take part in that policy and politics. But as I did not agree with
the
11 policies, I left the post of president of parliament and joined the
12 opposition.
13 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
14 Q. Mr. Mesic, you relinquished the post of president of parliament,
15 as you said a moment ago, only after the first quarter of 1994.
However,
16 the destructive policy of the HDZ, according to you, began already
in
17 March 1991; isn't that so?
18 A. Yes, you're quite right. From your agreement in Karadjordjevo.
19 Q. So you ascribe the destructive policy of the HDZ, you date it to
20 March 1991 and you ascribe it to me. Is that so, Mr. Mesic?
21 A. Well, if you offered the carving up and division of Bosnia, then
22 it is quite true that in part you did take part in the creation of
the
23 wrong kind of policy.
24 Q. Well, as you well know, I never offered a division of Bosnia nor
25 was that our policy. And if you believe I did so, then please show
me one
Page 10665
1 detail which would be illustrative of that?
2 A. Not only the division of Bosnia. It is sufficient that you paid
3 the army in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is sufficient to read the book
written
4 by General Veljko Kadijevic, the Federal Secretary for National
Defence,
5 who speaks precisely of the Virovitica-Karlobag-Karlovac border and
that
6 you stood behind that border, Mr. Accused. That same person
Kadijevic,
7 the Federal Secretary for National Defence, Blagoje Adzic, General
Blagoje
8 Adzic, who was the Chief of Staff of the General Staff of the
Yugoslav
9 army, never came to me. They never, ever came to me in the
Presidency,
10 although I embodied the Supreme Command. They never came to see me.
I
11 insisted -- it was I who insisted on going to see them. They never
came
12 to see me. But if you read Boro Jovic and his books and if you read
13 Mamula and his books, if you read Veljko Kadijevic and his books,
you will
14 see that the agreements were only and exclusively made with the
accused.
15 Q. First of all, that is not correct. I don't know what they say in
16 their books. Mamula retired even before the tensions mounted in
Croatia,
17 and later on in Bosnia. But I assume that you are a passionate
reader of
18 all these various books. But now tell me, please: As you were
referring
19 to the HDZ just now, in 1991 it started acting destructively, so
how can
20 you put up with this for a full three years, staying in that
destructive
21 party for three years as its executive chief, that is, as president
of the
22 Executive Board of the HDZ?
23 A. The point is something else. I was the president of the
executive
24 board of the HDZ. Let me tell you -- just a moment. From the 29th
of
25 December, 1991 until the 7th of August, 1992. This is the period in
which
Page 10666
1 I was at the head of the Executive Board of the HDZ. The point is
that as
2 soon as I saw that the policy was not the policy I had advocated, I
could
3 have relinquished it. That is true. However, in Croatia, I would
have
4 been seen as someone who refused to face the problems Croatia was
facing
5 at that moment, and it would have been thought that I had not done
enough
6 to correct the things that were going wrong in Croatia. I hoped that
with
7 those who thought the same way I did, I could correct the HDZ
policy, that
8 we could win. That is why, with other representatives, or rather,
with 23
9 MPs of the Croatian parliament, I discussed our leaving the HDZ.
This was
10 in 1993. In this way, we could have achieved cohabitation. The
11 opposition would have been the strongest in parliament, and HDZ
would have
12 held executive power. Things would have been different had we
succeeded.
13 But unfortunately, I was not successful. Only 11 MPs followed me,
and we
14 had one vote less than we needed to be the majority in parliament.
15 If you want to make a big change, you need to have a critical mass
16 with you. I thought that 23 MPs in parliament would be sufficient.
We
17 did not succeed, but I went over to the opposition. So I cannot
pinpoint
18 a date and say up to that date the policy was right; after that
date, the
19 policy was wrong. There was a continuity of events in politics.
When
20 enough things happen, one responds. My response was to try to
contribute,
21 in a positive way, to a better climate and a better policy in
Croatia.
22 Q. Very well. That was two years after March 1991, when you say
that
23 the destructive policy of the HDZ started. You say that to start
with the
24 HDZ was a democratic party and so on. In the HDZ platform, which I
assume
25 you contributed to, together with the other leaders of the HDZ, you
say
Page 10667
1 that the programme is based, among other things, on the teachings of
Ante
2 Starcevic. Let me just remind you what Ante Starcevic said -- or
rather,
3 wrote about the Serbs. He called the Serbs -- I don't know if this
can be
4 translated. I wouldn't be able to translate it. He called them
filthy
5 spawn, horrible slaves, people who were fit for the axe, Austrian
dogs,
6 inflated bags?
7 JUDGE MAY: When was this kind of thing written?
8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Ante Starcevic wrote, for example,
9 in 1870, because the witness based his programme on that of Ante
10 Starcevic, who wrote --
11 JUDGE MAY: You're saying that. The witness hasn't said it. Help
12 us with Mr. Ante Starcevic, who wrote 130 years ago. Was your
programme
13 based on his writings?
14 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] First of all, I did not create the
15 HDZ platform or programme. It had already been adopted when I
joined the
16 HDZ. Secondly, the teachings of Ante Starcevic do not consist of
17 particular statements that he made under various circumstances.
Ante
18 Starcevic, who is referred to in Croatia as the father of the
homeland,
19 advocated the idea that Croatia had to be independent. He struggled
for
20 the independence of Croatia from Austria and Hungary. In essence,
he was
21 a liberal. On the basis of Croatian state law, he demanded the
22 independence of Croatia. This is the part of his teaching that I
find
23 acceptable, an independent republic of Croatia. This is what was
taken
24 from Starcevic.
25 It was also mentioned, and the accused does not mention this, that
Page 10668
1 the programme was based on the anti-fascist tradition of the peoples
2 liberation struggle. The accused omitted this on purpose, on the
3 traditions of the anti-fascist struggle. So the ideas were not taken
just
4 from one source, but from all sources contributing to a positive
role for
5 Croatia and its citizens. That is why this was referred to in the
6 preamble to the programme. If we are to speak of history, the
accused
7 should say what Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic wrote. He was a Serbian
writer
8 who said that Serbs are all, everyone is a Serb, that the Croats
were
9 nothing but Serbs of Catholic faith, so that all this should be
Serbia.
10 JUDGE MAY: The Trial Chamber is not assisted by the exchange of
11 abuse, particularly abuse a hundred years ago.
12 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
13 Q. Is it true that the HDZ policy became more radical with time and
14 that elements who found inspiration in the Croatian state during
World War
15 II grew stronger? I'm referring to the fascist independent state of
16 Croatia.
17 A. The more attacks were mounted against Croatia and its integrity,
18 more excesses arose, and more and more people referred to the
independent
19 state of Croatia. I was against this. I'm still against this
policy,
20 because in essence I am an anti-fascist, and those are the ideas I
always
21 struggled for.
22 Q. Very well. I asked you about what you said about the HDZ, not
23 about what you say about yourself.
24 A. That's why I left the HDZ.
25 Q. Very well. In any case, I see that as the president of the
* Continued at: http://www.icdsm.org/more/mesic-6.htm
***** Urgent Message from Sloboda (Freedom) Association and the
International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic!
The Freedom Association in Belgrade and the ICDSM, based outside
Yugoslavia, are the two organizations formed at the request of
Slobodan
Milosevic to aid in his defense.
Up until now our main work has been threefold. We have publicized the
truth about The Hague's phony trial. We have organized research to
help President Milosevic expose NATO's lies. And we have initiated
legal action in the Dutch and European Courts.
Now our job has increased. The defense phase of the "trial" starts in
May 2003. No longer will Mr. Milosevic be limited to cross-examining
Hague witnesses. The prosecution will be forced further onto the
defensive as victims of NATO's aggression and experts from Yugoslavia
and
the NATO countries tell what really happened and expose media lies.
Moreover, Mr. Milosevic will call leaders, from East and West, some
friendly and some hostile to the truth.
The controlled mass media will undoubtedly try to suppress this
testimony as they have tried to suppress Mr. Milosevic's
cross-examinations. Nevertheless this phase of the "trial" will be the
biggest international forum ever to expose NATO's use of racism,
violence and lies to attack Yugoslavia.
We urgently need the help of all people who care about what is
happening in The Hague. Right now, Nico Steijnen , the Dutch lawyer in
the
ICDSM, is waging legal battles in the Dutch courts and before the
European Court, about which more news soon. These efforts urgently
require financial support. We now maintain a small staff of Yugoslav
lawyers in Holland, assisting and advising Mr. Milosevic full-time. We
need to expand our Dutch facilities, perhaps bringing in a
non-Yugoslav attorney full-time. Definitely we must guarantee that we
have an
office and office manager available at all times, to compile and
process evidence and for meetings with witnesses and lawyers and as a
base
for organizing press conferences.
All this costs money. And for this, we rely on those who want Mr.
Milosevic to have the best possible support for attacking NATO's lies.
************
Here's how you can help...
************
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http://www.icdsm.org
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=================================
Slobodan Milosevic's Cross-Examination of
Croatian President Stjepan Mesic: PART V
Because the transcript of the cross-examination
is 150 pages long we have broken it into 12 easy
to read segments. If you wish to read the whole thing
at once go to: http://www.icdsm.org/more/mesic.htm
=================================
Page 10658
1 JUDGE MAY: Just a moment. Just a moment. The witness has said
2 he's telling the truth. Now, don't misrepresent the evidence. If
you've
3 got a question, you can ask it.
4 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I think that we differ because of
5 the translation in your transcript, where it says nephew, and he
says
6 relative or distant cousin, whereas otherwise there is no
difference.
7 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
8 Q. Now, to get back to what you were just saying, that you had no
9 intentions of any kind, Globus, the paper, this is a special
edition,
10 November 1, 1999, which says the following:
11 "Tudjman was in Canada, paid a state visit to Canada in 1988 and
12 1989 [As interpreted] -- 1998 and 1999, and dovetailed concepts,
first
13 that Croatia had to be independent and autonomous, and so on and so
14 forth. Third, that the Serbs must be brought to the level of a
national
15 minority, which meant that Croatia should have been more or less
16 ethnically pure. And fourth, if there are Serbs in
Bosnia-Herzegovina to
17 the extent that they cannot all be expelled to Serbia, all that
remains is
18 to carve up Bosnia-Herzegovina, which will ensure pure Croatian
regions
19 and certain restructuring, and this would be joined onto an
ethnically
20 pure Croatian state." Isn't that right, Mr. Mesic?
21 A. I don't know who said that.
22 Q. This is something that can be read in Globus about a plan that
was
23 dovetailed in 1988 and 1989 [As interpreted] in Canada with the
Ustasha
24 émigrés. Do you know at all about that?
25 A. I know nothing about that plan whatsoever.
Page 10659
1 Q. All right. Thank you. Now, on the basis of what you were saying
2 a moment ago, is it true and correct that Tudjman considered the
3 territories that belonged to the 1938 banovina, that it should be
annexed
4 to Croatia? Is that what he thought? Is that right or not? Annexed.
5 A. He said that that was what Milosevic had proposed.
6 Q. Just a minute. I'm speaking about something else now. I don't
7 want to show you the transcript once again, but you can look at the
8 transcript from that same trial where you testified and the number
of the
9 transcript line is 7130. But to avoid having to go into private
session,
10 I just want to jog your memory and tell you that you did speak
about the
11 subject at that particular time.
12 And just as like a moment ago, when you challenged the fact that
13 Tudjman thought that for Croatia the best solution would be the
1938
14 banovina solution, also from your testimony, on page 7129 and 7130,
you
15 said what you said. So tell me now: Is it true that the HDZ party
for
16 you was an extremist nationalistic --
17 MR. NICE: If this line of questioning is to be of any value at
18 all --
19 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please, Mr. Nice.
20 MR. NICE: If this is to be of any value at all, the following
21 thing should happen: The Chamber will have to go into private
session,
22 not because itself necessarily wants to. It simply that this was
23 protected evidence of another Chamber and we don't have rights to
do
24 anything else. Second, the transcript will then have to be examined
25 properly with the witness being in a position to read it and the
Chamber
Page 10660
1 being able to see the full context.
2 JUDGE MAY: At the moment I do not wish to go into private
3 session. It cuts up the cross-examination, makes it very difficult
for
4 everybody else to follow. If there is a significant point here, no
doubt
5 our attention can be drawn to it.
6 MR. NICE: Can I simply also then ask that the accused reminds me,
7 or through the Chamber, of what page he says its was on which the
first
8 reference was to be found. He says 7266 but it doesn't match my page
9 numbering.
10 JUDGE MAY: That's the note we have, 7266.
11 Mr. Milosevic, you will have -- if you want to quote from the
12 transcript, if there's any significance in what was said earlier,
do you
13 want to quote from the transcript, we have to go into private
session.
14 Those are the rules which we have to follow. Now, if we can avoid
doing
15 that, we should do so.
16 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Yes, Mr. May, but it is not proper
17 and correct that the public should not be able to see this, that
18 Mr. Mesic, for the most part --
19 JUDGE MAY: It doesn't matter about that. It is the Rules which
20 we have to follow. This was private session evidence, therefore it
should
21 be dealt with in private session. Now, do you want to ask anything
more
22 about that transcript or not?
23 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] All right. I'll ask him something
24 about -- something else from the transcript in the Dokmanovic
trial, where
25 he wasn't a protected witness.
Page 10661
1 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
2 Q. Is it correct that the HDZ is an extremist nationalistic party
3 which introduced a uniform, unilateral way of thought that captured
people
4 in this way? Is that what you think? And you expressed words to that
5 effect in the Dokmanovic trial, where you were not a protected
witness.
6 The transcript page is 1714 in the testimony against him, and that
is
7 where you made a statement to that effect. You said that that was
your
8 opinion later on, not straight away, not from the very outset. So
when
9 did you come to think that way?
10 JUDGE MAY: Wait a moment. In order that the witness can deal
11 with this properly, have we got a copy of the transcript, Mr. Nice?
First
12 of all, have we got a copy of the transcript.
13 MR. NICE: Yes.
14 JUDGE MAY: Secondly, can the witness follow it?
15 MR. NICE: It's in English, I'm afraid, so he probably can't
16 follow it, because his English is not probably at the level to deal
with
17 that. But we have a copy for Your Honours if Your Honours haven't
seen
18 it.
19 JUDGE MAY: We, we have it here.
20 Mr. Mesic -- I'll deal with it. Mr. Mesic, what is being put to
21 you in the passage which the accused is asking you about is counsel
says,
22 counsel Mr. Fila, put: "We read that for you the HDZ is an
extremist
23 nationalist party, a hindrance to democracy which introduced a
single way
24 of thinking and which robbed the people. Is that what you really
meant?"
25 And you replied: To look at this in terms of the period -- time
period
Page 10662
Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the
French and English transcripts.
Page 10663
1 involved. "Okay," said witness. "Have you said something like this?"
2 And you replied: "The statement of yours calls for clarification,
namely,
3 when the HDZ was established first, when I was its member, when its
4 programme was elaborated, that was a party that was in favour of a
5 multiparty system for democratisation of free society. When the
balance
6 of political forces in the HDZ changed, I left the HDZ and I became
7 critical of the policy."
8 So counsel then put: That is to say that this statement,
9 obviously referring to his earlier statement, is from the latter
period.
10 And you replied: Yes, from the latter period.
11 Now, you're being asked about the comment that the HDZ was or
12 became an extreme nationalist party, a hindrance to democracy,
introducing
13 a single way of thinking. Can you help us as to whether you said
that,
14 and if you wish to elaborate on it, do.
15 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] When the HDZ was formed, just like
16 the other parties in Croatia, after the socialist model, I wanted
to have
17 a multiparty system. That's what I was in favour of, of a contest
of
18 opinion of democracy. That's what I wanted. Now, as the threats
were
19 coming from Serbia, threats which the accused himself, via his
rallies,
20 was sending out to Croatia, and they were coming from Vojvodina,
from
21 Serbia, and from Kosovo, the so-called rallies for truth, where it
was
22 stated that the people attending the rallies would go as far as
Ljubljana
23 and that what they would do was to stop over in Zagreb, topple the
24 government there, and carry on by way of passing. I considered that
the
25 HDZ could mobilise in Croatia people for setting up resistance to
that
Page 10664
1 kind of policy on the part of Milosevic, and I joined the HDZ
because I
2 considered that we would be able to protect the interests of the
Republic
3 of Croatia. However, because of the erroneous policy which prevailed
4 later on, or rather, the erroneous policy towards and vis-a-vis
5 Bosnia-Herzegovina, the wrong model of privatisation which was seen
and
6 the insufficient functioning of the rule of law in the country, the
7 insufficient functioning of the institutions inherent in the rule of
law,
8 I left that policy behind. I stepped down from it, because finally I
9 could still go on being the president of the Sabor parliament. I had
to
10 take part in that policy and politics. But as I did not agree with
the
11 policies, I left the post of president of parliament and joined the
12 opposition.
13 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
14 Q. Mr. Mesic, you relinquished the post of president of parliament,
15 as you said a moment ago, only after the first quarter of 1994.
However,
16 the destructive policy of the HDZ, according to you, began already
in
17 March 1991; isn't that so?
18 A. Yes, you're quite right. From your agreement in Karadjordjevo.
19 Q. So you ascribe the destructive policy of the HDZ, you date it to
20 March 1991 and you ascribe it to me. Is that so, Mr. Mesic?
21 A. Well, if you offered the carving up and division of Bosnia, then
22 it is quite true that in part you did take part in the creation of
the
23 wrong kind of policy.
24 Q. Well, as you well know, I never offered a division of Bosnia nor
25 was that our policy. And if you believe I did so, then please show
me one
Page 10665
1 detail which would be illustrative of that?
2 A. Not only the division of Bosnia. It is sufficient that you paid
3 the army in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is sufficient to read the book
written
4 by General Veljko Kadijevic, the Federal Secretary for National
Defence,
5 who speaks precisely of the Virovitica-Karlobag-Karlovac border and
that
6 you stood behind that border, Mr. Accused. That same person
Kadijevic,
7 the Federal Secretary for National Defence, Blagoje Adzic, General
Blagoje
8 Adzic, who was the Chief of Staff of the General Staff of the
Yugoslav
9 army, never came to me. They never, ever came to me in the
Presidency,
10 although I embodied the Supreme Command. They never came to see me.
I
11 insisted -- it was I who insisted on going to see them. They never
came
12 to see me. But if you read Boro Jovic and his books and if you read
13 Mamula and his books, if you read Veljko Kadijevic and his books,
you will
14 see that the agreements were only and exclusively made with the
accused.
15 Q. First of all, that is not correct. I don't know what they say in
16 their books. Mamula retired even before the tensions mounted in
Croatia,
17 and later on in Bosnia. But I assume that you are a passionate
reader of
18 all these various books. But now tell me, please: As you were
referring
19 to the HDZ just now, in 1991 it started acting destructively, so
how can
20 you put up with this for a full three years, staying in that
destructive
21 party for three years as its executive chief, that is, as president
of the
22 Executive Board of the HDZ?
23 A. The point is something else. I was the president of the
executive
24 board of the HDZ. Let me tell you -- just a moment. From the 29th
of
25 December, 1991 until the 7th of August, 1992. This is the period in
which
Page 10666
1 I was at the head of the Executive Board of the HDZ. The point is
that as
2 soon as I saw that the policy was not the policy I had advocated, I
could
3 have relinquished it. That is true. However, in Croatia, I would
have
4 been seen as someone who refused to face the problems Croatia was
facing
5 at that moment, and it would have been thought that I had not done
enough
6 to correct the things that were going wrong in Croatia. I hoped that
with
7 those who thought the same way I did, I could correct the HDZ
policy, that
8 we could win. That is why, with other representatives, or rather,
with 23
9 MPs of the Croatian parliament, I discussed our leaving the HDZ.
This was
10 in 1993. In this way, we could have achieved cohabitation. The
11 opposition would have been the strongest in parliament, and HDZ
would have
12 held executive power. Things would have been different had we
succeeded.
13 But unfortunately, I was not successful. Only 11 MPs followed me,
and we
14 had one vote less than we needed to be the majority in parliament.
15 If you want to make a big change, you need to have a critical mass
16 with you. I thought that 23 MPs in parliament would be sufficient.
We
17 did not succeed, but I went over to the opposition. So I cannot
pinpoint
18 a date and say up to that date the policy was right; after that
date, the
19 policy was wrong. There was a continuity of events in politics.
When
20 enough things happen, one responds. My response was to try to
contribute,
21 in a positive way, to a better climate and a better policy in
Croatia.
22 Q. Very well. That was two years after March 1991, when you say
that
23 the destructive policy of the HDZ started. You say that to start
with the
24 HDZ was a democratic party and so on. In the HDZ platform, which I
assume
25 you contributed to, together with the other leaders of the HDZ, you
say
Page 10667
1 that the programme is based, among other things, on the teachings of
Ante
2 Starcevic. Let me just remind you what Ante Starcevic said -- or
rather,
3 wrote about the Serbs. He called the Serbs -- I don't know if this
can be
4 translated. I wouldn't be able to translate it. He called them
filthy
5 spawn, horrible slaves, people who were fit for the axe, Austrian
dogs,
6 inflated bags?
7 JUDGE MAY: When was this kind of thing written?
8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Ante Starcevic wrote, for example,
9 in 1870, because the witness based his programme on that of Ante
10 Starcevic, who wrote --
11 JUDGE MAY: You're saying that. The witness hasn't said it. Help
12 us with Mr. Ante Starcevic, who wrote 130 years ago. Was your
programme
13 based on his writings?
14 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] First of all, I did not create the
15 HDZ platform or programme. It had already been adopted when I
joined the
16 HDZ. Secondly, the teachings of Ante Starcevic do not consist of
17 particular statements that he made under various circumstances.
Ante
18 Starcevic, who is referred to in Croatia as the father of the
homeland,
19 advocated the idea that Croatia had to be independent. He struggled
for
20 the independence of Croatia from Austria and Hungary. In essence,
he was
21 a liberal. On the basis of Croatian state law, he demanded the
22 independence of Croatia. This is the part of his teaching that I
find
23 acceptable, an independent republic of Croatia. This is what was
taken
24 from Starcevic.
25 It was also mentioned, and the accused does not mention this, that
Page 10668
1 the programme was based on the anti-fascist tradition of the peoples
2 liberation struggle. The accused omitted this on purpose, on the
3 traditions of the anti-fascist struggle. So the ideas were not taken
just
4 from one source, but from all sources contributing to a positive
role for
5 Croatia and its citizens. That is why this was referred to in the
6 preamble to the programme. If we are to speak of history, the
accused
7 should say what Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic wrote. He was a Serbian
writer
8 who said that Serbs are all, everyone is a Serb, that the Croats
were
9 nothing but Serbs of Catholic faith, so that all this should be
Serbia.
10 JUDGE MAY: The Trial Chamber is not assisted by the exchange of
11 abuse, particularly abuse a hundred years ago.
12 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
13 Q. Is it true that the HDZ policy became more radical with time and
14 that elements who found inspiration in the Croatian state during
World War
15 II grew stronger? I'm referring to the fascist independent state of
16 Croatia.
17 A. The more attacks were mounted against Croatia and its integrity,
18 more excesses arose, and more and more people referred to the
independent
19 state of Croatia. I was against this. I'm still against this
policy,
20 because in essence I am an anti-fascist, and those are the ideas I
always
21 struggled for.
