Slobo's Stooges

dublin | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis

Wednesday March 15, 2006 12:19

by John Byrne

The fossilsed Left and the paleo Right converge

"No one now disputes that stopping Slobodan Milosevic was the right thing to do,” wrote the Wall Street Journal this week, several days after the deposed Serbian strongman expired in his cell in the Hague. It’s an appealing sentiment, suggesting as it does that the man who presided over the deaths of 250,000 people in Yugoslavia in the 1990s died unsung and unmourned. In reality, however, even Slobodan Milosevic had his defenders. What is more, they are the same voices--largely on the far Left but also on the isolationist Right--who have now taken up the cause of Saddam Hussein.

Many of them congregated under the banner of the infamous International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic (ICDSM). Founded in March of 2001 as a personal cheering section for the indicted dictator, the group, whose 1,300 members included the Nobel laureate Harold Pinter, devoted its efforts to charging NATO leaders with “crimes against humanity.“ At the same time, the group cast Milosevic as the latest of the “freedom fighters and patriots” to fall victim to Western “imperial conquest.” In one of its more coherent statements of support, ICDSM asserted that Milosevic’s only crime was “to resist U.S. rule to terrorized slaves ruled by local fascists (conveniently labeled victims of oppression by the pro-NATO media) and all of it dominated by the U.S. and its allies, especially Germany and England.” Nowhere did the ICDSM bother to acknowledge the atrocities committed under Milosevic, from the shelling of Muslim and Croat civilians by Serbian paramilitaries, to the routine executions and rapes, to the wholesale destruction of villages and mass expulsion of non-Serbs that added “ethnic cleansing” to the lexicon of man’s inhumanity to man.
Emblematic of the apologists’ studied disregard for Milosevic’s murderous past was a 2004 letter protesting his trial, addressed to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. Its author was none other than ICDSM co-chairman Ramsey Clark, the former U.S. Attorney General, all-seasons anti-American activist and, most recently, attorney for Saddam Hussein. Rather than address the specifics of the more than 60 charges against Milosevic, Clark assailed the very legitimacy of the trial. As Clark saw it, 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.” Never mind that, in 2004, Milosevic had literally pleaded for the right to represent himself, over the objections of prosecutors troubled that his heart condition rendered him unfit for the task.
Unconcerned with the facts of the case, Clark advanced the claim that Milosevic had wanted only to “protect and preserve Yugoslavia” and sought to shift the blame onto “nationalist and ethnic groups…determined to dismember” the country--a spectacularly mendacious portrait of the man who had stoked nationalist and ethnic grievances to cement his hold on power and exterminate innocent civilians whose presence conflicted with his dream of “Greater Serbia.” For a more scrupulous account of Milosevic’s dirty work, one need only consult Samantha Powers’s book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. Of the campaign waged by Milosevic and his henchmen against non-Serb minorities, Powers reflects that “Theirs was a deliberate policy of destruction and degradation: destruction so this avowed enemy race would have no homes to which to return; degradation so the former inhabitants would not stand tall--and thus would not dare against stand--in Serb-held territory.”
No one, save perhaps Milosevic himself, expended greater efforts to cover up these atrocities than Edward Herman. As a longtime co-author of Noam Chomsky, Herman, a former professor at the University of Pennsylvania, had a long history of furnishing excuses for Communist killers. In 1977, Chomsky and Herman had famously authored an article for the Nation exonerating the Khmer Rouge and scoffing at the accounts of its victims. In the Communist apparatchik Milosevic, Herman spotted a natural ally.
Accordingly, Herman spent much of the 1990s rehabilitating Milosevic’s reputation. It is a commentary on Herman’s commitment--to say nothing of his political views--that in 1995 he founded the Srebrenica Research Group to defend the indefensible: the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Bosnian men and boys by Serb forces in Srebrenica. Despite the preponderance of evidence attesting to the massacre--including forensic evidence and a list of deceased and missing numbering in the thousands--Herman’s group judged it, incredibly, as a fabrication of the imperialist West, intended to undermine socialism in Serbia. Later, in an essay for the 2000 book Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis, Herman allowed that genocide had indeed taken place. In keeping with tradition, however, he reposed the blame not on Milosevic and his marauding military but on the NATO bombing campaign, writing that the "humanitarian bombing created more pain and ethnic cleansing than existed prior to the supposedly humane action."

