http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=80#comments
Our Daily Lies, From Tbilisi to Tripoli by Srdja Trifkovic
A prominent opposition figure was shot dead last Sunday in the capital of a
former Soviet republic. Had it been a pro-Western reformist in Moscow, youd
be force-fed the victims name for days on end. A legion of editorialists and
analysts would be telling you that Vladimir Putin is behind the crime and
that we are witnessing yet another dark chapter in Russias return to autocracy.
The killing took place the capital of Georgia Tbilisi, however, which is
ruled by a pro-Western reformist, Mikhail Saakashvili, who led a color-coded
revolution in 2003. You are therefore unlikely to know the name of Guram
Sharadze, or to learn that he was the head of the right-wing Faith,
Fatherland and Language movement, a prominent critic of Western influences in
general, and an outspoken opponent of George Soros in particular. You will not
know that Georgian opposition leaders say he was killed by the government, and
that his family agrees. (In the United States he is already a non-person: a
Google News search for Guram Sharadze on May 23 did not yield a single
U.S.-based media entry in the previous 24 hours.) And you will not know that
his murder is just business as usual in Georgia.
In the meantime the stage is set for a new rise in tension between Russia and
the West, following Great Britains demand on Moscow for the extradition of
Andrei Lugovoi, who is suspected by British officials of murdering his fellow
ex-KGB officer, Alexander Litvinenko, by poisoning him with polonium 210. The
thing for Americans to understand about the case is that it takes place in the
context of rising Russian disregard for the rule of law, pontificated the New
York Sun. Time for a row with Russia, screamed the Guardian:
Russia has to learn that it cannot act with impunity. We need to make our
condemnation of Russias appalling human rights record clear . . . We need to
remind him that the journalist Anna Politkovskaya was killed seven months
agoand still the police investigation has only been rudimentary. We need to
complain vigorously about . . . the mayor of Moscows banning of this weekends
gay pride march . . . Respect for the rule of law and human rights must
underpin Russias future and we should not be afraid of ruffling Putins
feathers.
The same article, in slightly different guises, was published as an editorial
or as an op-ed in most major dailies on both sides of the Atlantic.
None of them, to my knowledge, have deemed it newsworthy to mention that the
issue of extradition between Britain and Russia is not new: it is over seven
years old, in fact, and its origins are in Londons point-blank refusal to
extradite Boris Berezovsky, a Russian citizen wanted for fraud and embezzlement
on a colossal scale, and Akhmed Zakayev, a Russian citizen accused of a host of
horrendous terrorist crimes in Chechnya. In fact a British court accepted a
plea by lawyers for Mr Zakayev that he would not get a fair trial and could
even could face torture in Russia; Judge Timothy Workman ruled accordingly that
it would be unjust and oppressive to return Mr Zakayev to Russia.
It is, in other words, right and proper for Britain to refuse extradition of
accused terrorists and mega-thieves to Russiathey wouldnt get a fair trail
and may even be tortured in that dark and satanic countrybut if Russia dares
hesitates to honor Britains extradition order for a Russian citizen, then its
time for a showdown and for another paroxysm of ritualized Russophobia that
transcends the left-right divide.
In the same league is the mainstream media reporting of the latest round of
fighting in Lebanon. Armed clashes between the Lebanese army and the militants
belonging to Fatah al-Islam, a Sunni Islamic militant group based in the
Palestinian Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanons port city of
Tripoli, have killed dozens of civilians. Most of them died when the Lebanese
army started indiscriminate shelling inside the camp.
Lebanese officials charged that the militants are using the camps residents
to shield themselves, and the United States expressed full support to Prime
Minister Fuad Siniora; Washington is expected to grant him additional military
aid. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice unreservedly defended the Lebanese
governments actions: Lebanon is doing the right thing to try to protect its
population, to assert its sovereignty and so we are very supportive of the
Siniora government and what it is trying to do, she told reporters.
While there can be no doubt that Fatah al-Islam is a nasty piece of work and
that the militants are using the civilian population to shield themselvesa
favorite Muslim tactic in the Balkans and in the Middle East alikeit is
nevertheless noteworthy that doing the right thing in Tripoli in May 2007
apparently was not at all the right thing to do in Sarajevo in 1994.
This week at The Hague Tribunal the defense is presenting its case in the
trial of the Bosnian-Serb General Dragomir Milosevic, charged with ordering
artillery attacks against the residents of Sarajevo between August 1994 and the
end of the war in Bosnia. General Milosevics defense will argue that the
soldiers under his command did not commit any crimes. He says that the civilian
casualties in that period were either collateral damage in the urban
fighting, or else the result of the Muslim forces deliberately inserting
themselves into heavily built-up areas to invite retaliatory fire from the
Serbian side.
Perhaps he should try inviting Condi Rice as a defense witness . . .
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