* Why Milosevic, not NATO, is on trial (J. Catalinotto)
* Report from the Kangaroo Court at The Hague (J. Israel, 14.2.2002)
* Milosevic, a prisoner of conscience (N. Clark)
* The lie of the century (S. Stefanov)
* News from official yugoslav sources
===*===
MORE LINKS:
> http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,651187,00.html
The Guardian - Saturday February 16, 2002
This is not justice
The Hague has replaced Nuremberg's jurisprudence of peace with a
licence to the west to kill
By John Laughland
> http://www.transnational.org/forum/power/2002/
02.01_CriminalTribunal.html
Jonathan Power, TFF associate, February 8, 2002
The Milosevic Trial will embarrass America
===*===
> http://www.workers.org/ww/2002/milos0221.php
Why Milosevic, not NATO, is on trial
By John Catalinotto
The moneyed media throughout the United States
and Western Europe are focusing much attention on
the opening of what they call a "war-crimes
trial" of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic on
Feb. 12.
But those who want to know what's really behind
this trial won't find it in the media of the very
imperialist powers that pulverized Yugoslavia
with merciless bombing raids and dismembered the
former socialist country.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the
Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague was authorized in
1993 by the United Nations Security Council
under pressure from the U.S. government. Its officials
decided it would not put U.S. or NATO generals
on trial. Only those from the Balkans have been tried,
and most of those charged are Serbs. This court
is the antithesis of "justice."
The trial of Milosevic was set up by the victors
of the imperialist war to put on trial those who defied
their plans of domination. And Milosevic, the
first head of state to face an international war crimes
tribunal, is standing trial because he was the
head of a country that resisted the dismantling of
socialism and the surrender of the economy to
the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Milosevic was Serbia's premier for eight years
before being elected Yugoslav president in 1997. He is
also the leader of the Socialist Party of
Serbia.
The judges accuse Milosevic of committing war
crimes in three different struggles that dismembered
Yugoslavia: the war in Croatia in 1991-1995,
Bosnia in 1992-1995, and Kosovo in 1999. The charges
are concocted for the sole purpose of creating a
justification for wars that carved up the remainder of
socialist Yugoslavia after the Cold War had
succeeded in overturning the Soviet Union.
Who is providing the "evidence" to back up these
charges? Court officials who spoke on condition of
anonymity said that reports on Kosovo--a region
of Serbia--came from the CIA. Washington and Berlin
backed a right-wing terrorist group called the
Kosovo Liberation Army that assassinated Serb and
Albanian officials in Kosovo. The British MI-6
is supplying material on Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina,
two republics of the former Yugoslavia.
(Associated Press, Feb. 13)
The U.S. and NATO powers, during a 78-day
bombing campaign in 1999, dropped 25,000 tons of
bombs and killed thousands of Yugoslavs, many of
them seniors and children.
The anti-war movements in United States and
Europe have organized independent tribunals to try the
Pentagon and NATO brass in abstention and, after
pouring over testimony and facts, found the
imperialists guilty of war crimes against the
peoples of Yugoslavia.
In his Jan. 30 statement to an ICTY hearing,
Milosevic said of the combined charges against him: "All
three indictments really have a running thread
... which is the ongoing crime against Yugoslavia and
against my people." He said the victims are
being punished and the criminals let off "because they
were backed by forces that wanted to establish
control over the Balkans, so as to be able to use this
strategic position to establish their control
elsewhere."
Part of the anti-imperialist struggle
The trial of Milosevic in The Hague is therefore
viewed by many in Yugoslavia and around the world as
a continuation of the imperialist campaign in
eastern Europe.
Milosevic, who is defending himself before the
court, has refused to recognize the authority of the
imperial tribunal. He is expected to politically
rebut the charges against him on Feb. 14.
Milosevic's stand has aroused support in
Yugoslavia. Thousands marched in Belgrade on Feb. 9
demanding his freedom. The demonstration was
organized by the SPS. It took great courage to take
to the streets in an anti-imperialist
demonstration at this time.
More than 100,000 Serbs have already signed a
petition demanding his immediate release. This
petition will be sent to the United Nations and
to the Hague Tribunal.
Some 1,380 Yugoslavs volunteered to go to The
Hague to testify in his behalf, according to a French
Press Agency (AFP) report.
In The Hague, anti-war activists from Europe and
the U.S. denounced the tribunal as "NATO's court"
and called it a political tool of the U.S. and
European NATO powers to shift blame for the Balkan wars
from themselves to the Serb and Yugoslav people.
Those present included members of the
International Committee for the Defense of
Slobodan Milosevic and a delegation from the International
Action Center (IAC) from the United States.
Milosevic was first charged with war crimes by
the tribunal in May 1999. It was part of NATO's attempt
to pressure the Yugoslav government to surrender
control of the Serbian region of Kosovo and
Metohia to U.S./NATO occupation. Washington was
trying to avoid a land invasion that could bring U.S.
military casualties and spark more anti-war
actions within the United States.
Deposed by a foreign-financed election and a
coup in the fall of 2000, Milosevic was arrested by the
new pro-NATO regime in the spring of 2001. The
leaders of this government, President Vojislav
Kostunica and Serbian Premier Zoran Djinidjic,
were unable to bring substantial charges against the
former president. Instead, they violated the
Yugoslav Constitution and turned him over to NATO on
June 28, 2001.
Even then the only charges he faced involved
Kosovo. Only last fall, six to ten years after the events,
did they add charges involving Croatia and
Bosnia, where a bitter civil war had been fought between
Croatian, right-wing Muslim and Serb nationalist
regimes. The ICTY hoped it could make him
responsible for alleged crimes of the Serb
forces and make the more serious charge of "genocide"
stick.
After the collapse of the USSR, right-wing
ethnic nationalists in Croatia and Bosnia launched civil wars
that were tearing the country apart. The U.S.
and German governments and secret services backed
these right-wing forces, especially the
neo-fascist Franjo Tudjman in Croatia and the Alija Izetbegovic
regime in Bosnia.
Milosevic asked why "70,000 Muslim refugees
sought sanctuary in Serbia during the Bosnian conflict?