Herman’s collaborator Noam Chomsky sounded a kindred theme. In his 1999 book The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo, a contemptuous attack on the notion that allied intervention in the Balkans could be considered a humanitarian action, Chomsky blamed the NATO bombing for the “destruction of the civilian society” in the former Yugoslavia. That Milosevic might have had hand in that this destruction was a proposition that did not delay the MIT radical.
Like Herman, Chomsky was not above flirting with genocide denial. For instance, he praised the work of fringe journalist Diana Johnstone, whose 2002 book, Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions, was among the most scandalous to be written about the conflict. Beyond proffering the standard revisionism of Milosevic’s reign, Johnstone, an advisor to Herman’s Srebrenica Research Group, denied the demonstrable fact that rape had been systematically committed by Serb forces and claimed that Serb-run concentration camps in Omarska and Trnopolje were really refugee and transit centers--the preferred propaganda line of the Serbian authorities--to which Muslims traveled for protection and could leave whenever they pleased. (Video and photographic evidence, as well as interviews with detainees, argued differently.) And these were not even the most farfetched of Johnstone’s claims.
As in her regular articles, published in the far-Left magazine Counterpunch, Johnstone also denied that a massacre had taken place at Srebrenica. On no credible evidence, Johnstone claimed that Srebrenica, far from an ordinary village, was a “Muslim military base.“ As for the thousands of Muslim men who were never again found alive, Johnstone assured her readers that this was an invention of “Muslim authorities” that had failed to reveal the whereabouts of these men, “preferring to let them be counted among the missing, that is, among the massacred.” Johnstone conceded that a “large, unspecified number of these men were ambushed and killed as they fled in scenes of terrible panic,” but discounted its significance. Srebrenica, she concluded, was a “‘massacre’ such as occurs in war when fleeing troops are ambushed by superior forces.” In other words, what happened at Srebrenica, was not, as the historical consensus had it, a mass execution of civilians, but a lopsided clash between two military forces.
Chomsky initially defended Fools' Crusade on the merits if its argument. In a signed letter to the leftist Swedish magazine Ordfront, co-authored with fellow radicals Tariq Ali, Arundhati Roy and others, Chomsky endorsed Johnstone's book as an “outstanding work, dissenting from the mainstream view but doing so by an appeal to fact and reason, in a great tradition.” Chomsky further pronounced it “quite serious and important.” In an interview with the Britain’s left-wing Guardian, Chomsky further identified himself with Johnstone’s malign theory, describing the Srebrenica massacre as “probably overstated.” Emma Brockes, the journalist who conducted the interview, also noted that, just as Johnstone had done, Chomsky dismissively placed the word “massacre” in quotations. Unlike Johnstone, however, Chomsky lacked the courage of his convictions. When the interview appeared on October 31, 2005, Chomsky remonstrated that he had never doubted that a massacre had taken place. Rather, he now insisted, he had only defended Johnstone’s right to free speech--a face-saving defense plainly incompatible with the facts. Even so, the Guardian, after first defending the story, caved to Chomsky’s complaints and published an undeserved apology.
Not all of Milosevic’s defenders were as reluctant as Chomsky to be seen as whitewashing his crimes. “The most notorious ‘atrocities’ for which Milosevic is accused never happened,” declared a 2001 petition denouncing the “witch-hunt against Slobodan Milosevic.” Its signatories included the Communist writer Michael Parenti, ICDSM Vice-Chairman Jared Israel, and William Blum, an inveterate conspiracy theorist who has earned the favorable notice of Osama Bin Laden. The radical press proved equally charitable. Accepting at face value Milosevic’s self-serving claims to victimhood--the Serbian dictator had long portrayed himself as the target of a “New Fascism” even as he was its leading exponent--the Marxist-Leninist Worker’s World editorialized that “Milosevic has earned the respect of working-class activists worldwide.” Writing in the 2002 edition of the New Statesman, Milosevic votary Neil Clark stated that his “worst crime was to carry on being socialist.”
In condemning the NATO campaign against their socialist hero, the far-Left found an ally in the isolationist Right. Pat Buchanan, writing in 1999, euphemized Milosevic’s genocidal campaign against non-Serbs as an admirable attempt to “hold onto a province that is the birthplace of Serbian nationhood,” and chided the “New World Order,” led by the United States, for intervening in the internal affairs of another country. When notorious conspiracy theorist and Antiwar.com editorial director Justin Raimondo wasn’t alleging a “longstanding US plan to destabilize the Balkans,” he was unabashedly rooting for Milosevic to beat his rap for war crimes; the title of a 2002 Raimondo column cheered, “Go Slobo, Go!” Nor did these pundits reconsider their sympathy for Milosevic. Commenting on his death this Sunday, paleoconservative columnist Paul Craig Roberts opted for posthumous revisionism. “Milosevic,” he claimed, “was caught up in the post-Soviet era break-up of Yugoslavia,” and “was damned for trying to protect Yugoslavia’s territorial integrity.” On both extremes of the political spectrum, Milosevic was the victim, never the victimizer.
Missing from the far-Left’s encomia and the far-Right’s excuse-making is any honest reckoning with Milosevic’s blood-soaked legacy. After a decade of ethnic conflict in the Balkans, much of it directly incited by Milosevic, the UN Criminal Tribunal counted 11,334 bodies in 529 gravesites, with as many as 6,000 missing. Many of them were the victims of the Vojska Jugoslavije, the Yugoslav Army, which terrorized and was responsible for the deaths of untold civilians. According to a detailed 593-page report by Human Rights Watch, the army was commanded by Milosevic until October of 2000. Nor will it do, as Milosevic’s defenders attempt, to equate the genocidal tactics of Milosevic’s armies with the undeniable atrocities committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army and the tragic errors of NATO’s bombing strikes. As the journalist Alec Russell, a former Balkan correspondent, has reported, more than 90 percent of the of the war crimes in the former Yugoslavia were perpetrated by Serbs.
If there is any sadness in Milosevic’s death, it is that the world was denied an official verdict to formalize the judgment long ago rendered by history. More regrettable is that until the dictator’s dying day there were those who, out of political sympathy, plain-old anti-Americanism, or both, were willing to forgive him everything.

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Comments (28 of 28)

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Well Done John

by Gay Geori

Wed Mar 15, 2006 13:37

Well written and insightful. Thank You.

Author! Author!

by Wasp

Wed Mar 15, 2006 13:55

Gay Geori you posted the above C&Particle.

Evidence Please

by Billy Williamson - None

Wed Mar 15, 2006 14:13

Just what is the evidence that connects Slobo with the murder and mayhem in the former Yugoslavia as opposed to those Western countries that encouraged the unilateral territorial breakaways of the non-Serb nationalities.

Fool

by Ron

Wed Mar 15, 2006 14:44

Non-Serbs in pre-war Yugoslavia were threated as second class citizens by the Serbian "master-race" who had held political power in their hands since Tito.
Encouraging non-Serbs to revolt was perfectly justifiable - do you think they should have been encouraged to submit to Serbian tyranny?
When people rise up and win their freedom as the Slovenians, Croats, Bosnians and Kosovars did are those who encourage them responsible for what genocidal maniacs such as Milosevic did in response?
Milosevic was the Yugoslav head of state, he had supreme authority, senior army officers such as Mladic were under his command - the special army and police units led by thugs such as Arkan operated with his full knowledge and approval.
Only a fool would suggest other wise based on the testimony of witnesses who survived the death squads, the vast amount of documentary evidence, the mass graves of thousands of innocents gunned down and bulldozed into the ground and the villages and towns wrecked shelled and deserted of their inhabitants.

Inform the Fool Ron

Wed Mar 15, 2006 15:11

Tito was a Croat Ron. Tell me how the many corpses got the tag "Murdered by Milosovic".

This Seems to Cover It All

by Helpful - Nine

Wed Mar 15, 2006 15:46

How good is our information on the destruction of Yugoslavia?
international | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Tuesday March 14, 2006 22:37 by m.c.
- are you brainwashed by the media? find it out! -

MEDIA QUIZ . Answers below.

1 Did the war begin in 1991 with the secessions of Slovenia and Croatia?
O Yes O No O Don't know

2 Did Germany deliberately provoke the civil war?
O Yes O No O Don't know

3 Did the US really remain 'passive and disinterested' during this war?
O Yes O No O Don't know

4 Did the World Bank and the IMF help destroying this country?
O Yes O No O Don't know

5 Did the media give a phony image of 'our friends' Tudjman & Izetbegovic?
O Yes O No O Don't know

6 Did the media hide the essential history and geography of Bosnia?
O Yes O No O Don't know

7 Was the topic 'Serb aggressors, Croat and Muslim victims' correct?
O Yes O No O Don't know

8 Did Serbia initiate a program of ethnic cleansing?
O Yes O No O Don't know

9 Did the media correctly report on Srebrenica?
O Yes O No O Don't know

10 Were the first victims of the war killed by the Serbs?
O Yes O No O Don't know

11 Was the famous image of the 'concentration camps' false?
O Yes O No O Don't know

12 Were we given the true stories on the three large massacres in Sarajevo?
O Yes O No O Don't know

13 Was the largest ethnic cleansing of the war committed by the Croat Army?
O Yes O No O Don't know

14 Did the US use depleted uranium weapons also in Bosnia?
O Yes O No O Don't know

15 Was the war against Yugoslavia the US's 'only good war'?
O Yes O No O Don't know

ANSWERS:

1 1991 OR EARLIER?
Did the war begin in 1991 with the secessions of Slovenia and Croatia?