22 Q. Very well. I asked you about what you said about the HDZ, not
23 about what you say about yourself.
24 A. That's why I left the HDZ.
25 Q. Very well. In any case, I see that as the president of the
* Continued at: http://www.icdsm.org/more/mesic-6.htm
***** Urgent Message from Sloboda (Freedom) Association and the
International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic!
The Freedom Association in Belgrade and the ICDSM, based outside
Yugoslavia, are the two organizations formed at the request of
Slobodan
Milosevic to aid in his defense.
Up until now our main work has been threefold. We have publicized the
truth about The Hague's phony trial. We have organized research to
help President Milosevic expose NATO's lies. And we have initiated
legal action in the Dutch and European Courts.
Now our job has increased. The defense phase of the "trial" starts in
May 2003. No longer will Mr. Milosevic be limited to cross-examining
Hague witnesses. The prosecution will be forced further onto the
defensive as victims of NATO's aggression and experts from Yugoslavia
and
the NATO countries tell what really happened and expose media lies.
Moreover, Mr. Milosevic will call leaders, from East and West, some
friendly and some hostile to the truth.
The controlled mass media will undoubtedly try to suppress this
testimony as they have tried to suppress Mr. Milosevic's
cross-examinations. Nevertheless this phase of the "trial" will be the
biggest international forum ever to expose NATO's use of racism,
violence and lies to attack Yugoslavia.
We urgently need the help of all people who care about what is
happening in The Hague. Right now, Nico Steijnen , the Dutch lawyer in
the
ICDSM, is waging legal battles in the Dutch courts and before the
European Court, about which more news soon. These efforts urgently
require financial support. We now maintain a small staff of Yugoslav
lawyers in Holland, assisting and advising Mr. Milosevic full-time. We
need to expand our Dutch facilities, perhaps bringing in a
non-Yugoslav attorney full-time. Definitely we must guarantee that we
have an
office and office manager available at all times, to compile and
process evidence and for meetings with witnesses and lawyers and as a
base
for organizing press conferences.
All this costs money. And for this, we rely on those who want Mr.
Milosevic to have the best possible support for attacking NATO's lies.
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LABIRINTO LESSICALE
"Non chiamando le cose con il loro nome si seminano disgrazie tra la
gente", diceva Camus. Nel caso della tragedia jugoslava abbiamo avuto
tantissimi esempi pratici di questa "regola aurea"; ma piu' il tempo
passa, piu' il problema diventa generale e tragico.
Esempio: su "Il Manifesto" del 14.9.2002 Toni Negri e la sua
intervistatrice Ida Dominijanni si esibivano in uno spericolato slalom
tra neologismi, idee imprecise e concetti indefinibili, rappresentato
gia' nel ridicolo titolo: "Il backlash imperialista sull'Impero". Da
mettersi le mani tra i capelli: "La controspinta reazionaria
dell'amministrazione Bush blocca il processo di costruzione imperiale
[che dunque non sarebbe reazionario]. Ma la guerra preventiva non
salverà l'economia americana [se l'avesse salvata sarebbe andata bene?].
Le due carte in mano al movimento dei movimenti [trattasi forse di una
specie di ballo di gruppo?], i pericoli dell'antiamericanismo...". Basti
il sottotitolo.
Negri inventa l'"Impero", ma non sa piu' dire se esso e' fattore di
liberazione o di oppressione, se va appoggiato o se va combattuto.
Bisogna stare dalla parte dell'"Impero", o dalla parte del
"contro-impero"? Il problema, per i seguaci di Negri - che sono entrati
in un cortocircuito cerebrale, ma non se ne avvedono - e' talmente grave
che si incominciano a produrre pubblicazioni e dibattiti sul tema. Come
il libro: "Controimpero. Per un lessico dei movimenti globali", appena
uscito (AA.VV. - Manifestolibri, 2002 - una recensione su:
http://www.galileonet.it/Lo%20Scaffale/recensioni2002/rec_0210_07.htm)
"Chi parla male, pensa male", diceva pure Nanni Moretti - prima di
diventare un politicante. Ma qui non si parla male "per sbaglio": e' la
scelta deliberata di smantellare, con il lessico, il pensiero stesso e
la capacita' di critica. Proseguendo la via tracciata dai filosofi
pensiero-debolisti, i "maître à penser" soggettivisti operaisti alla
Negri e alla Revelli si scatenano: archiviare le categorie marxiste!
Cancellare ogni rigorosa analisi di tipo economico! Annullare l'identità
di classe, e diffondere concetti indistinti come: "moltitudine",
"folla",
"comunità di destino", "biopolitica", "impero", "corpi"... Diffondere
l'utilizzo dell'irrazionalità nella politica come elemento portante
delle nuove dinamiche consenso/dissenso. Costruire le condizioni
culturali e psicologiche per l'accettazione della necessità del
soggiogamento imperialista, e per l'accettazione della guerra, che e' il
portato piu' tipico del capitalismo nella sua fase imperialista.
"Non chiamando le cose con il loro nome si seminano disgrazie tra la
gente", diceva Camus. Nel caso della tragedia jugoslava abbiamo avuto
tantissimi esempi pratici di questa "regola aurea"; ma piu' il tempo
passa, piu' il problema diventa generale e tragico.
Esempio: su "Il Manifesto" del 14.9.2002 Toni Negri e la sua
intervistatrice Ida Dominijanni si esibivano in uno spericolato slalom
tra neologismi, idee imprecise e concetti indefinibili, rappresentato
gia' nel ridicolo titolo: "Il backlash imperialista sull'Impero". Da
mettersi le mani tra i capelli: "La controspinta reazionaria
dell'amministrazione Bush blocca il processo di costruzione imperiale
[che dunque non sarebbe reazionario]. Ma la guerra preventiva non
salverà l'economia americana [se l'avesse salvata sarebbe andata bene?].
Le due carte in mano al movimento dei movimenti [trattasi forse di una
specie di ballo di gruppo?], i pericoli dell'antiamericanismo...". Basti
il sottotitolo.
Negri inventa l'"Impero", ma non sa piu' dire se esso e' fattore di
liberazione o di oppressione, se va appoggiato o se va combattuto.
Bisogna stare dalla parte dell'"Impero", o dalla parte del
"contro-impero"? Il problema, per i seguaci di Negri - che sono entrati
in un cortocircuito cerebrale, ma non se ne avvedono - e' talmente grave
che si incominciano a produrre pubblicazioni e dibattiti sul tema. Come
il libro: "Controimpero. Per un lessico dei movimenti globali", appena
uscito (AA.VV. - Manifestolibri, 2002 - una recensione su:
http://www.galileonet.it/Lo%20Scaffale/recensioni2002/rec_0210_07.htm)
"Chi parla male, pensa male", diceva pure Nanni Moretti - prima di
diventare un politicante. Ma qui non si parla male "per sbaglio": e' la
scelta deliberata di smantellare, con il lessico, il pensiero stesso e
la capacita' di critica. Proseguendo la via tracciata dai filosofi
pensiero-debolisti, i "maître à penser" soggettivisti operaisti alla
Negri e alla Revelli si scatenano: archiviare le categorie marxiste!
Cancellare ogni rigorosa analisi di tipo economico! Annullare l'identità
di classe, e diffondere concetti indistinti come: "moltitudine",
"folla",
"comunità di destino", "biopolitica", "impero", "corpi"... Diffondere
l'utilizzo dell'irrazionalità nella politica come elemento portante
delle nuove dinamiche consenso/dissenso. Costruire le condizioni
culturali e psicologiche per l'accettazione della necessità del
soggiogamento imperialista, e per l'accettazione della guerra, che e' il
portato piu' tipico del capitalismo nella sua fase imperialista.
DUBBI ATROCI
Anche dentro le ONG ("Organizzazioni Non Governative") affiora ormai
ovunque la perplessita'... Il dubbio atroce, ormai, viene espresso in
modo esplicito: "Mica ci staranno usando, per caso?"
In un nuovo libro, il giornalista David Rieff critica la Croce Rossa ed
altri organismi umanitari (si veda: "Mission Impossible" -
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/293/focus/Mission_impossible+.shtml ),
dentro ai quali la gente si pone domande imbarazzanti: "Dobbiamo
rinunciare alla neutralita' nell'ambito d'un conflitto, per guadagnarci
in efficacia d'intervento?"
Allo stesso modo, nella provincia italiana, Giulio Marcon, notoriamente
impegnato con l'ICS (Consorzio Italiano di Solidarieta') tanto
nell'aiuto umanitario quanto nelle dichiarazioni a sostegno delle une o
delle altre parti in causa, ha scritto un altro libro: "L'ambiguità
degli aiuti umanitari", in uscita proprio in questi giorni con
Feltrinelli. Per l'appunto. (I. Slavo)
Anche dentro le ONG ("Organizzazioni Non Governative") affiora ormai
ovunque la perplessita'... Il dubbio atroce, ormai, viene espresso in
modo esplicito: "Mica ci staranno usando, per caso?"
In un nuovo libro, il giornalista David Rieff critica la Croce Rossa ed
altri organismi umanitari (si veda: "Mission Impossible" -
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/293/focus/Mission_impossible+.shtml ),
dentro ai quali la gente si pone domande imbarazzanti: "Dobbiamo
rinunciare alla neutralita' nell'ambito d'un conflitto, per guadagnarci
in efficacia d'intervento?"
Allo stesso modo, nella provincia italiana, Giulio Marcon, notoriamente
impegnato con l'ICS (Consorzio Italiano di Solidarieta') tanto
nell'aiuto umanitario quanto nelle dichiarazioni a sostegno delle une o
delle altre parti in causa, ha scritto un altro libro: "L'ambiguità
degli aiuti umanitari", in uscita proprio in questi giorni con
Feltrinelli. Per l'appunto. (I. Slavo)
AL MOMENTO DI MARCIARE
Al momento di marciare molti non sanno
che alla loro testa marcia il nemico.
La voce che li comanda
e' la voce del loro nemico.
E chi parla del nemico
e' lui stesso il nemico.
[Da Bertolt Brecht, Poesie di Svendborg, Einaudi, Torino 1976, p. 20. La
traduzione e' di Franco Fortini. Segnalato da Beppe Sini.]
Al momento di marciare molti non sanno
che alla loro testa marcia il nemico.
La voce che li comanda
e' la voce del loro nemico.
E chi parla del nemico
e' lui stesso il nemico.
[Da Bertolt Brecht, Poesie di Svendborg, Einaudi, Torino 1976, p. 20. La
traduzione e' di Franco Fortini. Segnalato da Beppe Sini.]
DRUSTVO "JOSIP BROZ TITO"
http://www.drustvo-jbt.tk/
GLASILO - Suvremenih gledanja Drustva "Josip Broz Tito"
http://www.geocities.com/d_jbt/glasilo.htm
Osnivanje i razvoj Dru¹tva "Josip Broz Tito"
http://www.geocities.com/d_jbt/drustvo.htm
AKTIVNOSTI:
25.05.2002.Kumrovec: Dan Mladosti - radosti
Narodnooslobodilaèka borba u Hrvatskoj 1941.
7-9.11.2001. Beograd: Okrugli stol "Ratovi u Jugoslaviji od 1991 -
2001.", izlaganje je podnio Dr.sc. Tomislav Badovinac
27.05.2001. Kumrovec: Dan Mladosti
04.05.2001. Beograd: Polaganje vjenca na Titov grob
---
Osnivanje i razvoj Dru¹tva "Josip Broz Tito"
Dru¹tvo "Josip Broz Tito" osnovano je 25. svibnja 1996.
godine. Cilj osnivanja bila je ¾elja da se okupe oni koji su privr¾eni
antifa¹izmu i osjeæaju potrebu promoviranja pouke Titova vremena i
po¹tuju Josipa Broza Tita, vodeæu osobu antifa¹istièkog pokreta,
Narodno-oslobodilaèkog rata 1941-1945. godine, poslijeratne
izgradnje zemlje, ostvarivanja pune demokracije i socijalne pravde,
borbe za mir, suradnje i ravnopravnosti meðu narodima i dr¾avama
i kao jednog od organizatora i voða Pokreta nesvrstanih zamalja u
svijetu.
Na osnivaèkoj Skup¹tini donijet je Statut, izabran
Glavni odbor, Predsjedni¹tvo i Nadzorni odbor, a za predsjednika
Dru¹tva je izabran Dr. Tomislav Badovinac
Osnivanje Dru¹tva potaknula je i postojeæa politièka atmosfera
u kojoj su jaèale snage koje su bile na suprotnoj strani antifa¹istièke
borbe, pravdajuæi potrebom sveukupnog pomirenja Hrvata.
Meðutim, posljedica te nazovi "pomirbe", ne samo ¹to su
minimizirana prava i polo¾aj antifa¹ista, boraca - partizana, veæ su
sustavno oskrnavljivana i uni¹tavana obilje¾ja njihove narodno -
oslobodilaèke borbe. Voðena je ignorantska politika u odnosu na
djela i liènost
Josipa Broza Tita, kojom ne samo da Tito nema nikakvih zasluga za
Hrvatsku, veæ ga se obilje¾ava zloèincem u odnosu na Hrvate.
U tim okolnostima Dru¹tvo je trebalo osporiti takvu politièku
platformu i promovirati pouke Titova vremena i temeljne vrijednosti
antifa¹istièke borbe i liènosti Tita.
Dru¹tvo je upisano u Registar udru¾enja graðana i steklo
svojstvo pravne osobe, 26 studenog 1996. godine.
U toku veljaèe 1997. godine odr¾ana je Konferencija za
novinstvo i prezentiran je Program aktivnosti Dru¹tva u 1997. godini.
Prikladnim pismom (uz prilog bro¹ure "Josip Broz Tito") obavje¹tene
su : Politièke stranke za koje se smatralo da bi mogle imati interes na
na¹u djelatnost; Sindikatima Hrvatske; Znanstvenim organizacijama i
udru¾enjima graðana (HAZU, Dru¹tvu povjesnièara, Savezu
¾idovskih opæina); Ambasadama u Zagrebu, koje pripadaju krugu
velike antifa¹istièke koalicije i nesvrstanih zemalja;
Meðunarodnim organizacijama u i izvan zemlje (Europsko dru¹tvo
Hrvatske, OESS, FMAC, AMPI). Dru¹tvo se pridru¾uje Savezu
antifa¹istièkih boraca uèestvovanjem u znaèajnim i veæ
tradicionalnim javnim skupovima, obilje¾avajuæi dogaðaje iz
Narodno - oslobodilaèke borbe, odnosno na proteste povodom
odreðenih aktualnih zbivanja. Odr¾ane su prigodne sveèanosti u
povodu 105. obljetnice roðenja Josipa Broza Tita, na razini Dru¹tva i
u ograncima Dru¹tva.
Predsjedni¹tvo Dru¹tva zatra¾ilo je prijem svoje delegacije kod
Predsjednika Vlade kojeg bi upoznali o postojanju Dru¹tva, te o
problemima vezanih za ukidanje Memorijalnog centra Josip Broz
Tito u Beogradu, rodnu kuæu u Kumrovcu i objekte na Vangi
(Brijuni). Isto tako, zatra¾ili smo financijsku pomoæ za rad Dru¹tva.
Meðutim, do danas nismo bili ni primljeni niti smo dobili bilo kakvu
pomoæ.
Uspostavljena je komunikacija s "Dru¹tvom za istinu o
antifa¹istièkoj narodno - oslobodilaèkoj borbi u Jugoslaviji 1941 -
1945." koja djeluje u Beogradu.
Dana 07. sijeènja 1998. godine je odr¾ana II. Skup¹tina
Dru¹tva, uglavnom radi usklaðivanja Statuta s novo done¹enim
Zakonom o udrugama . Suglasno izmjenama i dopunama Statuta
Izabran je Savjet Dru¹tva umjesto Glavnog odbora, a Predsjedni¹tvo je
dopunjeno s novim èlanovima. U osvrtu na rad Dru¹tva izmeðu I.
osnivaèke i II. Skup¹tine istaknuto je da je : osnovano 5 Ogranaka
(Split, Pula, Labin, Delnice i Fu¾ine); od¹tampano je 1000 bro¹ura
Dru¹tvo "Josip Broz Tito" i toliko pristupnica kako bi se
nastavilo sa ¹irenjem i poveæanjem ogranaka; zbog pojava nekih
nejasnoæa i nesporazuma
izmeðu Saveza antifa¹istièkih boraca Hrvatske (SABH) i Dru¹tva,
posebno u Splitu i Puli, obavljeno je niz razgovora sa SABH i
poslana su pisma; u cilju isticanja zajednièkih stremljenja donijeta je
odluka o pristupanju Dru¹tva u kolektivno èlanstvo SABH; Dru¹tvo i
èlanovi njegovih ogranaka su se prikljuèivali SABH u
obilje¾avanju dogaðaja i liènosti iz Narodno oslobodilaèkog rata.
U emisiji "Latinica" uèestvovali su predstavnici Dru¹tva
nasuprot odabrane suprotne opcije, ¹to je, mo¾e se reæi, bio presedan
u tada¹njoj politièkoj atmosferi. Nakon rasprave o postavljenom
pitanju "Tito, veliki dr¾avnik ili diktator , odnos glasanja je pokazao
da se 86.000 izjasnilo za Tita, kao velikog dr¾avnika, prema 23.000
koji su smatrali da je diktator.
Odr¾an je zajednièki sastanak Predsjedni¹tva i Savjeta s
ograncima Dru¹tva, 17 listopada 1998. godine. Pristvovalo je 17
ogranaka koji su okupili oko 2.500 èlanova. Iz izlaganja ogranaka
vidljivo je da su, uglavnom, ogranci uspjeli razviti korektnu i
konkretnu suradnju s SAB-om. Usvojen je Program Dru¹tva za
dvogodi¹nji period, kao i smjernice za dalji rad Dru¹tva i Ogranaka.
Skup je informiran da je Predsjednik Dru¹tva ostvario neposredni
kontakt sa Dru¹tvom za istinu u Beogradu i naglasio da oni svoju
djelatnost baziraju na izdavanju knjiga i bro¹ura preko kojih nastoje
istinitim i objektivnim izno¹enjem dogaðaja vezanih za Narodno -
oslobodilaèku borbu i druga Tita oèuvati od prekrajanja i negiranja,
odnosno falcificiranja.
Saglasno usvojenom programu odr¾ane su tribine: "Titovo ne
Informbirou - put u demokratizaciju" ( Pedeset godina od Rezolucije
Informbiroa) ; Neki pogledi na "Sluèaj Stepinac";
"Kosovsko pitanje" (za¹to na ovom prostoru jo¹ uvijek teèe ljudska
krv); "Samoupravljanje kod nas i u svijetu"; "U susret danu
antifa¹istièke borbe u Hrvatskoj"; "Izbori i ljudska prava".
Svake godine organizirana je zajedno sa SAB
komemorativna sveèanost
u Kumrovcu u povodu obilje¾avanja obljetnice smrti Josipa Broza
Tita. Istovremeno su Ogranci organizirali prigodnu sveèanost u
svojim sredinama.
U povodu roðenja Josipa Broza Tita organizirani su
sveèani skupovi u povodu "Dana Mladosti", kako u Dru¹tvu tako i u
ograncima sa prigodnim programima, tribinama i okruglim
stolovima. U sveèanom dijelu dodjeljena su priznanja drugovima: Dr.
Vladimiru Velebit, Dr. Branku Horvat, Dr. Savi Zlatiæ i Zvonimiru
Ivankoviæ - Vonti za njihov nesebièni doprinos u radu i afirmaciji
aktivnosti Dru¹tva. Dodijeljeno je priznanje i drugarici Meri Lukiæ
za iskazani volonterski rad u Dru¹tvu.
Dru¹tvo je na razne naèine nastojalo podr¾ati i pomoæi
izdavanje knjige "Tito" na hrvatskom jeziku, napisane od Jaspera
Ridleva, ¹to smo i uspjeli otkupiv¹i pravo ¹tampanja, kako bi
omoguæili izdavaèu tiskanje knjige.
Na zajednièkom sastanku Predsjedni¹tva i
Savjeta s ograncima Dru¹tva, 29. studenog 1999. godine, u prigodnom
dijelu sastanka, posthumno priznanje drugu Ivici Gretiæ - Marjanu za
njegove zasluge u formiranjju i radu Dru¹tva uruèeno je kæeri i
sinovima, na godi¹njicu njegove smrti.
Odr¾ana je III. Skup¹tina, 25. svibnja 2.000. godine, na dan
kada je prije èetiri (4) godine osnovano Dru¹tvo "Josip Broz Tito" i
povodom toga je odr¾ana Sveèano - izborna skup¹tina. Na poèetku
Sveèanog dijela Skup¹tine obratio se prigodnim govorom Dr. Savo
Zlatiæ, koji je i prije 4 godine otvorio Osnivaèku skup¹tinu. Zatim je
Skup¹tini uputio ohrabrujuæe rijeèi Dr. Vladimir Velebit, jedan od
najbli¾ih saradnika Tita i doajen na¹eg Dru¹tva.
Na komemorativnom skupu u Kumrovcu, 04.05. 2.000.
godine, povodom 20. godi¹njice smrti Josipa Broza Tita, predlo¾io
je, u svom govoru Dr. Tomislav Badovinac, u ime Dru¹tva "Josip
Broz Tito", Saveza antifa¹istièkih boraca i Saveza ratnih vojnih
invalida da se Tito proglasi, za liènost stoljeæa. Na temelju nespornih
djela i uva¾avanja njegove liènosti, kako u inozemstvu tako i u
donedavnoj domovini, kojima se ne mo¾e pripisati stvaranje kulta
njegove liènosti, prijedlog je svesrdno podr¾ala i Sveèana Skup¹tina
Dru¹tva.
Sa Skup¹tine, na prijedlog Dr. Branka Horvata, upuæen je i
javni protest u povodu odluke Vlade RH, koja je odbila da se dodijeli
20.000 kn na ime pomoæi Dru¹tvu sa obrazlo¾enjem da se ne ¾eli
podupirati kult liènosti.
U radnom dijelu Skup¹tine rezimirana je djelatnost Dru¹tva i
njegovih ogranaka: tekuæe aktivnosti u suradnji sa SAB Hrvatske
povodom obljetnica; odr¾ane su tribine, okrugli stolovi i prigodna
predavanja; protesti povodom raznih dogaðanja (kao na primjer: na
Trgu ¾rtava fa¹izma; TV emisija "Hrvatska u XX. stoljeæu", ru¹enja
spomen-ploèe Talijanskom partizanskom bataljonu "Garibaldi",
ru¹enja spomenika i skandalozne odluke, kojom ¹pilja na otoku Visu
nije vi¹e ¾astièeni dio prirode i drugi); razni zahtjevi za povrat
Titovih i drugih bista, ulica i trgova; osnovano je 22 ogranaka sa oko
3.000 èlanova.