Do you think someone would flee their home and
take refuge in the very territory from which they
were endangered?"
The former president pointed out that, for all
the phony charges, only "the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia," said Milosevic, "which now exists,
retained its [multi]ethnic makeup. There were no
expulsions, from the beginning to the end of the
Yugoslav crisis." After the imperialist-backed forces
won, "half a million Serbs were expelled from
Croatia," Bosnia was split in three ethnic regions, and
virtually all non-Albanians were driven from
Kosovo.
Catalinotto is co-editor of a new book on
Yugoslavia called "Hidden Agenda: U.S./NATO Takeover of
Yugoslavia," published by the International
Action Center. A full transcript of President Milosevic's Jan.
30 statement can be found at www.iacenter.org.
- END -
Reprinted from the Feb. 21,
2002, issue of Workers World newspaper
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is
permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of
this document, but changing it is not allowed.
For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17
St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@....
For subscription info send message to:
info@.... Web: http://www.workers.org)
===*===
URL for this article: http://emperors-clothes.com/h1.htm
EMPEROR'S CLOTHES, Thursday, February 14, 2002
=======================================
Report from the Kangaroo Court at The Hague
[14 February 2002]
=======================================
Dear friends,
I am writing to you from The Hague.
I am here as part of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan
Milosevic. We have been talking to many journalists in an effort to
break through the barrier of misinformation about Yugoslavia and
President Milosevic.
As we told journalists in interviews which have reached millions of
people, the character of the so-called prosecution's case is already
exposed, and the trial just two days old.
Instead of making a dignified, factual opening statement, the
prosecution spent two days broadcasting a made-for-TV fictional movie, a
rehash of all the emotional images they have produced over the past 12
years as evidence that the Serbs are monsters.
The pictures are presented without a shred of actual evidence. All we
get are ugly images and the assertions of the prosecutor/narrator. By
running this atrocity movie for two days, the ICTY hoped (not without
reason) that most reporters would leave The Hague before President
Milosevic made his statements.
What is perhaps most shocking, the prosecution has taken evidence
exonerating Milosevic and condemning NATO and, through the use of cheap
tricks, presented it as if it proved the opposite.
LIES ABOUT WHAT MILSOEVIC SAID AT KOSOVO FIELD IN 1989 - AGAIN!
For example, the "prosecutor" showed some footage of Milosevic
delivering his famous Kosovo Field speech in 1989. This footage included
English subtitles in which Milosevic said:
"Six centuries later, now, we are being again engaged in battles and are
facing battles. They are not armed battles, although such things cannot
be excluded yet."
This is supposed to prove that Milosevic used the 1989 speech to launch
the Yugoslav wars.
It is normal, if a prosecutor wishes to introduce quotes from a speech,
to distribute the entire text.
But this the 'Tribunal' did not do.
That's because if they had quoted almost any full paragraph from the
speech - let alone the whole speech - people would immediately see that
the quote above was a warning of the dangers of war. They would see it
was part of a call for unity between different national groups in
Yugoslavia, and for progress through equality and peaceful cooperation.
Take for instance the following uncut paragraph from the actual text (US
government translation) of Milosevic's speech. "For as long as
multinational communities have existed, their weak point has always been
the relations between different nations. The threat is that the question
of one nation being endangered by the others can be posed one day -- and
this can then start a wave of suspicions, accusations, and intolerance,
a wave that invariably grows and is difficult to stop. This threat has
been hanging like a sword over our heads all the time. Internal and
external enemies of multi-national communities are aware of this and
therefore they organize their activity against multinational societies
mostly by fomenting national conflicts. At this moment, we in Yugoslavia
are behaving as if we have never had such an experience and as if in our
recent and distant past we have never experienced the worst tragedy of
national conflicts that a society can experience and still survive.
FABRICATED PICTURES AND MIND BOGGLING DISHONESTY
Another example - The prosecutor showed footage of what seem to be men
imprisoned behind barbed wire. These pictures have been used before.
They were taken by an ITN film crew in 1992. Photographs were compiled
from this footage and broadcast around the world, purporting to prove
that the Serbs had set up a death camp at Trnopolje in Bosnia.
Amazingly, this footage can be seen in the Emperors' Clothes movie,
JUDGMENT. What the Tribunal did not show was the rest of the footage
from the movie - where you can witness Penny Marshall and the other
members of her ITN film crew setting up their cameras inside a chicken
wire and barbed wire enclosure.
Some refugees came over to see what was happening. Penny Marshall talked
to them and filmed them through the wire, thus producing footage that
made it seem these men were fenced in. The film was then further
doctored to create the 'feel' of a Nazi death camp.
In the movie, JUDGMENT, one can hear Penny Marshall pressing the Muslim
refugees to say they are being abused. The man she is interviewing
resists her pressure. "No no, " he says. "They treat us good. It's a
refugee center."
Thus the ICTY takes footage from a movie which proves that the death
camp stories were a lie, and uses them once again to broadcast the lie.
We have studied much data - both articles and transcripts from the mass
media, and original documents. We have also conducted our own
interviews.
We can now prove that NATO's charges against Milosevic are lies.
These lies were originally broadcast to justify the breakup of
Yugoslavia, engineered by the U.S., German and British Establishments.
Now because Milosevic has refused to crawl, the prosecution is forced to
justify their attack on Yugoslavia.
When Milosevic tried to speak today, his microphone was once again
turned off by Judge May. This demonstrates the essence of NATO's attempt
to deal with Milosevic and others who want to tell the truth about what
NATO has done to Yugoslavia. Their method is a) broadcast lies over and
over and 2) try to silence Milosevic and everyone else who tells the
truth.
But NATO and its 'Tribunal' have a problem. They are boxed in by their
previous propaganda. They have to prove the lies they made up over a
course of many years are true.
Thus this false trial has reopened the question of what really happened
in Yugoslavia. This gives those of us who want to get out the facts a
new opportunity.
And we are using it.