NO. In 1979, the BND (German CIA) sent a team of secret agents to Zagreb. Mission: to support Franjo Tudjman, a racist who actively promoted ethnic hatred and did all he could toward the break-up of Yugoslavia. Germany supported and financed this Croatian Le Pen, and sent him arms before the war.
To what end? Berlin never acknowledged the existence of the unified Yugoslav state which had courageously resisted German aggression in the two world wars. By once more breaking Yugoslavia into easily dominated mini-states, Germany sought to control the Balkans. An economic zone it could annex in order to remove it from local authority, to export German products to it, and to dominate it as a market. And a strategic route toward the oil and gas of the Middle East and the Caucasus. In 1992, the Bavarian Interior Minister declared: "Helmut Kohl has succeeded where neither Emperor Guillaume nor Hitler could." (see the parallel maps 'Yugoslavia in 1941--in 1991', Liars' Poker, pp 68-69)

2 GERMAN WILL?
Did Germany deliberately provoke the civil war?

YES. At the beginning of the Maastricht Summit in 1991, German Chancellor Kohl was alone in wanting to break up Yugoslavia and precipitously to recognize the 'independence' of Slovenia and Croatia, in defiance of both International Law and the Yugoslav Constitution. But the rise of German power would impose this madness on all its partners. Paris and London fell right in line.
According to The Observer of London: "Prime Minister Major paid dearly for supporting German policies toward Yugoslavia which all observers said precipitated the war." In effect, all the experts had warned that this 'recognition' would provoke a civil war. Why? 1. Nearly every Yugoslav Republic was a mix of diverse nationalities. Separating the territories was as absurd as dividing Paris or London into ethnically pure municipal districts. 2. By favoring the neo-fascist Tudjman and the Muslim nationalist Izetbegovic (who had in his youth collaborated with Hitler), it was certain that panic would be provoked among the important Serb minorities who had lived for centuries in Croatia and Bosnia. Every Serb family had lost at least one member to the horrible genocide committed by the fascist Croats and Muslims, agents of Nazi Germany in 1941-45.
Only Tito's Yugoslavia had been able to bring about peace, equality and coexistence. But Berlin, then Washington, wanted once and for all to break this country they saw as being 'too far to the Left' (see question 4).

3 A PASSIVE USA?
Did the US remain 'passive and disinterested' during this war?

NO. Lord Owen, special European Union envoy to Bosnia, and later a well-placed observer, wrote in his memoirs: "I greatly respect the United States. But in recent years (92-95) this nation's diplomacy has been guilty of needlessly prolonging the war in Bosnia."
What was its aim? While the Germans were busy taking control of Slovenia, Croatia and, eventually, Bosnia, Washington put pressure on Izetbegovic, the Muslim nationalist leader in Sarajevo: "Don't sign any peace agreements proposed by the Europeans. We will win the war for you on the ground." Washington then prolonged for two years the horrible suffering inflicted on all the people of Bosnia.
By what means? 1. Setting aside all the advantages Berlin had gained in this strategic region of the Balkans. 2. Dividing and weakening the European Union. 3. Installing NATO as the Continental European policeman. 4. Restricting all Russian access to the Mediterranian Sea. 5. Imposing its military and political leadership on all the other wars being prepared.
Because the war against Yugoslavia was at the same time a non-declared war against Europe. After the fall of the Berlin wall, US strategies were geared toward stopping, at all costs, the emergence of a European superpower. So everything was done to weaken Europe militarily and politically.

4 WORLD BANK & IMF
Did the World Bank and the IMF help destroying this country?

YES. In December 1989, the IMF imposed draconian conditions on Yugoslavia which forced liberal prime minister Markovic to beg for aid from George Bush Sr. This 'help' was aimed at destabilizing and bankrupting all large state-owned businesses. The World Bank dismantled the banking system, laid off 525,000 workers in one year, then ordered the immediate elimination of two out of every three jobs. The quality of life fell dramatically.
These policies and the growing incidence of work stoppages in solidarity with displaced workers in all the Republics heightened the contradictions among the leaders of the various Republics to whom Belgrade could no longer provide financing. To get themselves out of this mess, the leaders had to resort to divisive tactics and invested greatly in nationalist hatreds. This war was ignited from abroad. Like so many others.
The war against Yugoslavia was a war of globalization. All the great Western powers sought to liquidate the Yugoslav economic system which they found too Leftist: with a strong public sector, important social rights, resistance to the multinationals... The real reason for these various wars against Yugoslavia can be read in this reproach (this threat?) from the Washington Post: "Milosevic was unable to grasp the political message of the fall of the Berlin wall. Other Communist politicians accepted the Western model, but Milosevic went the other way." (4 August 1996).

5 "OUR FRIENDS"
Did the media give a phony image of 'our friends' Tudjman & Izetbegovic?

YES. The hyper-nationalist Croat and Muslim leaders were presented as the pure victims, great anti-racist democrats. But their past as much as their present should have alerted us:
When he took power, Franjo Tudjman declared: "I'm happy my wife isn't a Jew or a Serb." He hurriedly renamed the streets that had carried the names of antifascist partisans, reinstated the money and the flag of the old genocidal fascist regime, and changed the Constitution in order to run off the Serbs.
During his 1990 electoral campaign, Izetbegovic reissued his 'Islamic Declaration': "There can be neither peace nor coexistence between the Islamic religion and those social and political institutions that are non-Islamic." He set up a corrupt and mafia-ridden regime based primarily on the lucrative black market and the hijacking of funds from international aid. He called for assistance, with Washington's blessings, from Islamic mercenaries, most notably from al Qaeda.
Once the war had started, serious crimes were committed by all three camps, but by hiding these histories, the situation was rendered incomprehensible.

6 HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY
Did the media hide the essential history and geography of Bosnia?

YES. We were made to believe that the Serbs were the aggressors, that they had invaded Bosnia from outside its borders. In reality, three national groups had been living in Bosnia for a long time: the Muslims (43%), the Serbs (31%), the Croats (17%). And one should not forget that 7% of 'Yugoslavs' were born of mixed marriages or preferred to eschew narrow national identities.
Dividing Bosnia according to nationalities, as the EU did, was absurd and dangerous. Because this diverse population was completely intermingled: the Muslims lived primarily in the cities while the Serbs and Croats made up the peasantry and were dispersed throughout the sub-regions. Bosnia could not be divided without civil war.
In fact, the Serbs of Bosnia did not fight to invade the territories of 'others', but to save their own lands and establish corridors of communication between them. It was an absurd and bloody situation, with all the ravages of a civil war, but this civil war was provoked by the great powers.

7 "GOOD GUYS" AND "BAD GUYS"
Was the presumption of "Serb aggressors, Croat and Muslim victims" correct?

NO. In command of the UN forces in Bosnia from July 1993 to January 1994, Belgian general Briquemont was well placed to declare: "The disinformation is total (...) Television needs a scapegoat. For the moment, there is complete unanimity in condemning the Serbs, and that in no way facilitates the search for a solution. I don't think one can view the problem of ex-Yugoslavia and of Bosnia-Herzegovina only from the anti-Serb angle. It is much more complicated than that. One day in the middle of the Croat-Muslim war, we gave some information on the massacres committed by the Croatian army. An American journalist said to me: 'If you give out that sort of information, the American public won't understand anything.'"
It is not a question of denying the crimes committed by the Serb forces. The ideology one finds in the writings of Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic is extremely right wing. But in reality, after the break-up of Yugoslavia, on all sides, certain criminal and political forces used the methods of war to seize territory and riches. In the three camps - Croat, Muslim and Serb - militias committed grave crimes. To the detriment of all the people. Thus, in August 1994, the Muslim nationalist leader in Sarajevo, Izetbegovic, attacked the Muslim region of Bihac, controlled by Fikret Abdic, who had distanced himself from Izetbegovic and wanted to live in harmony with his Serb and Croat neighbors. In this offensive, Izetbegovic was aided by six US generals.
Remaining silent to the crimes of 'our friends' but demonizing whoever resists us is classic war propaganda. Numerous media lies were totally fabricated by a US public relations firm, Ruder Finn. Colleagues of the famous Hill & Knowlton, who created the media lie about Kuwaiti incubators stolen by the Iraqis.

