International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic (ICDSM)

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========================================================
The State of Emergency in Serbia
and the Slow Murder of Slobodan Milosevic

Nico Varkevisser's April 3rd ICDSM
Press Conference in Amsterdam

[Posted 9 April 2003]
========================================================

On Thursday, 3 April 2003, the
International Committee to Defend
Slobodan Milosevic (ICDSM) held a Press
Conference in Amsterdam.

At the press conference, Nico
Varkevisser, ICDSM Vice-Chairman in
charge of media relations, addressed
recent developments in Serbia; the actual
conduct of the Tribunal (ICTY) including
the attempt to prevent President
Milosevic from meeting with whomever he
chooses; and the consequences of these
matters for President Milosevic's defense
of Yugoslavia at the Tribunal.

Here is the statement delivered to the press.

* 'State of Emergency' in Serbia - Attack
on Yugoslavia in The Hague *

1.. The killing of Mr. Djindjic last
month showed all signs of being an
operation carried out by the NATO powers
in order to execute a political change in
Belgrade.

The killing was immediately followed by
the imposition of a State of Emergency.
This has nothing to do with fighting
organized crime, as claimed by the
controlled Yugoslav media, by the Western
media, and by US Secretary of State Colin
Powell, who recently visited Belgrade.
Working in the shadow of the Iraq war,
the pro-NATO authorities have arrested
thousands of people. They have especially
attacked the defenders and family of
President Slobodan Milosevic.

2.. Why was Zoran Djindjic killed? Mr.
Djindjic had ceased to be useful. He and
Yugoslav President Kostunica had done
their job. They destroyed the economy.
They violated the Yugoslav Constitution
and defied the Constitutional Court by
kidnapping Slobodan Milosevic and sending
this defender of Yugoslav sovereignty to
The Hague. They liquidated the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia.

Djindjic was despised by ordinary people
who blamed him personally for the
catastrophe that followed the October
5th, 2000 coup d'état in Belgrade.

No longer useful to NATO as a living
politician, and perhaps not completely
under NATO's control, Djindjic was
rendered useful by death.

3.. This assassination did not constitute
merely the removal of a no-longer-useful
individual. The implementation of the
State of Emergency, followed by mass
arrests, the specific targeting of the
SLOBODA foundation, which is central to
the defense of President Milosevic,
including arrests and other acts intended
to intimidate President Milosevic's
defenders, the seizure of SLOBODA's
computers in order to paralyze the work
of President Milosevic's supporters, the
arrest and indefinite detention of
SLOBODA President Bogoljub Bjelica, and
much-increased media slander and wild
accusations made against President
Milosevic's wife, Mira Markovic - with
the result that she is no longer able to
visit her husband - all this indicates
the nature of this, the second Yugoslav
coup d'état.

================================

'State of Emergency' Targets
anti-NATO opposition, not organized crime

================================

4.. To tighten its grip on Serbia, NATO
has installed a State of Emergency. This
means that the period during which
so-called democracy could serve as a
façade, hiding the anti-democratic
character of the October 2000 coup
d'état, is over. What will come now is
dictatorship, whether hard or soft.

The importance of this new dictatorship
to NATO is demonstrated by the recent
visit of US Secretary of State Collin
Powell. Though fully occupied with the
terrible war in Iraq, Powell had time to
come to Belgrade to praise 'the fight
against organised crime' and 'those who
threaten this society'.

Who are these threats to society who have
been arrested?

Journalists, lawyers, trade unionists,
dissenting politicians, political
activists, much-decorated Generals of the
Yugoslav Army, teachers, Professors and
writers. And defenders and family of
Slobodan Milosevic.

================

Absurd accusations

================

5.. The claim by the Belgrade authorities
and the media that President Milosevic is
linked to organized crime is simply
ridiculous. They speak of his 'contact'
with the mysterious Mr. Legija, officer
of the Red Berets. But his first contact
with that gentleman occurred when Legija
led a force of thousands of armed men,
some masked, who arrested President
Milosevic on April 1, 2001. Half a year
earlier, Mr. Legija took part in the
October 2000 coup d'état, which installed
Mr. Djindjic and Mr. Kostunica in power.