* Jared Israel * The Hague
===*===
Milosevic, a prisoner of conscience
Neil Clark raises a lone voice for a man whose worst crime was to carry
on being socialist
New Statesman magazine, 11 Feb., 2002
I always remember my first visit to Belgrade, in the summer of 1998. As
an unreconstructed socialist, completely out of step with the spirit of
the age, 1 had spent most of the Nineties trying to escape, as best 1
could, to a place where it was still 1948. So imagine my delight when 1
arrived in Belgrade and found a city that seemed miraculously to have
escaped all the horrors of global grunge.
Bookshops, self service restaurants and state~owned department stores
abounded: a walk down the city boulevards reminded one of a British high
street in the late Sixties. My delight turned to ecstasy when, on
entering a state owned bookshop, 1 saw on prominent display in the
window a copy of that classic tome Arguments for Socialism by Tony Berm.
What a truly wonderful place was Belgrade!
Yet here 1 was, in the capital city of a nation commonly regarded as the
"pariah" state of Europe and whose leader a certain Slobodan
Milosevic was routinely dismissed in the western media as Europe's
Saddam Hussein. Four years on, the same Slobodan Milosevic languishes in
a cell awaiting trial on charges of war crimes and genocide.
While opposition to the treatment of the al Qaeda prisoners has been
widespread and vociferous, few have protested about the treatment handed
out to a man who, less than 18 months ago, was president of a European
nation. Yet the way Milosevic has been dealt with is, in many ways, as
great a scandal as the blindfolds and handcuffs at Camp X Ray.
For a start, it is still unclear what the former Yugoslav leader is
actually charged with, even though he has been deprived of his liberty
for more than ten months now. The original war crimes indictment, served
on Milosevic in June 1999 at the height of the Kosovo war, covered vague
charges relating to the war in Bosnia. The UN's chief war crimes
prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, has sought to submerge these charges into a
"unified" indictment, widened to include charges relating to the war in
Bosnia and also to campaigns in Croatia. At least, that was the position
up until very recently. Now, it seems, due to problems with "collecting
evidence", the trial date of 12 February is likely to be put back once
more.
As if the nebulous nature of these charges were not scandalous enough,
there are also the day to day infringements of Milosevic's basic human
rights to consider. On the pretext of preventing a suicide attempt,
Milosevic is under 24 hour video surveillance in his cell. He is denied
access to the counsel of his choice, his mail is strictly censored and
he is prevented from speaking to the world's media. Yet despite these
violations, Amnesty International, normally so vocal in its defence of
"political prisoners", has yet to utter so much as a murmur.
The problem is that the demonisation campaign against Milosevic has been
so thorough and unrelenting and, for most, Slobo is already guilty as
charged.
Milosevic, we have learnt from the western media, is a rabid Serb
nationalist who whipped up dormant ethnic tensions to plunge the whole
region into war and, in the process, had thousands of innocent people
deported or killed.
But let us look beyond this CNN view of world history. Slobodan
Milosevic, a lifelong socialist, never once made a racist speech. When
faced with the incessant violence of western trained separatist groups,
he had little option but to use military means to try to prevent the
break up of his country and to defend the Serbian and Roma people from
being driven out of the lands they had inhabited for centuries.
Ironically, although the Yugoslav Socialist Party leader had no shortage
of "right wing" enemies (Lady Thatcher, for one), it has been
representatives of the liberal left, in the United States, Britain and
Europe, who have hounded him most mercilessly.
Back in 1999, it was Auberon Waugh who memorably coined the phrase
"Blair Toynbee axis" to describe the unedifying enthusiasm for the
bombing of Yugoslavia from new Labour and its supporters in the British
media. Then ministers such as Robin Cook and Derek Fatchett who, less
than 20 years earlier, had been on Ban the Bomb marches now climbed into
jump jets and addressed military press conferences, while Clare Short
defended the killing of cleaners and make up girls at the Yugoslav state
television station by Nato bombs.
How are we to explain this? The trouble with Slobo is not that he is an
"ethnic cleanser" (three years after the original indictment, we have
yet to see the evidence linking Milosevic to atrocities in Bosnia), but
that he is stubbornly and cussedly an "old", unreconstructed socialist.
This is why the new designer "left" parties of Europe have pursued him
so mercilessly to The Hague. Slobo is exactly the kind of old style
eastern European leader many of them would have defended in their
student days. Ironically, it is still acceptable in politically correct
circles to praise Tito's Yugoslavia, which was truly a one party state;
but Milosevie's Yugoslavia, where more than 20 political parties could
freely operate, is deemed completely beyond the pale.
Had Milosevic sold off his country's assets to the multinationals and
queued up deferentially to join the European Union and Nato, and become
a western "yes man", he would have had carte blanche to wage his own
"war against terrorism". Anyone who doubts this need only refer to the
1999 US EU Balkan Stability Pact, which called for all countries of the
region to be offered Nato and EU membership to "anchor them firmly in
Euro Atlantic structures", as well as demanding "wide spread'
privatisation" and an end to any restrictions on the operations of
multinationals.
The treatment handed out to Milosevic shows that the biggest enemies of
socialist causes are not those with principles on the right, but those
without them on the left.
===*===
THE TRIAL ON MILOSEVIC : THE LIE OF THE CENTURY!
The International Tribunal, presided over by Richard
May, started the trial of ex-president of Yugoslavia
Slobodan Milosevic. Prosecutor General Carla Del Ponte
said that the litigation could last up to two years.
Unprecendented security measures have been taken,
since the event is gathering a lot of people from the
entire world.
As news agencies reported, Milosevic appeared in the
court room wearing a dark suit and a tie; he was calm
and confident.
Carla Del Ponte was the first to make a speech. The
prosecutor talked about the justice and about the
inevitability of retaliation. She said that Milosevic
was moved by his hunger for power.
Ninety witnesses are going to participate in the
trial, and Bill Clinton may be one of them. The judges
of the International Tribunal of the Hague have
charged the former president of Yugoslavia of
committing war crimes in Kosovo in 1999, during the
war in Croatia (1991-1995), and in Bosnia (1992-1995).
As far as Bosnia is concerned, Milosevic is also being
charged with genocide.
The court will first consider the events in Kosovo.