Financijsko poslovanje Dru¹tva, u protekle 4 godine, bilo je:
ukupni prihodi (èlanarina i prilozi, donacije simpatizera, ostali
prihodi) iznosili su 33.682 kune i pozajnica Dru¹tvu 7.800 kuna, a
ukupni rashod su iznosili 38.488 kuna, ostvaren je negativan saldo od
2.994 kn. Iz iskazanog èetvero-godi¹njeg raspolaganja novcem i
njegovog tro¹enja vidljivo je da se djelatnost ostvarirala na
volonterskom entuzijazmu i samofinanciranju.
Usvojen je Program Dru¹tva za 2.000 - 2.001. godinu: prvo,
realizacija ciljeva i zadataka utvrðenih Statutom; drugo, rad u
narednom dvogodi¹njem razdoblju zasnivati æe se na prijedlozima
rje¹avanja aktualnih problema hrvatskog dru¹tva, a na poukama
Titovog vremena za buduænost. Na taj naèin, pronala¾enjem
dodirnih toèaka izmeðu sada¹njih problema i Titove misli moguæe je
dati doprinos rje¹avanju nagomilanih problema u zemlji, kao i u
odnosima prema svijetu, a posebno prema susjedstvu. U tom pravcu
Dru¹tvo æe koristiti razne oblike putem kojih æe upoznati javnost sa
svojim stavovima, te pru¾ili pomoæ u rje¹avanju pojedinih pitanja, a
osobito o: dru¹tveno-ekonomskim problemima; reafirmaciji
samoupravljanja ili participacije radnika i graðana u jedinicama
lokalne samouprave; razvitku lokalne samouprave, koja treba da
osigura prava i zadovoljavanje interesa i potreba graðama;
ravnopravnosti naroda i narodnosti, kao nastavka Titove politike
(bratstva i jedinstva, miroljubive koegzistencije i suradnje u
meðunarodnim odnosima); punoj demokraciji i socijalnoj pravdi, jer
puna demokracija je i politièka, ali i ekonomska; treæe, Dru¹tvo æe
djelovati na omasovljenju kroz: osnivanje i omasovljenje Savjeta za
punu demokraciju i socijalnu pravdu, osnivanje novih ogranaka;
ukljuèivanjem u rad mladih ljudi iz znanstvenog, kulturnog i
umjetnièkog ¾ivota, te svih antifa¹istièki i demokratski usmjerenih
graðana; èetvrto, potrebno je medijski afirmirati Dru¹tvo i uz
informacije o Titu na internetu, potrebno je imati i WEB stranicu,
peto, Dru¹tvo sa ograncima ostvarit æe Program, uz jasnu oznaku
orjentacije kao nevladinih, nepolitièkih, toleratnih i javnih oblika
udru¾ivanja graðana; ¹esto, Dru¹tvo æe i nadalje suraðivati sa
Savezom antifa¹istièkoh boraca, Savezom ratnih vojnih invalida,
Dru¹tvom za istinu o NOB-i 1941-1945. godine i drugim sa kojima
æe se uspostaviti saradnja.
Izabrano je Predsjedni¹tvo, Nadzorni odbor i Savjet Dru¹tva, a
za predsjednika je izabran Dr. Tomislav Badovinac, po treæi put. S
obzirom na potrebe prilagoðavanja Statuta saglasno dana¹njim
potrebama izabrana je i Statutarna komisija.
28. rujna 2.000. godine promovirana je knjiga Jaspera Ridley
TITO, nakladnika Prometej, a veæ pet mjeseci je, uglavnom, na
prvom mjestu po interesu graðana za kupnju, ¹to pokazuje ne samo
velik interes veæ i dobar pogodak.
U skladu s usvojenim Programom Dru¹tva, 8. studenog 2.000.
godine organiziran je Okrugli stol pod naslovom "Nova stremljenja"
(o akcijama za zapo¹ljavanje, o rastu privrede i podizanju ¾ivotnog
standarda) i 18. sijeènja 2.001. godine na temu "Aktuelna pitanja
Lokalne samouprave".
Na zajednièkoj sjednici Predsjednika ogranaka, Predsjedni¹tva,
Nadzornog odbora i Savjeta Dru¹tva, 21. prosinca 2.000. godine,
dogovoreno je da se priðe izdavanju Biltena, koji bi omoguæio
odreðenu vrstu medijskog pojavljivanja Dru¹tva u javnosti, zatim da
se komemoracija izvr¹i polaganjem vijenca na grob Josipa Broza Tita
u Beogradu, 4. svibnja 2.001. godine i da se u Kumrovcu organizira
susret èlanova i simpatizera Dru¹tva, a povodom dana roðenja Josipa
Broza, poznatijeg kao "Dan Mladosti".
U cilju isticanja zajednièkih stremljenja doneta je odluka o
pristupanju Dru¹tva u kolektivno èlanstvo Saveza ratnih vojnih
invalida Hrvatske.
Ured za odnose s javno¹æu Vlade Republike Hrvatske izdao je
Potvrdu da je nakladnik Dru¹tvo "Josip Broz Tito" dana 9. veljaèe
2.001. godine prijavilo GLASILO Dru¹tva "Josip Broz Tito" te da
prijava sadr¾i propisane podatke.
Tomislav
Badovinac
http://www.drustvo-jbt.tk/
GLASILO - Suvremenih gledanja Drustva "Josip Broz Tito"
http://www.geocities.com/d_jbt/glasilo.htm
Osnivanje i razvoj Dru¹tva "Josip Broz Tito"
http://www.geocities.com/d_jbt/drustvo.htm
AKTIVNOSTI:
25.05.2002.Kumrovec: Dan Mladosti - radosti
Narodnooslobodilaèka borba u Hrvatskoj 1941.
7-9.11.2001. Beograd: Okrugli stol "Ratovi u Jugoslaviji od 1991 -
2001.", izlaganje je podnio Dr.sc. Tomislav Badovinac
27.05.2001. Kumrovec: Dan Mladosti
04.05.2001. Beograd: Polaganje vjenca na Titov grob
---
Osnivanje i razvoj Dru¹tva "Josip Broz Tito"
Dru¹tvo "Josip Broz Tito" osnovano je 25. svibnja 1996.
godine. Cilj osnivanja bila je ¾elja da se okupe oni koji su privr¾eni
antifa¹izmu i osjeæaju potrebu promoviranja pouke Titova vremena i
po¹tuju Josipa Broza Tita, vodeæu osobu antifa¹istièkog pokreta,
Narodno-oslobodilaèkog rata 1941-1945. godine, poslijeratne
izgradnje zemlje, ostvarivanja pune demokracije i socijalne pravde,
borbe za mir, suradnje i ravnopravnosti meðu narodima i dr¾avama
i kao jednog od organizatora i voða Pokreta nesvrstanih zamalja u
svijetu.
Na osnivaèkoj Skup¹tini donijet je Statut, izabran
Glavni odbor, Predsjedni¹tvo i Nadzorni odbor, a za predsjednika
Dru¹tva je izabran Dr. Tomislav Badovinac
Osnivanje Dru¹tva potaknula je i postojeæa politièka atmosfera
u kojoj su jaèale snage koje su bile na suprotnoj strani antifa¹istièke
borbe, pravdajuæi potrebom sveukupnog pomirenja Hrvata.
Meðutim, posljedica te nazovi "pomirbe", ne samo ¹to su
minimizirana prava i polo¾aj antifa¹ista, boraca - partizana, veæ su
sustavno oskrnavljivana i uni¹tavana obilje¾ja njihove narodno -
oslobodilaèke borbe. Voðena je ignorantska politika u odnosu na
djela i liènost
Josipa Broza Tita, kojom ne samo da Tito nema nikakvih zasluga za
Hrvatsku, veæ ga se obilje¾ava zloèincem u odnosu na Hrvate.
U tim okolnostima Dru¹tvo je trebalo osporiti takvu politièku
platformu i promovirati pouke Titova vremena i temeljne vrijednosti
antifa¹istièke borbe i liènosti Tita.
Dru¹tvo je upisano u Registar udru¾enja graðana i steklo
svojstvo pravne osobe, 26 studenog 1996. godine.
U toku veljaèe 1997. godine odr¾ana je Konferencija za
novinstvo i prezentiran je Program aktivnosti Dru¹tva u 1997. godini.
Prikladnim pismom (uz prilog bro¹ure "Josip Broz Tito") obavje¹tene
su : Politièke stranke za koje se smatralo da bi mogle imati interes na
na¹u djelatnost; Sindikatima Hrvatske; Znanstvenim organizacijama i
udru¾enjima graðana (HAZU, Dru¹tvu povjesnièara, Savezu
¾idovskih opæina); Ambasadama u Zagrebu, koje pripadaju krugu
velike antifa¹istièke koalicije i nesvrstanih zemalja;
Meðunarodnim organizacijama u i izvan zemlje (Europsko dru¹tvo
Hrvatske, OESS, FMAC, AMPI). Dru¹tvo se pridru¾uje Savezu
antifa¹istièkih boraca uèestvovanjem u znaèajnim i veæ
tradicionalnim javnim skupovima, obilje¾avajuæi dogaðaje iz
Narodno - oslobodilaèke borbe, odnosno na proteste povodom
odreðenih aktualnih zbivanja. Odr¾ane su prigodne sveèanosti u
povodu 105. obljetnice roðenja Josipa Broza Tita, na razini Dru¹tva i
u ograncima Dru¹tva.
Predsjedni¹tvo Dru¹tva zatra¾ilo je prijem svoje delegacije kod
Predsjednika Vlade kojeg bi upoznali o postojanju Dru¹tva, te o
problemima vezanih za ukidanje Memorijalnog centra Josip Broz
Tito u Beogradu, rodnu kuæu u Kumrovcu i objekte na Vangi
(Brijuni). Isto tako, zatra¾ili smo financijsku pomoæ za rad Dru¹tva.
Meðutim, do danas nismo bili ni primljeni niti smo dobili bilo kakvu
pomoæ.
Uspostavljena je komunikacija s "Dru¹tvom za istinu o
antifa¹istièkoj narodno - oslobodilaèkoj borbi u Jugoslaviji 1941 -
1945." koja djeluje u Beogradu.
Dana 07. sijeènja 1998. godine je odr¾ana II. Skup¹tina
Dru¹tva, uglavnom radi usklaðivanja Statuta s novo done¹enim
Zakonom o udrugama . Suglasno izmjenama i dopunama Statuta
Izabran je Savjet Dru¹tva umjesto Glavnog odbora, a Predsjedni¹tvo je
dopunjeno s novim èlanovima. U osvrtu na rad Dru¹tva izmeðu I.
osnivaèke i II. Skup¹tine istaknuto je da je : osnovano 5 Ogranaka
(Split, Pula, Labin, Delnice i Fu¾ine); od¹tampano je 1000 bro¹ura
Dru¹tvo "Josip Broz Tito" i toliko pristupnica kako bi se
nastavilo sa ¹irenjem i poveæanjem ogranaka; zbog pojava nekih
nejasnoæa i nesporazuma
izmeðu Saveza antifa¹istièkih boraca Hrvatske (SABH) i Dru¹tva,
posebno u Splitu i Puli, obavljeno je niz razgovora sa SABH i
poslana su pisma; u cilju isticanja zajednièkih stremljenja donijeta je
odluka o pristupanju Dru¹tva u kolektivno èlanstvo SABH; Dru¹tvo i
èlanovi njegovih ogranaka su se prikljuèivali SABH u
obilje¾avanju dogaðaja i liènosti iz Narodno oslobodilaèkog rata.
U emisiji "Latinica" uèestvovali su predstavnici Dru¹tva
nasuprot odabrane suprotne opcije, ¹to je, mo¾e se reæi, bio presedan
u tada¹njoj politièkoj atmosferi. Nakon rasprave o postavljenom
pitanju "Tito, veliki dr¾avnik ili diktator , odnos glasanja je pokazao
da se 86.000 izjasnilo za Tita, kao velikog dr¾avnika, prema 23.000
koji su smatrali da je diktator.
Odr¾an je zajednièki sastanak Predsjedni¹tva i Savjeta s
ograncima Dru¹tva, 17 listopada 1998. godine. Pristvovalo je 17
ogranaka koji su okupili oko 2.500 èlanova. Iz izlaganja ogranaka
vidljivo je da su, uglavnom, ogranci uspjeli razviti korektnu i
konkretnu suradnju s SAB-om. Usvojen je Program Dru¹tva za
dvogodi¹nji period, kao i smjernice za dalji rad Dru¹tva i Ogranaka.
Skup je informiran da je Predsjednik Dru¹tva ostvario neposredni
kontakt sa Dru¹tvom za istinu u Beogradu i naglasio da oni svoju
djelatnost baziraju na izdavanju knjiga i bro¹ura preko kojih nastoje
istinitim i objektivnim izno¹enjem dogaðaja vezanih za Narodno -
oslobodilaèku borbu i druga Tita oèuvati od prekrajanja i negiranja,
odnosno falcificiranja.
Saglasno usvojenom programu odr¾ane su tribine: "Titovo ne
Informbirou - put u demokratizaciju" ( Pedeset godina od Rezolucije
Informbiroa) ; Neki pogledi na "Sluèaj Stepinac";
"Kosovsko pitanje" (za¹to na ovom prostoru jo¹ uvijek teèe ljudska
krv); "Samoupravljanje kod nas i u svijetu"; "U susret danu
antifa¹istièke borbe u Hrvatskoj"; "Izbori i ljudska prava".
Svake godine organizirana je zajedno sa SAB
komemorativna sveèanost
u Kumrovcu u povodu obilje¾avanja obljetnice smrti Josipa Broza
Tita. Istovremeno su Ogranci organizirali prigodnu sveèanost u
svojim sredinama.
U povodu roðenja Josipa Broza Tita organizirani su
sveèani skupovi u povodu "Dana Mladosti", kako u Dru¹tvu tako i u
ograncima sa prigodnim programima, tribinama i okruglim
stolovima. U sveèanom dijelu dodjeljena su priznanja drugovima: Dr.
Vladimiru Velebit, Dr. Branku Horvat, Dr. Savi Zlatiæ i Zvonimiru
Ivankoviæ - Vonti za njihov nesebièni doprinos u radu i afirmaciji
aktivnosti Dru¹tva. Dodijeljeno je priznanje i drugarici Meri Lukiæ
za iskazani volonterski rad u Dru¹tvu.
Dru¹tvo je na razne naèine nastojalo podr¾ati i pomoæi
izdavanje knjige "Tito" na hrvatskom jeziku, napisane od Jaspera
Ridleva, ¹to smo i uspjeli otkupiv¹i pravo ¹tampanja, kako bi
omoguæili izdavaèu tiskanje knjige.
Na zajednièkom sastanku Predsjedni¹tva i
Savjeta s ograncima Dru¹tva, 29. studenog 1999. godine, u prigodnom
dijelu sastanka, posthumno priznanje drugu Ivici Gretiæ - Marjanu za
njegove zasluge u formiranjju i radu Dru¹tva uruèeno je kæeri i
sinovima, na godi¹njicu njegove smrti.
Odr¾ana je III. Skup¹tina, 25. svibnja 2.000. godine, na dan
kada je prije èetiri (4) godine osnovano Dru¹tvo "Josip Broz Tito" i
povodom toga je odr¾ana Sveèano - izborna skup¹tina. Na poèetku
Sveèanog dijela Skup¹tine obratio se prigodnim govorom Dr. Savo
Zlatiæ, koji je i prije 4 godine otvorio Osnivaèku skup¹tinu. Zatim je
Skup¹tini uputio ohrabrujuæe rijeèi Dr. Vladimir Velebit, jedan od
najbli¾ih saradnika Tita i doajen na¹eg Dru¹tva.
Na komemorativnom skupu u Kumrovcu, 04.05. 2.000.
godine, povodom 20. godi¹njice smrti Josipa Broza Tita, predlo¾io
je, u svom govoru Dr. Tomislav Badovinac, u ime Dru¹tva "Josip
Broz Tito", Saveza antifa¹istièkih boraca i Saveza ratnih vojnih
invalida da se Tito proglasi, za liènost stoljeæa. Na temelju nespornih
djela i uva¾avanja njegove liènosti, kako u inozemstvu tako i u
donedavnoj domovini, kojima se ne mo¾e pripisati stvaranje kulta
njegove liènosti, prijedlog je svesrdno podr¾ala i Sveèana Skup¹tina
Dru¹tva.
Sa Skup¹tine, na prijedlog Dr. Branka Horvata, upuæen je i
javni protest u povodu odluke Vlade RH, koja je odbila da se dodijeli
20.000 kn na ime pomoæi Dru¹tvu sa obrazlo¾enjem da se ne ¾eli
podupirati kult liènosti.
U radnom dijelu Skup¹tine rezimirana je djelatnost Dru¹tva i
njegovih ogranaka: tekuæe aktivnosti u suradnji sa SAB Hrvatske
povodom obljetnica; odr¾ane su tribine, okrugli stolovi i prigodna
predavanja; protesti povodom raznih dogaðanja (kao na primjer: na
Trgu ¾rtava fa¹izma; TV emisija "Hrvatska u XX. stoljeæu", ru¹enja
spomen-ploèe Talijanskom partizanskom bataljonu "Garibaldi",
ru¹enja spomenika i skandalozne odluke, kojom ¹pilja na otoku Visu
nije vi¹e ¾astièeni dio prirode i drugi); razni zahtjevi za povrat
Titovih i drugih bista, ulica i trgova; osnovano je 22 ogranaka sa oko
3.000 èlanova.
Financijsko poslovanje Dru¹tva, u protekle 4 godine, bilo je:
ukupni prihodi (èlanarina i prilozi, donacije simpatizera, ostali
prihodi) iznosili su 33.682 kune i pozajnica Dru¹tvu 7.800 kuna, a
ukupni rashod su iznosili 38.488 kuna, ostvaren je negativan saldo od
2.994 kn. Iz iskazanog èetvero-godi¹njeg raspolaganja novcem i
njegovog tro¹enja vidljivo je da se djelatnost ostvarirala na
volonterskom entuzijazmu i samofinanciranju.
Usvojen je Program Dru¹tva za 2.000 - 2.001. godinu: prvo,
realizacija ciljeva i zadataka utvrðenih Statutom; drugo, rad u
narednom dvogodi¹njem razdoblju zasnivati æe se na prijedlozima
rje¹avanja aktualnih problema hrvatskog dru¹tva, a na poukama
Titovog vremena za buduænost. Na taj naèin, pronala¾enjem
dodirnih toèaka izmeðu sada¹njih problema i Titove misli moguæe je
dati doprinos rje¹avanju nagomilanih problema u zemlji, kao i u
odnosima prema svijetu, a posebno prema susjedstvu. U tom pravcu
Dru¹tvo æe koristiti razne oblike putem kojih æe upoznati javnost sa
svojim stavovima, te pru¾ili pomoæ u rje¹avanju pojedinih pitanja, a
osobito o: dru¹tveno-ekonomskim problemima; reafirmaciji
samoupravljanja ili participacije radnika i graðana u jedinicama
lokalne samouprave; razvitku lokalne samouprave, koja treba da
osigura prava i zadovoljavanje interesa i potreba graðama;
ravnopravnosti naroda i narodnosti, kao nastavka Titove politike
(bratstva i jedinstva, miroljubive koegzistencije i suradnje u
meðunarodnim odnosima); punoj demokraciji i socijalnoj pravdi, jer
puna demokracija je i politièka, ali i ekonomska; treæe, Dru¹tvo æe
djelovati na omasovljenju kroz: osnivanje i omasovljenje Savjeta za
punu demokraciju i socijalnu pravdu, osnivanje novih ogranaka;
ukljuèivanjem u rad mladih ljudi iz znanstvenog, kulturnog i
umjetnièkog ¾ivota, te svih antifa¹istièki i demokratski usmjerenih
graðana; èetvrto, potrebno je medijski afirmirati Dru¹tvo i uz
informacije o Titu na internetu, potrebno je imati i WEB stranicu,
peto, Dru¹tvo sa ograncima ostvarit æe Program, uz jasnu oznaku
orjentacije kao nevladinih, nepolitièkih, toleratnih i javnih oblika
udru¾ivanja graðana; ¹esto, Dru¹tvo æe i nadalje suraðivati sa
Savezom antifa¹istièkoh boraca, Savezom ratnih vojnih invalida,
Dru¹tvom za istinu o NOB-i 1941-1945. godine i drugim sa kojima
æe se uspostaviti saradnja.
Izabrano je Predsjedni¹tvo, Nadzorni odbor i Savjet Dru¹tva, a
za predsjednika je izabran Dr. Tomislav Badovinac, po treæi put. S
obzirom na potrebe prilagoðavanja Statuta saglasno dana¹njim
potrebama izabrana je i Statutarna komisija.
28. rujna 2.000. godine promovirana je knjiga Jaspera Ridley
TITO, nakladnika Prometej, a veæ pet mjeseci je, uglavnom, na
prvom mjestu po interesu graðana za kupnju, ¹to pokazuje ne samo
velik interes veæ i dobar pogodak.
U skladu s usvojenim Programom Dru¹tva, 8. studenog 2.000.
godine organiziran je Okrugli stol pod naslovom "Nova stremljenja"
(o akcijama za zapo¹ljavanje, o rastu privrede i podizanju ¾ivotnog
standarda) i 18. sijeènja 2.001. godine na temu "Aktuelna pitanja
Lokalne samouprave".
Na zajednièkoj sjednici Predsjednika ogranaka, Predsjedni¹tva,
Nadzornog odbora i Savjeta Dru¹tva, 21. prosinca 2.000. godine,
dogovoreno je da se priðe izdavanju Biltena, koji bi omoguæio
odreðenu vrstu medijskog pojavljivanja Dru¹tva u javnosti, zatim da
se komemoracija izvr¹i polaganjem vijenca na grob Josipa Broza Tita
u Beogradu, 4. svibnja 2.001. godine i da se u Kumrovcu organizira
susret èlanova i simpatizera Dru¹tva, a povodom dana roðenja Josipa
Broza, poznatijeg kao "Dan Mladosti".
U cilju isticanja zajednièkih stremljenja doneta je odluka o
pristupanju Dru¹tva u kolektivno èlanstvo Saveza ratnih vojnih
invalida Hrvatske.
Ured za odnose s javno¹æu Vlade Republike Hrvatske izdao je
Potvrdu da je nakladnik Dru¹tvo "Josip Broz Tito" dana 9. veljaèe
2.001. godine prijavilo GLASILO Dru¹tva "Josip Broz Tito" te da
prijava sadr¾i propisane podatke.
Tomislav
Badovinac
International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic
www.icdsm.org
=================================
Slobodan Milosevic's Cross-Examination of
Croatian President Stjepan Mesic: PART III
Because the transcript of the cross-examination is 150 pages long we
have broken it into 12 easy to read segments. If you wish to read the
whole thing at once go to: http://www.icdsm.org/more/mesic.htm
=================================
Page 10636
1 Q. You arrived on the 5th of December in the Croatian parliament.
2 You thanked them for their confidence. This was on the 5th of
December,
3 1991. And you made a notorious statement to the effect that you
thought I
4 have performed my task. Yugoslavia is no more. Is this so, Mr. Mesic?