8 "ETHNIC CLEANSING"?
Did Serbia initiate a program of ethnic cleansing?

NO. If one believes that ethnic cleansing was actually the program of 'the dictator Milosevic', one has to admit that this program was sadly ineffective. Because throughout the war years and still today, one of every five inhabitants of Serbia is a non-Serb. In Belgrade there are and have always been many minorities living without any difficulty: Muslims, Gypsies, Albanians, Macedonians, Turks, Hungarians, Gorans . . .
In reality, contrary to the image given by the press, Serbia is today the only state of the ex-Yugoslavia, along with Macedonia, that remains 'multinational'. On the other hand, all the NATO protectorates - Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo - practiced an almost total ethnic purification.
Milosevic objected to the excesses committed by the Serb militias in Bosnia. His wife made several declarations against them. An embargo was even applied by Serbia against Karadzic. Certainly, part of Serb public opinion was influenced by racist nationalism. But this was due precisely to Germany and the great powers having plunged the country into civil war and thus into hatred.

9 SREBRENICA
Did the media correctly report on Srebrenica?

NO. First element. Even if it's a matter of condemning abominable crimes, historical truth - necessary for reconciliation - is not served by the propagandistic processes that unreflexively use the term 'genocide', by the obfuscation of the fact that that some of the victims died in combat or by the systematic exaggeration of the numbers. Inquests have determined that many of the 'victims' were found some months later voting in subsequent elections or even taking part in other battles with Izetbegovic's army. This information was and remains obscured. We won't here go into the argument over numbers which only serious historians will be able to sort out definitively.
Second element. Why did the media hide the events essential to an understanding of this drama? In the beginning, this region was inhabited by Muslim AND Serbs. The latter were run off in 1993 by an ethnic cleansing committed by the Muslim nationalist troops of Izetbegovic. French general Morillon, who commanded the UN force there, charges: "On the night of the Orthodox Christmas, the holy night of January 1993, Nasser Oric led raids on Serb villages. . . . There were heads cut off, abominable massacres committed by the forces of Nasser Oric in all the neighboring villages." (Documents of information from the French National Assembly, Srebrenica, t 2, pp. 140-154) The desire for vengeance does not excuse the crimes committed later. But why systematically hide the crimes of 'our friends'?
Third element. Like other so-called demilitarized 'safe havens', Srebrenica was in reality an area used by the forces of Izetbegovic to regroup, the UN protecting them from total defeat. Astonishingly, Oric's troops retreated from Srebrenica just a week before the massacre. French general Germanos: "Oric had widely declared that they had abandoned Srebrenica because they'd wanted Srebrenica to fall. The 'they' was Izetbegovic."
And why? It is interesting to return to a curious UN report, written a year and a half earlier by Kofi Annan: "Izetbegovic had learned that a NATO intervention into Bosnia was possible. But it would happen only if the Serbs forced their way into Srebrenica and massacred at least 5,000 people [sic]." A massacred predicted a year and a half before it happened! (UN Report of 28-29 November)
General Morillon also informed us that "It is Izetbegovic's people who opposed the evacuation of all those who had asked to be taken out, and there were many." His conclusion: "Mladic fell into a trap at Srebrenica."

10 FIRST VICTIMS
Were the first victims of the war killed by Serbs?

NO. June 28, 1991, the Slovenian police executed (at least) two unarmed soldiers of the Yugoslav national army who had surrendered at Holmec, a post on the Austrian border. This was acknowledged by the newspaper Slovenske Novice. It has also been 'established from the very beginning' that three soldiers of this same Yugoslav army were executed at a post on the Italian border after surrendering themselves. (Facts and testimony reported to the ICY at The Hague, cfr Forgotten Crimes, Igor Mekina, AIM Ljubljana, 11/02/99).

11 CONCENTRATION CAMPS?
Was the famous image of the 'concentration camps' false?

YES. Fabricated by Bernard Kouchner and Médecins du Monde, this image showed some 'prisoners' held, seemingly, behind barbed wire. One of them had terribly protruding ribs. Kouchner had pasted beside the photo a guard tower from Auschwitz and the accusation 'mass extermination'. To hammer home the message "Serbs = Nazis". He thus abetted a campaign of demonization launched by the US public relations firm Ruder Finn.
But the whole thing was faked and taken from a report by British TV channel ITN. The trickery became obvious when one viewed the footage shot at the same time by a local TV news crew. In reality, the British camera had been deliberately placed behind the two lonely strands of barbed wire that formed a fence surrounding an old enclosure for farming equipment. The 'prisoners' were on the 'outside' of the barbed wire. Free because they were refugees in this camp to escape the war and the militias who would force them to fight. In the complete film, the only prisoner who speaks English declares to the ITN journalist three times that they are being well treated and are safe. The man with the protruding ribs (gravely ill) was called to the foreground when all his mates looked to be in too good a shape. Kouchner's montage was a gross falsehood. (Cfr Liars' Poker, p. 34)
There certainly were camps in Bosnia. Not for extermination, but rather for the preparation of prisoner exchanges. Violations of Human Rights were committed here. But why were the UN reports on this subject hidden from us? They accounted for six Croat camps, two Serb camps and one Muslim camp.

12 SARAJEVO
Were we given the true stories on the three large massacres in Sarajevo?

NO. Three times Western public opinion was shocked by these terrible images: dozens of victims blown to bits in front of a bakery or in the marketplace of Sarajevo. Immediately the Serbs were accused of having killed civilians by bombarding the city. This despite numerous contradictions in official communications.
But never was the public informed of the results of inquiries made outside the UN. Nor of the reports which accused the forces of president Izetbegovic. Furthermore, high Western officials knew about them but kept them carefully hidden. It was only much later that the editor-in-chief of the Nouvel Observateur, Jean Daniel, admitted: "Today I have to say it. I heard, in succession, Edouard Balladur (French Prime Minister at the time), François Léotard (Minister of the Army), Alain Juppé (Foreign Minister) and two 'high-ranking' generals, whose confidence I will not betray by naming them, tell me (. . .) that the shell fired on the marketplace was itself also from the Muslims! They would have brought carnage upon their own people! Was I afraid of this observation? Yes, the Prime Minister answered me without hesitating... "(Nouvel Observateur, August 21, 1995)
Why these manipulations? As if by chance, each massacre took place just before an important meeting to justify some Western measures: an embargo against the Serbs (92), a NATO bombing (94), a final offensive (95). NATO and Izetbegovic applied an essential principle of war propaganda: justify the offensive with a media lie, a 'massacre' to shock public opinion.
The official version of the siege of Sarajevo hides several points: 1. The Serb forces certainly committed serious crimes. But the civilians who wanted to flee through a tunnel that permitted them to leave the city were stopped by the Izetbegovic regime. He wanted to maximize the clientele for his black market, hijacking international aid money. 2. It was especially important to present a black and white image of a victim people and their aggressors. In reality, even in Sarajevo, Izetbegovic's snipers regularly killed the inhabitants of Serb sections of the city without anyone ever speaking of it. 3. Some equally grave atrocities went down, for example, at Mostar. But here they were due to fighting between the Croat and Muslim forces who had long before run off all the Serbs.

