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Declaration by
the Athens Congress of the European Peace
Forum
At the close of an academic colloquium about the topic “The wars in the Balkans and the case of Milosevic”, the following declaration was passed: In few weeks time, it will be a year ago that the chairman of the Socialist Party of Serbia and former president of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, was handed over to the so-called International Tribunal for the Prosecution of War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia. The handing over, in fact a kidnapping staged by secret services, as well as the present trial before the tribunal in The Hague, are an event unprecedented in the history of international relations and in international law. Facts speak for
themselves:
That gross reversal of all legal and ethical standards aims at
whitewashing NATO, justifying a posteriori its war of aggression against
Yugoslavia and, thus, enabling repetitions of such or similar wars. It is the
large-scale attempt to demonstrate to the world that resistance against the
global claim for hegemony of the United States and NATO will not be tolerated,
and will be severely punished. That is the essence of the trial against the former Yugoslav president and his co-defendants, the essence of the case of Milosevic. In the court of The Hague, the case in point is not an
individual of whom one may think whatever one deems right. It is rather a matter
of untruth or truth, of right or wrong. It is a matter of an individual who, for
numerous reasons, has become the symbol of resistance against NATO’s
conflict-fomenting policy of intervention into the internal affairs of
Yugoslavia and against the NATO war. In the eyes of NATO, the war will be only
be won, and the dismemberment of Yugoslavia only accomplished, if and when this
symbol has been brought into discredit. If only for those reasons, the trial in The Hague cannot leave partisans of peace and opponents of imperialist globalization indifferent. Those who rose up against the NATO war and the 78 days of terrorist
bombings in Yugoslavia cannot remain silent in view of this pseudo-legal
sequel. By now, the course of the trial in The Hague has borne out the far-reaching political intentions of its organizers, but they have not yet been able to achieve their goals. The judges’ obvious bias, the prosecutors’ paltriness and lack of evidence, Slobodan Milosevic’s initial speech, and the debacle of the witnesses in the cross-examinations he carried out, have made it more and more difficult for the managers of the trial to achieve their aims. The man accused by NATO has become the accuser of
NATO, and what was intended to become a show trial has more and more become a
secret trial. Being unable to to break Slobodan Milosevic’s morale, the
management of the trial is now attempting to weaken him physically, to wreck his
health and resistance by unbearable prison and procedural conditions, by
bringing forth more and more new “witnesses”, by almost incessant proceedings.
The arbitrariness of this illegitimate court must be
stopped. Joining this international protest we claim: *
the immediate discontinuance of the trial against Slobodan Milosevic and the
other Yugoslav defendants, and their prompt
release; *
the dissolution of the criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, established
in violation of the United Nations Charter; *
the earliest possible ratification of the treaty of Rome on the establishment of
a standing
global criminal tribunal in accordance with international law, by all states, in
particular the United States, as well as the incorporation of crimes against
peace and aggression into the court’s scope of
authority; *
the punishment of those responsible for the NATO war of aggression against
Yugoslavia; *
the payment of war reparations to the Yugoslav state and of damages to the
Yugoslav war victims. Athens, May 19, 2002
NOTE: Annual Congress of the European Peace Forum has been held in Athens last weekend, under slogan "FOR A EUROPEAN PEACE ORDER AGAINST THE MILITARIZATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL POLICY BY THE USA & NATO" and with participation of more than 60 representatives of peace movements and progressive organizations and associations from Austria, Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Romania, Russian Federation, Sweden, Ukraine and Yugoslavia. Besides the general Declaration, the Congress has adopted the above one. The European Peace Forum is founded on March 24, 2001 in Berlin, on the second anniversary of NATO aggression against Yugoslavia. Among the founders, together with representatives of numerous European organizations were also German admiral Elmar Schmaehling, great Ukrainian poet Boris Oliynik, Czech publicist and humanist Dr Rajko Dolecek, Chairman of the Italian "Nino Pasti" Foundation Paolo Pioppi, known Bulgarian politician and human rights activist Professor Velko Volkanov and other renown personalities - politicians, scientists, lawyers, parliamentarians.
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