5 We saw it on the video we played here a few days ago, and all of
6 Yugoslavia knows about this. You said: I think I have performed my
task.
7 Yugoslavia is no more.
8 A. An excellent question. I will explain what this was about. The
9 Croatian parliament elected me to be the Croatian member of the
Presidency
10 of Yugoslavia. I went to Belgrade, where first, for several months, I
was
11 not allowed to take up my duties because the Federal Assembly was
unable
12 to meet. After that, the Serbian bloc boycotted my election as
president
13 under --
14 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, let him finish. You've asked him a
15 question. Let him give his explanation.
16 A. Finally, under pressure from the international community, I was
17 elected president. Croatia adopted a decision on its independence.
18 Croatia, in agreement with the international community, postponed its
19 secession from Yugoslavia by three months. This time period had
elapsed.
20 Yugoslavia no longer existed. The federal institutions were no longer
21 functioning. I returned to Zagreb, and that's precisely what I said.
22 Because I did not go to Belgrade to open up a house-painting
business. I
23 went there as a member of the Presidency of Yugoslavia. Since
Yugoslavia
24 no longer existed and the Presidency no longer existed, I had
performed
25 the tasks entrusted to me by the Croatian parliament and was
reporting
Page 10637
1 back, ready to take up a different office. What was I to do in
Belgrade
2 when the Presidency no longer existed?
3 Q. Very well, Mr. Mesic. This is truly worthy of admiration, your
4 explanation of what you said, but you haven't told me whether you
actually
5 said: I have performed my task. Yugoslavia is no more.
6 A. The accused is a lawyer. He understands very well what I'm
7 talking about. My task was to represent Croatia in the Federal
8 Presidency.
9 Q. There is no need for you to repeat this. You said this in the
10 Croatian or Serbian language, or whatever you want to call it, and
11 everybody understood it. Your explanation now is obviously an attempt
to
12 make this statement relative, but this is no longer important.
13 [Trial Chamber confers]
14 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
15 Q. In your public statements, or rather, in Tudjman's public
16 statements on Ban Jelacic Square on the 24th of May, 1992, said
"There
17 would have been no war had not Croatia wanted it. But we thought that
it
18 was only by war that we could win the independence of Croatia. That's
why
19 we had a policy of negotiations behind which we were setting up
military
20 units. Had this not been so, we would not have reached our goal." Is
21 this correct, Mr. Mesic?
22 A. I think that this could have been reported only by the Serbian
23 press, because it simply does not correspond to the truth. We know
who
24 was in control of the press in Serbia. It was the accused, Slobodan
25 Milosevic.
Page 10638
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5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12 Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the
French and
13 English transcripts.
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Page 10639
1 Q. Unfortunately, a few days ago we watched a video of this, and we
2 saw this speech on Ban Jelacic square, taped on video. Tell me,
please:
3 Do you know that when the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was founded
and
4 the new constituted was promulgated on the 27th of April, 1992, a
5 declaration was adopted on the goals of the new common state, that is,
the
6 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, according to which, and I quote
verbatim:
7 "Yugoslavia has no territorial pretensions towards any of the former
8 Yugoslav republics." Are you aware of this?
9 A. I don't know what the declaration on the establishing of the
10 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia says, but I do know everything that
was
11 done to cut off parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and annex
them
12 to Serbia.
13 Q. Mr. Mesic, you're telling us fairy tales about Karlovac, Karlobag
14 Virovitica boundary. When did you ever hear any official of the
Republic
15 of Serbia referring to this border, and when did any body or organ of
the
16 Republic of Serbia or anyone in Yugoslavia raise this issue and talk
about
17 such a boundary? This is a pure fabrication that you are launching
here.
18 Where did you get this idea?
19 A. It's quite understandable that those who perpetrated aggression
20 did not make such statements, but the Serbian minister, who was in
the
21 government, one of the ministers of Mr. Milosevic, visited this
boundary
22 with Vojislav Seselj, the Chetnik Vojvoda or leader, to show how far
the
23 interests of Serbia reached.
24 Q. What minister are you referring to? And if a minister visits a
25 spot, if he goes to a certain municipality, does he go to a boundary
or
Page 10640
1 does he mark a boundary? Was he marking a boundary there?
2 A. You understand very well that if someone visits Croatia,
3 especially an official, he should visit the official organs of the
4 Republic of Croatia.
5 Q. What municipal organs are you referring to if someone is visiting
6 a municipality? I didn't know you were a police state of that kind,
that
7 someone visiting a municipality in Croatia would have to report to the
8 police.
9 A. I was not paid to teach the accused Croatian laws. I was paid to
10 implement them.
11 Q. Mr. Mesic, you are a university graduate. Did you ever learn
12 about the rights of peoples to self-determination, and do you know
that
13 volumes and volumes of books have been written on this topic? Do you
know
14 about this?
15 A. I think this question is pointless. Of course I do. Of course I
16 know about the right to self-determination. This is going too far.
17 Q. Well, then answer me, please: Where did you get the idea that, as
18 you said, the Serbs in Croatia do not have a right to
self-determination?
19 Where did you get the idea, as you said on page 2 of your statement,
that
20 according to the constitution of 1974, Yugoslavia was a confederal
state?
21 You know yourself that this is untrue. Show me a single
constitutional
22 provision to this effect. Is this correct or not, Mr. Mesic?
23 A. The Presidency of Yugoslavia was established as a confederal
24 institution because all decisions were made for the most part by
25 consensus, and the accused knows this very well. He also knows very
well
Page 10641
1 that according to the constitution of 1974, the republics were called
2 states, and he also knows that, by virtue of their association into
3 Yugoslavia, they also had the right to disassociate themselves from
4 Yugoslavia. When a threat arose that Croatia and Slovenia might suffer
5 the same fate as Kosovo, Vojvodina, and Montenegro, Croatia made use
of
6 its right to disassociate itself, and the Badinter Commission
confirmed
7 this. Of course the Serbs have a right to their own state. That state
is
8 the Republic of Serbia. But it is well known that national minorities
9 cannot ask to secede from the Republic of Croatia. They could ask for
10 that but they could not realise it, because the Republic of Croatia
was
11 recognised in the borders established by Avnoj and the accused knows
this
12 very well.
13 Q. Do you know that according to the Yugoslav constitution, it was
14 the peoples and not the republics that had sovereignty? Do you
remember
15 that even the coat of arms of Yugoslavia had five torches,
represented
16 five peoples: The Serbs, the Croats, the Slovenes, the Macedonians
and the
17 Montenegrins, and then later on a sixth torch was added when the
Muslims
18 were declared a constituent people? Are you aware of this, Mr. Mesic?
19 A. The constituent elements of the Federation were the republics,
20 plus two autonomous provinces: Vojvodina, and Kosovo. Those were the
21 constituent elements of the Federation. Symbolism is one thing, but
22 constitutional provisions are quite another.
23 Q. You assert that in the constitutions of Yugoslavia and the
24 republics, it was not the sovereignty of peoples that was the
starting
25 point but the territory of the republics established in 1945; is that
what
Page 10642
1 you're claiming? I just want to be clear so as not to waste time.
2 A. I have said what I had to say about the constituent elements of
3 the Federation. Croatia had the right to self-determination, and the
4 Serbs in Croatia had the right to protection, to protection of their
5 collective rights and of their status as citizens of the Republic of
6 Croatia.
7 Q. Very well. Let us proceed, then. Let us proceed at a faster
8 pace, so please answer me yes or no: Is it correct that all the
9 constitutions of Croatia, until the amendments introduced by you in
1990,
10 had a provision about the Serbs as a constituent people, not a ethnic
11 minority, as you have just said? For example, the constitution of
1945,
12 1963, 1974, the constitutional amendments of July 1990. So these
13 amendments of July 1990 for the first time left out the Serbs as a
14 constituent element of the Republic of Croatia. I'm referring now to
the
15 constitution of the Republic of Croatia. Did all the constitutions
16 contain a provision about the Serbian people as a constituent people
in
17 Croatia; yes or no?
18 A. One cannot reply to this question with yes or no. The
19 constitutions were enacted in different periods of time, in different
20 situations, and in different international environments. The
21 constitution, therefore, had different provisions at different points
in
22 time. For example, the Yugoslav and the Croatian constitutions had a
23 provision which other constitutions, for example, do not contain,
that
24 there are two kinds of groups: Narodi and Narodnosti, two kinds of
25 peoples, plus ethnic groups. The constitution was further developed
up
Page 10643
1 until 1990.
2 Q. So the fact that the Serbs were left out of the constitution was
3 a development.
4 Do you know that on the 14th of May, 1887, the Croatian parliament
5 enacted a provision on the use of the Cyrillic alphabet? Are you aware
of
6 this?
7 A. I was not aware of that particular piece of information, but I do
8 thank the accused for having given me this piece of information. That
is
9 truly meaningful for me.
10 Q. And do you know about the rest, that what the constitution -- what
11 the assembly of Croatia adopted in 1887 was abolished in 1990 by your
12 parliament? They abolished the Cyrillic alphabet as an official
13 alphabet. Do you know about that? You went 150 years backwards. Do
you
14 know that?
15 A. Yet another piece of information, very important to me, as a
16 lawyer.
17 Q. All right, Mr. Mesic. Do you remember an entire series of laws,
18 not to mention taking over symbols, the symbols of the Nazi state of
the
19 independent state of Croatia, for example, the law on the Academy of
20 Sciences and Arts, the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts? In
article
21 1 it says that it is the legal successor of the academy from the
period
22 from 1941 to 1945. The budget for 1991 does not envisage a single
dinar
23 for the schools of Serbs in Croatia, but it does envisage money for
24 Italians, Czechs, Ruthenians, and other national minorities. The law
on
25 the government allows the government to take measures against
so-called
Page 10644
1 disobedient municipalities. The only executive government in Europe
that
2 has the right to dissolve municipalities. The law on education refers
to
3 the Croatian language only, and so on and so forth?
4 JUDGE MAY: One thing at a time. What is the question,
5 Mr. Milosevic?
6 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
7 Q. The question is -- the question is: Is it correct that not only
8 through this behaviour and also the combination of this ethnic
intolerance
9 towards the Serbs, but it is also through the adoption of many laws,
the
10 Croatian authorities instigated nationalism and chauvinism not only
in
11 Croatia but also a discriminatory, an insulting attitude towards
Serbs in
12 Croatia. Is that right or is that not right, Mr. Mesic?
13 A. Croatia adopted laws that gave equal rights to all its citizens
14 and protect national minorities, all vulnerable groups, actually.
15 National minorities are vulnerable groups, and that is why Croatia
favours
16 positive discrimination of all vulnerable groups.
17 Q. Very well. Then give me a comment with regard to these following
18 statements: There are many such laws, and of course they did have to
19 cause concern. For example, a meeting of the parliament on the 4th of
20 October, 1990, the 4th of October, 1990, your own assembly. Damir
Majovic
21 says: "Do not trust the Serbs even when they bring gifts." Stjepan
22 Sulimanac says: "Persons who moved in after 1918, who moved into
Croatia
23 after 1918, a law should be passed with regard to such persons and
there
24 should be protection from them." Then MP Ivan Milas says: "We are
going
25 to use a sword in respect of your rights. The day of a final showdown
is
Page 10645
1 getting near." Another MP says: "All Serbs should be isolated like
Iraq
2 isolated the Kurds. A ghetto should be established for the Serbs." And
3 Praljak, what's his name, one of the helmsmen of the HDZ said in April
4 1990: "Outside the boys are already singing we are going to slaughter
the
5 Serbs." And so on and so forth. Is that the right kind of atmosphere,
6 Mr. Mesic? Is that the atmosphere in which the Serbs were supposed to
7 view everything that was happening to them with confidence? And in the
8 meantime you dismissed practically all Serbs from the state
9 administration?
10 JUDGE MAY: One thing at a time. Now, you've read out a series --
11 you've read out a series of quotations which are said to have been
made in
12 the parliament.
13 Now, Mr. Mesic, you can deal with that. First of all, do you know
14 if these statements were made, or these sort of statements, and if
so, is
15 there anything that you can tell us about them?
16 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] There were different statements that
17 will were impermissible, and it is certain that such statements
harmed
18 Croatia. As for Slobodan Praljak, I must say that he was never a
member
19 of the HDZ. When the HDZ was established, he was one of President
20 Tudjman's major critics. Now, why were such statements made? I say
today
21 as well that they did not work to Croatia's advantage but to its
22 disadvantage. There were rallies of Serbs in various places on the
4th of
23 February, 1990. On the 4th of March, 1990, there was a rally in
Petrova
24 Gora of people from Lika, Kordun, Banja Luka, Bosanska Krajina, and
also
25 Vojvodina in Serbia.
Page 10646
Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French
and English transcripts.
* Continued at: http://www.icdsm.org/more/mesic-4.htm
***** Urgent Message from Sloboda (Freedom) Association and the
International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic!
The Freedom Association in Belgrade and the ICDSM, based outside
Yugoslavia, are the two organizations formed at the request of Slobodan
Milosevic to aid in his defense.
Up until now our main work has been threefold. We have publicized the
truth about The Hague's phony trial. We have organized research to
help President Milosevic expose NATO's lies. And we have initiated legal
action in the Dutch and European Courts.
Now our job has increased. The defense phase of the "trial" starts in
May 2003. No longer will Mr. Milosevic be limited to cross-examining
Hague witnesses. The prosecution will be forced further onto the
defensive as victims of NATO's aggression and experts from Yugoslavia
and
the NATO countries tell what really happened and expose media lies.
Moreover, Mr. Milosevic will call leaders, from East and West, some
friendly and some hostile to the truth.
The controlled mass media will undoubtedly try to suppress this
testimony as they have tried to suppress Mr. Milosevic's
cross-examinations.
Nevertheless this phase of the "trial" will be the biggest international
forum ever to expose NATO's use of racism, violence and lies to
attack Yugoslavia.
We urgently need the help of all people who care about what is happening
in The Hague. Right now, Nico Steijnen , the Dutch lawyer in the
ICDSM, is waging legal battles in the Dutch courts and before the
European Court, about which more news soon. These efforts urgently
require
financial support. We now maintain a small staff of Yugoslav lawyers in
Holland, assisting and advising Mr. Milosevic full-time. We need to
expand our Dutch facilities, perhaps bringing in a non-Yugoslav attorney
full-time. Definitely we must guarantee that we have an office and
office manager available at all times, to compile and process evidence
and for meetings with witnesses and lawyers and as a base for
organizing press conferences.
All this costs money. And for this, we rely on those who want Mr.
Milosevic to have the best possible support for attacking NATO's lies.
************
Here's how you can help...
************
* You may contribute by credit card. By the end of September we will
have an ICDSM secure server so you can contribute directly on the
Internet.
For now, you can contribute by credit card in two ways: *
You can Contribute by Credit Card over the Telephone by calling:
ICDSM office, USA: 1 617 916-1705
SLOBODA (Freedom) Association office, Belgrade: 381 63 279 819
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http://www.icdsm.org
www.icdsm.org
=================================
Slobodan Milosevic's Cross-Examination of
Croatian President Stjepan Mesic: PART III
Because the transcript of the cross-examination is 150 pages long we
have broken it into 12 easy to read segments. If you wish to read the
whole thing at once go to: http://www.icdsm.org/more/mesic.htm
=================================
Page 10636
1 Q. You arrived on the 5th of December in the Croatian parliament.
2 You thanked them for their confidence. This was on the 5th of
December,
3 1991. And you made a notorious statement to the effect that you
thought I
4 have performed my task. Yugoslavia is no more. Is this so, Mr. Mesic?
5 We saw it on the video we played here a few days ago, and all of
6 Yugoslavia knows about this. You said: I think I have performed my
task.
7 Yugoslavia is no more.
8 A. An excellent question. I will explain what this was about. The
9 Croatian parliament elected me to be the Croatian member of the
Presidency
10 of Yugoslavia. I went to Belgrade, where first, for several months, I
was
11 not allowed to take up my duties because the Federal Assembly was
unable
12 to meet. After that, the Serbian bloc boycotted my election as
president
13 under --
14 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, let him finish. You've asked him a
15 question. Let him give his explanation.
16 A. Finally, under pressure from the international community, I was
17 elected president. Croatia adopted a decision on its independence.
18 Croatia, in agreement with the international community, postponed its
19 secession from Yugoslavia by three months. This time period had
elapsed.
20 Yugoslavia no longer existed. The federal institutions were no longer
21 functioning. I returned to Zagreb, and that's precisely what I said.
22 Because I did not go to Belgrade to open up a house-painting
business. I
23 went there as a member of the Presidency of Yugoslavia. Since
Yugoslavia
24 no longer existed and the Presidency no longer existed, I had
performed
25 the tasks entrusted to me by the Croatian parliament and was
reporting
Page 10637
1 back, ready to take up a different office. What was I to do in
Belgrade
2 when the Presidency no longer existed?
3 Q. Very well, Mr. Mesic. This is truly worthy of admiration, your
4 explanation of what you said, but you haven't told me whether you
actually
5 said: I have performed my task. Yugoslavia is no more.
6 A. The accused is a lawyer. He understands very well what I'm
7 talking about. My task was to represent Croatia in the Federal
8 Presidency.
9 Q. There is no need for you to repeat this. You said this in the
10 Croatian or Serbian language, or whatever you want to call it, and
11 everybody understood it. Your explanation now is obviously an attempt
to
12 make this statement relative, but this is no longer important.
13 [Trial Chamber confers]
14 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
15 Q. In your public statements, or rather, in Tudjman's public
16 statements on Ban Jelacic Square on the 24th of May, 1992, said
"There
17 would have been no war had not Croatia wanted it. But we thought that
it
18 was only by war that we could win the independence of Croatia. That's
why
19 we had a policy of negotiations behind which we were setting up
military
20 units. Had this not been so, we would not have reached our goal." Is
21 this correct, Mr. Mesic?
22 A. I think that this could have been reported only by the Serbian
23 press, because it simply does not correspond to the truth. We know
who
24 was in control of the press in Serbia. It was the accused, Slobodan
25 Milosevic.
Page 10638
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12 Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the
French and
13 English transcripts.
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Page 10639
1 Q. Unfortunately, a few days ago we watched a video of this, and we
2 saw this speech on Ban Jelacic square, taped on video. Tell me,
please:
3 Do you know that when the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was founded
and
4 the new constituted was promulgated on the 27th of April, 1992, a
5 declaration was adopted on the goals of the new common state, that is,
the
6 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, according to which, and I quote
verbatim:
7 "Yugoslavia has no territorial pretensions towards any of the former
8 Yugoslav republics." Are you aware of this?
9 A. I don't know what the declaration on the establishing of the
10 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia says, but I do know everything that
was
11 done to cut off parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and annex
them
12 to Serbia.
13 Q. Mr. Mesic, you're telling us fairy tales about Karlovac, Karlobag
14 Virovitica boundary. When did you ever hear any official of the
Republic
15 of Serbia referring to this border, and when did any body or organ of
the
16 Republic of Serbia or anyone in Yugoslavia raise this issue and talk
about
17 such a boundary? This is a pure fabrication that you are launching
here.
18 Where did you get this idea?
19 A. It's quite understandable that those who perpetrated aggression
20 did not make such statements, but the Serbian minister, who was in
the
21 government, one of the ministers of Mr. Milosevic, visited this
boundary
22 with Vojislav Seselj, the Chetnik Vojvoda or leader, to show how far
the
23 interests of Serbia reached.
24 Q. What minister are you referring to? And if a minister visits a
25 spot, if he goes to a certain municipality, does he go to a boundary
or
Page 10640
1 does he mark a boundary? Was he marking a boundary there?
2 A. You understand very well that if someone visits Croatia,
3 especially an official, he should visit the official organs of the
4 Republic of Croatia.
5 Q. What municipal organs are you referring to if someone is visiting
6 a municipality? I didn't know you were a police state of that kind,
that
7 someone visiting a municipality in Croatia would have to report to the
8 police.
9 A. I was not paid to teach the accused Croatian laws. I was paid to
10 implement them.
11 Q. Mr. Mesic, you are a university graduate. Did you ever learn
12 about the rights of peoples to self-determination, and do you know
that
13 volumes and volumes of books have been written on this topic? Do you
know
14 about this?
15 A. I think this question is pointless. Of course I do. Of course I
16 know about the right to self-determination. This is going too far.
17 Q. Well, then answer me, please: Where did you get the idea that, as
18 you said, the Serbs in Croatia do not have a right to
self-determination?
19 Where did you get the idea, as you said on page 2 of your statement,
that
20 according to the constitution of 1974, Yugoslavia was a confederal
state?
21 You know yourself that this is untrue. Show me a single
constitutional
22 provision to this effect. Is this correct or not, Mr. Mesic?
23 A. The Presidency of Yugoslavia was established as a confederal
24 institution because all decisions were made for the most part by
25 consensus, and the accused knows this very well. He also knows very
well
Page 10641
1 that according to the constitution of 1974, the republics were called
2 states, and he also knows that, by virtue of their association into
3 Yugoslavia, they also had the right to disassociate themselves from
4 Yugoslavia. When a threat arose that Croatia and Slovenia might suffer
5 the same fate as Kosovo, Vojvodina, and Montenegro, Croatia made use
of
6 its right to disassociate itself, and the Badinter Commission
confirmed
7 this. Of course the Serbs have a right to their own state. That state
is
8 the Republic of Serbia. But it is well known that national minorities
9 cannot ask to secede from the Republic of Croatia. They could ask for
10 that but they could not realise it, because the Republic of Croatia
was
11 recognised in the borders established by Avnoj and the accused knows
this
12 very well.
13 Q. Do you know that according to the Yugoslav constitution, it was
14 the peoples and not the republics that had sovereignty? Do you
remember
15 that even the coat of arms of Yugoslavia had five torches,
represented
16 five peoples: The Serbs, the Croats, the Slovenes, the Macedonians
and the
17 Montenegrins, and then later on a sixth torch was added when the
Muslims
18 were declared a constituent people? Are you aware of this, Mr. Mesic?
19 A. The constituent elements of the Federation were the republics,
20 plus two autonomous provinces: Vojvodina, and Kosovo. Those were the
21 constituent elements of the Federation. Symbolism is one thing, but
22 constitutional provisions are quite another.
23 Q. You assert that in the constitutions of Yugoslavia and the
24 republics, it was not the sovereignty of peoples that was the
starting
25 point but the territory of the republics established in 1945; is that
what
Page 10642
1 you're claiming? I just want to be clear so as not to waste time.