The accusations against President
Milosevic's wife, Mira Markovic, that she
was somehow involved in the death of
former Yugoslav President Ivan Stambolic,
are equally outlandish. Using easily
available information, we have produced
an analysis proving these charges cannot
be true. See, "The Absurdity of the
Accusations against Mira Markovic in the
Stambolic Murder," in your press kit. [To
be posted shortly on the Internet.]

6.. The claim that the Emergency
authorities are fighting organized crime
inherited from President Milosevic is a
vicious lie. During Slobodan Milosevic's
presidency, his government fought crime,
harder than many realize; and they did it
without a State of Emergency.

If President Milosevic had instituted a
State of Emergency, the world would have
cried that he was "as bad as Hitler". Yet
the Western media has only praise for the
current draconian measures.

7. There is ample evidence that those who
staged the October 2000 coup d'état
relied on organized crime. It is well
known that Mr. Djindjic was intimately
involved with criminals, for example the
cigarette Mafia in Montenegro. In
addition, since the October 2000 coup
d'état, the new authorities have acted as
criminals on a grand scale - overthrowing
the elected government, routinely
violating the constitution and some of
the established rules of Yugoslav and
Serbian democracy, giving away the
Yugoslav economy to their controllers
from the NATO countries.

So: criminals in their own right, and
linked to the Mafia, but now they root
out organized crime!

===========================================

Repression in Serbia
targets Milosevic's work at The Hague

===========================================

8.. These developments in Serbia have had
a great impact on the defense of
President Milosevic. His research and
support team in Belgrade is under heavy
attack and his wife has been cut off from
him. All this jeopardizes his ability to
maintain his historic defense against
NATO's court.

9.. The affect of the arrests and witch
hunt against President Milosevic's family
have been magnified because the Tribunal
continues to prevent him from seeing
lawyers and other associates of his
choice.

========================

ICDSM prevented from
meeting with President Milosevic

========================

10.. At President Milosevic's request, in
mid-December the ICDSM sent a delegation
to The Hague. However, the meeting was
denied by the Tribunal after we were told
it would be accepted. Two reasons were
given.

The first reason, claimed the Tribunal,
was that Ramsey Clark had visited
President Milosevic the day before, and
in the opinion of Tribunal officials,
this sufficed. ICDSM Attorney Tiphaine
Dickson spent a week at The Hague trying
to reverse this ruling; President
Milosevic protested as well; but all to
no avail.

Aside from the fact that Mr. Clark's
visit bore no relation to the work of the
ICDSM, and apart from the fact that
Tribunal officials were fully aware of
the request by President Milosevic to
meet our delegation well before the
impromptu visit of Mr. Clark, the reality
of this situation, where the Tribunal
arbitrarily decides who can and who
cannot see President Milosevic, and uses
one visit to cancel another, is absurd,
unacceptable and in violation of
President Milosevic's most basic rights.

The second reason for denying our visit,
according to the Tribunal, was that they
had concluded from reading the ICDSM
Website that we meant to report to the
media what President Milosevic told us.

This is remarkable. The Tribunal staff
and Prosecution regularly make
anti-Milosevic statements to the press.
The press lies about what transpires
during Tribunal proceedings. But not only
is President Milosevic forbidden to talk
to the press, on pain of being entirely
cut off from the outside world, but
members of his support committee are
forbidden to talk to the press as well.
We protest this attempt to gag us. Of
course it demonstrates the profound
insecurity of the Tribunal. So much
power, so frightened of daylight.

You will find in your press kit a copy of
the Tribunal's fax denying President
Milosevic his right to meet with our
delegation. [Note: This fax is now posted
on the Internet.]
http://www.icdsm.org/more/fax.htm

=================

Murder in slow motion

==================

11.. And there is more. We continue to
have the most serious concerns about
President Milosevic's medical care. When
his heart problems became more serious,
in the beginning of last year, the
Tribunal initially treated his condition
with aspirin. They refused to let
Yugoslav and other specialists examine
him. In November of last year we read in
the Dutch press that President Milosevic
had been given the wrong medicine.

Apparently nothing was done about this,
despite a flood of protests, because
President Milosevic continued to complain
about the side affects of the medicine he
received, which caused dizziness and
insomnia, making it hard to function.