The documents on the other two cases are to be
prepared by July 1. The most severe punishment that
can be ruled by the Tribunal is a lifetime of
imprisonment.
As it became known, Slobodan Milosevic?s party, the
Social Party of Serbia, is trying to provide for the
constant presence of its representatives at the court
sessions. The Canadian lawyer Christopher Black stated
that the prosecution would extend the process to the
maximum, for they were not successful in Milosevic?s
case, so they will use him as a whipping boy.
In the meantime, a group of the deputies of the State
Duma sent a letter to UN?s Secretary-General Kofi
Annan, expressing solidarity with the former
Yugoslavian leader. They asked Annan to dimiss Carla
Del Ponte from her position.
It was stressed in the letter that new information
pertaining to the links between the Liberation Army of
Kosovo and Osama bin Laden (and his al-Qaeda group)
changed the conception about the character of the
conflict in Kosovo during 1998-1999, and, therefore,
the estimation of the key figures of that conflict. It
is obvious that President Milosevic was waging war
against international terrorism. However, the actions
of the Yugoslavian government to suppress the armed
separatism and destroy the armed militant groups that
terrorized the Serb and the Albanian population were
pictured as repression against the civilians.
The deputies drew Annan?s attention to the fact that
Carla Del Ponte had all the necessary documents
concerning the terrorist activity of the Liberation
Army of Kosovo at her disposal, but she deliberately
refused to include them in the materials of the case.
Furthermore, the court is not going to consider the
war crimes committed by the USA and NATO in 1999. No
wonder, taking into consideration the fact of who
controls this International Tribunal. If you want to
address someone, don't address Kofi Annan, address
American President George (the second)W. Bush.
The Serbian minister for Justice, Vladan Batic, said
that the state is not supposed to interfere in the
litigation with Milosevic. As Batic claimed, the
proceedings in the Hague are not the aimed against
Serbia, but are a process aimed at proving the
criminal responsibility of one person only.
Furthermore, Milosevic does not acknowledge the
government of Serbia.
ver 100-thousand Serbian citizens have already signed
a petition for the immediate release of Milosevic.
This petition is going to be sent to the UN and to the
Hague Tribunal. The process in the Hague is going to
be proved the ?the lie of the century? in order to
release Milosevic and find him not guilty of the
charges (...)
Milosevic?s name is written in the history as the man
who ruled the country during NATO?s aggression in the
spring of 1999. This was the time when the whole
nation united around this leader and saw Milosevic as
their protecter and the embodiment of an unconquered
people.
Sergey Stefanov (PRAVDA.Ru)
===*===
DJINDJIC CALLS ON ICTY INDICTEES TO GIVE THEMSELVES UP
BELGRADE, Feb. 13 (Beta) - Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic said
the
list of war crimes indictees sought by the International Criminal
Tribunal
for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has been considerably shortened,
"partly
due to court capacity, and partly because tensions have eased," the
Belgrade daily Glas Javnosti reports on Feb. 14.
"We cannot evade The Hague tribunal. There is only a limited number of
names on their list, including Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, and
the
four members of Milosevic's entourage," Djindjic said, adding that "they
can be counted on the fingers of one hand."
"Why don't they, gentlemen and heroes that they are, remove the noose
from
their nation's neck and give themselves up of their own free will. The
trials are public, there are 250 reporters with press accreditation, so
the
trials cannot possibly be rigged," the Serbian prime minister said.
SERBIAN JUSTICE MINISTER URGES ICTY INDICTEES TO SURRENDER
BELGRADE, Feb. 13 (Beta) - Serbian Justice Minister Vladan Batic called
on
all those indicted by The Hague-based International War Crimes Tribunal
for
the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to voluntarily surrender, and thus
"demonstrate patriotic conscience." Batic reiterated that in the case of
voluntary surrender, the Serbian government would offer guarantees for
release from pre-trial detention.
At a press conference of the Democratic-Christian Party of Serbia, led
by
him, Batic said that the Serbian government had not been set "any
ultimatum
requests in respect to certain individuals or deadlines" for extradition
of
indictees to the ICTY, but added that all international officials had
pointed to the necessity of full cooperation with the ICTY.
PESIC: COOPERATION WITH THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL IN LEGALLY DEFINED MANNER
BELGRADE, Feb 18 ( Tanjug) - Yugoslav Prime Minister Dragisa Pesic told
Tanjug Sunday that it is the last moment for cooperation with The Hague
tribunal in a legally defined manner and that a political agreement
needed
to be reached as soon as possible with coalition partners on the federal
level and parties in Serbia. "On the issue of extradition of
individuals, I
personally think that, realizing the resolve and need for future
cooperation with The Hague tribunal, conscience will prevail and that
many
will voluntarily give themselves up and in that way lift the burden from
themselves and from the nation and from our state," Pesic said.
FRY ASKS FOR OBSERVER STATUS AT HAGUE TRIAL
BELGRADE, Feb 17 ( Free Serbia) - Federal foreign
minister Goran Svilanovic confirmed today our country demanded The Hague
tribunal to make it possible for one representative of the Yugoslav
government to be observer to the trial of Slobodan Milosevic.
"This is something I have done in the capacity of
foreign minister. I officially demanded The Hague tribunal to have one
of
our observers be present during the course of the trial, because our
citizens are on trial", tells Svilanovic.