13 THE LARGEST "CLEANSING"
Was the largest ethnic cleansing of the war committed by the Croat army?

YES. On August 4, 1995, a hundred thousand Croat soldiers, a hundred and fifty tanks, two hundred troop transports, more than three hundred pieces of artillery, and forty missile launchers attacked the Serb population of the Krajina. More than 150,000 Serbs were forced to leave this region which they had inhabited for centuries. The worst atrocities of the war were committed: the Croat forces killed the elderly who could not flee, and burned 85% of the abandoned houses.
Clinton called the offensive 'useful'. His Secretary of State said: "The retaking of the Krajina could lead to a new strategic situation which might be favorable for us." Worse yet: the United States advised Croatia in carrying out its offensive, according to an admission by the Croatian foreign minister. Furthermore, it was Washington that took charge of the 'democratic' training of this army. (Liars' Poker, pp. 193-194)

14 URANIUM BOMBS
Did the US use depleted uranium weapons also in Bosnia?

YES. At an international conference, "Uranium, the victims speak", organized in Brussels in March 2001, a Bosnian doctor presented a Bosnian Serb forest ranger, a victim like many others of multiple atypical and fast moving cancers. after having been exposed to DU in areas of US bombardment.
A Bosnian health official laid out some statistics : the population of a Serb neighbourhood of Sarajevo bombed by US planes in 1995, (a population later expelled from that city), showed a five-fold increase in various types of cancer.
The weapons using depleted uranium allowed the US - but also France and Great Britain - to get rid of waste materials from their nuclear plants. These by-products seriously pollute the earth as well as the underground water table, causing cancer, leukemia and monstrous birth defects (including babies born to contaminated GIs). In short, use of these depleted uranium arms transformed several countries into nuclear waste dumps for eternity. (video and brochure "Uranium, the victims speak").

15 THE ONLY "GOOD WAR"
Was the war against Yugoslavia the US's only good war?

NO. The United States tried to make believe that it had fought a humanitarian war. And to present itself, for once, as a defender of Muslims. But in reality Washington and Berlin provoked this war. Deliberately. In the selfish interest of conquering certain strategic objectives: the economic colonization of the Balkans, gaining control of the routes for transporting oil, and the fight for world domination.
The USA has never fought a humanitarian war. And it was not the fireman in this war against Yugoslavia, it was the firebug. It was the most guilty of inflicting suffering on all the people. The USA can not be, on the one hand, the friend of the Muslims in the Balkans, and, on the other, their worst enemy in Palestine and Iraq. The US is the Muslims' enemy everywhere.
And the most dangerous enemy of all the people of the world. It threatens Syria, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and some day even China. Because its war strategy has no other goal than to maintain an unjust economic order, to dominate and exploit every country on earth to the end of further enriching a small handful of super - billionairs.
This is why it is so important to unmask all the media lies and to make the truth known about the war against Yugoslavia: It was a war of aggression.

___________________________

In conclusion. An appeal.

We will not give you a 'score' to evaluate the degree to which you have suffered from media manipulations. That would be indecent. During this decade, too many innocents suffered and suffer still because of the disinformation orchestrated by the great powers in order to advance their imperialist domination.
And other people, closer to you, or yourself perhaps, have suffered another injury: knowing what was traumatizing you behind these orchestrated lies, but not being able to do anything about it. Such was the powerful indoctrination of the public consciousness.
The answers that we set forth here are the results of long research, which took a great deal of time and required detailed investigation to break out the truth. We would like only to show you that it is possible for each of you to escape the media's hypnotic spell meant to make us accept the unacceptable.
What to do? It's not enough, after the lies of each conflict, to say: "Never again!" We must search without ceasing to understand what is truly at stake economically and strategically in each war. To yank the curtain on the puppeteers who pull the strings from off-stage. To organize collectively, to investigate more rapidly. And to spread more widely the results of these 'media quiz'.
You can help reinforce the effects of the media quiz by contacting us. Because we must never become enured to this horror and cynicism.

parallels with Iraq

by Barry

Wed Mar 15, 2006 16:57

The very same intelligence agencies which told us Saddam Husseins forces were hiding WMD , burying them , digging them up , transporting them then burying them again told us the serbs were doing the exact same thing with these mass graves , digging up the bodies removing them etc which was making these mass graves very difficult to find .

How in the hell does it take the best legal brains in western europe with millions in funding 4 years to try and convict a man with no funding and no legal team if the evidence of these atrocities was so conclusive ?

From day one of that conflict the serbs as an entire race were demonised by the western media and powers . The very word serb has become a euphemism for barbaric evil - which is total nonsense . Even the germans as a race werent depicted as evil to a man during the nazi era the way the serbs were .

Slovenia was tiny , Serbia could have flattened it but they let it seced with barely a shot fired . In fact virtually the only casualties were ambushed and murdered yugoslav soldiers . Doesnt exactly fit the bill as regards serb tyranny .

When the serbs were shown evacuating women and children from srebrinica to Tuzla airport they were denounced as doing it cynically for the media ? guilty of committing a horrendous war crime by showing they werent committing one ? The nearby town of Zepa surrendered to the serbs at exactly the same time and yet there was no report of any atrocity even though the media werent there so why is Srebrinica somehow the worst atrocity since ww2 ? Why commit the worst war crime in europe since ww2 right in front of the media ( who didnt actually see it) and not a few mile down the road were those no media ?

If the serbs were such a bloodthirsty race of savages why did the 28th bosnian regiment , which outnumbered the serb force 8 to one , leave their women and children at the mercy of these serb monsters ? Its a huge con in my opinion , just like the WMD. The Bosnian army retreat was managed incompetently . It turned into an undisciplined rout and they were unsurprisingly scattered and slaughtered in the fighting . Thats what happens when you mismanage your bizarre retreat . The charge is that 8000 armed men laid down their guns to a smaller force and were all massacred ? And then the serbs hid the bodies , countless times ? Bollocks to that .

Im not surprised Milosevich ended up dead . If the west was found to be lying , as it certainly lied about the invasion of Iraq , thered have been deep shit all round . Paddy Ashdown , the NATO appointed procunsul of Bosnia was outed only last year as an MI5 agent . He routinely sacked officials who provided him with reports he found unhelpful to the case against serb demonisation .
The end of his trial suits them and only them . 4 years with no legal team and he raan rings round them . That can only mean the evidence was watery to say the least .

Hmmmmmmmm

by Davy Carlin

Wed Mar 15, 2006 17:10

Some real food for thought in above.

War Criminals

by Cynic

Wed Mar 15, 2006 17:33

Barry is now defending War Criminals! How many RIRAs are there these days and how did your European Junket to meet the Marxist-Leninists go?