2 A. I have said what I had to say about the constituent elements of
3 the Federation. Croatia had the right to self-determination, and the
4 Serbs in Croatia had the right to protection, to protection of their
5 collective rights and of their status as citizens of the Republic of
6 Croatia.
7 Q. Very well. Let us proceed, then. Let us proceed at a faster
8 pace, so please answer me yes or no: Is it correct that all the
9 constitutions of Croatia, until the amendments introduced by you in
1990,
10 had a provision about the Serbs as a constituent people, not a ethnic
11 minority, as you have just said? For example, the constitution of
1945,
12 1963, 1974, the constitutional amendments of July 1990. So these
13 amendments of July 1990 for the first time left out the Serbs as a
14 constituent element of the Republic of Croatia. I'm referring now to
the
15 constitution of the Republic of Croatia. Did all the constitutions
16 contain a provision about the Serbian people as a constituent people
in
17 Croatia; yes or no?
18 A. One cannot reply to this question with yes or no. The
19 constitutions were enacted in different periods of time, in different
20 situations, and in different international environments. The
21 constitution, therefore, had different provisions at different points
in
22 time. For example, the Yugoslav and the Croatian constitutions had a
23 provision which other constitutions, for example, do not contain,
that
24 there are two kinds of groups: Narodi and Narodnosti, two kinds of
25 peoples, plus ethnic groups. The constitution was further developed
up
Page 10643
1 until 1990.
2 Q. So the fact that the Serbs were left out of the constitution was
3 a development.
4 Do you know that on the 14th of May, 1887, the Croatian parliament
5 enacted a provision on the use of the Cyrillic alphabet? Are you aware
of
6 this?
7 A. I was not aware of that particular piece of information, but I do
8 thank the accused for having given me this piece of information. That
is
9 truly meaningful for me.
10 Q. And do you know about the rest, that what the constitution -- what
11 the assembly of Croatia adopted in 1887 was abolished in 1990 by your
12 parliament? They abolished the Cyrillic alphabet as an official
13 alphabet. Do you know about that? You went 150 years backwards. Do
you
14 know that?
15 A. Yet another piece of information, very important to me, as a
16 lawyer.
17 Q. All right, Mr. Mesic. Do you remember an entire series of laws,
18 not to mention taking over symbols, the symbols of the Nazi state of
the
19 independent state of Croatia, for example, the law on the Academy of
20 Sciences and Arts, the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts? In
article
21 1 it says that it is the legal successor of the academy from the
period
22 from 1941 to 1945. The budget for 1991 does not envisage a single
dinar
23 for the schools of Serbs in Croatia, but it does envisage money for
24 Italians, Czechs, Ruthenians, and other national minorities. The law
on
25 the government allows the government to take measures against
so-called
Page 10644
1 disobedient municipalities. The only executive government in Europe
that
2 has the right to dissolve municipalities. The law on education refers
to
3 the Croatian language only, and so on and so forth?
4 JUDGE MAY: One thing at a time. What is the question,
5 Mr. Milosevic?
6 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
7 Q. The question is -- the question is: Is it correct that not only
8 through this behaviour and also the combination of this ethnic
intolerance
9 towards the Serbs, but it is also through the adoption of many laws,
the
10 Croatian authorities instigated nationalism and chauvinism not only
in
11 Croatia but also a discriminatory, an insulting attitude towards
Serbs in
12 Croatia. Is that right or is that not right, Mr. Mesic?
13 A. Croatia adopted laws that gave equal rights to all its citizens
14 and protect national minorities, all vulnerable groups, actually.
15 National minorities are vulnerable groups, and that is why Croatia
favours
16 positive discrimination of all vulnerable groups.
17 Q. Very well. Then give me a comment with regard to these following
18 statements: There are many such laws, and of course they did have to
19 cause concern. For example, a meeting of the parliament on the 4th of
20 October, 1990, the 4th of October, 1990, your own assembly. Damir
Majovic
21 says: "Do not trust the Serbs even when they bring gifts." Stjepan
22 Sulimanac says: "Persons who moved in after 1918, who moved into
Croatia
23 after 1918, a law should be passed with regard to such persons and
there
24 should be protection from them." Then MP Ivan Milas says: "We are
going
25 to use a sword in respect of your rights. The day of a final showdown
is
Page 10645
1 getting near." Another MP says: "All Serbs should be isolated like
Iraq
2 isolated the Kurds. A ghetto should be established for the Serbs." And
3 Praljak, what's his name, one of the helmsmen of the HDZ said in April
4 1990: "Outside the boys are already singing we are going to slaughter
the
5 Serbs." And so on and so forth. Is that the right kind of atmosphere,
6 Mr. Mesic? Is that the atmosphere in which the Serbs were supposed to
7 view everything that was happening to them with confidence? And in the
8 meantime you dismissed practically all Serbs from the state
9 administration?
10 JUDGE MAY: One thing at a time. Now, you've read out a series --
11 you've read out a series of quotations which are said to have been
made in
12 the parliament.
13 Now, Mr. Mesic, you can deal with that. First of all, do you know
14 if these statements were made, or these sort of statements, and if
so, is
15 there anything that you can tell us about them?
16 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] There were different statements that
17 will were impermissible, and it is certain that such statements
harmed
18 Croatia. As for Slobodan Praljak, I must say that he was never a
member
19 of the HDZ. When the HDZ was established, he was one of President
20 Tudjman's major critics. Now, why were such statements made? I say
today
21 as well that they did not work to Croatia's advantage but to its
22 disadvantage. There were rallies of Serbs in various places on the
4th of
23 February, 1990. On the 4th of March, 1990, there was a rally in
Petrova
24 Gora of people from Lika, Kordun, Banja Luka, Bosanska Krajina, and
also
25 Vojvodina in Serbia.
Page 10646
Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French
and English transcripts.
* Continued at: http://www.icdsm.org/more/mesic-4.htm
***** Urgent Message from Sloboda (Freedom) Association and the
International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic!
The Freedom Association in Belgrade and the ICDSM, based outside
Yugoslavia, are the two organizations formed at the request of Slobodan
Milosevic to aid in his defense.
Up until now our main work has been threefold. We have publicized the
truth about The Hague's phony trial. We have organized research to
help President Milosevic expose NATO's lies. And we have initiated legal
action in the Dutch and European Courts.
Now our job has increased. The defense phase of the "trial" starts in
May 2003. No longer will Mr. Milosevic be limited to cross-examining
Hague witnesses. The prosecution will be forced further onto the
defensive as victims of NATO's aggression and experts from Yugoslavia
and
the NATO countries tell what really happened and expose media lies.
Moreover, Mr. Milosevic will call leaders, from East and West, some
friendly and some hostile to the truth.
The controlled mass media will undoubtedly try to suppress this
testimony as they have tried to suppress Mr. Milosevic's
cross-examinations.
Nevertheless this phase of the "trial" will be the biggest international
forum ever to expose NATO's use of racism, violence and lies to
attack Yugoslavia.
We urgently need the help of all people who care about what is happening
in The Hague. Right now, Nico Steijnen , the Dutch lawyer in the
ICDSM, is waging legal battles in the Dutch courts and before the
European Court, about which more news soon. These efforts urgently
require
financial support. We now maintain a small staff of Yugoslav lawyers in
Holland, assisting and advising Mr. Milosevic full-time. We need to
expand our Dutch facilities, perhaps bringing in a non-Yugoslav attorney
full-time. Definitely we must guarantee that we have an office and
office manager available at all times, to compile and process evidence
and for meetings with witnesses and lawyers and as a base for
organizing press conferences.
All this costs money. And for this, we rely on those who want Mr.
Milosevic to have the best possible support for attacking NATO's lies.
************
Here's how you can help...
************
* You may contribute by credit card. By the end of September we will
have an ICDSM secure server so you can contribute directly on the
Internet.
For now, you can contribute by credit card in two ways: *
You can Contribute by Credit Card over the Telephone by calling:
ICDSM office, USA: 1 617 916-1705
SLOBODA (Freedom) Association office, Belgrade: 381 63 279 819
You can Contribute using PayPal at:
https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=icdsm%40aol.com
PayPal accepts VISA and MasterCard
You can Contribute by mail to:
ICDSM
831 Beacon St., #295
Newton Centre, MA 02459 (USA)
- OR -
You can Contribute by wire transfer to Sloboda Association
Intermediary:
UBS AG
Zurich, Switzerland
Swift Code: UBSWCHZH
Account with:
/ 756 - CHF
/ 840 - USD
/ 978 - EUR
Kmercijalna Banka AD
SV. Save 14, 11000 Belgrade, FR Yugoslavia
Swift Code: KOBBYUBG
Beneficiary: Account No. 5428-1246-16154-6
SLOBODA
Rajiceva 16, 11000 Belgrade, FR Yugoslavia
Thank you!
http://www.icdsm.org
CONTRO LA GUERRA IMPERIALISTA
RESISTENZA CONTINUA!
Con l'imminente guerra all'Iraq, in continuità con quella del '91,
della Jugoslavia e dell'Afghanistan, è in atto un'operazione di
destabilizzazione dell'area mediorientale, condotta dall'imperialismo
USA, con il contributo determinante dello Stato sionista israeliano,
teso al controllo diretto delle risorse petrolifere dell'area e
relativi corridoi.
Tale guerra ne prepara altre, insieme alla definitiva soluzione del
problema palestinese con l'annessione israeliana di gran parte dei
territori occupati e il resto ridotto a regime di apartheid, come
riserva di manodopera a basso costo e senza alcun diritto.
Il carattere imperialista della guerra è nella necessità per gli USA
di mantenere la propria egemonia economica con la forza bellica,
rilanciando la spesa militare e la corsa al riarmo a sostegno del
ciclo economico, e pilotare così la fuoriuscita dalla recessione.
Infatti tutta l'economia americana si regge su un enorme processo di
indebitamento, finanziato da tutto il resto del mondo.
La strategia di guerra preventiva, che è anche la forma attuale dello
scontro interimperialistico USA-UE, implica per tutti i paesi, inclusi
quelli europei, la possibilità di essere colpiti dalle politiche di
destabilizzazione degli USA, che cercano di prevenire il formarsi di
potenze competitive o che possano sottrarsi al loro controllo.
Guerra preventiva significa anche un salto di qualità ulteriore nelle
politiche interne di attacco alle condizioni di vita e di lavoro dei
proletari (Precarietà, Patto per l'Italia, abolizione dell'articolo
18, Legge Bossi-Fini ecc.) e nelle misure repressive e di deriva
autoritaria col pretesto della "guerra al terrorismo" nel nostro Paese
come in tutto il mondo.
Come organismi di lotta intendiamo impegnarci nell'ampio movimento
contro la guerra che si va formando, sollecitando ad una presa di
coscienza ed alla resistenza antimperialista.
Proponiamo, in questo contesto, l'unità delle forze antimperialiste in
Italia, nella prospettiva dello sviluppo di un largo fronte
internazionale.
- Non un uomo, non un soldo, né una base per la guerra.
- Pieno sostegno al popolo iracheno, alla resistenza
palestinese e a tutti i popoli in lotta contro l'oppressione
imperialista
- Contro le polizie e gli eserciti dei padroni, le liste nere,
la criminalizzazione degli immigrati e delle lotte sociali, la
repressione dello Stato e il potere manipolatorio dei mass-media.
- Fuori l'Italia dalla Nato, fuori le basi Usa e Nato dal
nostro Paese
L'UNICA GUERRA CHE I POPOLI POSSONO ACCETTARE
È QUELLA PER LA LORO LIBERAZIONE
Domenica 10 novembre - Firenze
ASSEMBLEA
Via Pisana, 809 c/o Casa del Popolo Ponte a Greve
per dare vita ad un percorso stabile e unitario delle forze
antimperialiste
Promotori:
Coordinamento dei Comitati Antimperialisti ed Antifascisti della
Toscana
Assemblea Antimperialista
Comitati contro la guerra - Milano
Centro Popolare Occupato "La Fucina" - Sesto San Giovanni (MI)
Coordinamento Romagnolo contro le guerre e la Nato
Gruppo Zastava - Trieste
Coordinamento Nazionale per la Jugoslavia
Comitato contro la guerra - Roma Sud
Compagne e compagni antimperialiste/i di: Bologna, Pordenone, Torino
Soccorso Popolare - Padova
G.A.MA.DI. - Roma
Comitato Provvisorio immigrati in Italia
--------------------------------------
PRAGA 20 NOVEMBRE 2002
Piazza della citta' vecchia (Staromestske Namesti) - ore 14:30
In occasione del vertice atlantico che si terra' il 21-22 novembre
nella capitale ceka per decidere un nuovo allargamento ad Est della
Nato e il suo coinvolgimento nella dottrina di Bush della "guerra
preventiva"
MANIFESTAZIONE EUROPEA
Contro la guerra all'Iraq, contro le guerre di Bush
Contro la NATO e il suo allargamento ad Est
Per un'Europa di pace, di giustizia sociale e di amicizia tra i popoli
Per un'Europa autonoma e neutrale, senza basi militari straniere
La manifestazione e' promossa da Partito comunista della Repubblica
Ceka (KSCM) con altre organizzazioni giovanili, pacifiste, sindacali
del paese, e dal Forum europeo per la pace, con l'adesione - per la
prima volta congiunta, dopo il 1989 - delle maggiori forze comuniste e
di sinistra alternativa di tutta l'Europa (dell'Est e dell'Ovest),
rappresentative di decine di milioni di cittadini europei. Hanno
aderito finora: BELGIO (Pc e Partito del lavoro), BIELORUSSIA (i due
partiti comunisti), BOSNIA (Pc dei lavoratori), BULGARIA (Pcb), CIPRO
(Akel), CROAZIA (Partito socialista operaio), DANIMARCA (i due partiti
comunisti), FINLANDIA (Pc), FRANCIA (Pcf), GERMANIA (Pds e Dkp),
GRECIA (Pc-Kke e Synaspismos), ITALIA (Rifondazione comunista, PdCI,
Rete dei comunisti), LETTONIA (Partito socialista), MOLDAVIA (Pc),
POLONIA (Unione comunisti polacchi - proletariat), PORTOGALLO (Pcp),
UNGHERIA (Partito del lavoro), YUGOSLAVIA (Partito socialista serbo,
Partito dei comunisti yugoslavi e Nuovo Pc yugoslavo)... Dagli STATI
UNITI aderisce l'International Action Center di Ramsey Clark. E le
adesioni continuano...
La manifestazione e' aperta a tutte le realta' politiche, sociali,
culturali, religiose, di movimento che si riconoscano nelle sue parole
d'ordine: contro la guerra, contro la NATO.
Per adesioni e maggiori informazioni, politiche e logistiche (viaggio
e alloggio a Praga) rivolgersi alle rispettive organizzazioni
nazionali
IL 9 NOVEMBRE TUTTI A FIRENZE
alla manifestazione contro la guerra del Forum Sociale Europeo
IL 20 NOVEMBRE TUTTI A PRAGA
(da: http://www.lernesto.it/ )
RESISTENZA CONTINUA!
Con l'imminente guerra all'Iraq, in continuità con quella del '91,
della Jugoslavia e dell'Afghanistan, è in atto un'operazione di
destabilizzazione dell'area mediorientale, condotta dall'imperialismo
USA, con il contributo determinante dello Stato sionista israeliano,
teso al controllo diretto delle risorse petrolifere dell'area e
relativi corridoi.
Tale guerra ne prepara altre, insieme alla definitiva soluzione del
problema palestinese con l'annessione israeliana di gran parte dei
territori occupati e il resto ridotto a regime di apartheid, come
riserva di manodopera a basso costo e senza alcun diritto.
Il carattere imperialista della guerra è nella necessità per gli USA
di mantenere la propria egemonia economica con la forza bellica,
rilanciando la spesa militare e la corsa al riarmo a sostegno del
ciclo economico, e pilotare così la fuoriuscita dalla recessione.
Infatti tutta l'economia americana si regge su un enorme processo di
indebitamento, finanziato da tutto il resto del mondo.
La strategia di guerra preventiva, che è anche la forma attuale dello
scontro interimperialistico USA-UE, implica per tutti i paesi, inclusi
quelli europei, la possibilità di essere colpiti dalle politiche di
destabilizzazione degli USA, che cercano di prevenire il formarsi di
potenze competitive o che possano sottrarsi al loro controllo.
Guerra preventiva significa anche un salto di qualità ulteriore nelle
politiche interne di attacco alle condizioni di vita e di lavoro dei
proletari (Precarietà, Patto per l'Italia, abolizione dell'articolo
18, Legge Bossi-Fini ecc.) e nelle misure repressive e di deriva
autoritaria col pretesto della "guerra al terrorismo" nel nostro Paese
come in tutto il mondo.
Come organismi di lotta intendiamo impegnarci nell'ampio movimento
contro la guerra che si va formando, sollecitando ad una presa di
coscienza ed alla resistenza antimperialista.
Proponiamo, in questo contesto, l'unità delle forze antimperialiste in
Italia, nella prospettiva dello sviluppo di un largo fronte
internazionale.
- Non un uomo, non un soldo, né una base per la guerra.
- Pieno sostegno al popolo iracheno, alla resistenza
palestinese e a tutti i popoli in lotta contro l'oppressione
imperialista
- Contro le polizie e gli eserciti dei padroni, le liste nere,
la criminalizzazione degli immigrati e delle lotte sociali, la
repressione dello Stato e il potere manipolatorio dei mass-media.
- Fuori l'Italia dalla Nato, fuori le basi Usa e Nato dal
nostro Paese
L'UNICA GUERRA CHE I POPOLI POSSONO ACCETTARE
È QUELLA PER LA LORO LIBERAZIONE
Domenica 10 novembre - Firenze
ASSEMBLEA
Via Pisana, 809 c/o Casa del Popolo Ponte a Greve
per dare vita ad un percorso stabile e unitario delle forze
antimperialiste
Promotori:
Coordinamento dei Comitati Antimperialisti ed Antifascisti della
Toscana
Assemblea Antimperialista
Comitati contro la guerra - Milano
Centro Popolare Occupato "La Fucina" - Sesto San Giovanni (MI)
Coordinamento Romagnolo contro le guerre e la Nato
Gruppo Zastava - Trieste
Coordinamento Nazionale per la Jugoslavia
Comitato contro la guerra - Roma Sud
Compagne e compagni antimperialiste/i di: Bologna, Pordenone, Torino
Soccorso Popolare - Padova
G.A.MA.DI. - Roma
Comitato Provvisorio immigrati in Italia
--------------------------------------
PRAGA 20 NOVEMBRE 2002
Piazza della citta' vecchia (Staromestske Namesti) - ore 14:30
In occasione del vertice atlantico che si terra' il 21-22 novembre
nella capitale ceka per decidere un nuovo allargamento ad Est della
Nato e il suo coinvolgimento nella dottrina di Bush della "guerra
preventiva"
MANIFESTAZIONE EUROPEA
Contro la guerra all'Iraq, contro le guerre di Bush
Contro la NATO e il suo allargamento ad Est
Per un'Europa di pace, di giustizia sociale e di amicizia tra i popoli
Per un'Europa autonoma e neutrale, senza basi militari straniere
La manifestazione e' promossa da Partito comunista della Repubblica
Ceka (KSCM) con altre organizzazioni giovanili, pacifiste, sindacali
del paese, e dal Forum europeo per la pace, con l'adesione - per la
prima volta congiunta, dopo il 1989 - delle maggiori forze comuniste e
di sinistra alternativa di tutta l'Europa (dell'Est e dell'Ovest),
rappresentative di decine di milioni di cittadini europei. Hanno
aderito finora: BELGIO (Pc e Partito del lavoro), BIELORUSSIA (i due
partiti comunisti), BOSNIA (Pc dei lavoratori), BULGARIA (Pcb), CIPRO
(Akel), CROAZIA (Partito socialista operaio), DANIMARCA (i due partiti
comunisti), FINLANDIA (Pc), FRANCIA (Pcf), GERMANIA (Pds e Dkp),
GRECIA (Pc-Kke e Synaspismos), ITALIA (Rifondazione comunista, PdCI,
Rete dei comunisti), LETTONIA (Partito socialista), MOLDAVIA (Pc),
POLONIA (Unione comunisti polacchi - proletariat), PORTOGALLO (Pcp),
UNGHERIA (Partito del lavoro), YUGOSLAVIA (Partito socialista serbo,
Partito dei comunisti yugoslavi e Nuovo Pc yugoslavo)... Dagli STATI
UNITI aderisce l'International Action Center di Ramsey Clark. E le
adesioni continuano...
La manifestazione e' aperta a tutte le realta' politiche, sociali,
culturali, religiose, di movimento che si riconoscano nelle sue parole
d'ordine: contro la guerra, contro la NATO.
Per adesioni e maggiori informazioni, politiche e logistiche (viaggio
e alloggio a Praga) rivolgersi alle rispettive organizzazioni
nazionali
IL 9 NOVEMBRE TUTTI A FIRENZE
alla manifestazione contro la guerra del Forum Sociale Europeo
IL 20 NOVEMBRE TUTTI A PRAGA
(da: http://www.lernesto.it/ )
1. LINKS on the "Yugoslavia-to-Iraq equipment export" scandal
2. AFP dispatches
3. TANJUG and BETA dispatches
=== 1 ===
LINKS
COMMENTARY:
> http://www.antiwar.com/malic/m-col.html
Casus Belli: Balkans The Key To Iraq War? (by Nebojsa Malic)
NEWS AND ARTICLES:
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/europe/2343355.stm
Sunday, 20 October, 2002, 00:45 GMT 01:45 UK
Bosnia firm 'sold arms illegally'
The Nato inquiry is expected to last several weeks
By Nick Hawton In Sarajevo
> http://breaking.examiner.ie/2002/10/22/story73662.html#
Yugoslav dealer exported equipment to Iraq
> http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/10/23/38546.html
Yugoslavia Accused of Weapons Sales to Iraq (by Sergey Yugov)
PRAVDA (RUSSIA) 13:53 2002-10-23
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/europe/2351795.stm
Wednesday, 23 October, 2002, 00:59 GMT 01:59 UK
Yugoslav officials sacked in arms row
Spare parts for Mig fighters are said to have gone to Iraq
> http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml;jsessionid=
KUO1UKXX2FPY4CRBAEZSFEY?type=search&StoryID=1616602
NATO Gathers Proof of Bosnia Arms Export to Iraq
Last Updated: October 22, 2002 05:51 PM ET
SARAJEVO (Reuters)
> http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=
search&StoryID=1616531
Yugoslavia Sacks Minister over Arms-To-Iraq Charge
Last Updated: October 22, 2002 05:08 PM ET
By Will Hardie and Nedim Dervisbegovic
> http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/
20021022/ap_wo_en_po/bosnia_intelligence_service_1
Bosnia's top international official fires head of intelligence service
Tue Oct 22, 8:40 AM ET
By AIDA CERKEZ-ROBINSON, Associated Press Writer
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2549-2002Oct22.html
THE WASHINGTON POST
U.S. Says Two Serb Firms Are Helping Iraqis
Yugoslav, Bosnian Companies Accused of Repairing Fighters, Sharing
Technology
By Nicholas Wood - Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, October 23, 2002; Page A24
> http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=345340
THE INDEPENDENT (London)
24 October 2002
Yugoslavia sacks minister in arms to Iraq scandal
By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade
> http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F
2002%2F10%2F24%2Fwirq324.xml&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=496098
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH (London) (Filed: 24/10/2002)
Serbian firms 'in arms deal with Iraq'
By Alex Todorovic in Belgrade
> http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml;jsessionid=
O2LLZL1FLCQOKCRBAELCFEY?type=search&StoryID=1629406
Missile igniter smuggled towards Iraq
Last Updated: October 24, 2002 03:45 PM ET
RIJEKA, Croatia (Reuters)
> http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/bcr2/bcr2_20021024_1_eng.txt
Kostunica Blamed for Iraq Debacle (by Aleksandar Radic)
MORE:
> http://www.vj.yu/english/index.htm
The Yugoslav Army's Official Site - News
=== 2 ===
AFP: NATO uncovers weapons exports by Bosnian company accused of links
to Iraq
SARAJEVO, Oct 19 (AFP) - The NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) said
Saturday it uncovered evidence of unreported exports of weapons parts
by a Bosnian Serb military company earlier accused by the
United States of links to Iraq.
