http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20070308&articleId=5021
Yugoslavia: Human Rights Watch in Service to the War Party
by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson and George Szamuely
Global Research, March 9, 2007
Zmag.org - 2007-02-25
Concluding Note
While it has often done valuable service, HRW has failed badly in dealing with the disintegration of Yugoslavia . It supported that dismantlement, its leaders arguing that this would help minorities. They were wrong and thus their stance contributed to an escalation of human rights abuses. Their claim that justice must be given greater weight than peace-making fed into the interests of those eager for war and had disastrous effects on all the “nations” of the former Yugoslavia. Their claim that justice must come first in order to deliver peace of mind to the victims and as essential for peace and reconciliation, which follows the ICTY party line, is untenable and hypocritical in the light of ICTY and HRW practice. A focus on justice merges easily into vengeance and feeds antagonism and hostility, particularly when carried out in a one-sided fashion. The first Milosevic indictment listed 344 Kosovo Albanian victims, so presumably their relatives needed “justice, “ but as noted earlier the ICTY found that 495 Serb victims of NATO bombing did not provide a sufficient “crime base” for any action, so how are the families of these victims to obtain justice? Where is the justice for the victims of Operation Storm, or the scores of thousands of Serbs and Roma ousted from the Kosovo under NATO control? ( Serbia has had to deal with more refugees than any other area in the former Yugoslavia .)
If the Serbs feel—and we believe are fully justified in feeling—that they have been victims of a Great Power assault based on geopolitical considerations, and subjected to extreme and politicized discrimination in the workings of the ICTY, the show trial of their leader will hardly make them more peace-minded. That show trial was also a “travesty” in terms of substance. If it was to educate Serbs by instructing them about their leaders’ guilt, it failed abysmally, and not just because it was managed incompetently. It failed because, at bottom, it was a political trial in which the political case was not only unsustainable, but was shown to be trying the lesser villains—the bigger ones being those guilty of the “supreme international crime”—and it revealed itself throughout to be a “rogue court” serving the bigger villains, violating every legal principle, and moving inexorably toward the pre-determined finding of guilt.
Sadly, HRW has played an important role in this travesty and has therefore been an important contributor to human rights violations in the former Yugoslavia . HRW helped stir up passions in the demonization process from 1992 onward and actively and proudly contributed to preparing the ground for NATO’s “supreme international crime” in March 1999. It has conveniently assumed “neutrality” on matters of aggression, though WTE focuses on Serbia’s cross-border aid to the Bosnian and Krajina Serbs as something to be strongly condemned—so it ceases to be neutral on aggression when the Serbs can be targeted, although, with a droll application of the double standard, U.S. and Croatian aid to their allies in Bosnia are exempt from criticism. There are no holds barred in finding against the bad guys, just as our side only makes regrettable mistakes. This human rights group is even completely oblivious to the violation of Slobodan Milosevic’s human rights as a prisoner. Indicted Croatians are exempted from being put on trial for ill health,[167] indicted Kosovo Albanians are released from Hague incarceration to return to campaign for office in Kosovo,[168] but Milosevic, a very sick man, was not released to get medical attention in Moscow even with Russian assurances of his return.[169] His death just 16 days after this rejection was regretted by Carla Del Ponte because “It deprives the victims of the justice they need and deserve”[170]—but WTE and HRW have no word of criticism for this improper treatment. They are on the team with Carla Del Ponte and the Western establishment.
In the past, two of the present authors have compared the Milosevic trial to the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s.[171] Recalling the Dewey Commission of Inquiry's conclusion that the Moscow trials “served not juridical but political ends,” we observed that, among the parallels between these trials and the bodies conducting them, one that stands out is their public-relations function, and, more broadly, their drafting of a historical record that serves the needs of the dominant political faction, even if executed in juridical form. Here we add the observation that Human Rights Watch's Weighing the Evidence concludes its summary of the Prosecution's case against Milosevic in the same place where it begins, with the affirmation that, going forward, “Trials of high-level suspects will be important for the documentation of events and the role and responsibility of various actors, irrespective of any conclusion relating to the defendant's guilt or innocence.”[172] If this is true, and if we allow the Milosevic trial and the ICTY to become our models for “international justice,” then both the historical record and human rights will suffer damaging blows.
Endnotes
167. In April, 2003, the ICTY suspended its warrant for the arrest of the former Chief of Staff of Croatia's Army, General Janko Bobetko, under indictment by the ICTY since August, 2002. An ICTY-appointed doctor determined the 83-year-old too ill to travel to The Hague, and the previous month, an ICTY judge had declared that if Zagreb agreed to serve the six-month-old indictment on Bobetko, suspension of the arrest warrant would be "effective immediately," thus rendering the whole indictment meaningless. Bobetko died less than three weeks later. See Judge Carmel Agius, Order for Service of Indictment, March 19, 2003; "ICTY Officially Informs Zagreb on Suspension of Arrest Warrant," ONASA News Agency, April 9, 2003; and "Obituary of General Janko Bobetko," Daily Telegraph, April 30, 2003.
168. Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj was indicted in March 2005 (IT-04-84-I) on multiple counts of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war for events that occurred while he was a commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army. He resigned his office and surrendered to ICTY custody. On June 6, 2005, Haradinaj was granted provisional release to return to participation in the political life of Kosovo, pending trial. (See Judge Carmel Agius, Decision on Ramush Haradinaj's Motion for Provisional Release, ICTY, June 6, 2005.) Some 20 months later, Haradinaj remained at large, and with a final date for his trial scheduled for March 2007, he was ordered to return to ICTY custody no later than February 26, 2007. (See Judge Alphons Orie, Order Recalling Ramush Haradinaj from Provisional Release, ICTY, February 1, 2007.)
