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The Hague Tribunal: Milosevic charges NATO with war crimes
Part Three
By Chris Marsden
2 March 2002
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This is the conclusion of a three part series dealing with the trial of former Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague. See Part One and Part Two.
Milosevic�s indictment of NATO began by charging the Western powers with crimes
against peace for having deliberately fomented civil war in Yugoslavia and then
bombing its people: �The first and greatest crime was the aggression itself, which
represents a crime against peace. And the crimes of genocide were perpetrated,
crimes against humanity, and war crimes from the 24th of March, 1999, when NATO
attacked Yugoslavia, up to the present day.�
He continued, �Aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the
greatest aggression in the world after World War II. The alliance included 19 of the
most highly developed countries, 676 times more powerful than Yugoslavia on the
basis of facts and figures, statistics... NATO did not choose its victims. Children
suffered, women, elderly people. All of them suffered: Ailing people, pregnant
women, serious patients having to undergo dialysis, refugee columns, journalists and
cameramen doing their jobs, farmers in the fields, salesmen at marketplaces,
passengers on trains, passers by on bridges. Whole housing blocks were destroyed.
Whole centres in towns were destroyed. Everything was done in conformity with the
statement made�and you all read it in the papers�that Serbia must be sent back to
the Stone Age.�
Milosevic�s factual depiction of the results of NATO�s bombardment was horrific and
lasted several hours. Of the total number of civilians killed, 30 percent were
children.
Of the total number of civilians seriously wounded and injured, 40 percent were
children. Some 1,300,000 pupils were unable to go to school. More than half the
victims of NATO bombs in Kosovo were Albanian citizens, �precisely those people for
whose alleged protection the aggression was implemented, and the perpetrators
named the aggression humanitarian intervention... In Kosovo, in all the bombing
campaigns, they only succeeded in destroying seven tanks, but on the other hand,
they did succeed in destroying many more hospitals. They hit many more hospitals
than they did tanks. They hit many more schools than they did tanks. They hit many
more health centres and nurseries and kindergartens than they did tanks. They used
cluster bombs and violated the use of prohibited weapons.�
NATO created an ecological catastrophe by bombing oil refineries and chemical
facilities and using weapons containing depleted uranium. Milosevic cited a long list
of bombed medical centres, 34 pages of schools that were hit in just one month, as
well as cultural monuments, bridges, TV channels, radio masts, railways and other
vital infrastructure such as workplaces. He also noted the deliberate targeting of the
Chinese Embassy on May 7.
Milosevic insisted, �For the crimes committed and the war damages done, it is the
Alliance that is responsible and the Member States that took part in the aggression
on Yugoslavia as well as all other states which indirectly assisted NATO. In addition
to the States, there are physical persons also responsible and accountable: Those
who issued orders, the heads of state and government, the ministers of defence, the
Secretary-General of NATO himself, the military commanders and others, right up to
the perpetrators themselves.�
As to the war�s motives, Milosevic said; �Today it is more than obvious that the real
reason for the NATO aggression was the geostrategic spreading of NATO interests
and its areas, and also to create a precedent for using force in contravention of the
UN Charter and without the approval of the UN Security Council.�
The catalogue of incidents read out by Milosevic, as well as his use of various
television documentaries and witness statements from around Europe clearly
disturbed Justice May. At one point the Judge tried to impose a limit on Milosevic�s
testimony of two days, but was persuaded by the prosecution to extend this by half a
day for fear that such blatant censorship was a step too far.
In any case, Milosevic succeeded in exposing the political bias of the trial. Even if
he
were guilty of every charge levelled against him, the actions of the Western powers
in indiscriminately targeting the Serbian people for massive and sustained
bombing�as well as many of the Kosovo Albanians they claimed to be
defending�would make them guilty of war- crimes. That they do not stand alongside
Milosevic in the dock by itself serves to refute all claims that The Hague tribunal is
a
vehicle for imposing a universal standard of justice with regard to human rights
violations.