"We want to follow the course of the trial up to the
smallest detail, not from the media but from direct presence. We are
still
expecting the answer and I think it will be positive", stressed
Svilanovic
adding this was an important trial and "there are trials that would be
beneficial to our country". He adds cooperation with The Hague tribunal
is
an obligation of our government and should be taken seriously, which
also
applies to the extradition of indictees for war crimes
ALBRIGHT: U.S. GOVERNMENT WILL DECIDE UPON TESTIMONY AT HAGUE
WASHINGTON, Feb 17 ( B92) - Former State Secretary Madeleine
Albright has stated the U.S. government would decide upon whether she
would
testify at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic. "Whatever steps I took, I
did
it as ally to the U.S. government and so the decision about the
appearance
at the Milosevic trial should be adopted by the government", Albright
tells
the press in Kiev
* Report from the Kangaroo Court at The Hague (J. Israel, 14.2.2002)
* Milosevic, a prisoner of conscience (N. Clark)
* The lie of the century (S. Stefanov)
* News from official yugoslav sources
===*===
MORE LINKS:
> http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,651187,00.html
The Guardian - Saturday February 16, 2002
This is not justice
The Hague has replaced Nuremberg's jurisprudence of peace with a
licence to the west to kill
By John Laughland
> http://www.transnational.org/forum/power/2002/
02.01_CriminalTribunal.html
Jonathan Power, TFF associate, February 8, 2002
The Milosevic Trial will embarrass America
===*===
> http://www.workers.org/ww/2002/milos0221.php
Why Milosevic, not NATO, is on trial
By John Catalinotto
The moneyed media throughout the United States
and Western Europe are focusing much attention on
the opening of what they call a "war-crimes
trial" of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic on
Feb. 12.
But those who want to know what's really behind
this trial won't find it in the media of the very
imperialist powers that pulverized Yugoslavia
with merciless bombing raids and dismembered the
former socialist country.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the
Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague was authorized in
1993 by the United Nations Security Council
under pressure from the U.S. government. Its officials
decided it would not put U.S. or NATO generals
on trial. Only those from the Balkans have been tried,
and most of those charged are Serbs. This court
is the antithesis of "justice."
The trial of Milosevic was set up by the victors
of the imperialist war to put on trial those who defied
their plans of domination. And Milosevic, the
first head of state to face an international war crimes
tribunal, is standing trial because he was the
head of a country that resisted the dismantling of
socialism and the surrender of the economy to
the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Milosevic was Serbia's premier for eight years
before being elected Yugoslav president in 1997. He is
also the leader of the Socialist Party of
Serbia.
The judges accuse Milosevic of committing war
crimes in three different struggles that dismembered
Yugoslavia: the war in Croatia in 1991-1995,
Bosnia in 1992-1995, and Kosovo in 1999. The charges
are concocted for the sole purpose of creating a
justification for wars that carved up the remainder of
socialist Yugoslavia after the Cold War had
succeeded in overturning the Soviet Union.
Who is providing the "evidence" to back up these
charges? Court officials who spoke on condition of
anonymity said that reports on Kosovo--a region
of Serbia--came from the CIA. Washington and Berlin
backed a right-wing terrorist group called the
Kosovo Liberation Army that assassinated Serb and
Albanian officials in Kosovo. The British MI-6
is supplying material on Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina,
two republics of the former Yugoslavia.
(Associated Press, Feb. 13)
The U.S. and NATO powers, during a 78-day
bombing campaign in 1999, dropped 25,000 tons of
bombs and killed thousands of Yugoslavs, many of
them seniors and children.
The anti-war movements in United States and
Europe have organized independent tribunals to try the
Pentagon and NATO brass in abstention and, after
pouring over testimony and facts, found the
imperialists guilty of war crimes against the
peoples of Yugoslavia.
In his Jan. 30 statement to an ICTY hearing,
Milosevic said of the combined charges against him: "All
three indictments really have a running thread
... which is the ongoing crime against Yugoslavia and
against my people." He said the victims are
being punished and the criminals let off "because they
were backed by forces that wanted to establish
control over the Balkans, so as to be able to use this
strategic position to establish their control
elsewhere."
Part of the anti-imperialist struggle
The trial of Milosevic in The Hague is therefore
viewed by many in Yugoslavia and around the world as
a continuation of the imperialist campaign in
eastern Europe.
Milosevic, who is defending himself before the
court, has refused to recognize the authority of the
imperial tribunal. He is expected to politically
rebut the charges against him on Feb. 14.
Milosevic's stand has aroused support in
Yugoslavia. Thousands marched in Belgrade on Feb. 9
demanding his freedom. The demonstration was
organized by the SPS. It took great courage to take
to the streets in an anti-imperialist
demonstration at this time.
More than 100,000 Serbs have already signed a
petition demanding his immediate release. This
petition will be sent to the United Nations and
to the Hague Tribunal.
Some 1,380 Yugoslavs volunteered to go to The
Hague to testify in his behalf, according to a French
Press Agency (AFP) report.
In The Hague, anti-war activists from Europe and
the U.S. denounced the tribunal as "NATO's court"
and called it a political tool of the U.S. and
European NATO powers to shift blame for the Balkan wars
from themselves to the Serb and Yugoslav people.
Those present included members of the
International Committee for the Defense of
Slobodan Milosevic and a delegation from the International
Action Center (IAC) from the United States.
Milosevic was first charged with war crimes by
the tribunal in May 1999. It was part of NATO's attempt
to pressure the Yugoslav government to surrender
control of the Serbian region of Kosovo and
Metohia to U.S./NATO occupation. Washington was
trying to avoid a land invasion that could bring U.S.
military casualties and spark more anti-war
actions within the United States.
Deposed by a foreign-financed election and a
coup in the fall of 2000, Milosevic was arrested by the
new pro-NATO regime in the spring of 2001. The
leaders of this government, President Vojislav
Kostunica and Serbian Premier Zoran Djinidjic,
were unable to bring substantial charges against the
former president. Instead, they violated the
Yugoslav Constitution and turned him over to NATO on
June 28, 2001.
Even then the only charges he faced involved
Kosovo. Only last fall, six to ten years after the events,
did they add charges involving Croatia and
Bosnia, where a bitter civil war had been fought between
Croatian, right-wing Muslim and Serb nationalist
regimes. The ICTY hoped it could make him
responsible for alleged crimes of the Serb
forces and make the more serious charge of "genocide"
stick.
After the collapse of the USSR, right-wing
ethnic nationalists in Croatia and Bosnia launched civil wars
that were tearing the country apart. The U.S.
and German governments and secret services backed
these right-wing forces, especially the
neo-fascist Franjo Tudjman in Croatia and the Alija Izetbegovic
regime in Bosnia.
Milosevic asked why "70,000 Muslim refugees
sought sanctuary in Serbia during the Bosnian conflict?