"SFOR's preliminary inspection results uncover the existence of a
contract linking the ORAO factory... to the unreported export of
weapons systems components," a press release issued by SFOR said. SFOR
spokesman Yves Vanier declined to provide details, saying more
information will become known in the coming weeks.
The United States informed authorities here in September of its
suspicions that the Orao company, based in the Serb-run part of
Bosnia, was supplying Iraq with spare aircraft parts and that its
staff was travelling there to help with airplane maintenance. The
Bosnian Serb government denied the allegations following an
investigation.
SFOR inspected Orao earlier this month in what they said was a regular
"periodic review and inspection" of the country's military capacities
to ensure compliance with the 1995 Dayton peace accords. It said at
the time that the investigation had nothing to do with the US
allegations.
The 1995 peace deal that ended Bosnia's 1992-1995 war split the
country into the Serb-run Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat
Federation. Both entities have separate governments, parliaments,
police and armed forces, and are linked by central institutions. ORAO
comes under the authority of Bosnian Serb military headquarters.
SFOR informed Bosnian Serb authorities of the initial findings and
will also notify the country's central institutions and international
community officials, Vanier said.
AFP Bosnian Serb company sold weapons parts to Iraq via Yugoslavia:
official
SARAJEVO, Oct 22 (AFP) - A Bosnian Serb military company sold weapons
parts to Iraq via a Yugoslav state-controlled company, the country's
top military body confirmed Tuesday.
Stjepan Pocrnja, secretary general of Bosnia's Standing Military
Committee, told Bosnian television that Washington had informed the
body of "illegal activities by Orao (a military company) and its
Yugoslav partner Jugoimport."
"They (the United States) provided us with numerous photos, various
materials ... and a contract confirming" illegal sales of weapons
parts, Pocrnja told Bosnian television.
If confirmed, the sale of weapons parts by Orao to Iraq in violation
of UN Security Council's resolutions would "seriously damage the
international reputation of Bosnia-Herzegovina," Paddy Ashdown, the
top international envoy here, told Bosnian television.
"I hope the Bosnian people will understand that if that was the case,
the most serious actions would need to be taken to protect the
reputation of this country," he added.
Ashdown has wide powers to implement the 1995 Dayton peace accords,
including the power to sack the country's officials.
The 1995 peace deal that ended Bosnia's 1992-95 war split the country
into the Serb-run Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation.
The two entities have separate governments, parliaments, police and
armed forces, and are linked by central institutions.
Ashdown's deputy, US diplomat Donald Hays, said earlier Tuesday that
an investigation by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had
revealed that weapons parts sold by Orao ended up in Iraq via a third
party.
"The results so far indicate that there were items shipped (by the
company) to a second party that ended up in Iraq," Hays told
reporters, without elaborating.
The NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) earlier said it uncovered
evidence of unreported exports of weapons parts by Orao, saying more
details would become known in the coming weeks.
However, Hays could not say whether Orao intended to export the
weapons parts to Iraq, stressing that the investigation's findings
were not yet confirmed.
"I'm not sure that it is clear that this had any governmental
connection," Hays added.
The United States informed authorities here in September of its
suspicions that Orao (Eagle) -- based in the Serb-run part of Bosnia
and under the authority of the Bosnian Serb military headquarters --
was supplying Iraq with spare aircraft parts and that its staff was
traveling there to help with airplane maintenance.
The Bosnian Serb government denied the allegations following an
investigation.
Hays said that there were "ongoing discussions in various capitals"
about this "serious" issue.
The Serbian interior minister said earlier Tuesday that Serbia, which
along with Montenegro makes up Yugoslavia, has begun an investigation
into press reports that a state-controlled company was involved in
exporting military equipment from Bosnia to Iraq.
Minister Dusan Mihajlovic told Belgrade radio B92 that a "very
serious and thorough probe has been launched" into the reports.
Mihajlovic, who is also chairman of Jugoimport's managing board, said
he had no information on "any exports of weapons to Iraq."
Belgrade launches investigation into sale of military equipment to
Iraq.
WASHINGTON, Oct 23 (AFP) - The United States Wednesday welcomed
measures taken by Belgrade to end the sale by a Yugoslav firm of
military equipment to Iraq in violation of UN sanctions, and is urging
the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina to do the same.
"We welcome the steps that were taken yesterday by the government of
Yugoslavia" State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said, adding that
the measures were "significant".
He said Washington had offered "its full support and cooperation" to
Yugoslav authorities in the investigation of this case.
Belgrade dismissed two people allegedly involved in the military
transfers and ordered an investigation into Jugoimport, a
state-controlled company suspected of providing Iraq with military
aviation supplies and expertise.
The authorities in Belgrade acted in response to a request by
American
authorities to halt any ongoing cooperation with Iraq, investigate the
sales and prosecute those found responsible for them.
Washington has also asked the authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina to
look into the activities of the Arao Aviation firm in the Bosnian
entity Republika Srpska, also suspected of illegal sales to Iraq.
"We certainly expect the relevant authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina
to
undertake the necessary steps to immediately halt any ongoing
cooperation with Iraq, to conduct a through investigation and to hold
accountable those responsible" Mr Reeker said.
The official said the United States had told Bosnian authorities of
its suspicions in September that Arao -- which is operates under the
aegis of the Bosnian Serb military headquarters.
Boucher said that in addition to violating the UN sanctions, the sales
by Arao contravened the terms of the Dayton Peace Accord which
requires that the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) be informed
about military export activity in Republika Srpska.
The 1995 peace deal that ended Bosnia's 1992-95 war split the country
into the Serb-run Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation.
AFP Three Bosnian Serb officials sacked over weapons sales to Iraq
BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Oct 24 (AFP) - Three high ranking
Bosnian Serb officials were sacked Thursday over the sale of spare
parts for Iraqi fighter jets in violation of a UN arms embargo,
officials said.
Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Mladen Ivanic voiced hope that the
dismissals would "prevent further negative consequences" for the
Serb-run entity of Republika Srpska and Bosnia, according to a
statement released after the government held an extraordinary session
over the matter.
The government fired the head of the Bosnian Serb military factory
Orao (Eagle) Milan Prica, Air Force chief Colonel Miljan Vlacic, and
the head of government's weapons trade office Spasoje Orasanin.
Earlier in the day Bosnian Serb authorities said that Orao sold the
parts to Iraq through a Yugoslav state-run company, shifting
attention in the probe to Belgrade.
The government ordered an urgent audit of Orao's finances, while the
defence ministry was told to conduct a thorough investigation into the
case.
Orao was supplying weapons parts to "a country under UN embargo," the
defence ministry admitted in a statement.
"The shipment of weapons parts was done through the (company)
Jugoimport and firms" that Jugoimport is working with in Yugoslavia,
the ministry added.
A Bosnian Serb commission began investigating the company in
September
after the United States alleged that Orao, operating under the
authority of the Bosnian Serb military, was supplying Baghdad with
spare aircraft parts.
The United States also said that Orao employees had travelled to Iraq
to help with airplane maintenance.
According to Nezavisne Novine daily, the NATO-led peacekeeping
Stabilisation Force (SFOR) found during a recent inspection of the
factory a copy of a contract which showed that Orao, based in the
northeastern town of Bijeljina, had shipped weapons parts to Iraq
through Jugoimport.
It was signed by Belgrade-based Jugoimport and Bagdad-based "Al
Bashair Trade Company," the paper reported.
The contract stated that Jugoimport would deliver to Iraq weapons
parts from the Orao aircraft firm and that Orao's employees would
conduct repairs on Iraqi MiG-21 and MiG-29 fighter aircraft in the
period between October 2000 and October 2005, the daily said.
The Bosnian Serb defence ministry said Thursday it was trying to make
a list of tools, spare parts and equipment, which had been delivered
to Jugoimport and its partners.
Belgrade has dismissed two people allegedly involved in the sales and
ordered an investigation into Jugoimport.
The government has said the defence ministry would also be probed
along with Jugoimport, while Serbian police and justice officials
have already launched a full-scale investigation.
Washington said earlier this week it expected both Yugoslavia and
Bosnia to stop the arms transfers, investigate the sales and
prosecute those responsible.
In addition to violating the UN sanctions, Orao's sales to Iraq
contravened the terms of the Dayton peace deal, which requires that
the peacekeepers be informed of all military exports from the
Republika Srpska, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.
Local analysts warned that the scandal was likely to have negative
consequences for both the Bosnian Serb entity and its army.
Due to the scandal "the reputation of Republika Srpska and its army
will be harmed," a military analyst, Ostoja Barasin, told AFP.
The 1995 peace deal that ended Bosnia's 1992-95 war split the country
into the Serb-run Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation.
The two entities, linked by weak central institutions, have separate
governments, parliaments, police and armed forces.
Barasin stressed that the affair could give ground to those political
groups who claim that Bosnia should have a unified army, an idea which
is strongly opposed by Bosnian Serbs.
=== 3 ===
http://www.beta.co.yu/e/
BETA DAILY NEWS
October 23, 2002
Yugoslav Government Holds Emergency Session Following
Reports of Illegal Arms Sale to Iraq -- Kosovo Serbs
from Five Municipalities to Vote in Election -- Hague
Prosecutor Announces Indictments for Crimes in Kosovo
-- Solana Envoys Visit Belgrade, Podgorica --
Montenegrin Legislature to Hold Inaugural Session at
Beginning of November
FR YUGOSLAVIA
YUGOSLAV GOVERNMENT MEETS ON IRAQI ARMS AFFAIR. The
Yugoslav government fired on Oct. 22 Jugoimport
company GM Jovan Cekovic and Assistant Yugoslav
Defense Minister Gen. Ivan Djokic.
After an emergency session following press reports of
illegal arms sales to Iraq through the Jugoimport
military equipment dealer, the government released a
statement saying that Djokic was dismissed "as the
person in charge of arms and military equipment
trading."
The government called on state institutions to
investigate Jugoimport's trade deals and other weapons
traders as well, to establish if anyone else was
involved.
The government demanded that Jugoimport close its
office in Baghdad.
The federal government also said it would create a
commission to investigate the issue of permits for
arms and military equipment exports.
---
No trade of weapons and military equipment with Iraq, Yugoslav DEFENSE
Ministry
BELGRADE, Oct 22 (Tanjug) - Since the return of Yugoslavia into the
United Nations, the Yugoslav Defense Ministry has not received any
request to approve trade in weapons and military equipment with Iraq,
therefore, such trade has not been approved, the Ministry said in
Belgrade on Tuesday.
Regarding indications about the possible violation of the UN
sanctions, not only linked to Iraq, the federal Defense Ministry will
investigate each separate case with the aim of taking measures against
the possible perpetrators and reporting to the corresponding state
organs, the statement said.
The Ministry issued the statement following demands for its reaction
by several media regarding an article in today's issue of the Belgrade
daily Blic entitled "Yugoslav Experts in Iraq."
Yugoslav minister says Jugoimport SDPR scandal causes serious damage
BELGRADE, Oct 23 (Tanjug) - Yugoslav Interior Minister Zoran Zivkovic
said late on Tuesday that the scandal with the SDPR Jugoimport
enterprise had caused a lot of damage to Yugoslavia.
"Just a suspicion that something has been done with Iraq, which is
under sanctions, is reason enough to jeopardize the top state
interests," Zivkovic told the Serbian state television's late night
news broadcast on Tuesday. "So far we have succeeded in finding some
confirmation of this suspicion," he said and added that an
investigation aimed at establishing all details would begin on
Wednesday.
Serbian interior minister denies allegations, announces investigation
BELGRADE, Oct 22 (Tanjug) - President of the Jugoimport SDPR JP
company administration board and Serbian Minister of the Interior
Dusan Mihajlovic denied Tuesday allegations by some media on
violations of the UN embargo on exporting military equipment to Iraq,
and announced an investigation of the allegations and
consultations with Yugoslav Premier Dragisa Pesic and Deputy Premier
Miroljub Labus on future measures and activities regarding the affair.
Mihajlovic underlined that since he became Jugoimport SDPR board
president, the board has not discussed any documents containing
information on the export of military equipment to Iraq or on any
engagement of Yugoslav experts in the installation of such equipment
or in troop training in Iraq.
Mihajlovic expressed hope that the affair will soon be cleared up and
that it will not have a negative impact on relations with the UN and
the US in particular.
Jugoimport - SDPR company denies exporting weapons to Iraq
BELGRADE, Oct 22 (Tanjug) - The Jugoimport - SDPR company on Tuesday
denied reports in the Belgrade press that it had mediated in the
export of weapons and military equipment to Iraq allegedly
manufactured by the Orao Aircraft Institute of Bjeljina, Republika
Srpska.
"We do not know what is in question because we have no outstanding
contracts for the delivery of goods and services which have the
character of weapons and military equipment to Iraq," a statement said
adding that this company has not signed such contracts since August
1990 when the United Nations imposed sanctions on Iraq.
"We have strictly adhered to all UN resolutions which introduce
sanctions against Iraq," the statement said.
Jugoimport - SDPR recalled that during the 1970s and 1980s it had
engaged in significant business deals with Iraq which also included
the export of weapons and military equipment, as well as construction
work. This operation was conducted by the Federal Directorate For the
Trade of Special Goods - the legal predecessor of Jugoimport - SDPR.
From that period, there remain debts amounting to 1.2 billion dollars
and very valuable equipment owned by Yugoslav construction companies,
and their protection required that our company retains its offices in
Iraq, the statement said.
Washington calls on Yugoslavia, Bosnia to stop selling arms to Iraq
WASHINGTON, Oct 23 (Tanjug) - Washington on Tuesday called on the
authorities of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Yugoslavia to forbid their
enterprises to sell military equipment to Iraq in violation of UN
sanctions against the country.
The US Administration accused the Orao air institute in Republika
Srpska and the Yugoslav company Jugoimport of supplying military
equipment to Iraq. US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said
that the US government had strong evidence that the Orao air institute
had been overhauling military aircraft for Iraq in cooperation with
Jugoimport.
The US State Department spokesman said that there were no elements to
indicate any involvement of the Yugoslav and Bosnian governments, or
the involvement of Bosnian Serb authorities.
---
http://www.beta.co.yu/e/
BETA DAILY NEWS
October 24, 2002.
Arms Trade Affair with Iraq Continuing -- USA Approves
Steps Taken By Yugoslav Government -- ICTY President
Reports Yugoslavia to U.N. Security Council -- Still
No Agreement on Constitutional Charter -- Serbian
Constitutional Court Discusses Kostunica Party
Mandates Today -- Incident during High School Student
Protest in Skopje
FR Yugoslavia
REPUBLIKA SRPSKA GOVERNMENT CONFIRMS SELLING WEAPONS
TO IRAQ. The government of Republika Srpska confirmed
on Oct. 23 that the Orao aircraft company from
Bijeljina had violated the embargo on exporting
military equipment to Iraq.
"On the basis of information provided by Republika
Srpska's defense ministry, the Republika Srpska
government has confirmed that the Orao aircraft
company has violated the embargo on exporting military
eqipment to Iraq," government PR Cvijeta Kovacevic
told reporters in Bijeljina.
She said that the government believed that the
responsible people in Orao, the Republika Srpska
general staff and the defense ministry must be
punished, which is under the authority of the
Republika Srpska's Supreme Defense Council.
The U.S. Embassy in Bosnia said that the U.S. has
clear proof that the company from Bijeljina together
with the Yugoslav company Yugoimport provided
maintenance for aircrafts exported to Iraq.
The U.S. Embassy delivered the information to senior
officials in Bosnia, Republika Srpska and Yugoslavia,
who have promised in turn to carry out a detailed
investigation into the issue.
The U.S. expect the relevant institutions in Bosnia
and Yugoslavia to take the necessary steps to
immediately stop any kind of cooperation with Iraq, to
conduct a detailed investigation and to bring the
persons responsible to justice.
The Belgrade daily Blic of Oct. 22 says that SFOR
members recently found ample evidence in the Orao
plant and the Obarska sugar plant in Bijeljina,
showing that despite the UN sanctions, a large
quantity of military equipment has been exported to
Iraq through the Belgrade-based export company
Jugoimport.
At a closed session last night, the Yugoslav
government dismissed Jugoimport's manager Jovan
Cekovic and Yugoslav defense ministry official, Gen.
Ivan Djokic.
KOSTUNICA ON ARMS TRADE WITH IRAQ. On Oct. 23,
Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica described as
"unpleasant" the arms trade affair of the Yugoslav
Jugoimport SDRP company with Iraq. However, Kostunica
said that the affair "cannot cause drastic harm the
country's reputation."
"Unfortunately, this affair has been also used for
launching new attacks on the federal authorities, the
Yugoslav Army, and myself, which are as absurd as all
the previous ones," said Kostunica.
"The country's reputation cannot be drastically
affected by a case that has been discovered and
promptly been placed under investigation. However, the
country's reputation, or better to say, the remains of
that reputation, after what are mostly fabricated
affairs, can be harmed by the campaign of backbiting
and tale-bearing at the expense of the federal bodies,
in which both republics are directly involved in a
swift and synchronized fashion," stressed the Yugoslav
president.
DJINDJIC: IRAQ AFFAIR HARMFUL TO COUNTRY'S REPUTATION.
Serbian Premier Zoran Djindjic said on Oct. 23 that
the affair concerning the export of weapons to Iraq
through the Jugoimport company was extremely harmful
to the country's international reputation, there being
no civilian control over the army in Yugoslavia.
Djindjic said that the country's international image,
which has been greatly enhanced over the last two
years, "can now be endangered."
"All those who spoil our image, are working against
the country's interests. What we least need at the
moment when the world is divided into countries who
are fighting against terrorism and those who cooperate
with terrorists, is to be grouped with the latter,"
said the Serbian premier.
He said that the President of Yugoslavia was
responsible for all issues connected with the army and
raised the question of civilian control over the army.
Member of the Atlantic Council of Yugoslavia steering
committee, Zoran Ostojic said on Oct. 23 that an
investigation should be carried out to establish
responsibility for the export of large quantities of
military equipment to Iraq.
"If we manage to react quickly and learn from this
experience, the consequences for the country's
international reputation does not have to be
devastating," Ostojic told BETA.
Asked whether "the Jugoimport affair" can slow down
Yugoslavia's admission to the Partnership for Peace,
Ostojic said that it depends on the state's stand on
the issue and other requirements of the partnership.
"Partnership means sharing the same values - respect
for human rights, adherence to UN resolutions
prohibiting trade with certain countries and respect
for commitments to The Hague Tribunal. We cannot say
that we have achieved anything significant in these
fields," said Ostojic.
---
YUGOSLAV LEFT OFFICIAL IS NOT ADVISOR AT YUGOSLAV EMBASSY IN IRAQ
BELGRADE, Oct 23 (Beta) - The Yugoslav foreign ministry stated on Oct.
23 that the former foreign trade minister, Borisa Vukovic, was not an
advisor at Yugoslavia's embassy in Baghdad.
The ministry views as necessary, for the sake of truth, to point out
that not only is Vukovic is not an advisor at our embassy in Iraq, but
also that his employment with this ministry was terminated in November
1992," it was said in the statement. Meanwhile, the Belgrade firm
Jugoimport closed down its office in Iraq, as the Yugoslav government
had ordered.
After the dismissal of Jugoimport's director and the official in the
Yugoslav Defense Ministry, the United States approved the steps the
Yugoslav government had taken regarding this affair.
According to reports in the Blic daily about illegal arms trade with
Iraq, Vukovic issued permits for such deals as an advisor at the
Yugoslav Embassy in Iraq. Vukovic is a member of the Yugoslav Left,
whose leader is Mirjana Markovic, the wife of the former Yugoslav
president Slobodan Milosevic.
A Yugoslav Left official, Dragana Kuzmanovic, confirmed that Vukovic
was in Iraq, but said that she did not know what he was doing there.
2. AFP dispatches
3. TANJUG and BETA dispatches
=== 1 ===
LINKS
COMMENTARY:
> http://www.antiwar.com/malic/m-col.html
Casus Belli: Balkans The Key To Iraq War? (by Nebojsa Malic)
NEWS AND ARTICLES:
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/europe/2343355.stm
Sunday, 20 October, 2002, 00:45 GMT 01:45 UK
Bosnia firm 'sold arms illegally'
The Nato inquiry is expected to last several weeks
By Nick Hawton In Sarajevo
> http://breaking.examiner.ie/2002/10/22/story73662.html#
Yugoslav dealer exported equipment to Iraq
> http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/10/23/38546.html
Yugoslavia Accused of Weapons Sales to Iraq (by Sergey Yugov)
PRAVDA (RUSSIA) 13:53 2002-10-23
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/europe/2351795.stm
Wednesday, 23 October, 2002, 00:59 GMT 01:59 UK
Yugoslav officials sacked in arms row
Spare parts for Mig fighters are said to have gone to Iraq
> http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml;jsessionid=
KUO1UKXX2FPY4CRBAEZSFEY?type=search&StoryID=1616602
NATO Gathers Proof of Bosnia Arms Export to Iraq
Last Updated: October 22, 2002 05:51 PM ET
SARAJEVO (Reuters)
> http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=
search&StoryID=1616531
Yugoslavia Sacks Minister over Arms-To-Iraq Charge
Last Updated: October 22, 2002 05:08 PM ET
By Will Hardie and Nedim Dervisbegovic
> http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/
20021022/ap_wo_en_po/bosnia_intelligence_service_1
Bosnia's top international official fires head of intelligence service
Tue Oct 22, 8:40 AM ET
By AIDA CERKEZ-ROBINSON, Associated Press Writer
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2549-2002Oct22.html
THE WASHINGTON POST
U.S. Says Two Serb Firms Are Helping Iraqis
Yugoslav, Bosnian Companies Accused of Repairing Fighters, Sharing
Technology
By Nicholas Wood - Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, October 23, 2002; Page A24
> http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=345340
THE INDEPENDENT (London)
24 October 2002
Yugoslavia sacks minister in arms to Iraq scandal
By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade
> http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F
2002%2F10%2F24%2Fwirq324.xml&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=496098
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH (London) (Filed: 24/10/2002)
Serbian firms 'in arms deal with Iraq'
By Alex Todorovic in Belgrade
> http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml;jsessionid=
O2LLZL1FLCQOKCRBAELCFEY?type=search&StoryID=1629406
Missile igniter smuggled towards Iraq
Last Updated: October 24, 2002 03:45 PM ET
RIJEKA, Croatia (Reuters)
> http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/bcr2/bcr2_20021024_1_eng.txt
Kostunica Blamed for Iraq Debacle (by Aleksandar Radic)
MORE:
> http://www.vj.yu/english/index.htm
The Yugoslav Army's Official Site - News
=== 2 ===
AFP: NATO uncovers weapons exports by Bosnian company accused of links
to Iraq
SARAJEVO, Oct 19 (AFP) - The NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) said
Saturday it uncovered evidence of unreported exports of weapons parts
by a Bosnian Serb military company earlier accused by the
United States of links to Iraq.