As Milosevic asked, �what kind of Tribunal can you talk about if you refuse to try
people for all these crimes, the crimes committed by the leaders and governments
and army of the NATO pact countries that I enumerated, that I quoted, on the
territory of Yugoslavia. And you call yourself a war crimes Tribunal for crimes
committed on the territory of Yugoslavia. Not even in the Security Council Resolution
which set you up, although it was unlawful in taking that Resolution, but not even in
that Resolution with respect to crimes in Yugoslavia are the Americans, French, or
anybody else exempt... And thus you have defined yourself as the exponents of the
side that perpetrated the crimes and as accomplices in crimes against somebody
who defended themselves on their own territory.�
In the latter part of his opening statement to the ICTY, Milosevic noted the
willingness of the prosecution to utilise contested incidents such as the alleged
massacre at Racek and to parrot uncritically statements by NATO politicians and
military personnel. Returning to the lack of proof of his personal responsibility, he
noted, �You have said that you are going to try everyone, but you tell me I am
responsible by virtue of a chain of command, a command responsibility that exists in
no laws.�
He also turned to the crimes committed by the KLA and the support lent to the
terrorist group by the Western powers, particularly following the end of the war and
the establishment of the UN�s KFOR security mission and the UN (UNMIK) civilian
administration in Kosovo.
He insisted that under KFOR�s noses the KLA killed 3,000 people and kidnapped
2,500, of which 1,300 are still unaccounted for. Over 360,000 Serbs and other non-
Albanians were expelled, according to Milosevic. Given the court�s insistence that he
was personally responsible for whatever took place while he was president of
Yugoslavia, he asked whether the same rule will be applied to KFOR and UNMIK.
They just as surely knew what was going on�the court�s standard proving guilt.
Milosevic charged that the NATO states had �formed, financed, co-ordinated and
supported, until the present day, Albanian terrorist groups, and they started doing
that before 1998 in order to create a reason for aggression.� After the war, �They
promoted these people into some kind of new forces of law and order in Kosovo. And
finally, they have not done a thing to prevent these same groups in the commission
of new crimes.�
He stated that the KLA had destroyed churches, burnt out houses, destroyed two
million books by non-Albanian authors, transferred entire factories to Albania and
facilitated the movement of between 250,000 to 300,000 citizens from Albania and
Macedonia into Kosovo. With the tacit support of KFOR, the KLA then launched an
offensive across the border with Serbia and into Macedonia.
�From this whole overview, it is obvious that this extensive crime is ongoing and that
this is criminal association of the powers who committed the aggression on
Yugoslavia together with terrorist killers and the drug Mafia of Kosovo Albanians who
today are killing not only Serbs [but] also Albanians.�
Milosevic stated that the Dayton Accord had been deliberately sabotaged by the
West through its support for the KLA. A leading role had been played initially by the
German intelligence services, the BND, �while the USA, right up until March and April
1998, treated the KLA as a terrorist organisation�. Germany�s role was supervised by
then Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel, who also headed the intelligence services. It was
Germany that first insisted on recognising the independence of Slovenia and Croatia
in 1991 and which had armed Croatia until 1994 to facilitate its efforts to take over
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Krajina.
Later the US switched its position to support the KLA as a vehicle for its intrigues
against Serbia. It elbowed Germany out. KLA leader Hashim Thaci was the US man
on the ground, Milosevic stated.
Milosevic also made the correct historical observation that German imperialism had
long had relations with Croatian and Albanian nationalists, who provided the
essential puppet regimes during the Nazis� efforts to conquer the Balkans.
He charged that the immediate spark for Germany�s efforts to destabilise Kosovo
began following a 1987 summit of the countries of southeastern Europe. After which
the Albanian government had pronounced the issue of Kosovo�s status to be an
internal Yugoslav affair. �From then onwards an explosion of terrorism, that�s the way
I�d like to put it, started in Kosovo and Metohija. During the entire previous decade,
there were very few attacks. Then only within about a month�s time, and from the
beginning of 1998 until just before the NATO aggression, 1,068 attacks were
launched against individuals, citizens only, that is to say, about 100 times more than
in any one of the previous years.�
He described the terror campaign waged by the KLA: �Everybody was a target,
including Kosovo Albanians, especially those who were employed in the
government.� The KLA killed 387 citizens, of which only 75 were ethnic Serbs and
Montenegrins while 196 were ethnic Albanians. �Parallel with this there was an
enormous number of terrorist attacks on the facilities and members of the Ministry of
the Interior; 1,642 attacks,� Milosevic claimed. �Among these attacks, most of them
were attempts to kill; 163 attempted murders. And actually 241 members were killed,
and together with them 28 citizens, 23 wounded. Another 478 members of the
Ministry of the Interior were seriously wounded and another 363 injured.
