------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the April 15, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
SYMBOLIC BUT SIGNIFICANT SHIFT: NEW SERB LAW AIDS DEFENSE OF MILOEVIC VS. NATO COURT
By John Catalinotto
Under mass popular pressure, the Serbian government has defied the U.S. and West European imperialists. The parliament voted to provide concrete support to Serbian citizens on trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, Netherlands. This includes modest financial support for former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and for Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj, who both face war crimes charges. The Radical Party led the parliamentary vote last Dec. 28 with 36 percent.
By passing the "Law on Rights of ICTY Indictees Detained at The Hague and of Their Families" on March 30, the parliament gave expression to the growing mass anger at Western imperialist domination of their country. It was also a thumbing of the nose at Washington, which is threatening to withhold an already meager $50 million in loan aid.
The new law provides the Hague's prisoners and their families with very modest financial assistance, including the equivalent of their salaries if they had worked in Serbia, travel costs for visits by family members, phone calls and other small expenses. It also gives detainees expense money for the work of two lawyers--legal advisers or assistants--in accordance with the rates set by the Serbian Bar Association, if these expenses are not covered by ICTY.
According to President Milosevic's assistant, Vladimir Krsljanin, this law is "important politically" but the amount is "insufficient" for a defense as complicated as Milosevic's.
The NATO-created tribunal has spent two whole years and tens of millions of dollars developing a prosecution case against Milosevic. According to his supporters, the former president plans to wage a thorough political defense on every point and charge raised against him and to turn the case into an indictment of NATO.
The growing popular support for the defendants comes after more than three years of rule in Serbia by pro-Western parties and individuals.
In 1999, a 78-day NATO bombing campaign killed thousands and destroyed much industry in Yugoslavia. It allowed the U.S. and its allies to occupy Kosovo, a province of Serbia, as alleged peacekeepers. These countries continued their efforts to subvert the Milosevic government, focusing on manipulating the national elections in the fall of 2000. They stage-managed a coup in October of that year to get rid of Milosevic and isolate Seselj.
At that time a portion of the intelligentsia and parts of the population in Serbia believed that the removal of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and the Radical Party from the government would open the door to integration with Western Europe, bringing peace and improving living conditions.
Instead, since the ouster of Milosevic and Seselj in 2000, Serbia's economy has been globalized and taken over, mainly by U.S. and German transnational firms and by local collaborators. Unemployment is now at 30 percent, with many factories closed. No significant aid arrived from the West.
Instead of bringing peace to Kosovo, since 1999 NATO has allowed the ganglike rightist grouping known as the KLA to use murder and arson to drive 240,000 Serbs, Jews, Roma and other nationalities and progressive Kosovo Albanians out of the province. Some 4,000 were driven out just this March after widespread attacks.
Meanwhile, Milosevic's self-defense and cross-examination at The Hague has helped destroy a weak ICTY case and regained much support from the population in Serbia.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe wwnews- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