Do you think someone would flee their home and
take refuge in the very territory from which they
were endangered?"
The former president pointed out that, for all
the phony charges, only "the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia," said Milosevic, "which now exists,
retained its [multi]ethnic makeup. There were no
expulsions, from the beginning to the end of the
Yugoslav crisis." After the imperialist-backed forces
won, "half a million Serbs were expelled from
Croatia," Bosnia was split in three ethnic regions, and
virtually all non-Albanians were driven from
Kosovo.
Catalinotto is co-editor of a new book on
Yugoslavia called "Hidden Agenda: U.S./NATO Takeover of
Yugoslavia," published by the International
Action Center. A full transcript of President Milosevic's Jan.
30 statement can be found at www.iacenter.org.
- END -
Reprinted from the Feb. 21,
2002, issue of Workers World newspaper
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is
permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of
this document, but changing it is not allowed.
For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17
St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@....
For subscription info send message to:
info@.... Web: http://www.workers.org)
===*===
URL for this article: http://emperors-clothes.com/h1.htm
EMPEROR'S CLOTHES, Thursday, February 14, 2002
=======================================
Report from the Kangaroo Court at The Hague
[14 February 2002]
=======================================
Dear friends,
I am writing to you from The Hague.
I am here as part of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan
Milosevic. We have been talking to many journalists in an effort to
break through the barrier of misinformation about Yugoslavia and
President Milosevic.
As we told journalists in interviews which have reached millions of
people, the character of the so-called prosecution's case is already
exposed, and the trial just two days old.
Instead of making a dignified, factual opening statement, the
prosecution spent two days broadcasting a made-for-TV fictional movie, a
rehash of all the emotional images they have produced over the past 12
years as evidence that the Serbs are monsters.
The pictures are presented without a shred of actual evidence. All we
get are ugly images and the assertions of the prosecutor/narrator. By
running this atrocity movie for two days, the ICTY hoped (not without
reason) that most reporters would leave The Hague before President
Milosevic made his statements.
What is perhaps most shocking, the prosecution has taken evidence
exonerating Milosevic and condemning NATO and, through the use of cheap
tricks, presented it as if it proved the opposite.
LIES ABOUT WHAT MILSOEVIC SAID AT KOSOVO FIELD IN 1989 - AGAIN!
For example, the "prosecutor" showed some footage of Milosevic
delivering his famous Kosovo Field speech in 1989. This footage included
English subtitles in which Milosevic said:
"Six centuries later, now, we are being again engaged in battles and are
facing battles. They are not armed battles, although such things cannot
be excluded yet."
This is supposed to prove that Milosevic used the 1989 speech to launch
the Yugoslav wars.
It is normal, if a prosecutor wishes to introduce quotes from a speech,
to distribute the entire text.
But this the 'Tribunal' did not do.
That's because if they had quoted almost any full paragraph from the
speech - let alone the whole speech - people would immediately see that
the quote above was a warning of the dangers of war. They would see it
was part of a call for unity between different national groups in
Yugoslavia, and for progress through equality and peaceful cooperation.
Take for instance the following uncut paragraph from the actual text (US
government translation) of Milosevic's speech. "For as long as
multinational communities have existed, their weak point has always been
the relations between different nations. The threat is that the question
of one nation being endangered by the others can be posed one day -- and
this can then start a wave of suspicions, accusations, and intolerance,
a wave that invariably grows and is difficult to stop. This threat has
been hanging like a sword over our heads all the time. Internal and
external enemies of multi-national communities are aware of this and
therefore they organize their activity against multinational societies
mostly by fomenting national conflicts. At this moment, we in Yugoslavia
are behaving as if we have never had such an experience and as if in our
recent and distant past we have never experienced the worst tragedy of
national conflicts that a society can experience and still survive.
FABRICATED PICTURES AND MIND BOGGLING DISHONESTY
Another example - The prosecutor showed footage of what seem to be men
imprisoned behind barbed wire. These pictures have been used before.
They were taken by an ITN film crew in 1992. Photographs were compiled
from this footage and broadcast around the world, purporting to prove
that the Serbs had set up a death camp at Trnopolje in Bosnia.
Amazingly, this footage can be seen in the Emperors' Clothes movie,
JUDGMENT. What the Tribunal did not show was the rest of the footage
from the movie - where you can witness Penny Marshall and the other
members of her ITN film crew setting up their cameras inside a chicken
wire and barbed wire enclosure.
Some refugees came over to see what was happening. Penny Marshall talked
to them and filmed them through the wire, thus producing footage that
made it seem these men were fenced in. The film was then further
doctored to create the 'feel' of a Nazi death camp.
In the movie, JUDGMENT, one can hear Penny Marshall pressing the Muslim
refugees to say they are being abused. The man she is interviewing
resists her pressure. "No no, " he says. "They treat us good. It's a
refugee center."
Thus the ICTY takes footage from a movie which proves that the death
camp stories were a lie, and uses them once again to broadcast the lie.
We have studied much data - both articles and transcripts from the mass
media, and original documents. We have also conducted our own
interviews.
We can now prove that NATO's charges against Milosevic are lies.
These lies were originally broadcast to justify the breakup of
Yugoslavia, engineered by the U.S., German and British Establishments.
Now because Milosevic has refused to crawl, the prosecution is forced to
justify their attack on Yugoslavia.
When Milosevic tried to speak today, his microphone was once again
turned off by Judge May. This demonstrates the essence of NATO's attempt
to deal with Milosevic and others who want to tell the truth about what
NATO has done to Yugoslavia. Their method is a) broadcast lies over and
over and 2) try to silence Milosevic and everyone else who tells the
truth.
But NATO and its 'Tribunal' have a problem. They are boxed in by their
previous propaganda. They have to prove the lies they made up over a
course of many years are true.
Thus this false trial has reopened the question of what really happened
in Yugoslavia. This gives those of us who want to get out the facts a
new opportunity.
And we are using it.