169. See Judge Patrick Robinson, Decision on Assigned Counsel Request for Provisional Release (IT-02-54-T), ICTY, February 23, 2006. Milosevic's release from custody for special medical care at the Bakoulev Center in Russia was denied because, "notwithstanding the guarantees of the Russian Federation and the personal undertaking of the Accused, the Trial Chamber is not satisfied that the first prong of the test has been met—that is, that it is more likely than not that the Accused, if released, would return for the continuation of his trial" (par. 18).
171. See Ch. 2, "A Study in Propaganda," in Michael Barratt Brown, Edward S. Herman, and David Peterson, The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic (Spokesman, 2004), pp. 31-78. (For an electronic version, see "Marlise Simons on the Yugoslavia Tribunal: A Study in Total Propaganda Service," ZNet, 2004.)
172. WTE, p. 75. Compare the assertion WTE makes in its Introduction: "Human Rights Watch believes the evidence introduced [in the Milosevic trial] should help shape how current and future generations view the wars and in particular Serbia ’s role in them" (p. 5).
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© Copyright Edward S. Herman, Zmag.org, 2007
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Appendix: The “Scorpions” and the Serbian Police
Neither the execution videotape[A1] nor any of the other evidence presented during the trial of Slobodan Milosevic substantiated the prosecution's claim—now repeated by WTE—that the Scorpions were “acting under the aegis of the Serbian police.”[A2]
In fact, the most detailed evidence about the Scorpions to have emerged at the trial occurred nearly two years earlier, during the testimony of prosecution witness Milan Milanovic, a former deputy defense minister of the Republika Srpska Krajina.
Milanovic is a witness on whose word HRW attaches great weight.[A3] When asked by the Prosecution under whom the Scorpions served (i.e., “were subordinated”) during the period they were active in the Bihac Pocket, Milanovic replied: “They were subordinated to the command of the army of the Republic of Serbian Krajina .”[A4] Asked for a second time under whom the Scorpions were subordinated when they subsequently went to Trnovo in eastern Bosnia , Milanovic replied: “To the MUP of the Republika Srpska.”[A5]
Later, during Milanovic's cross-examination by Slobodan Milosevic, the following exchange took place:[A6]
Milosevic: Did you engage them [the Scorpions] in your area?
Milanovic: I proposed to the director of the oil company that they secure the oil fields that were on the separation lines….I proposed Slobodan Medic as the person who should be in charge of that security, and then they were under the director of the oil company.
Milosevic: So this was a security unit for the oil company, the head of which you yourself proposed?
Milanovic: Correct….
Milosevic: But you also sent them to Bosnia and Herzegovina , didn't you?
Milanovic: I didn't send them. The command of the corps sent them to accomplish various assignments, and most of those units that went outside the area I would visit very frequently.
Milosevic: Very well. So the government sent them.
Milanovic: Yes, the government and the army command.
So the Scorpions were recruited by the government of the Republika Srpska Krajina to protect the oil fields. Milanovic, a prosecution witness with no love for the government of Serbia , made no claim about the Scorpions serving under the command of (or having been “subordinated” to) the Serbian MUP. It was the Srpska Krajina government that sent the Scorpions into Bosnia .
Shortly thereafter, Milanovic explained that in 1999, while NATO was bombing Serbia , the Scorpions wanted to go to Kosovo. According to Milanovic's testimony:[A7]
[A]fter the NATO attack on the Federal Republic, seven, eight, or ten days after that he [Slobodan Medic] called me up and told me that he'd rather not go as a reservist to the army of Yugoslavia but as a member of MUP. At the same time…I was called up by General Djordjevic, the head of the public security, saying that he needed volunteers. So I didn't know what to do for three or four days, whether to send him or not, because everything was being monitored. I didn't know whether I should get in touch with the two of them, and three or four days later I did establish—link the two of them up, and two or three days later he went to Kosovo.
Milosevic then asked Milanovic: “Was he returned from there following General Djordjevic's orders? He demanded that he return?” And Milanovic replied: “Yes. He was returned, but he went back and stayed until the end of the bombing raids.”[A8]
Again, we emphasize that Milanovic never made any claim about the Republic of Serbia 's MUP. Were the Scorpions already a unit of the Serbian MUP, it would have made no sense for the Scorpions to ask Milanovic to arrange for them to be sent to Kosovo as members of the Republic of Serbia's MUP.
Appendix Notes
A1. For the passage where Prosecution Geoffrey Nice presents the alleged "Scorpions video," see Milosevic Trial Transcript, June 1, 2005, pp. 40275 ff.
A2. Sara Darehshori, Weighing the Evidence: Lessons from the Slobodan Milosevic Trial, Human Rights Watch, December, 2006, p. 14.
A3. WTE mentions Milan Milanovic's name 16 different times.
A4. Milosevic Trial Transcript, October 14, 2003, p. 27431.
A5. Ibid. "MUP" denotes Ministarstvo Unutrašnjih Polsova, meaning in this instance the Ministry of the Interior of the Republika Srpska—not the MUP of the Republic of Serbia , i.e., under the command of Belgrade and Slobodan Milosevic.
A5. Ibid. "MUP" denotes Ministarstvo Unutrašnjih Polsova, meaning in this instance the Ministry of the Interior of the Republika Srpska—not the MUP of the Republic of Serbia , i.e., under the command of Belgrade and Slobodan Milosevic.
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