Complete insanity

Wed Mar 15, 2006 18:05

You defense of Milosevic is complete insanity but explained by the history of the Left.
The Left defended Stalin in the 1930's while he killed millions, justified the pact to divide Poland and then only supported WW2 when Nazism threatened to overwhelm the Soviet Union.
The Left supported the enslavement of Eastern Europe by Communist Russia and it was only interesented in supporting uprisings and wars of liberation by native peoples against their European colonial masters when it was backed by Soviet military advisers and the Comintern led by the Politburo gave them premission.
The Jews were the victims of Nazism and it was the Left within in the Democrat party who were the most supportive of the establishment of the State of Israel - it was when Israel became an ally of America and the torn in the side of Soviet backed Middle Eastern dictatorships that the Left switiched their allegiance to the Soviet backed PLO led by Yasser Arafat and have supported Islamic fundementalist terror groups ever since either by direct co-operation by the Red Army Faction, Red Brigades and the IRA or by sympathy with Bin Laden and Al-Qaida prisoners in the post 9/11 period.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan never aroused any passions until the CIA began supporting Pashtun tribesmen with shipments of Stinger missiles to knock out the helicopters strafing their villages - this aroused the fury of pro-Soviet intellectuals in the West.
Left wingers supported communists and their revolutions throughout Central and South America -from Castro to the Sandinistas to the Chavez and FARC today - excusing their atrocities and genocides.
The Fall of the Berlin Wall was the apocalypse for the Left - it shriveled and dried up almost over night.
For much of the 1990's Communists were confined to the cobwebbed corners of universities and Hollywood movies lots where they produced paranoid garbage such as "JFK" "The X-files" and "Fight Club."

What has brought a new awakening among the left?

9/11 of course.

There was nothing but delight among aged dinosaurs smothering under collected dust such as Chomsky - when they saw the smoking ruins of the Twin Towers.
They want and believe Al-Qaida will win the War on Terror (the so-called "War on Terror") - bringing the loathed capitalist system crashing down - that is why they attack on all fronts - opposing the liberation of the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq - while supporting the murder of thousands of Israelis and Iraqis in suicide bombings - any dictator no matter how evil - be it Milosevic, Castro, Mugabe, Kim Jong IL, Saddam Hussein, Ahmadinijad or Arafat - ANYONE as long as they violently opposed Western freedom democracy and capitalism - You can make up any propaganda you want and sell to the sheep - global warming, hyperpower, blood for oil etc. etc. etc. they had common cause with radicals who still carry Marx's Communist Manifesto in their pocket - dreaming through their wrinkles of vast crowds in identical overalls marching to work in the fields like happy automatons under a hammer and sickle flag.

insanity

Wed Mar 15, 2006 19:44

The glaring flaw in your argument ron is that im not really what someone would call a typical lefty ( most lefties wouldnt anyway) and im quite happy about the ussr disappearing up its own backside . Try again .
We cant find the wmds becuasethyre hiding them in the most bizzare ways imaginable .
We cant find the mass graves because..........

by the way Ron

Wed Mar 15, 2006 19:51

you havent refuted anything Ive said , simply engaged in a lengthy tirade against the left . Genocide by Cuba ? By Chavez ? did this happen at the same time as the serbs committed genocide ? Must have missed those . Maybe theyll uncover the mass graves one day along with the serb ones and the wmd .

Cuba's record of human rights abuses has been well documented

Wed Mar 15, 2006 20:10

The following is from a Human Rights Watch report which includes a section on the Cuban labour camp system:

"Imprisonment and other measures which result in cutting off an offender from the outside world are afflictive by... depriving [the person] of his liberty. Therefore the prison system shall not, except as incidental to... the maintenance of discipline, aggravate the suffering inherent in such a situation."
Article 57, United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners

Cuba confines its sizable prison population in substandard and unhealthy conditions, where prisoners face physical and sexual abuse. Cuban prison practices fail in numerous respects to comply with the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, which provide authoritative guidance on the treatment of prisoners under international law and treaties.242 Despite grave problems in its prisons, Cuba has asserted its full compliance with the Standard Minimum Rules.243 Cuba told the U.N. that in May 1997 its Interior Ministry promulgated new prison regulations that "took into account" the Standard Minimum Rules, as well as Cuba's constitution and other legislation.244

Cuba's refusal to allow domestic or international human rights monitors to conduct regular visits to its prisons casts a veil of secrecy over its extensive prison system, reportedly one of the largest per capita in Latin America and the Caribbean. Cuba refuses to disseminate even the most basic prison statistics, such as prison population figures. Cuba's Penitentiary Establishment Directorate, however, reportedly maintains a centralized, computerized system that wouldreadily make available detailed information about all detainees in Cuba's prisons.245 Cuba has promised to do so with respect to the racial makeup of its prison population, in response to questions as to whether persons of African descent are over-represented.246 In late 1996 Cuba reportedly operated some forty maximum security prisons, thirty minimum security prisons, and over 200 work camps.247 Prisoners reportedly completed the construction of Cuba's newest prison in early 1998. The facility, which has space for 300 inmates and is next to the maximum-security Valle Grande prison in Havana, apparently is being used to hold the increasing numbers of women accused of prostitution. However, in late 1997 the Cuban government told the U.N. that "there were only nineteen closed prisons in Cuba, together with a number of open prisons." The government did not detail the distinction between closed and open prisons. Cuba also said that, "whatever the case, the number of places of detention in Cuba, including police stations, was less than 250."248 Our research suggests that the government's figures are artificially low.

In preparation for this report, Human Rights Watch interviewed dozens of former Cuban prisoners and family members of current and former prisoners(gathering information on twenty-four of Cuba's maximum security prisons and numerous other detention centers, such as police stations and state security offices), as well as human rights activists within Cuba, many of whom are former political prisoners. Our interviews reveal that male and female Cuban prisoners, including political prisoners whose treatment is discussed in greater detail below, at Treatment of Political Prisoners, endure severe hardships in Cuba's prisons. Most prisoners suffer malnourishment from an insufficient prison diet and languish in overcrowded cells without appropriate medical attention. Some endure physical and sexual abuse or long periods in isolation cells. Prison authorities insist that all detainees participate in politically oriented "reeducation" sessions or face punitive measures. In many prisons, authorities fail to separate all of the pretrial detainees from the convicts and minors from adults. Cuba has stated that only 8 percent of its detainees have not been tried, but qualified this assertion with an unusual description of a "trial" as, typically, "a six-to-nine month" period before any sentence is handed down.249 This explanation suggests that Cuba has a far larger percentage of pretrial detainees, who are imprisoned without being convicted of any crime, for periods of six to nine months or longer. Minors risk indefinite detention in juvenile facilities, without benefit of due process guarantees or a fixed sentence.

The Cuban Interior Ministry runs the prison system, with soldiers often serving as prison guards and labor camp overseers. Each prison's staff includes a reeducator, usually a military official, assigned to direct the prison population's pro-government political indoctrination. In facilities holding political prisoners, special units of the state security police reportedly take responsibility for overseeing the detainees' sentences. Prison guards in men's facilities name prisoners to powerful positions as members of "prisoners' councils" or "disciplinary councils," (consejos de reclusos or consejos de disciplina) and rely on these prisoners to maintain internal discipline. Prison authorities apparently select members of the prisoners' councils because they have records of violence or "thuggery" (matonismo) and sometimes allow them to carry sticks.250 One prisoner held in the Agüica maximum security prison in Matanzas from late 1996 to February 1998 said that three or four members of the prisoners' councils took charge of discipline and food distribution for each company of approximately 150prisoners.251 The council members commit some of Cuba's worst prison abuses, including beating fellow prisoners as a disciplinary measure and sexually abusing prisoners, under direct orders from or with the acquiescence of prison officials.252

Bar on Domestic and International Monitoring of Prison Conditions

The Cuban government bars regular access to its prisons by domestic and international human rights and humanitarian monitors. While the government allowed a representative from Human Rights Watch to visit Cuba and interview twenty-four political prisoners in 1995, as part of a human rights mission with France-Libertés, the Federation Internationale des Droits de l'Homme, and Medicins du Monde, the government strictly controlled the access to the prisoners and did not allow us beyond the administrative sections of any prison visited.253 We later learned that Cuban authorities surreptitiously audiotaped our interviews with the prisoners and based decisions to release or continue to imprison them on the content of their conversations with us (specifically, their positions for or against the U.S. embargo on Cuba).254 The Cuban government has not allowed Human Rights Watch to return officially to Cuba since 1995. While the Cuban government allowed two groups restricted access to a juvenile detention center in the past year, we know of no Cuban or international organization granted open access to Cuba's prisons and prisoners. Cuba never allowed U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Cuba Ambassador Carl Johan-Groth to enter the country, much less its prisons.

