From: "John Jay" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: "STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN!" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> From: "Bob Petrovich" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: N.Statesman: "No howls of outrage" Date: Fri, Apr 6, 2001, 3:37 pm "60 years ago, April 6 1941, Hitler's Luftwaffe bombed Belgrade without declaration of war." "2 years ago, April 6 1991, Luftwaffe bombed Belgrade again, without declaration of war." "Joschka Fischer, approving German military participation abroad for the first time since World War Two, averred: "Racak was the turning point for me'" [1] The New Statesman Not as it seems... Was 'Racak' Kosovo's Gulf of Tonkin? April 5 2001 Armen Georgian and Arthur Neslen There were no howls of outrage from world leaders or press cries for action when the Forensic Science International Journal published its report on the alleged massacre of 45 Albanian civilians by Serb forces in the Kosovan village of Racak. Yet the Journal's report cast massive doubt on an incident that played the central part in justifying Nato's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999. It could not establish that the victims were civilians, that they were from Racak or even that they had been killed there. It left open the distinct possibility that the single incident that ignited the war could have been a lie. Published on 15 February, the report by a Finnish EU Forensic Experts Team (EU-FET) was based on autopsies carried out on 40 bodies found at Racak on 16 January 1999. The EU commissioned the team in October 1998 following international calls to investigate human rights abuses in Kosovo. The Milosevic regime had previously obstructed ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia) investigators but accepted the EU-mandated team as a compromise. When the bodies were discovered at Racak, EU-FET received an urgent request from the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) and returned to Kosovo immediately. The apparent "massacre" of civilians at Racak had stunned the world. It "transformed the West's Balkan policy as singular events seldom do", reported the Washington Post. Many feared an incipient genocide and pressure for action bounced previously reluctant Nato allies into line. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, approving German military participation abroad for the first time since World War Two, averred: "Racak was the turning point for me." On March 19 1999, President Clinton told the world's press: "We should remember what happened in the village of Racak, where innocent men, women and children were taken from their homes to a gully, forced to kneel in the dirt, sprayed with gunfire - not because of anything they had done, but because of who they were." Five days later NATO planes went into action. In the fog of war, such statements were taken at face value but the Finnish report found that only one of the dead was a woman, just one was under 15. Six had suffered single gunshot wounds but most were covered in multiple wounds coming from many different angles and elevations, as might be expected from victims of a firefight, not of execution-style killings. Only one had been shot "at close range or contact discharge." Contrary to claims made at the time by William Walker, the American OSCE chief in Kosovo in 1999, the pathologists found "no signs of postmortem mutilation." Crucially, the team were "unable to confirm the chain of custody, concerning the localisation of the victims at the site of the incident and their transportation to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Pristina." Thus, they "could not confirm that the victims were from Racak." On the alleged day of the killings, a fierce battle between besieging Serb forces and KLA units was fought around Racak, "a fortified village with lots of trenches," according to Le Figaro's Renaud Girard. That morning, Serb police had invited journalists to accompany them and, as fighting raged in the nearby woods, Le Monde's Christophe Chatelet travelled to Racak with OSCE monitors in search of civilian casualties at the alleged time that Serb forces were slaughtering villagers. He found four wounded and was told of one person dead. The following day however, the OSCE team discovered up to 18 bodies in the deserted village, and KLA units guided the press corps to a gully where 22 corpses were laid out. Later that day, William Walker arrived to announce the "horrendous massacre" to the world. Few press reports mentioned that, at the time the massacre was supposedly taking place, the Information Press Centre in Pristina was receiving independent reports that 15 KLA fighters had been killed around Racak. Interestingly, the Sunday Times, a paper with close links to British security sources, last year reported claims by Pristina-based European diplomats that William Walker was "inextricably linked with the CIA". In their story, diplomatic and intelligence sources alleged that the team led by Walker had been a 'CIA front' helping the KLA with logistical and technical support. Walker had previously been an ambassador to El Salvador in