* Jared Israel * The Hague
===*===
Milosevic, a prisoner of conscience
Neil Clark raises a lone voice for a man whose worst crime was to carry
on being socialist
New Statesman magazine, 11 Feb., 2002
I always remember my first visit to Belgrade, in the summer of 1998. As
an unreconstructed socialist, completely out of step with the spirit of
the age, 1 had spent most of the Nineties trying to escape, as best 1
could, to a place where it was still 1948. So imagine my delight when 1
arrived in Belgrade and found a city that seemed miraculously to have
escaped all the horrors of global grunge.
Bookshops, self service restaurants and state~owned department stores
abounded: a walk down the city boulevards reminded one of a British high
street in the late Sixties. My delight turned to ecstasy when, on
entering a state owned bookshop, 1 saw on prominent display in the
window a copy of that classic tome Arguments for Socialism by Tony Berm.
What a truly wonderful place was Belgrade!
Yet here 1 was, in the capital city of a nation commonly regarded as the
"pariah" state of Europe and whose leader a certain Slobodan
Milosevic was routinely dismissed in the western media as Europe's
Saddam Hussein. Four years on, the same Slobodan Milosevic languishes in
a cell awaiting trial on charges of war crimes and genocide.
While opposition to the treatment of the al Qaeda prisoners has been
widespread and vociferous, few have protested about the treatment handed
out to a man who, less than 18 months ago, was president of a European
nation. Yet the way Milosevic has been dealt with is, in many ways, as
great a scandal as the blindfolds and handcuffs at Camp X Ray.
For a start, it is still unclear what the former Yugoslav leader is
actually charged with, even though he has been deprived of his liberty
for more than ten months now. The original war crimes indictment, served
on Milosevic in June 1999 at the height of the Kosovo war, covered vague
charges relating to the war in Bosnia. The UN's chief war crimes
prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, has sought to submerge these charges into a
"unified" indictment, widened to include charges relating to the war in
Bosnia and also to campaigns in Croatia. At least, that was the position
up until very recently. Now, it seems, due to problems with "collecting
evidence", the trial date of 12 February is likely to be put back once
more.
As if the nebulous nature of these charges were not scandalous enough,
there are also the day to day infringements of Milosevic's basic human
rights to consider. On the pretext of preventing a suicide attempt,
Milosevic is under 24 hour video surveillance in his cell. He is denied
access to the counsel of his choice, his mail is strictly censored and
he is prevented from speaking to the world's media. Yet despite these
violations, Amnesty International, normally so vocal in its defence of
"political prisoners", has yet to utter so much as a murmur.
The problem is that the demonisation campaign against Milosevic has been
so thorough and unrelenting and, for most, Slobo is already guilty as
charged.
Milosevic, we have learnt from the western media, is a rabid Serb
nationalist who whipped up dormant ethnic tensions to plunge the whole
region into war and, in the process, had thousands of innocent people
deported or killed.
But let us look beyond this CNN view of world history. Slobodan
Milosevic, a lifelong socialist, never once made a racist speech. When
faced with the incessant violence of western trained separatist groups,
he had little option but to use military means to try to prevent the
break up of his country and to defend the Serbian and Roma people from
being driven out of the lands they had inhabited for centuries.
Ironically, although the Yugoslav Socialist Party leader had no shortage
of "right wing" enemies (Lady Thatcher, for one), it has been
representatives of the liberal left, in the United States, Britain and
Europe, who have hounded him most mercilessly.
Back in 1999, it was Auberon Waugh who memorably coined the phrase
"Blair Toynbee axis" to describe the unedifying enthusiasm for the
bombing of Yugoslavia from new Labour and its supporters in the British
media. Then ministers such as Robin Cook and Derek Fatchett who, less
than 20 years earlier, had been on Ban the Bomb marches now climbed into
jump jets and addressed military press conferences, while Clare Short
defended the killing of cleaners and make up girls at the Yugoslav state
television station by Nato bombs.
How are we to explain this? The trouble with Slobo is not that he is an
"ethnic cleanser" (three years after the original indictment, we have
yet to see the evidence linking Milosevic to atrocities in Bosnia), but
that he is stubbornly and cussedly an "old", unreconstructed socialist.
This is why the new designer "left" parties of Europe have pursued him
so mercilessly to The Hague. Slobo is exactly the kind of old style
eastern European leader many of them would have defended in their
student days. Ironically, it is still acceptable in politically correct
circles to praise Tito's Yugoslavia, which was truly a one party state;
but Milosevie's Yugoslavia, where more than 20 political parties could
freely operate, is deemed completely beyond the pale.
Had Milosevic sold off his country's assets to the multinationals and
queued up deferentially to join the European Union and Nato, and become
a western "yes man", he would have had carte blanche to wage his own
"war against terrorism". Anyone who doubts this need only refer to the
1999 US EU Balkan Stability Pact, which called for all countries of the
region to be offered Nato and EU membership to "anchor them firmly in
Euro Atlantic structures", as well as demanding "wide spread'
privatisation" and an end to any restrictions on the operations of
multinationals.
The treatment handed out to Milosevic shows that the biggest enemies of
socialist causes are not those with principles on the right, but those
without them on the left.
===*===
THE TRIAL ON MILOSEVIC : THE LIE OF THE CENTURY!
The International Tribunal, presided over by Richard
May, started the trial of ex-president of Yugoslavia
Slobodan Milosevic. Prosecutor General Carla Del Ponte
said that the litigation could last up to two years.
Unprecendented security measures have been taken,
since the event is gathering a lot of people from the
entire world.
As news agencies reported, Milosevic appeared in the
court room wearing a dark suit and a tie; he was calm
and confident.
Carla Del Ponte was the first to make a speech. The
prosecutor talked about the justice and about the
inevitability of retaliation. She said that Milosevic
was moved by his hunger for power.
Ninety witnesses are going to participate in the
trial, and Bill Clinton may be one of them. The judges
of the International Tribunal of the Hague have
charged the former president of Yugoslavia of
committing war crimes in Kosovo in 1999, during the
war in Croatia (1991-1995), and in Bosnia (1992-1995).
As far as Bosnia is concerned, Milosevic is also being
charged with genocide.
The court will first consider the events in Kosovo.
