by Diana Johnstone (6-21-00)
www.tenc.net
[emperors-clothes]
Last June 3, two tribunals reached opposite
conclusions concerning accusations of war crimes brought
against NATO for its 1999 bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.
In The Hague, Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor at the
"International Criminal Tribunal for former
Yugoslavia" (ICTY), created by the UN Security Council at
the initiative of the United States, announced that she saw no
grounds even to open an inquiry. NATO made "some
mistakes", she acknowledged. But
Ms Del Ponte was "very satisfied" that there had
been no deliberate targeting of civilians during NATO's
bombing campaign.
No wonder. Indicting
NATO would have meant biting the hand that feeds this Tribunal,
whose former presiding judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald once
described Madeleine Albright as its "mother". It was
hardly conceivable that the ICTY would allow itself to get too
interested in crimes committed by the NATO powers who provide
it with funding, equipment and investigators... not to mention
its basic political agenda, which is to justify the diplomatic
isolation of Serbian leaders by labeling them as
"indicted war criminals".
In Berlin, on the same day, another Tribunal
concluded a far more serious examination of the charges
against NATO. This unofficial "European Tribunal"
was genuinely independent of all the governments involved in
the 1999 war. In contrast to The Hague, the conclusions were
based on several public hearings (already published in two
illustrated volumes*), precise references to international
law, detailed presentation and analysis of the relevant facts
and finally the direct testimony of six victims who came from
Yugoslavia to recount their experience as civilian targets
under the 78-day rain of NATO bombs and missiles.
The Berlin Tribunal was presided by a distinguished
Hamburg University professor of international law, Dr. Norman
Paech, who insisted that the verdict would be based on
strictly legal criteria. And indeed the deliberations of this
European Tribunal in Berlin, supported by over sixty peace,
civic and human rights groups, stuck very strictly to the
subject of the NATO war against Yugoslavia, to the exclusion
of other political issues (in contrast to the similar Tribunal
organized by the International Action Center in New York on
June 10, which chose to link issues). Berlin's proximity to
Eastern Europe was reflected in the composition of the panel
of jurists, who had come from Austria, Italy, Hungary, Poland,
Belarus, the Czech Republic, Russia and Macedonia.
The long and detailed indictment, presented by
lawyer Ulrich Dost, was divided into two main sections: first,
responsibility for deliberately preparing the war against
Yugoslavia to the exclusion of peaceful negotiated solutions
to the Kosovo problem, and second, violations of international
law in the conduct of the war. The former East German
ambassador to Belgrade, Ralph Hartmann, a genuine expert on
the region, presented a recapitulation of key events and
statements that clearly demonstrated the major responsibility
of the Federal Republic of Germany in preparing the war, both
by actively encouraging armed ethnic Albanian separatists and
by pushing other NATO allies toward military intervention.
Retired Bundeswehr General Heinz Loquai, who served
as German military observer at the Organization of Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) headquarters in Vienna,
contributed a damning report on how the German Defense
Ministry itself invented "Operation Horseshoe", the
supposed Serbian plan to expel the Albanian population from
Kosovo, which was "revealed" by Defense Minister
Scharping in April 1999 to justify the bombing as it began to
lose public support. Hartmann and Loquai are among the authors
of a growing number of German books which are devastating in
their refutation of NATO claims. Indeed, if certain German
media and the German government bear major international
responsibility for initiating the violent disintegration of
Yugoslavia in 1991, by the same token German critics of the
process are perhaps the best informed and most thorough in
their denunciations.
Such a "people's tribunal", like the
Russell Tribunal formed to condemn the U.S. war in Vietnam,
obviously has no power to carry out a sentence. Its verdict is
purely moral, and serves to point up two things: the existence
of flagrant violations of the law, and the absence of any
existing institutional recourse. It does not settle but rather
raises a number of questions.
The verdict, as expected, found the top officials
of NATO and its member states guilty of having committed an
aggression in violation of all the relevant treaties and
international agreements, from the United Nations Charter to
the NATO Treaty itself, as well as numerous conventions. Far
from being legitimately "humanitarian", NATO's
intervention ignored and blocked Belgrade's various compromise
offers and dramatically worsened an already difficult
situation, causing a sharp increase in the number of victims.