the 1980s, when Washington backed extreme-right wing paramilitaries in that country's civil war. Echoes of the Gulf of Tonkin, the CIA-manipulated story of the 'torpedoing' of two US destroyers that escalated the Vietnam war, are resonant. On 12 August 1998, the US Senate Republican Policy Committee had commented: "Planning for a US-led Nato intervention in Kosovo is now largely in place. The only missing element seems to be an event - with suitably vivid media coverage - that could make the intervention politically saleable . . . That Clinton is waiting for a 'trigger' in Kosovo is increasingly obvious." The EU-FET team returned to Racak in November 1999 and March 2000 to conduct further detailed investigations. They submitted the 1400-page result to the ICTY on 21 June 2000 but this has never been made public. Still, Racak heads the list of Milosevic's ICTY indictments for murder but while Article 28 refers to "45 unarmed Kosovo Albanians murdered in the village of Racak", Florence Hartman, the spokesperson for the prosecutor at the ICTY, could not confirm that all the dead were civilians. "Some are in doubt," she conceded. "But part of them for sure, maybe most, maybe all, were civilians." "We have established that the dead were not wearing military dress. Is that enough to draw the conclusion that they were not fighters? No, it's not enough but we have other information from investigators and other sources, and we have photographs taken on the day and the day after." Strange then, that none of this information has yet been made public. Even so, the world's media has largely remained silent. Professor Saukko, editor of Forensic Science International, said he had only received inquiries from Dutch and Yugoslav journalists. The veteran British Labour MP Tony Benn believes: "truth is the first casualty of war and Racak is one of those war stories - I nearly said 'lies' - that politicians would much rather forget." According to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), the failure to question basic assumptions about the event "bolsters the KLA" and its ongoing campaign to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of non-Albanian minorities. In southern Serbia and Macedonia, the self-styled Liberation Army for Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB) and National Liberation Army (NLA) are receiving weapons and recruits from the KLA. Serb civilians and KFOR peacekeepers have been targeted in a bid to graft the territories onto KFOR-administered Kosovo as a prelude to full-blown independence and possible unification into a Greater Albania. Just three weeks before the bus bombing in February that killed nine Serb civilians, a UCPMB rebel told the Chicago Tribune: "The essence of our existence is preventing what happened at Racak. We don't want that repeated." Gordana Igric of the independent Institute of War and Peace Reporting said: "KFOR has the means to disarm the KLA and its UCPMB allies and is required to do so under its mandate. But no KFOR member wants bodybags." She added: "Most Western governments now privately admit that it's only a matter of time before the first KFOR troops are killed." While political games are played out at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, one thing appears certain: the ghosts of Racak will haunt the Western alliance for years to come. As Tony Benn put it: "...we're by no means out of this war, or its consequences, yet." -------------------------------------- BACKGROUNDER [1] Principle VI : http://deoxy.org/wc/wc-nurem.htm i)The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under; international law: Crimes against peace:Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i). [2] J. Rainio,K. Lalu A. Penttila:Independent forensic autopsies in an armed conflict: investigation of the victims from Racak, Kosovo. Forensic Science International, Feb 2001 contact Editor-in-Chief: P. Saukko mailto:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [3] Westdeutsches Rundfunk: it started with a lie, documentary March 2001 http://www.wdr.de/online/news/kosovoluege/index.phtml [4] Chris Soda: Complete Analysis of the Incident at Racak on Jan. 15, 1999 (includes extensive library of references) published November 4 1999 http://www.egroups.co.uk/message/yugoslaviainfo/618 [5] Peter Worthington: The hoax that started a war http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sorabia/message/13966 [6] FAIR media advisory: DOUBTS ON A MASSACRE: Media Ignore Questions About Incident That Sparked Kosovo War February 1, 2001 http://www.fair.org/press-releases/racak.html [7] Reed Irvine, Whose Massacre ? Acuracy in Media January 13, 2000 http://www.balkanpeace.org/racak/rck06.shtml [8] Christophe Chatelot, Le Monde Le Monde WERE THE RACAK DEAD REALLY COLDLY MASSACRED? http://www.balkanpeace.org/racak/rck02.shtml [9] The Strategic Issues Research Institute Archive: The Racak Killings, A Massacre? http://www.globalresistance.com/siri-us/KLA-Racak.html [10] WWII German propaganda principles http://www.propaganda101.com/newpage118.htm [11] NATO public statements http://www.google.com/cobrand?q=jamie+Shea _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