"SFOR's preliminary inspection results uncover the existence of a
contract linking the ORAO factory... to the unreported export of
weapons systems components," a press release issued by SFOR said. SFOR
spokesman Yves Vanier declined to provide details, saying more
information will become known in the coming weeks.
The United States informed authorities here in September of its
suspicions that the Orao company, based in the Serb-run part of
Bosnia, was supplying Iraq with spare aircraft parts and that its
staff was travelling there to help with airplane maintenance. The
Bosnian Serb government denied the allegations following an
investigation.
SFOR inspected Orao earlier this month in what they said was a regular
"periodic review and inspection" of the country's military capacities
to ensure compliance with the 1995 Dayton peace accords. It said at
the time that the investigation had nothing to do with the US
allegations.
The 1995 peace deal that ended Bosnia's 1992-1995 war split the
country into the Serb-run Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat
Federation. Both entities have separate governments, parliaments,
police and armed forces, and are linked by central institutions. ORAO
comes under the authority of Bosnian Serb military headquarters.
SFOR informed Bosnian Serb authorities of the initial findings and
will also notify the country's central institutions and international
community officials, Vanier said.
AFP Bosnian Serb company sold weapons parts to Iraq via Yugoslavia:
official
SARAJEVO, Oct 22 (AFP) - A Bosnian Serb military company sold weapons
parts to Iraq via a Yugoslav state-controlled company, the country's
top military body confirmed Tuesday.
Stjepan Pocrnja, secretary general of Bosnia's Standing Military
Committee, told Bosnian television that Washington had informed the
body of "illegal activities by Orao (a military company) and its
Yugoslav partner Jugoimport."
"They (the United States) provided us with numerous photos, various
materials ... and a contract confirming" illegal sales of weapons
parts, Pocrnja told Bosnian television.
If confirmed, the sale of weapons parts by Orao to Iraq in violation
of UN Security Council's resolutions would "seriously damage the
international reputation of Bosnia-Herzegovina," Paddy Ashdown, the
top international envoy here, told Bosnian television.
"I hope the Bosnian people will understand that if that was the case,
the most serious actions would need to be taken to protect the
reputation of this country," he added.
Ashdown has wide powers to implement the 1995 Dayton peace accords,
including the power to sack the country's officials.
The 1995 peace deal that ended Bosnia's 1992-95 war split the country
into the Serb-run Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation.
The two entities have separate governments, parliaments, police and
armed forces, and are linked by central institutions.
Ashdown's deputy, US diplomat Donald Hays, said earlier Tuesday that
an investigation by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had
revealed that weapons parts sold by Orao ended up in Iraq via a third
party.
"The results so far indicate that there were items shipped (by the
company) to a second party that ended up in Iraq," Hays told
reporters, without elaborating.
The NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) earlier said it uncovered
evidence of unreported exports of weapons parts by Orao, saying more
details would become known in the coming weeks.
However, Hays could not say whether Orao intended to export the
weapons parts to Iraq, stressing that the investigation's findings
were not yet confirmed.
"I'm not sure that it is clear that this had any governmental
connection," Hays added.
The United States informed authorities here in September of its
suspicions that Orao (Eagle) -- based in the Serb-run part of Bosnia
and under the authority of the Bosnian Serb military headquarters --
was supplying Iraq with spare aircraft parts and that its staff was
traveling there to help with airplane maintenance.
The Bosnian Serb government denied the allegations following an
investigation.
Hays said that there were "ongoing discussions in various capitals"
about this "serious" issue.
The Serbian interior minister said earlier Tuesday that Serbia, which
along with Montenegro makes up Yugoslavia, has begun an investigation
into press reports that a state-controlled company was involved in
exporting military equipment from Bosnia to Iraq.
Minister Dusan Mihajlovic told Belgrade radio B92 that a "very
serious and thorough probe has been launched" into the reports.
Mihajlovic, who is also chairman of Jugoimport's managing board, said
he had no information on "any exports of weapons to Iraq."
Belgrade launches investigation into sale of military equipment to
Iraq.
WASHINGTON, Oct 23 (AFP) - The United States Wednesday welcomed
measures taken by Belgrade to end the sale by a Yugoslav firm of
military equipment to Iraq in violation of UN sanctions, and is urging
the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina to do the same.
"We welcome the steps that were taken yesterday by the government of
Yugoslavia" State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said, adding that
the measures were "significant".
He said Washington had offered "its full support and cooperation" to
Yugoslav authorities in the investigation of this case.
Belgrade dismissed two people allegedly involved in the military
transfers and ordered an investigation into Jugoimport, a
state-controlled company suspected of providing Iraq with military
aviation supplies and expertise.
The authorities in Belgrade acted in response to a request by
American
authorities to halt any ongoing cooperation with Iraq, investigate the
sales and prosecute those found responsible for them.
Washington has also asked the authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina to
look into the activities of the Arao Aviation firm in the Bosnian
entity Republika Srpska, also suspected of illegal sales to Iraq.
"We certainly expect the relevant authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina
to
undertake the necessary steps to immediately halt any ongoing
cooperation with Iraq, to conduct a through investigation and to hold
accountable those responsible" Mr Reeker said.
The official said the United States had told Bosnian authorities of
its suspicions in September that Arao -- which is operates under the
aegis of the Bosnian Serb military headquarters.
Boucher said that in addition to violating the UN sanctions, the sales
by Arao contravened the terms of the Dayton Peace Accord which
requires that the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) be informed
about military export activity in Republika Srpska.
The 1995 peace deal that ended Bosnia's 1992-95 war split the country
into the Serb-run Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation.
AFP Three Bosnian Serb officials sacked over weapons sales to Iraq
BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Oct 24 (AFP) - Three high ranking
Bosnian Serb officials were sacked Thursday over the sale of spare
parts for Iraqi fighter jets in violation of a UN arms embargo,
officials said.
Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Mladen Ivanic voiced hope that the
dismissals would "prevent further negative consequences" for the
Serb-run entity of Republika Srpska and Bosnia, according to a
statement released after the government held an extraordinary session
over the matter.
The government fired the head of the Bosnian Serb military factory
Orao (Eagle) Milan Prica, Air Force chief Colonel Miljan Vlacic, and
the head of government's weapons trade office Spasoje Orasanin.
Earlier in the day Bosnian Serb authorities said that Orao sold the
parts to Iraq through a Yugoslav state-run company, shifting
attention in the probe to Belgrade.
The government ordered an urgent audit of Orao's finances, while the
defence ministry was told to conduct a thorough investigation into the
case.
Orao was supplying weapons parts to "a country under UN embargo," the
defence ministry admitted in a statement.
"The shipment of weapons parts was done through the (company)
Jugoimport and firms" that Jugoimport is working with in Yugoslavia,
the ministry added.
A Bosnian Serb commission began investigating the company in
September
after the United States alleged that Orao, operating under the
authority of the Bosnian Serb military, was supplying Baghdad with
spare aircraft parts.
The United States also said that Orao employees had travelled to Iraq
to help with airplane maintenance.
According to Nezavisne Novine daily, the NATO-led peacekeeping
Stabilisation Force (SFOR) found during a recent inspection of the
factory a copy of a contract which showed that Orao, based in the
northeastern town of Bijeljina, had shipped weapons parts to Iraq
through Jugoimport.
It was signed by Belgrade-based Jugoimport and Bagdad-based "Al
Bashair Trade Company," the paper reported.
The contract stated that Jugoimport would deliver to Iraq weapons
parts from the Orao aircraft firm and that Orao's employees would
conduct repairs on Iraqi MiG-21 and MiG-29 fighter aircraft in the
period between October 2000 and October 2005, the daily said.
The Bosnian Serb defence ministry said Thursday it was trying to make
a list of tools, spare parts and equipment, which had been delivered
to Jugoimport and its partners.
Belgrade has dismissed two people allegedly involved in the sales and
ordered an investigation into Jugoimport.
The government has said the defence ministry would also be probed
along with Jugoimport, while Serbian police and justice officials
have already launched a full-scale investigation.
Washington said earlier this week it expected both Yugoslavia and
Bosnia to stop the arms transfers, investigate the sales and
prosecute those responsible.
In addition to violating the UN sanctions, Orao's sales to Iraq
contravened the terms of the Dayton peace deal, which requires that
the peacekeepers be informed of all military exports from the
Republika Srpska, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.
Local analysts warned that the scandal was likely to have negative
consequences for both the Bosnian Serb entity and its army.
Due to the scandal "the reputation of Republika Srpska and its army
will be harmed," a military analyst, Ostoja Barasin, told AFP.
The 1995 peace deal that ended Bosnia's 1992-95 war split the country
into the Serb-run Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation.
The two entities, linked by weak central institutions, have separate
governments, parliaments, police and armed forces.
Barasin stressed that the affair could give ground to those political
groups who claim that Bosnia should have a unified army, an idea which
is strongly opposed by Bosnian Serbs.
=== 3 ===
http://www.beta.co.yu/e/
BETA DAILY NEWS
October 23, 2002
Yugoslav Government Holds Emergency Session Following
Reports of Illegal Arms Sale to Iraq -- Kosovo Serbs
from Five Municipalities to Vote in Election -- Hague
Prosecutor Announces Indictments for Crimes in Kosovo
-- Solana Envoys Visit Belgrade, Podgorica --
Montenegrin Legislature to Hold Inaugural Session at
Beginning of November
FR YUGOSLAVIA
YUGOSLAV GOVERNMENT MEETS ON IRAQI ARMS AFFAIR. The
Yugoslav government fired on Oct. 22 Jugoimport
company GM Jovan Cekovic and Assistant Yugoslav
Defense Minister Gen. Ivan Djokic.
After an emergency session following press reports of
illegal arms sales to Iraq through the Jugoimport
military equipment dealer, the government released a
statement saying that Djokic was dismissed "as the
person in charge of arms and military equipment
trading."
The government called on state institutions to
investigate Jugoimport's trade deals and other weapons
traders as well, to establish if anyone else was
involved.
The government demanded that Jugoimport close its
office in Baghdad.
The federal government also said it would create a
commission to investigate the issue of permits for
arms and military equipment exports.
---
No trade of weapons and military equipment with Iraq, Yugoslav DEFENSE
Ministry
BELGRADE, Oct 22 (Tanjug) - Since the return of Yugoslavia into the
United Nations, the Yugoslav Defense Ministry has not received any
request to approve trade in weapons and military equipment with Iraq,
therefore, such trade has not been approved, the Ministry said in
Belgrade on Tuesday.
Regarding indications about the possible violation of the UN
sanctions, not only linked to Iraq, the federal Defense Ministry will
investigate each separate case with the aim of taking measures against
the possible perpetrators and reporting to the corresponding state
organs, the statement said.
The Ministry issued the statement following demands for its reaction
by several media regarding an article in today's issue of the Belgrade
daily Blic entitled "Yugoslav Experts in Iraq."
Yugoslav minister says Jugoimport SDPR scandal causes serious damage
BELGRADE, Oct 23 (Tanjug) - Yugoslav Interior Minister Zoran Zivkovic
said late on Tuesday that the scandal with the SDPR Jugoimport
enterprise had caused a lot of damage to Yugoslavia.
"Just a suspicion that something has been done with Iraq, which is
under sanctions, is reason enough to jeopardize the top state
interests," Zivkovic told the Serbian state television's late night
news broadcast on Tuesday. "So far we have succeeded in finding some
confirmation of this suspicion," he said and added that an
investigation aimed at establishing all details would begin on
Wednesday.
Serbian interior minister denies allegations, announces investigation
BELGRADE, Oct 22 (Tanjug) - President of the Jugoimport SDPR JP
company administration board and Serbian Minister of the Interior
Dusan Mihajlovic denied Tuesday allegations by some media on
violations of the UN embargo on exporting military equipment to Iraq,
and announced an investigation of the allegations and
consultations with Yugoslav Premier Dragisa Pesic and Deputy Premier
Miroljub Labus on future measures and activities regarding the affair.
Mihajlovic underlined that since he became Jugoimport SDPR board
president, the board has not discussed any documents containing
information on the export of military equipment to Iraq or on any
engagement of Yugoslav experts in the installation of such equipment
or in troop training in Iraq.
Mihajlovic expressed hope that the affair will soon be cleared up and
that it will not have a negative impact on relations with the UN and
the US in particular.
Jugoimport - SDPR company denies exporting weapons to Iraq
BELGRADE, Oct 22 (Tanjug) - The Jugoimport - SDPR company on Tuesday
denied reports in the Belgrade press that it had mediated in the
export of weapons and military equipment to Iraq allegedly
manufactured by the Orao Aircraft Institute of Bjeljina, Republika
Srpska.
"We do not know what is in question because we have no outstanding
contracts for the delivery of goods and services which have the
character of weapons and military equipment to Iraq," a statement said
adding that this company has not signed such contracts since August
1990 when the United Nations imposed sanctions on Iraq.
"We have strictly adhered to all UN resolutions which introduce
sanctions against Iraq," the statement said.
Jugoimport - SDPR recalled that during the 1970s and 1980s it had
engaged in significant business deals with Iraq which also included
the export of weapons and military equipment, as well as construction
work. This operation was conducted by the Federal Directorate For the
Trade of Special Goods - the legal predecessor of Jugoimport - SDPR.
From that period, there remain debts amounting to 1.2 billion dollars
and very valuable equipment owned by Yugoslav construction companies,
and their protection required that our company retains its offices in
Iraq, the statement said.
Washington calls on Yugoslavia, Bosnia to stop selling arms to Iraq
WASHINGTON, Oct 23 (Tanjug) - Washington on Tuesday called on the
authorities of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Yugoslavia to forbid their
enterprises to sell military equipment to Iraq in violation of UN
sanctions against the country.
The US Administration accused the Orao air institute in Republika
Srpska and the Yugoslav company Jugoimport of supplying military
equipment to Iraq. US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said
that the US government had strong evidence that the Orao air institute
had been overhauling military aircraft for Iraq in cooperation with
Jugoimport.
The US State Department spokesman said that there were no elements to
indicate any involvement of the Yugoslav and Bosnian governments, or
the involvement of Bosnian Serb authorities.
---
http://www.beta.co.yu/e/
BETA DAILY NEWS
October 24, 2002.
Arms Trade Affair with Iraq Continuing -- USA Approves
Steps Taken By Yugoslav Government -- ICTY President
Reports Yugoslavia to U.N. Security Council -- Still
No Agreement on Constitutional Charter -- Serbian
Constitutional Court Discusses Kostunica Party
Mandates Today -- Incident during High School Student
Protest in Skopje
FR Yugoslavia
REPUBLIKA SRPSKA GOVERNMENT CONFIRMS SELLING WEAPONS
TO IRAQ. The government of Republika Srpska confirmed
on Oct. 23 that the Orao aircraft company from
Bijeljina had violated the embargo on exporting
military equipment to Iraq.
"On the basis of information provided by Republika
Srpska's defense ministry, the Republika Srpska
government has confirmed that the Orao aircraft
company has violated the embargo on exporting military
eqipment to Iraq," government PR Cvijeta Kovacevic
told reporters in Bijeljina.
She said that the government believed that the
responsible people in Orao, the Republika Srpska
general staff and the defense ministry must be
punished, which is under the authority of the
Republika Srpska's Supreme Defense Council.
The U.S. Embassy in Bosnia said that the U.S. has
clear proof that the company from Bijeljina together
with the Yugoslav company Yugoimport provided
maintenance for aircrafts exported to Iraq.
The U.S. Embassy delivered the information to senior
officials in Bosnia, Republika Srpska and Yugoslavia,
who have promised in turn to carry out a detailed
investigation into the issue.
The U.S. expect the relevant institutions in Bosnia
and Yugoslavia to take the necessary steps to
immediately stop any kind of cooperation with Iraq, to
conduct a detailed investigation and to bring the
persons responsible to justice.
The Belgrade daily Blic of Oct. 22 says that SFOR
members recently found ample evidence in the Orao
plant and the Obarska sugar plant in Bijeljina,
showing that despite the UN sanctions, a large
quantity of military equipment has been exported to
Iraq through the Belgrade-based export company
Jugoimport.
At a closed session last night, the Yugoslav
government dismissed Jugoimport's manager Jovan
Cekovic and Yugoslav defense ministry official, Gen.
Ivan Djokic.
KOSTUNICA ON ARMS TRADE WITH IRAQ. On Oct. 23,
Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica described as
"unpleasant" the arms trade affair of the Yugoslav
Jugoimport SDRP company with Iraq. However, Kostunica
said that the affair "cannot cause drastic harm the
country's reputation."
"Unfortunately, this affair has been also used for
launching new attacks on the federal authorities, the
Yugoslav Army, and myself, which are as absurd as all
the previous ones," said Kostunica.
"The country's reputation cannot be drastically
affected by a case that has been discovered and
promptly been placed under investigation. However, the
country's reputation, or better to say, the remains of
that reputation, after what are mostly fabricated
affairs, can be harmed by the campaign of backbiting
and tale-bearing at the expense of the federal bodies,
in which both republics are directly involved in a
swift and synchronized fashion," stressed the Yugoslav
president.
DJINDJIC: IRAQ AFFAIR HARMFUL TO COUNTRY'S REPUTATION.
Serbian Premier Zoran Djindjic said on Oct. 23 that
the affair concerning the export of weapons to Iraq
through the Jugoimport company was extremely harmful
to the country's international reputation, there being
no civilian control over the army in Yugoslavia.
Djindjic said that the country's international image,
which has been greatly enhanced over the last two
years, "can now be endangered."
"All those who spoil our image, are working against
the country's interests. What we least need at the
moment when the world is divided into countries who
are fighting against terrorism and those who cooperate
with terrorists, is to be grouped with the latter,"
said the Serbian premier.
He said that the President of Yugoslavia was
responsible for all issues connected with the army and
raised the question of civilian control over the army.
Member of the Atlantic Council of Yugoslavia steering
committee, Zoran Ostojic said on Oct. 23 that an
investigation should be carried out to establish
responsibility for the export of large quantities of
military equipment to Iraq.
"If we manage to react quickly and learn from this
experience, the consequences for the country's
international reputation does not have to be
devastating," Ostojic told BETA.
Asked whether "the Jugoimport affair" can slow down
Yugoslavia's admission to the Partnership for Peace,
Ostojic said that it depends on the state's stand on
the issue and other requirements of the partnership.
"Partnership means sharing the same values - respect
for human rights, adherence to UN resolutions
prohibiting trade with certain countries and respect
for commitments to The Hague Tribunal. We cannot say
that we have achieved anything significant in these
fields," said Ostojic.
---
YUGOSLAV LEFT OFFICIAL IS NOT ADVISOR AT YUGOSLAV EMBASSY IN IRAQ
BELGRADE, Oct 23 (Beta) - The Yugoslav foreign ministry stated on Oct.
23 that the former foreign trade minister, Borisa Vukovic, was not an
advisor at Yugoslavia's embassy in Baghdad.
The ministry views as necessary, for the sake of truth, to point out
that not only is Vukovic is not an advisor at our embassy in Iraq, but
also that his employment with this ministry was terminated in November
1992," it was said in the statement. Meanwhile, the Belgrade firm
Jugoimport closed down its office in Iraq, as the Yugoslav government
had ordered.
After the dismissal of Jugoimport's director and the official in the
Yugoslav Defense Ministry, the United States approved the steps the
Yugoslav government had taken regarding this affair.
According to reports in the Blic daily about illegal arms trade with
Iraq, Vukovic issued permits for such deals as an advisor at the
Yugoslav Embassy in Iraq. Vukovic is a member of the Yugoslav Left,
whose leader is Mirjana Markovic, the wife of the former Yugoslav
president Slobodan Milosevic.
A Yugoslav Left official, Dragana Kuzmanovic, confirmed that Vukovic
was in Iraq, but said that she did not know what he was doing there.
1. LET'S GO SHOPPING FOR SNIPER RIFLES (The New York Times)
2. THE ROMA AND "HUMANITARIAN" ETHNIC CLEANSING IN KOSOVO (Dissident
Voice)
LINKS to documents and news on Kosmet's hell:
Source: UN Security Council - Date: 9 Oct 2002
Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Interim
Administration Mission in Kosovo (S/2002/1126)
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/vID/1CCD470704F300FB85256C5600679068?OpenDocument
Source: Council of Europe
THE HUMAN RIGHTS SITUATION in Kosovo-Metohija
http://www.commissioner.coe.int/docs/CommDH(2002)11_E.pdf
U.N. police in Kosovo make record drugs haul (Reuters, Sept 29, 2002)
http://news.serbianunity.net/bydate/2002/September_30/21.html
U.N. police crack down on prostitution, drugs in Kosovo (AP 1/10/02)
http://news.serbianunity.net/bydate/2002/September_30/24.html
Appeal of the expelled Serbs from Kosovo and Metohija, OEA, October 1st
2002
http://news.serbianunity.net/bydate/2002/October_01/5.html
RIA "Novosti": Everything`s Fine in Kosovo? (by Valentin Kunin)
http://www.artel.co.yu/en/izbor/jugoslavija/2002-10-19_2.html
Report: Church deeply hurt by the behavor or the U.S. KFOR
http://www.kosovo.com/rep191002.html
New pressures on Visoki Decani monastery
http://www.kosovo.com/news.html
=== 1 ===
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/opinion/20SULL.html
THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sunday, October 20, 2002
Shopping for Sniper Rifles
By STACY SULLIVAN
When a sniper began shooting down people in suburban Maryland and
Virginia earlier this month, followed by possible copycat shootings on
Long Island last weekend, I wondered why it hadn't happened sooner.
For the past three years, I have been doing research for a book on how a
group of Kosovar Albanian émigrés in New York City helped build a
guerrilla army by raising money and buying and shipping high-powered
rifles from the United States to the Balkans. In March 2001, I
accompanied one of the key fund-raisers for the Kosovo Liberation Army
to a gun show in suburban Pennsylvania. Sports utility vehicles with
"Sportsmen for Bush" bumper stickers lined the parking lot. Inside, a
throng of people - mostly young men, but also a surprising number of
families with children - strolled past tables laden with AK-47's, M-16
assault rifles, sniper rifles, handguns, flat and round bullets,
brochures for
the National Rifle Association, silencers, night scopes, knives,
Japanese
swords, muskets, daggers, even a couple of anti-aircraft guns, as well
as
paraphernalia from the Civil War, World War I and World War II.
One gun dealer showed me a .32-caliber Thompson automatic weapon that
shoots 32 rounds in less than 2.5 seconds. Another showed me a
.22-caliber
Bushmaster gun with a silencer that was described as "deadly quiet." The
most impressive gun, however, was the .50-caliber high-powered Barrett
sniper rifle. With the .50-caliber rifle, the dealer told me, a good
marksman can kill a large animal from two miles away and an amateur
could probably shoot a person from a mile away. He said he had armor-
piercing, tracer and incendiary .50-caliber bullets available that could
bring down a helicopter. The rifle was going for about $5,000.
