-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- Mar 11, 2000 - 11:43 AM http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGIDGDDGP5C.html International Justice System Emerging From Ashes of Bloodiest Century By Jerome Socolovsky Associated Press Writer THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - When the Serbs came to take her son away, Sabaheta Fejzic fell to her knees and begged the soldiers to kill her instead. She last saw 17-year-old Rijade and her husband, Saban, being dragged off one black day in July 1995, when Serb forces swept into the U.N. "safe haven" of Srebrenica and overran 150 Dutch peacekeepers. Some 8,000 Muslim fathers, sons, brothers and husbands were killed or disappeared in the Bosnian massacre. Grief has tormented Fejzic since. "There is nothing that could ease my pain and the pain of thousands of other mothers," she says. "But if everyone who is guilty is put on trial, it might help a little bit to make life worth living." The clamor for justice by Fejzic and fellow "Mothers of Srebrenica," as well as other grieving survivors of wars, ethnic slaughters and civil oppression, is finally being heard. Monday, the commander who allegedly ordered the systematic slaughter at Srebrenica goes on trial at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal here. Indeed, an increasingly sturdy framework of international tribunals and truth commissions is taking shape and showing, more and more, that justice is bound by no frontiers. Earlier this month, the Yugoslav tribunal handed down a 45-year sentence, its stiffest yet, to the first senior military officer it convicted. Gen Tihomir Blaskic was found guilty of overseeing the 1993 killings of hundreds of Bosnian Muslims. The modest successes of the Yugoslav tribunal at The Hague and a similar court in Tanzania dealing with the 1994 Rwanda genocide are prompting calls for more tribunals and renewing faith in the promise of global justice. "This is a sea change," says Theodor Meron of New York University, an expert on international law. "Since the establishment of the tribunals, we have seen acceptance of the notion of prosecution of those responsible for atrocities." Experts credit the spread of democracy, the human rights movement and instantaneous television news coverage of atrocities - which made it impossible to look the other way. "What has changed is the perception that they (citizens) can exert their influence on governments to curb impunity - and the realization by governments that they can't get away with it anymore," says Cherif Bassiouni, a law professor at DePaul University in Chicago who headed a 1993 U.N. commission on war crimes. A turning point came earlier that year when TV images of emaciated prisoners in Bosnian concentration camps shocked the world and left the United Nations with no option but to act. The Security Council set up Bassiouni's commission, which in turn provided the foundation for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which has 14 judges from assorted countries. The Yugoslav tribunal was the first war crimes court since the aftermath of World War II, when 22 Nazis stood trial at Nuremberg and 28 Japanese leaders were prosecuted by a tribunal in Tokyo. The Yugoslav tribunal, however, is considered the first truly international prosecution of war criminals because the German and Japanese tribunals were imposed by the victors on the vanquished. So far, judges at The Hague have convicted 14 Serbs, Muslims and Croats of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Thirty-five others are in detention. Thirty additional suspects stand indicted - including former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military chief, Gen. Ratko Mladic, for Srebrenica, and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for crimes against humanity in last spring's Kosovo campaign. The Rwanda tribunal, based in Arusha, Tanzania, has detained 45 people and sentenced seven Rwandans to life imprisonment, the maximum penalty at either tribunal. As other nations struggle to overcome dark chapters in their history, appeals are sounding for similar tribunals: -For East Timor, to judge Indonesian troops and pro-Jakarta militias who went on a murderous, three-week rampage after the Aug. 30 independence vote. -For Cambodia, to judge the Khmer Rouge for the infamous "killing fields." -For Iraq, to judge the regime of Saddam Hussein, a campaign led by the U.S. State Department. Meanwhile, momentum is building for a permanent International Criminal Court that might replace the tribunals. It would sit at The Hague alongside the International Court of Justice, better known as the World Court. Unlike the World Court, a U.N. body that settles disputes between countries, the criminal court could hold individuals responsible for atrocities anywhere in the world. The proposal has powerful opposition from the United States and a coalition of unlikely bedfellows, including Libya, Algeria and China. Washington fears that U.S. troops deployed in foreign hot spots could be made targets of politically motivated charges. Because of such political complications, non-judicial alternatives to justice are becoming popular. One is the truth commission, which tries to compile a detailed account of atrocities for future generations. Victims offer their stories, and tormentors who confess and show sincere remorse receive pardons. Truth commissions have been used in post-apartheid South Africa, as well as in El Salvador and Guatemala, both emerging from long civil wars. Perhaps the most prominent example of the way justice can transcend borders is Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the dictator who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990. Pinochet just ended 16 months under British house arrest on charges of crimes against humanity. The arrest warrant was issued by a Spanish judge on grounds that some victims were Spanish citizens. Pinochet returned to Chile on March 3 after Britain ruled him unfit for trial. That case helped inspire what has been called the "African Pinochet case." On Feb. 3, the former dictator of Chad, Hissene Habre, was indicted on torture charges by a court in Senegal, where he has lived in exile since 1990. It was the first time an African head of state has been charged in another country's courts. Despite the successes of the new legal institutions, criticisms abound. Among them: -Snail's pace. Proceedings are excruciatingly slow because the tribunals are creating new international jurisprudence and taking pains to appear impartial. The Yugoslav tribunal's first case, of Bosnian Serb Dusan Tadic, ended in January after four years of hearings and appeals, with his sentence for torture and murder reduced from 25 to 20 years. - Little impact: There's scant indication tribunals deter further ethnic conflicts; the prosecutions at The Hague, for example, did not keep Milosevic from attacking Kosovo a year ago. -Diplomatic obstacles: Indictments and warrants may strengthen targets' resolve to continue war crimes. Mediators in Kosovo said the Yugoslav tribunal's warrant for Milosevic's arrest only complicated the task of negotiating with him to withdraw. Similar criticism is leveled at the U.S. effort to try Saddam Hussein. Nonetheless, the trend toward tribunals seems irreversible. For victims and survivors, even imperfect justice is better than none. Hasan Nuhanovic, a former interpreter for U.N. peacekeepers, lost his family at Srebrenica. Recently he came to The Hague with Fejzic and half a dozen other Bosnian Muslims to press for more aggressive pursuit of the killers. "This is a symbol of justice for us," says Nuhanovic, pointing to the former insurance building that houses the Yugoslav tribunal. "It's not perfect, but it's the only hope we have." --- On the Net: U.N. sites for the two current war crimes tribunals: Yugoslavia: http://www.un.org/icty Rwanda: http://www.un.org/ictr AP-ES-03-11-00 1141EST © Copyright 2000 Associated Press. ----------- The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks its victim; denounces it; and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments. -- Senator Henry Clay (Whig, Kentucky), 1834 <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! 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