MEDIA RELEASE 28 March 1999
OPEN LETTER TO THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT:
The Australian Peace Committee (SA Branch) strongly protest at the
Australian Government�s support for NATO�s air attacks on Yugoslavia. It is
the sovereign right of that country to resolve the conflict peacefully.
Unfortunately this has not been possible. The reason for this has been the
continued harassment of the process by forces supported by the United States
and their allies in Europe, in particular the British government.
US global policy since the ending of World War II has been to assume
international leadership in the interests of the US national interest. As a
consequence US foreign policy has supported the most brutal regimes in our
history. They have propped up a discredited government in South Vietnam
with appalling outcomes for the people of that country, which still suffers
the after effects of the fifteen years of conflict. They have given
logistic support for the extreme right wing governments of central and south
America. This has included support for the violent overthrow of the
democratically elected Allende government in Chile and the destabilising of
the democratically elected Nicaraguan government. (There is mounting
evidence that the funds for their involvement came from the trading of
drugs, e.g. heroin and cocaine, through their ever reliable CIA).
Moreover the US government stands indicted because of the deliberate
avoidance of the processes of the United Nations, putting themselves above
that world organisation and its Security Council, in pursuit of their own
ends. The death toll mounts in Angola where a bloody conflict has continued
for over a decade. Similarly the Indonesian government has pursued a brutal
and oppressive policy against the people of East Timor for over 25 years,
and not one action has been put in place to stop this brutality by countries
such as the US or Britain. Only when the Indonesian people have decided to
end undemocratic practices and revolt, do changes begin to happen. And
again a similar pattern is emerging in East Timor as has happened in other
trouble spots, where a minority group within the country is armed by the
military to violently oppress their own people, in the interest of
sustaining the colonising power.
Kosovo has all the hallmarks of conflicts over the last fifty years. Though
small, it occupies a central position in Eastern Europe. It is separated
from the sea by Macedonia. Militarily both countries are weak and would
present little opposition to a powerful country like the US, especially if a
nearby country had been used to show how effective US firepower is. We have
already seen this in Iraq.
The US are past masters of destabilisation. The methodology is to capture
the mood of the people by demonising the leader. We saw it with Allende,
and also with Norriega in the Panama, where the US wanted to control the
Panama Canal, with the loss of some 1400 innocent Panamanians. And Norriega
was an ally of the US State Department in drug running. Saddam Hussein was
another case, in which the people of Iraq are the victims and the tyrant
remains. Now it is the turn of Milosevic. History has been besmirched by
such tactics, with innocent people becoming collateral damage. The world
leaders who support these methods also stand condemned.
But why Kosovo?
Kosovo has always been a part of Serbia. In fact it is regarded as the
birth place of the Serbian language and culture. Kosovo has received
Albanian immigrants for centuries, to a point where they outnumber the Serb
population. The Serbian government under Milosevic is still seen as a thorn
in the side of further expansion eastward by western economic forces. They
are therefore accused of extreme nationalism, abhorrent to the deregulating,
expansive capitalism of the west controlled by the US. The fields rich for
exploration in this region would be opened up immeasurably if this
ex-communist country could be brought to heel. With a compliant and weak
Albania and Macedonia, trade routes could be opened up to this region
through the ports of the Adriatic.
What better way to destablise the region than to foment ethnic tension?
Kosovo has a population dominated by Albanians. Albania is a poor country
that needs foreign economic aid and the possibility of an improvement in
their living standards. The US provides aid in the form of arms to carry
out a protracted guerilla struggle. This struggle would appear to the
outside but ignorant world to be the plight of a poor people putting up a
valiant struggle against the aggressive nationalism of the Serbian
government or, by focussing on the individual, Milosevic.
If the US is able to maintain the united front through a subservient NATO,
then they will be able to put pressure on the Russian Federation to submit
to US foreign policy through the discredited International Monetary Fund and
the World Bank.
Yours faithfully,
Don Jarrett, President.
_____________________________________
Australian Peace Committee (SA Branch)Inc.
11 South Tce, Adelaide SA 5000 Australia
Ph: (+61-8) 82127138 Fx: (+61-8) 83642291
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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