The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), which visits prisoners in custody for political and security offenses all over the world, last conductedprison visits in Cuba in 1988 and 1989. ICRC delegates carry out strictly humanitarian work: they interview prisoners to determine their material and psychological needs and, if necessary, provide them with supplies, such as medicine, toiletries, and clothing. They also observe the treatment afforded detainees and ask the authorities to take needed steps to improve that treatment.255 In 1989, the agreement between the Cuban government and the ICRC was suspended, and the visits foreseen for 1990 could not take place. Cuba's refusal to allow human rights and humanitarian groups access to its prisons represents a failure to demonstrate minimal transparency. Moreover, the government's barring of the ICRC, which works behind the scenes to protect the rights of political prisoners and does not publicize its findings, shows a profound lack of concern for those prisoners' welfare.0

Food

Cuban prisoners measure their prison rations by the spoonful, rather than by the bowl or plate. Most prisoners suffer malnutrition on the prison diet—typically losing significant amounts of weight while serving their sentences.1 A former prisoner at the Provincial Prison of Holguín recalled that during his four-year incarceration in the prison (from March 1994 until February 1998), his daily food ration would fit into one small cup.2 When asked what she received for her evening meal, one former prisoner simply said "no," explaining that she never had received more than two servings of food per day. One former prisoner said that in his six years in Cuban prisons, his food rations included a total of six eggs and"never a single piece of chicken." He recalled that for breakfast, he typically received a cup of water with some sugar and for lunch, four or five spoonfuls of rice and a small bowl of unidentifiable soup (caldo loco). He said that he would not have survived but for his family's persistent deliveries of food.3 Several former prisoners said prison authorities served them foul and poorly cleaned food that was both revolting and potentially harmful to eat. Prisoners recalled meals composed of rice or beans that were infested with pests, rotting fish innards, excrement, and putrified cow's and pig's blood. Several prisoners told Human Rights Watch that receiving food in this condition was one of the most degrading experiences of their prison terms.

The Cuban government claimed in late 1997 that "...despite the [U.S.] economic blockade, the penitentiary population was sufficiently nourished. The prisoners can raise poultry and other animals appropriate for their nourishment. They are guaranteed three meals per day...."4 Another government report stated that all prisoners receive 2,160 calories a day, served in three meals, and that any prisoners who are underweight receive additional food and vitamin supplements.5 The government's assertions are contradicted by consistent reports from Cuban prisons that detainees receive inadequate nutrition. Moreover, the prison officials' practice of granting control over food to the prisoners' councils aggravates the nutritional crisis in Cuba's prisons.6 Prisoners' councils routinely abuse this authority, hoarding food for themselves, using it to discipline prisoners or to bribe hungry prisoners for sexual favors. And while Cuban prisoners often work on prison farms, guards typically forbid them from eating the produce or livestock they raise. Moreover, prisoners interviewed by Human Rights Watch had gleaned information from prison overseers that the food raised on Cuban prison groundswas destined for Cuba's military forces or tourist restaurants.7 Prisoners' family members often encounter difficulties when attempting to leave food for their imprisoned relatives. Prisoners and their family members recalled cases of prison guards refusing to accept food or taking it but failing to give it to prisoners. Cuban prison authorities needlessly aggravate prisoners' suffering with these practices.

Health Concerns

Cuban prisoners also endure overcrowded, squalid conditions that one former prisoner called "primitive and anti-hygienic." Prisoners rarely have regular access to clean drinking water, and bathing water often is filthy or insufficient.8 Toilets are usually filthy holes in the floor. One former prisoner recalled that the toilet near his cell drained into the corridor and onto his cell floor.9 Overcrowding in some facilities requires prisoners to sleep on the floor until other prisoners leave. Mattresses and sheets are rare. Prisoners with mattresses described them as rough sacks stuffed with leaves that were infested with biting insects. Prison authorities rarely permit visitors to bring bedding, clothes, or writing materials. Nevertheless, Cuba has stated that "despite the limitations arising from the economic blockade...all of the areas used by prisoners, including the dormitories, are maintained in a perfectly hygienic sanitary state...."10

Malnutrition leaves Cuban prisoners at risk of numerous diseases.11 Overcrowding and poor hygiene contribute to widespread disease in Cuban prisons. Mosquito-infested, filthy cells are breeding grounds for skin diseases, tuberculosis, conjunctivitis, and scabies. Many prisoners suffer from uncomfortable fungal infections under their arms and between their legs, which could be prevented byimproved hygiene and exposure to sunlight. A physician who served over six years as a political prisoner said he had seen prisoners suffering from malnutrition, beriberi, anemia, polineuropatitis, hepatitis, girardia, lectoperosis (transmitted by rat bites), amoebiasis, vomit and diarrhea, and meningitis. Prisoners also had a high incidence of psychological disorders, including neuroses, anxiety, and depression.12

Despite the serious medical problems affecting Cuban prisoners, prison authorities routinely deny them access to medical care and even refuse to provide prisoners with medicines brought by family members. The Standard Minimum Rules call for prison doctors to visit sick inmates daily and for prisons to provide dental care.13 While many Cuban prisons have medical staff on the prison grounds, prisoners still do not receive prompt attention and appropriate medicines. On occasion, prison authorities treat prisoners suffering from acute conditions in hospitals off prison grounds. But prisoners complain that most ailments go untreated, even extremely painful conditions such as broken bones or multiple cavities. In some cases, prisoners died due to prison doctors' failure to treat them swiftly and sufficiently.14 Prison authorities deny political prisoners medical care as a punishment for anti-government views, as discussed below at Treatment of Political Prisoners.

Restrictions of Visits

Cuban prison authorities impose severe limits on visits from family members and friends. Given the poor prison conditions, the reduction of family visits denies prisoners mental and physical support, including the provision of food and medicine. The Standard Minimum Rules urge prison authorities to assist prisoners in maintaining and improving relationships with their families, and in providing for regular contact with family and friends.15 Prison guards place detainees onspecific regimens, which link the frequency of visits to the prisoners' behavior. The most severe regimens only allow two-hour family visits, with a maximum of two immediate family members, every two or three months. Guards arbitrarily reduce these visits even further, by barring visits for several months or by cancelling family visits at the last minute, often after family members have traveled long distances under difficult conditions. Guards arbitrarily confiscate or refuse to accept food, medicines, and other belongings intended for the personal use of prisoners. Guards also penalize prisoners who refuse to participate in political reeducation sessions by reducing their family visits.