That this was caused by faulty medicine
is indicated by the fact that when, very
recently, President Milosevic was given
different medication, the symptoms went
away.

12.. Is the problem mistaken diagnosis?
Or something worse?

Events make clear that this mistreatment
is deliberate.

Last July, Judge May read in court the
statement of a doctor who had examined
President Milosevic. The doctor said that
because of his serious heart condition,
President Milosevic should have more time
for rest. Instead, the Tribunal increased
his work hours.

Not only has the Tribunal refused to let
coronary specialists examine President
Milosevic, but in a session of the
Tribunal, at which President Milosevic
was not present, Judge May accused him of
refusing medication. This is simply a
lie.

========================

Four hundred *thousand* pages

========================

13.. The Tribunal has recently given
President Milosevic 400.000 (four hundred
thousand) pages of "relevant" documents
to read. If one were to read 500 pages a
day, obviously an impossibility, this
would take two years.

The intent is obviously to put an
unbearable strain on the former Yugoslav
head of state, whose heart condition
responds negatively to stress. This,
combined with the spiteful medical
'care', gives a picture of machinery
operating to destroy a man it cannot
politically defeat.

========================

If you can't defeat him, kill him

========================

14.. Perhaps The Hague proceedings were
planned to be a show trial. But
immediately the trial began, President
Milosevic's forthright, accurate and
devastating opening comments about what
NATO had done to his country frightened
those who control the Tribunal.

They realized that if ordinary people
were permitted to witness the
proceedings, the world would learn that
the media-created impressions of
President Milosevic, the Serbian people,
and what had happened in Yugoslavia, were
all based on lies.

Within days, virtually all television and
in-full newspaper coverage was stopped
cold.

========================

Why this case is so important

========================

Now, instead of a show trial, we are
witnessing a slow political murder! We
call upon on all people concerned with
the truth and with justice, upon all who
have realized NATO was wrong in
Yugoslavia, upon all who support
President Milosevic, upon all who support
fair play, to undertake initiatives to
support his demand to postpone this
so-called trial, to give President
Milosevic time to recover, with proper
medical care, and in freedom, to prepare
his continuing counterattack against
NATO's lies.

15.. Whatever their faults, national and
multinational states are today a crucial
component of ordinary people's rights -
often the very right to live - won over
centuries of struggle. All who now strive
for peaceful solutions to the problems of
our world should realize: Yugoslavia is
the model for national destruction in
this new Empire.

By refusing to make a legalistic defense
of just himself, by standing up to NATO's
lies about Yugoslavia at The Hague
Tribunal, President Milosevic is not only
defending the peoples of Yugoslavia.

He is defending us all.

-- ICDSM

1. To obtain the media kit, please write
icdsm@...

2. To be added to the ICDSM media list,
write icdsm@...

3. For further information contact Nico
Varkevisser

Phone ++ 31 20 615 1122

Fax ++ 31 20 615 1120

============================

(... To help the ICDSM fund, please go to
http://www.icdsm.org/donate.htm ...)

========================

Footnotes and Further Reading

========================

The record shows that President Milosevic
and the Serbian people have been the
victims of a campaign of media lies.

1) "Media Misrepresentation Of
Milosevic's Words: A Review Of The
Evidence," by Prof. Francisco Gil-White
at
http://www.icdsm.org/more/gw.htm

2) "KLA Attacks Everyone; Media
Attacks...Milosevic?" by Jared Israel at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/expan.htm

3) Regarding our charge that the ICTY is
NATO's instrument, see "Official
Statements Prove Hague 'Tribunal' Belongs
to NATO," at
http://www.icdsm.org/more/belongs.htm

4) Here are 'Judge' May's own words
during the session of the so-called trail
on the 25th:

"?We have received a report, a medical
report, which in its conclusion describes
the accused as a man with severe
cardiovascular risk which demands careful
future monitoring. The authors recommend
that his workload be reduced?"

As a group of Nobel Prize winning
physicians from Germany noted in their
open letter to The Hague, since Judge May
made this statement, the ICTY has done
exactly the opposite.
http://emperor.vwh.net/icdsm/more/physicians.htm

www.icdsm.org