The documents on the other two cases are to be
prepared by July 1. The most severe punishment that
can be ruled by the Tribunal is a lifetime of
imprisonment.
As it became known, Slobodan Milosevic?s party, the
Social Party of Serbia, is trying to provide for the
constant presence of its representatives at the court
sessions. The Canadian lawyer Christopher Black stated
that the prosecution would extend the process to the
maximum, for they were not successful in Milosevic?s
case, so they will use him as a whipping boy.
In the meantime, a group of the deputies of the State
Duma sent a letter to UN?s Secretary-General Kofi
Annan, expressing solidarity with the former
Yugoslavian leader. They asked Annan to dimiss Carla
Del Ponte from her position.
It was stressed in the letter that new information
pertaining to the links between the Liberation Army of
Kosovo and Osama bin Laden (and his al-Qaeda group)
changed the conception about the character of the
conflict in Kosovo during 1998-1999, and, therefore,
the estimation of the key figures of that conflict. It
is obvious that President Milosevic was waging war
against international terrorism. However, the actions
of the Yugoslavian government to suppress the armed
separatism and destroy the armed militant groups that
terrorized the Serb and the Albanian population were
pictured as repression against the civilians.
The deputies drew Annan?s attention to the fact that
Carla Del Ponte had all the necessary documents
concerning the terrorist activity of the Liberation
Army of Kosovo at her disposal, but she deliberately
refused to include them in the materials of the case.
Furthermore, the court is not going to consider the
war crimes committed by the USA and NATO in 1999. No
wonder, taking into consideration the fact of who
controls this International Tribunal. If you want to
address someone, don't address Kofi Annan, address
American President George (the second)W. Bush.
The Serbian minister for Justice, Vladan Batic, said
that the state is not supposed to interfere in the
litigation with Milosevic. As Batic claimed, the
proceedings in the Hague are not the aimed against
Serbia, but are a process aimed at proving the
criminal responsibility of one person only.
Furthermore, Milosevic does not acknowledge the
government of Serbia.
ver 100-thousand Serbian citizens have already signed
a petition for the immediate release of Milosevic.
This petition is going to be sent to the UN and to the
Hague Tribunal. The process in the Hague is going to
be proved the ?the lie of the century? in order to
release Milosevic and find him not guilty of the
charges (...)
Milosevic?s name is written in the history as the man
who ruled the country during NATO?s aggression in the
spring of 1999. This was the time when the whole
nation united around this leader and saw Milosevic as
their protecter and the embodiment of an unconquered
people.
Sergey Stefanov (PRAVDA.Ru)
===*===
DJINDJIC CALLS ON ICTY INDICTEES TO GIVE THEMSELVES UP
BELGRADE, Feb. 13 (Beta) - Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic said
the
list of war crimes indictees sought by the International Criminal
Tribunal
for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has been considerably shortened,
"partly
due to court capacity, and partly because tensions have eased," the
Belgrade daily Glas Javnosti reports on Feb. 14.
"We cannot evade The Hague tribunal. There is only a limited number of
names on their list, including Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, and
the
four members of Milosevic's entourage," Djindjic said, adding that "they
can be counted on the fingers of one hand."
"Why don't they, gentlemen and heroes that they are, remove the noose
from
their nation's neck and give themselves up of their own free will. The
trials are public, there are 250 reporters with press accreditation, so
the
trials cannot possibly be rigged," the Serbian prime minister said.
SERBIAN JUSTICE MINISTER URGES ICTY INDICTEES TO SURRENDER
BELGRADE, Feb. 13 (Beta) - Serbian Justice Minister Vladan Batic called
on
all those indicted by The Hague-based International War Crimes Tribunal
for
the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to voluntarily surrender, and thus
"demonstrate patriotic conscience." Batic reiterated that in the case of
voluntary surrender, the Serbian government would offer guarantees for
release from pre-trial detention.
At a press conference of the Democratic-Christian Party of Serbia, led
by
him, Batic said that the Serbian government had not been set "any
ultimatum
requests in respect to certain individuals or deadlines" for extradition
of
indictees to the ICTY, but added that all international officials had
pointed to the necessity of full cooperation with the ICTY.
PESIC: COOPERATION WITH THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL IN LEGALLY DEFINED MANNER
BELGRADE, Feb 18 ( Tanjug) - Yugoslav Prime Minister Dragisa Pesic told
Tanjug Sunday that it is the last moment for cooperation with The Hague
tribunal in a legally defined manner and that a political agreement
needed
to be reached as soon as possible with coalition partners on the federal
level and parties in Serbia. "On the issue of extradition of
individuals, I
personally think that, realizing the resolve and need for future
cooperation with The Hague tribunal, conscience will prevail and that
many
will voluntarily give themselves up and in that way lift the burden from
themselves and from the nation and from our state," Pesic said.
FRY ASKS FOR OBSERVER STATUS AT HAGUE TRIAL
BELGRADE, Feb 17 ( Free Serbia) - Federal foreign
minister Goran Svilanovic confirmed today our country demanded The Hague
tribunal to make it possible for one representative of the Yugoslav
government to be observer to the trial of Slobodan Milosevic.
"This is something I have done in the capacity of
foreign minister. I officially demanded The Hague tribunal to have one
of
our observers be present during the course of the trial, because our
citizens are on trial", tells Svilanovic.
"We want to follow the course of the trial up to the
smallest detail, not from the media but from direct presence. We are
still
expecting the answer and I think it will be positive", stressed
Svilanovic
adding this was an important trial and "there are trials that would be
beneficial to our country". He adds cooperation with The Hague tribunal
is
an obligation of our government and should be taken seriously, which
also
applies to the extradition of indictees for war crimes
ALBRIGHT: U.S. GOVERNMENT WILL DECIDE UPON TESTIMONY AT HAGUE
WASHINGTON, Feb 17 ( B92) - Former State Secretary Madeleine
Albright has stated the U.S. government would decide upon whether she
would
testify at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic. "Whatever steps I took, I
did
it as ally to the U.S. government and so the decision about the
appearance
at the Milosevic trial should be adopted by the government", Albright
tells
the press in Kiev