�In that period, at the time, 246 terrorists were [arrested], eight injured, and 238
killed
in clashes with members of the Ministry of the Interior,� Milosevic alleged. Out of the
309 registered attacks on members of the Yugoslav army, 40 soldiers were killed.
He concluded by insisting, �Not a single government in the world�gentlemen, there
is no government in the world... would remain passive to such activities by armed
bands which, in less than two years of an armed revolt, killed 152 persons.�
Milosevic drew attention to the known links between the KLA and Osama bin Laden�s
Al Qaeda network in order to present his own defence in terms that would find favour
with sections of the European bourgeoisie. Milosevic placing himself as being
someone who had fought what President Bush has proclaimed to be the greatest
danger to mankind. He described the KLA�s drug trafficking, the danger of Albanian
expansionism and the spread of Islamic fundamentalism as a threat to the stability of
Europe. �And I�m afraid that once Europe comes to its senses and realises what is
going on there, it will be too late, it will be too late to put things right.�
Milosevic continued by appealing to the growing fears within European capitals of the
aggressive, expansionist and unilateralist drive of US foreign policy. He warned his
accusers that President Clinton had �proclaimed the destruction of an independent
and sovereign state 776 times weaker, 10,000 kilometres away from America, as a
target for a war without casualties. And to make it an even greater absurdity,
Yugoslavia had no disputes with anyone of those states, any disputes of a territorial
or of any other nature, nor had it attacked anyone, nor was it a threat to any
neighbouring state... The whole world should hear this alarm bell ringing because the
whole world is the target of neo-colonialism, including the rather tired and sleepy
Europe.�
Milosevic turned again and again to the role being played by the Western media in
The Hague prosecution. He declared that this �is the first time in history that the war
against truth and justice is being waged by a new weapon and that is the mass
media. In the struggle against truth and justice, this weapon is more lethal then all
of
those that were used until now. And if this weapon is being used by the most
powerful country in the world and also the bloc of the most powerful countries in the
world, then of course their opponents are condemned to being on the losing side... I
saw on television that the CNN said that they were not showing Milosevic�s
photographs because they are too gruesome for the public. That was their official
explanation. They don�t want their public to see their crimes, and thereby they only
confirm that they are in the service of crimes and in leading their own public astray.�
He concluded with a challenge to the court: �If war crimes were carried out over
Yugoslavia, what you saw here and what the Yugoslav and world public saw, then
those who committed these crimes have to be held accountable. You do not wish to
hold them accountable and to call them because you represent them.
�However, what came here before the public eye, thanks to this sorrowful trial, puts
all of those people responsible before a grand jury that consists of the entire public
opinion, and they will not be able to evade responsibility for what they did. I am
convinced of that because I am convinced that the majority of people are honest
people. If I did not believe in that, life would be pointless... After all, the public
will
speak up. They are the jury, because this Tribunal does not have one.�
In reporting the opening days of the trial, it has been necessary to take great
liberties.
Days and days of testimony can be read in which arguments are presented and
countered of a factual nature regarding diverse incidents during conflicts that lasted
close to a decade� something impossible to replicate. Moreover the work of
independently checking the various accounts, statistics and sources would be a
monumental task. Instead these initial reports of the trial proceedings have
attempted to concentrate on the fundamental political thrust of the prosecution case
and of Milosevic�s defence.
Despite these restrictions, however, one searches in vain for similar reporting of the
ICTY proceedings in the media. Instead in the main we have seen journalism
reduced to the mere dissemination of propaganda�with perhaps the worst being the
Washington Times cynical contribution, �Why not victor�s justice?� The other reaction
has been to simply express nervous embarrassment that Milosevic did not come
over as a buffoon, but instead made things extremely awkward for del Ponte and her
team. As far as any journalist challenging the official version of events themselves,
however, there is no sign. It is certain that the longer the trial goes on, the more
awkward facts will emerge exposing the efforts of the Western powers to conceal
their own responsibility for the ongoing tragedy they have inflicted on the Balkan
peoples.
Concluded
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