As I looked at the gun, my K.L.A. companion beckoned me over to another
stand where a woman was selling a Barrett knock-off, a .50-caliber
sniper rifle made by Armalite that was selling for just $2,495. The
dealer
told me all I had to do was hand over my driver's license for an "Insta-
Check."
"They call this an Insta-Check, but really it takes about 15 minutes,"
she said, referring to the background check she would have to do. As
long
as I didn't have a criminal record or live in the "People's Republic of
New
York City," so called among gun dealers because it's one of the few
cities
where it is illegal to possess any kind of firearm without a permit, the
gun
would be mine. I told her I did live in New York City, but that my
driver's license was issued in California. In that case, she said, I'd
probably be fine.
The K.L.A. member bought a sniper rifle that day, along with a few other
guns. Those weapons were promptly shipped overseas to Kosovo and
Macedonia, another example of American gun laws inadvertently fueling
foreign conflicts.
Ever since that day at the Pennsylvania gun show, I've wondered how hard
it would be to use one of those high-powered sniper-rifles. Last week,
in
a Times report, a retired New York City police detective and security
executive, Richard Dietl, cleared that up a little. He said it took him
one afternoon to teach his 12-year-old son how to hit a target in the
torso from 200 yards away.
The ease with which one can buy weapons at gun shows has not gone
unnoticed by groups like Al Qaeda, which pointed this out in one of its
training manuals. According to the Violence Policy Center, a gun control
advocacy group, Osama bin Laden's agents in the United States purchased
25 high-powered sniper rifles to use in their war against the Soviets in
Afghanistan in the late 1980's. What would stop them from using the guns
against us at home?
We have no idea whether the suburban sniper on the loose inside the
Beltway is a foreign terrorist. It is clear, however, that our gun laws
not only inadvertently fuel foreign conflicts but also enable terrorists
to purchase guns to launch attacks against people on American soil.
Gun control advocates have called for the creation of a ballistic
imaging system to help law enforcement officers trace ammunition
to the guns used to fire them. However, such a high-tech system
would be of little use to law enforcement if the gunman bought his
weapon more than three months before using it. Federal law mandates
that background checks on gun buyers be kept on record for only 90
days, and Attorney General John Ashcroft has proposed shortening
that time to 24 hours. The ability to trace the sniper's 223-caliber
rifle and examine background-check records on the person who
purchased it would be invaluable to the police investigation. Without
it, I can't help wondering how many more victims there will be.
Stacy Sullivan is the author of the forthcoming "From Brooklyn to Kosovo
with Love and Guns."
letters@...
=== 2 ===
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Rifati_Kosovo.htm
The Roma and "Humanitarian" Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo
by Sani Rifati
Dissident Voice, October 13, 2002
I am a Rom (more commonly known as "Gypsy") who was born in
Kosovo, Yugoslavia, and lived in Pristina (the capital of the Kosovo
region) for 27 years. In the summer of 2000, ten years later, I was
only 30 miles away in Macedonia but I could not visit the town where
I lived most of my life. This was more than three years after the
"humanitarian bombing" by U.S.-NATO forces and escalation of
ethnic conflict began in Kosovo on March 24th, 1999.
But it was still too dangerous for me, as a dark-skinned "Madjupi"
(Albanian term connoting "lower than garbage"), to set foot inside of
Kosovo.
Finally, the day arrived (May 2nd, 2002) when I could visit my place
of birth, the place of so many memories from my youth. But that
place--where I grew up with my four brothers and one sister,
cousins, relatives, neighbors, friends--no longer existed. Everything
had been wiped away. The new and renovated houses, villas, gas
stations, motels, all built in the past three years by the triumphant
ethnic Albanians, made Kosovo look like a foreign country to me.
I didn't know what to feel in that moment of returning. Fear,
happiness, anger, sadness?
The paradox that crossed my mind was that all this rebuilding is
being sponsored by international relief agencies and financed by
development and investment companies with such well-known heads
as Dick Cheney and George Soros. Meanwhile the Roma, Serbs, Gorani,
Bosnians, Turks and other minorities in Kosovo are starving! While
most of these international institutions were bragging about "free and
democratic Kosovo," these peoples were forced to abandon their
homes, suffering a "humanitarian" supported ethnic cleansing
that has been virtually invisible to the rest of the world. The ironic
consequence of NATO/US rescue of oppressed Albanians is that they
then became oppressors themselves.
This May, as President of Voice of Roma (VOR), I led a trip to Kosovo
with delegates representing human rights, refugee assistance, and
peace groups from the U.S., Germany, Italy, and Holland. Most
people working in such organizations think that Kosovo is free
now, and that its people are living in harmony and peace. They are
surprised when I inform them that the ethnic minorities in Kosovo
are still fleeing. I wanted them to witness with their own eyes what
is going on there.
The delegates were housed in the Romani communities, south of
Pristina. Each family hosted two or more delegates. The delegates spent
time with and got to know people who had been caught in heavy crossfire
between Serbs and Albanians, suffered from the heavy bombing by
NATO's U.S.-led forces, and experienced discrimination by K-FOR
forces, the U.N. Police, international non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), and Western European foreign policies. The delegates were
appalled by the stories they heard and shocked at the conditions under
which the Kosovo Roma were living.
Since NATO's "peace-keepers" arrived in Kosovo, more than 300,000
ethnic minorities have been "cleansed" from the region by extremist
Albanians. It has been more than a year since the U.N. Interim
Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK) or the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) released any statements about
human rights abuses of minorities in Kosovo. Surprisingly, such
NGOs as Doctors Without Borders (winner of the Nobel Peace Prize),
the International Red Cross, Oxfam, and many more have failed the
ethnic minorities in Kosovo by not addressing their problems.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are alone in reporting
on minority human rights abuses in Kosovo.
My question is: If NATO's so-called humanitarian bombing was to
stop "ethnic cleansing," why are the same Western powers now so
unwilling to intervene on behalf of the actual ethnic cleansing of
Romani people and other minorities in Kosovo?
The ethnic cleansing of the Roma since U.N. peace-keepers arrived
in June 12th of 1999 has resulted in more than 75% of this population
(over 100,000 Romani people) fleeing Kosovo. Still the media and the
international "humanitarian" community are silent. U.S. and Western
media did not catch any of these events on their radar screens, or
rather
willingly ignored these horrors. (See our report The Current Plight
of the Roma in Kosovo, available from Voice of Roma, P.O. Box 514,
Sebastopol, CA 95473.)
[Foto: Crkvena Vodica village just outside the capital Prishtina.
94 Romani homes were destroyed by Albanians after the 1999 US-NATO
bombings.]
The majority of the Roma who are left in Kosovo (25,000 out of a
prewar population of 150,000) are internal refugees, but they do not
have the official status of refugees. Instead these Roma are labeled
"internally-displaced persons" (IDPs), with fewer recognized rights
than refugees, and are restricted to camps with very poor facilities.
Some Roma do live in Serbian controlled enclaves. No other ethnic
group is in the IDP camps, only Roma. Why is this? Only the Roma
have no safe haven country. Serbs flee to Serbia, Bosnians to Bosnia,
Turks to Turkey, and Gorani (who are Muslim/Slavs) to Macedonia or
Western Europe.
The poorest of the poor, in the IDP camps, the Roma face a remarkable
level of discrimination and oppression that is threatening their lives
and crippling their culture.
Just to give you an idea, the U.N. provides to each of the Roma in IDP
camps a monthly ration of eight kilos (17 pounds) of flour, two onions,
two tomatoes, a half-kilo (one pound) of cheese, and some fruit
(usually rotten). Beyond that, there is only three liters of cooking oil
per family, regardless of family size; no other supplies are available
(interviews with refugees in IDP camps in Kosovo and Macedonia).
If these people are struggling to survive physically, what then happens
to their culture?
For another example, when a U.N. representative was approached by
a VOR representative about providing cooking and drinking water to
Roma in one camp, his reply was, "Oh, the Gypsies know how to take
care of themselves. They're nomads; they've lived all their lives like
that." If the Roma are facing such dismissal from those on whom they
depend for their physical survival, how are they to survive either
physically or culturally?
This deeply-rooted stereotype, that the Roma are uncivilized
wanderers who don't have the same needs as members of "civilized"
societies is contradicted by the facts. In Kosovo, Roma have lived in
houses for over seven hundred years, and most of them have never seen
a wanderer's caravan. The effect of such stereotypes is to dehumanize
the Roma and destroy their cultural infrastructure.
In today's "free" Kosovo, no Rom can move freely; his children cannot
go to school, and cannot speak their mother tongue. Because they had
to leave their homes and now must stay in the camps, most of the Roma
still in Kosovo have not seen nearby family members in more than
three years. That means, among other things, that marriages cannot be
made according to Romani social rules. What happens to a society in
which new families cannot form?
How can we change the situation of Roma, wherever they may happen
to be? What is our responsibility to a people who have been so abused
and ignored for centuries?
Sani Rifati is a Romani activist, writer and lecturer from Kosovo,
now living in Graton, California. He is the President of Voice of Roma,
a non-profit advocacy group working on behalf of Roma in Kosovo
and Romani refugees living throughout Europe. Email:
staff@...
Glossary of Terms:
Rom= one person, (sing.), human being or husband in Romani language.
Roma= Gypsies (pl.)
Romani=Adjective (e.g. Romani language, history, culture, etc?)
Madjupi= Derogatory term in Albanian language for Roma.
Gorani= Ethnic group in Kosovo that are Slav Muslim
2. THE ROMA AND "HUMANITARIAN" ETHNIC CLEANSING IN KOSOVO (Dissident
Voice)
LINKS to documents and news on Kosmet's hell:
Source: UN Security Council - Date: 9 Oct 2002
Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Interim
Administration Mission in Kosovo (S/2002/1126)
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/vID/1CCD470704F300FB85256C5600679068?OpenDocument
Source: Council of Europe
THE HUMAN RIGHTS SITUATION in Kosovo-Metohija
http://www.commissioner.coe.int/docs/CommDH(2002)11_E.pdf
U.N. police in Kosovo make record drugs haul (Reuters, Sept 29, 2002)
http://news.serbianunity.net/bydate/2002/September_30/21.html
U.N. police crack down on prostitution, drugs in Kosovo (AP 1/10/02)
http://news.serbianunity.net/bydate/2002/September_30/24.html
Appeal of the expelled Serbs from Kosovo and Metohija, OEA, October 1st
2002
http://news.serbianunity.net/bydate/2002/October_01/5.html
RIA "Novosti": Everything`s Fine in Kosovo? (by Valentin Kunin)
http://www.artel.co.yu/en/izbor/jugoslavija/2002-10-19_2.html
Report: Church deeply hurt by the behavor or the U.S. KFOR
http://www.kosovo.com/rep191002.html
New pressures on Visoki Decani monastery
http://www.kosovo.com/news.html
=== 1 ===
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/opinion/20SULL.html
THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sunday, October 20, 2002
Shopping for Sniper Rifles
By STACY SULLIVAN
When a sniper began shooting down people in suburban Maryland and
Virginia earlier this month, followed by possible copycat shootings on
Long Island last weekend, I wondered why it hadn't happened sooner.
For the past three years, I have been doing research for a book on how a
group of Kosovar Albanian émigrés in New York City helped build a
guerrilla army by raising money and buying and shipping high-powered
rifles from the United States to the Balkans. In March 2001, I
accompanied one of the key fund-raisers for the Kosovo Liberation Army
to a gun show in suburban Pennsylvania. Sports utility vehicles with
"Sportsmen for Bush" bumper stickers lined the parking lot. Inside, a
throng of people - mostly young men, but also a surprising number of
families with children - strolled past tables laden with AK-47's, M-16
assault rifles, sniper rifles, handguns, flat and round bullets,
brochures for
the National Rifle Association, silencers, night scopes, knives,
Japanese
swords, muskets, daggers, even a couple of anti-aircraft guns, as well
as
paraphernalia from the Civil War, World War I and World War II.
One gun dealer showed me a .32-caliber Thompson automatic weapon that
shoots 32 rounds in less than 2.5 seconds. Another showed me a
.22-caliber
Bushmaster gun with a silencer that was described as "deadly quiet." The
most impressive gun, however, was the .50-caliber high-powered Barrett
sniper rifle. With the .50-caliber rifle, the dealer told me, a good
marksman can kill a large animal from two miles away and an amateur
could probably shoot a person from a mile away. He said he had armor-
piercing, tracer and incendiary .50-caliber bullets available that could
bring down a helicopter. The rifle was going for about $5,000.
As I looked at the gun, my K.L.A. companion beckoned me over to another
stand where a woman was selling a Barrett knock-off, a .50-caliber
sniper rifle made by Armalite that was selling for just $2,495. The
dealer
told me all I had to do was hand over my driver's license for an "Insta-
Check."
"They call this an Insta-Check, but really it takes about 15 minutes,"
she said, referring to the background check she would have to do. As
long
as I didn't have a criminal record or live in the "People's Republic of
New
York City," so called among gun dealers because it's one of the few
cities
where it is illegal to possess any kind of firearm without a permit, the
gun
would be mine. I told her I did live in New York City, but that my
driver's license was issued in California. In that case, she said, I'd
probably be fine.
The K.L.A. member bought a sniper rifle that day, along with a few other
guns. Those weapons were promptly shipped overseas to Kosovo and
Macedonia, another example of American gun laws inadvertently fueling
foreign conflicts.
Ever since that day at the Pennsylvania gun show, I've wondered how hard
it would be to use one of those high-powered sniper-rifles. Last week,
in
a Times report, a retired New York City police detective and security
executive, Richard Dietl, cleared that up a little. He said it took him
one afternoon to teach his 12-year-old son how to hit a target in the
torso from 200 yards away.
The ease with which one can buy weapons at gun shows has not gone
unnoticed by groups like Al Qaeda, which pointed this out in one of its
training manuals. According to the Violence Policy Center, a gun control
advocacy group, Osama bin Laden's agents in the United States purchased
25 high-powered sniper rifles to use in their war against the Soviets in
Afghanistan in the late 1980's. What would stop them from using the guns
against us at home?
We have no idea whether the suburban sniper on the loose inside the
Beltway is a foreign terrorist. It is clear, however, that our gun laws
not only inadvertently fuel foreign conflicts but also enable terrorists
to purchase guns to launch attacks against people on American soil.
Gun control advocates have called for the creation of a ballistic
imaging system to help law enforcement officers trace ammunition
to the guns used to fire them. However, such a high-tech system
would be of little use to law enforcement if the gunman bought his
weapon more than three months before using it. Federal law mandates
that background checks on gun buyers be kept on record for only 90
days, and Attorney General John Ashcroft has proposed shortening
that time to 24 hours. The ability to trace the sniper's 223-caliber
rifle and examine background-check records on the person who
purchased it would be invaluable to the police investigation. Without
it, I can't help wondering how many more victims there will be.
Stacy Sullivan is the author of the forthcoming "From Brooklyn to Kosovo
with Love and Guns."
letters@...
=== 2 ===
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Rifati_Kosovo.htm
The Roma and "Humanitarian" Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo
by Sani Rifati
Dissident Voice, October 13, 2002
I am a Rom (more commonly known as "Gypsy") who was born in
Kosovo, Yugoslavia, and lived in Pristina (the capital of the Kosovo
region) for 27 years. In the summer of 2000, ten years later, I was
only 30 miles away in Macedonia but I could not visit the town where
I lived most of my life. This was more than three years after the
"humanitarian bombing" by U.S.-NATO forces and escalation of
ethnic conflict began in Kosovo on March 24th, 1999.
But it was still too dangerous for me, as a dark-skinned "Madjupi"
(Albanian term connoting "lower than garbage"), to set foot inside of
Kosovo.
Finally, the day arrived (May 2nd, 2002) when I could visit my place
of birth, the place of so many memories from my youth. But that
place--where I grew up with my four brothers and one sister,
cousins, relatives, neighbors, friends--no longer existed. Everything
had been wiped away. The new and renovated houses, villas, gas
stations, motels, all built in the past three years by the triumphant
ethnic Albanians, made Kosovo look like a foreign country to me.
I didn't know what to feel in that moment of returning. Fear,
happiness, anger, sadness?
The paradox that crossed my mind was that all this rebuilding is
being sponsored by international relief agencies and financed by
development and investment companies with such well-known heads
as Dick Cheney and George Soros. Meanwhile the Roma, Serbs, Gorani,
Bosnians, Turks and other minorities in Kosovo are starving! While
most of these international institutions were bragging about "free and
democratic Kosovo," these peoples were forced to abandon their
homes, suffering a "humanitarian" supported ethnic cleansing
that has been virtually invisible to the rest of the world. The ironic
consequence of NATO/US rescue of oppressed Albanians is that they
then became oppressors themselves.
This May, as President of Voice of Roma (VOR), I led a trip to Kosovo
with delegates representing human rights, refugee assistance, and
peace groups from the U.S., Germany, Italy, and Holland. Most
people working in such organizations think that Kosovo is free
now, and that its people are living in harmony and peace. They are
surprised when I inform them that the ethnic minorities in Kosovo
are still fleeing. I wanted them to witness with their own eyes what
is going on there.
The delegates were housed in the Romani communities, south of
Pristina. Each family hosted two or more delegates. The delegates spent
time with and got to know people who had been caught in heavy crossfire
between Serbs and Albanians, suffered from the heavy bombing by
NATO's U.S.-led forces, and experienced discrimination by K-FOR
forces, the U.N. Police, international non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), and Western European foreign policies. The delegates were
appalled by the stories they heard and shocked at the conditions under
which the Kosovo Roma were living.
Since NATO's "peace-keepers" arrived in Kosovo, more than 300,000
ethnic minorities have been "cleansed" from the region by extremist
Albanians. It has been more than a year since the U.N. Interim
Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK) or the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) released any statements about
human rights abuses of minorities in Kosovo. Surprisingly, such
NGOs as Doctors Without Borders (winner of the Nobel Peace Prize),
the International Red Cross, Oxfam, and many more have failed the
ethnic minorities in Kosovo by not addressing their problems.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are alone in reporting
on minority human rights abuses in Kosovo.
My question is: If NATO's so-called humanitarian bombing was to
stop "ethnic cleansing," why are the same Western powers now so
unwilling to intervene on behalf of the actual ethnic cleansing of
Romani people and other minorities in Kosovo?
The ethnic cleansing of the Roma since U.N. peace-keepers arrived
in June 12th of 1999 has resulted in more than 75% of this population
(over 100,000 Romani people) fleeing Kosovo. Still the media and the
international "humanitarian" community are silent. U.S. and Western
media did not catch any of these events on their radar screens, or
rather
willingly ignored these horrors. (See our report The Current Plight
of the Roma in Kosovo, available from Voice of Roma, P.O. Box 514,
Sebastopol, CA 95473.)
[Foto: Crkvena Vodica village just outside the capital Prishtina.
94 Romani homes were destroyed by Albanians after the 1999 US-NATO
bombings.]
The majority of the Roma who are left in Kosovo (25,000 out of a
prewar population of 150,000) are internal refugees, but they do not
have the official status of refugees. Instead these Roma are labeled
"internally-displaced persons" (IDPs), with fewer recognized rights
than refugees, and are restricted to camps with very poor facilities.
Some Roma do live in Serbian controlled enclaves. No other ethnic
group is in the IDP camps, only Roma. Why is this? Only the Roma
have no safe haven country. Serbs flee to Serbia, Bosnians to Bosnia,
Turks to Turkey, and Gorani (who are Muslim/Slavs) to Macedonia or
Western Europe.
The poorest of the poor, in the IDP camps, the Roma face a remarkable
level of discrimination and oppression that is threatening their lives
and crippling their culture.
Just to give you an idea, the U.N. provides to each of the Roma in IDP
camps a monthly ration of eight kilos (17 pounds) of flour, two onions,
two tomatoes, a half-kilo (one pound) of cheese, and some fruit
(usually rotten). Beyond that, there is only three liters of cooking oil
per family, regardless of family size; no other supplies are available
(interviews with refugees in IDP camps in Kosovo and Macedonia).
If these people are struggling to survive physically, what then happens
to their culture?
For another example, when a U.N. representative was approached by
a VOR representative about providing cooking and drinking water to
Roma in one camp, his reply was, "Oh, the Gypsies know how to take
care of themselves. They're nomads; they've lived all their lives like
that." If the Roma are facing such dismissal from those on whom they
depend for their physical survival, how are they to survive either
physically or culturally?
This deeply-rooted stereotype, that the Roma are uncivilized
wanderers who don't have the same needs as members of "civilized"
societies is contradicted by the facts. In Kosovo, Roma have lived in
houses for over seven hundred years, and most of them have never seen
a wanderer's caravan. The effect of such stereotypes is to dehumanize
the Roma and destroy their cultural infrastructure.
In today's "free" Kosovo, no Rom can move freely; his children cannot
go to school, and cannot speak their mother tongue. Because they had
to leave their homes and now must stay in the camps, most of the Roma
still in Kosovo have not seen nearby family members in more than
three years. That means, among other things, that marriages cannot be
made according to Romani social rules. What happens to a society in
which new families cannot form?
How can we change the situation of Roma, wherever they may happen
to be? What is our responsibility to a people who have been so abused
and ignored for centuries?
Sani Rifati is a Romani activist, writer and lecturer from Kosovo,
now living in Graton, California. He is the President of Voice of Roma,
a non-profit advocacy group working on behalf of Roma in Kosovo
and Romani refugees living throughout Europe. Email:
staff@...
Glossary of Terms:
Rom= one person, (sing.), human being or husband in Romani language.
Roma= Gypsies (pl.)
Romani=Adjective (e.g. Romani language, history, culture, etc?)
Madjupi= Derogatory term in Albanian language for Roma.
Gorani= Ethnic group in Kosovo that are Slav Muslim
Ciao,
desideriamo farti sapere che, nella sezione File del gruppo
crj-mailinglist, troverai un nuovo file appena caricato.
File : /Praga2.gif
Caricato da : itajug <jugocoord@...>
Descrizione : Manifestazione internazionale a Praga, 21-22 novembre 2002
Puoi accedere al file dal seguente indirizzo:
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/files/Praga2.gif
Per ulteriori informazioni su come condividere i file con gli altri
iscritti al tuo gruppo, vai invece alla sezione di Aiuto al seguente
indirizzo:
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Cordiali saluti,
itajug <jugocoord@...>
desideriamo farti sapere che, nella sezione File del gruppo
crj-mailinglist, troverai un nuovo file appena caricato.
File : /Praga2.gif
Caricato da : itajug <jugocoord@...>
Descrizione : Manifestazione internazionale a Praga, 21-22 novembre 2002
Puoi accedere al file dal seguente indirizzo:
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/files/Praga2.gif
Per ulteriori informazioni su come condividere i file con gli altri
iscritti al tuo gruppo, vai invece alla sezione di Aiuto al seguente
indirizzo:
http://help.yahoo.com/help/it/groups/files
Cordiali saluti,
itajug <jugocoord@...>
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