Such a verdict is similar to the finding of a
"truth commission", and shows at least that a prima
facie case exists against NATO. A careful examination of the
Berlin results, as well as those of other "people's
tribunals", is enough to expose the uselessness of Ms Del
Ponte's ICTY when it comes to establishing the facts, let
alone justice.
The Berlin Tribunal pinpointed an important treaty
violation scarcely mentioned in other NATO countries: by
sending its warplanes to bomb Yugoslavia, the Federal Republic
of German was in flagrant violation of the so-called "4
plus 2" treaty of 1990 by which Moscow consented to the
unification of the two German states. By that Treaty, the
German government undertook a solemn commitment that
"never again would war emanate from German
territory" and that Germany's military engagements would
remain strictly within the norms of the United Nations
Charter.
The Berlin Tribunal condemned not only Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder, defense minister Rudolf Scharping and
foreign minister Joschka Fischer, but also all the members of
the Bundestag who had voted in favor of a military engagement
that clearly violated the Federal Republic's international
engagements.
The Tribunal expressed concern at the role played
by the war against Yugoslavia in the formulation of NATO's new
"strategic concept", whose significance
"extends far beyond the Balkans and across Eurasia as a
model for a future world military order". To prevent such
military globalization, the Tribunal said it was imperative to
pursue examination of the
preconditions, objectives and consequences
of the war against Yugoslavia and to draw attention to its eventual
geostrategic implications.
On the matter of civilian targets, the Berlin
Tribunal cited statements from various NATO officials and
military officers proving that the
choice of civilian targets was indeed part of the "third
stage" of a strategy aimed at putting pressure on the
civilian population to rise up against
its own government, a clear violation of the Geneva
Conventions. Moreover, the use of such weapons as depleted
uranium and cluster bombs clearly endangered the civilian
population, both during and after the actual bombing, and
constituted a particularly grave violation of international
humanitarian law.
About 600 people attended the two-day proceedings
in the handsome Protestant Church of the Holy Cross in the
Kreuzberg section of Berlin, whose pastor Jürgen Quandt in
his welcoming speech rejected the concept of "just"
war.
The Berlin Tribunal condemned the deliberate
destruction of the Belgrade studios of Radio Television Serbia
(RTS) not only as an attack against a civilian installation,
but also as an assault on freedom of information. The purpose
was to deprive not only the Yugoslavs but also audiences
around the world of the pictures and information concerning
the bombing broadcast by RTS. Whether or not that information
was "objective" was irrelevant, the verdict stated,
since the same could be said of information broadcast by NATO
media.
This condemnation of the bombing of RTS was echoed
a few days later by Amnesty International which, accusing NATO
of war crimes, specifically cited the deliberate bombing of
the Belgrade television studies, which killed 16 employees --
a flagrant crime which failed to interest Ms Del Ponte.
In conclusion, the Tribunal presided by Dr. Paech
emphasized the need to pursue the search for truth. The
underlying problems in the Balkans remain serious and
unresolved.
- "It is imperative for the public to be
informed not only of the physical and material damage, but
also of the psychological wounds inflicted ... This war
must not be the model for a new world order. We must
finally make it clear to politicians and the military that
neither human rights nor civilization are to be saved by
war, that war must no longer be used as a political
instrument."
* The two volumes are published by Schkeuditzer
Buchverlag, Badeweg 1, 04435 Schkeuditz, Federal Republic of
Germany. Wolfgang Richter, Elmar Schmaehling, Eckart Spoo
(editors), (1) _Die Wahrheit über den NATO-Krieg gegen
Jugoslawien_. (2) _Die deutsche Verantwortung für den NATO-Krieg
gegen Jugoslawien_.
***
Further reading...
1) See Money
Talks - US Funds ICTY Public Relations
at http://emperors-clothes.com/news/press.htm
(2) Back
to the dark ages by Jared Israel at http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/bac.htm
(3) See NATO's
War & World Security by Prof. Raju G.
C. Thomas at http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/security.htm
(4) See HUMANITARIAN
WAR: Making the Crime Fit the Punishment by
Diana Johnstone at http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/Johnstone/crime.htm
(5) See An
Impartial Tribunal? Really?
by Christopher Black at http://emperors-clothes.comanalysis/Impartial.htm
(6)See NATO
Willfully Triggered Environmental Catastrophe In Yugoslavia
at http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/chuss/willful.htm
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