*************************************************** Artists' Appeal for Milosevic ***************************************************
For over two years now, Slobodan Milosevic has been on trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia - a Security Council institution of dubious legality - charged with 66 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Over 500,000 pages of documents and 5000 videocassettes have been filed as evidence by the Prosecution. There have been some 300 trial days. More than 300 witnesses have testified. The trial transcript is near 33,000 pages. Yet after all this time and effort, the Prosecution has failed to present significant or compelling evidence of any criminal act or intention of President Milosevic. In fact, it has been revealed that some prosecution witnesses have been coerced to lie under oath, others have committed perjury. Former NATO commander Wesley Clark, was allowed, in violation of the principle of an open trial, to give testimony in private, with Washington able to apply for removal of any parts of his evidence from the public record they deemed to be against US interests. President Milosevic was indicted during the 78 day continuous bombardment of Yugoslavia by US-led NATO forces, which used cluster bombs and depleted uranium, attempted to assassinate Milosevic by bombing his residence, killed thousands of civilians and caused billions of dollars of damage to the country's infrastructure. This illegal act of undeclared war is in clear violation of the NATO Charter, the UN Charter, and International Law. Yet neither Wesley Clark, nor the leaders of NATO countries have been indicted for the crimes of which Slobodan Milosevic is accused. The proceedings of the ICTY against Slobodan Milosevic, as a large and growing number of international jurists has publicly stated, respect neither the principles nor even the appearance of justice. According to Ramsey Clark, the former Attorney-General of the United States, "the spectacle of this huge onslaught by an enormous prosecution support team with vast resources pitted against a single man, defending himself, cut off from all effective assistance, his supporters under attack everywhere and his health slipping away from the constant strain, portrays the essence of unfairness, of persecution". And now that presiding judge Richard May has resigned his position for unspecified health reasons, it appears inevitable, the issue prejudged, that the trial will nevertheless continue, in spite of the virtual impossibility that a new judge will be able to come to grips with the mountain of evidence presented so far. If justice is not just, if prosecution is persecution, if international law is flaunted in order to "enforce international law", we are indeed now living in the dystopian world of George Orwell's 1984. The neighborhood bully has decided the world is his back yard. The implications of this egregious use of "power politics" go beyond the unjust trial of Slobodan Milosevic: the "new world order" now being implemented is simply inhuman and intolerable. What can be done to change this cruel and criminal state of affairs? Let us remember that it was not long ago that 15 million people marched on the same day in a gesture of international solidarity to say no to the Bush junta's illegal war on Iraq. Now is the time for another such gesture. For if this trial continues, the only triumphs will be those of travesty over justice, power over principle, disinformation over truth. And many feel that the sum total of these acts constitutes state terrorism perpetrated on a virtually defenseless country and its legally elected president. As artists, our work is to broaden our horizons, to become more human and to share that humanity. And to create. Destruction is intolerable to us. It is intolerable that courts be used to justify the killing of civilians, the destruction of a sovereign nation, and the demonization and imprisonment of that nation's leader. Let us now create a massive demonstration of our humanity. Now is the time to make ourselves heard loud and clear, once again, by publicly denouncing this injustice. We urge you to join your efforts to those of the International Committee for the Defense of Slobodan Milosevic. Robert Dickson, poet (winner of the Governor General's award for French poetry 2002), Canada Harold Pinter, playwright, UK Peter Handke, writer, Austria/France Alexander Zinoviev, writer, philosopher, Russian Federation Valeri Ganichev, writer (President of the Writers' Union of Russia), Russian Federation Vyacheslav Klykov, sculptor (President of the International Fund for Slavonic Literacy and Culture), Russian Federation Dimitri Analis, poet, Greece/France Valentin Rasputin, novelist, Russian Federation Fulvio Grimaldi, filmmaker, journalist, Italy Vladimir Kostrov, poet (winner of Tyutchev and Bunin awards), Russian Federation Nadja Tesich, novelist, Yugoslavia/US Milos Raickovich, composer, Yugoslavia/US Mick Collins, screenwriter, US/France John Steppling, screenwriter, playwright, US/Poland John Goodrich, playwright, US March-April 2004 Montreal-New York-Moscow-Paris ******************************************************* If you are an artist and you want to add your name to this Public Appeal, please send and e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . ****************************************************************** TRUTH OR SLAVERY, HUMILIATION AND DESTRUCTION OF SERBIAN NATION http://www.icdsm.org/battle.htm THE DECISIVE BATTLE FOR TRUTH NEEDS YOUR HELP NOW! ****************************************************************** SLOBODA urgently needs your donation. Please find the detailed instructions at: http://www.sloboda.org.yu/pomoc.htm To join or help this struggle, visit: http://www.sloboda.org.yu/ (Sloboda/Freedom association) http://www.icdsm.org/ (the international committee to defend Slobodan Milosevic) http://www.free-slobo.de/ (German section of ICDSM) http://www.icdsm-us.org/ (US section of ICDSM) http://www.icdsmireland.org/ (ICDSM Ireland) http://www.wpc-in.org/ (world peace council) http://www.geocities.com/b_antinato/ (Balkan antiNATO center) Serbian News Network - SNN [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.antic.org/