On a positive note, Cuban prison authorities grant some male and female prisoners conjugal visits. The Cuban government states that it allows female prisoners to keep their infants with them until they are one year old, after which they are sent to family or a government-run child-care center (círculo infantil).16 One female prisoner held in a Havana prison for a lengthy term said that in practice, mothers must cede their infants to the government centers when they are six months old.17

Former prisoners and their family members told Human Rights Watch that guards routinely strip-search prisoners and visitors, including the elderly and, on occasion, children. The wife of one prisoner described how guards forced her to disrobe and perform deep knee bends before allowing her to take part in a conjugal visit. She said that the humiliation of the vaginal search made her feel like a prisoner herself.18 The strip-searches were performed by same-sex guards.

Human Rights Watch is cognizant of prison security requirements and the difficulty of reconciling such constraints with humane visiting policies. Yet, family members, particularly children and the elderly, should not be subjected to degrading searches as the cost of a visit. Human Rights Watch agrees with a 1996 decision of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights concluding that vaginal searches are only acceptable if, in each instance: 1) they are absolutely necessary for achieving a legitimate objective, 2) there is no alternative means ofachieving the objective, 3) they are authorized by a judicial order, and 4) they are conducted by a health professional.19

Restrictions of Religious Visits

The Standard Minimum Rules call for prison authorities to respect religious beliefs, to allow prisoners to meet with religious advisors in private, and to allow prisoners to participate in religious instruction.20 In 1989, the Cuban Interior Ministry re-authorized the right of religious groups to provide for the spiritual needs of Cuban prisoners, which was banned in 1964. Nonetheless, prisoners face multiple barriers to receiving religious guidance in Cuba's prisons. Prison authorities apparently require prisoners to make written requests to prison directors noting their interest in religious attention, yet directors rarely inform prisoners of this requirement.21 In late 1997 prison guards reportedly harassed and threatened to prosecute Augusto César San Martín Albistur, who was sentenced to seventeen years in 1994 for revealing secrets concerning the security of the state, reportedly because he had solicited religious attention.22 Some prison guards subject prisoners to interrogations about their religious beliefs when they ask for pastoral care. The guards apparently explain that the prisoners must first "properly" answer questions such as: "why do you hold this faith?"; "why do you want religious assistance?"; or, "why do you prefer this religion over others?"23 Nonetheless, the Cuban government allows some Catholic clergy to make limited prison visits while arbitrarily denying the requests of others. In April 1998, the Archdiocese of Havana expressed frustration at the government's refusal to allow detainees to meetwith Catholic clergy.24 But even when the authorities permit visits, prison guards often accompany the representatives.

Political Indoctrination

Cuba requires prisoners to undergo political indoctrination. The prison authorities' emphasis on political "reeducation," rather than broader educational opportunities, exercise, and recreational and cultural activities, runs counter to the Standard Minimum Rules' provisions to protect convicts' mental and physical health.25 Cuba's insistence that all prisoners, whether held for political or common crimes, engage in pro-government activities also violates those prisoners' freedom of opinion.26 Prison officials routinely punish prisoners who fail to participate in the political reeducation activities.

Obligatory prison reeducation programs, directed by the prison's reeducator who usually is a military official, require prisoners to shout pro-government slogans, including "Long Live Fidel," "Commander-in-Chief, Give Us Your Orders," "Socialism or Death," and "The Homeland or Death - We Will Win!" Prisoners also must participate in "cycles" (ciclos), where they study and take quizzes based on pro-government reading materials. Prisoners also noted that reeducators sometimes turn over the responsibility for carrying out reeducation sessions to the abusive prisoners' councils. Prison authorities force compliance with political reeducation programs by subjecting non-participating prisoners to beatings (often carried out by the prisoners' councils), denying food rations, transferring inmates to prisons with worse conditions, or suspending the right to conditional liberty, visits, access to sunlight, or other benefits.

Prisoners consider reeducators among the most abusive prison authorities. Former political prisoner Raúl Ayarde Herrera recalled that the reeducator at the Pinar del Río Provincial Prison, known as Osiris, told him "you have to reeducate yourself. Then you'll get more food." On November 9, 1997, nine days after Ayarde Herrera commenced a hunger strike to protest prison conditions and his detention in an isolation cell, Osiris and the prison official in charge of politicalprisoners, state security Lt. Mario Medina, beat him and cut his face with a piece of a broken mirror.27

Cuban prisons provide limited educational and recreational opportunities. The Standard Minimum Rules recommend that all prisons have libraries stocked with recreational and instructional books that are accessible to all inmates.28 But Cuban prison authorities typically provide limited access to reading materials and ban any books that might contain anti-government content. Prisoners complain that they are rarely permitted outside for exercise or simply to be in the sun (many suffer ailments related to sunlight deprivation).

Prison Labor

Cuba provides prisoners with opportunities to work, which in some cases provide helpful job-training, but these programs do not always satisfy the Standard Minimum Rules' regulations governing prison labor programs. The Standard Minimum Rules require prisons to have physically fit convicts to take part in vocational training and to engage in meaningful, rehabilitative work for equitable remuneration.29 Cuba's insistence that some political prisoners participate in work programs and its inappropriate pressuring of inmates to work without pay in inhuman conditions violate international labor and prison rights standards. Prison labor conditions are discussed in detail below, at Labor Rights: Prison Labor.

Isolation

The Cuban government has stated that "it does not practice, nor allow, corporal punishment, nor are there any darkened cells, nor degrading or cruel punishments, nor punishments that humiliate or minimize the dignity of a detainee."30 Unfortunately, this assessment bears little relation to the reality of Cuban prisons, where guards frequently mete out long punishment periods in darkened isolation cells. The use of this extremely destructive and unnecessary practice is detailed below, at Treatment of Political Prisoners: Abusive Pretrial Detentions and Post-Conviction Isolation.

Beatings by Police, Guards and Prisoners' Councils

Cuban prison guards and prisoners' councils reportedly use beatings as a disciplinary measure, to punish political opinions, to intimidate prisoners for sex, or for other reasons.31 Several former prisoners believed that prison guards grant disciplinary authority to prisoners' councils, in direct violation of the Standard Minimum Rules, in order to avoid becoming directly involved in physically abusing prisoners themselves. Prison authorities reportedly are quite sensitive to criticism of their human rights practices and typically punish prisoners who criticize prison abuses or attempt to publicize them.32 Prisoners in pretrial detention, particularly political prisoners, also face beatings. Some prisoners interviewed by Human Rights Watch recalled minor actions taken by Cuban authorities against prison guards implicated in abuses, in one case a transfer to another post. We have learned of one 1998 case where two guards beat a political prisoner in which the government reportedly intended to prosecute the wrongdoers. We know of no incident when prison authorities disciplined a member of a prisoners' council who was implicated in beating a fellow prisoner.

In a report to the U.N. Committee Against Torture, Cuba provided some information about internal efforts to establish accountability for a broad range of rights and specifically mentioned receiving complaints of abuse in its prisons. Since Cuba permits no independent prison monitoring, and has not even released the number of prisoners currently detained in its prisons, it is impossible to confirm the veracity of this information. Without providing specific details of any cases, the government stated that in 1997 it had received thirty-seven complaints of ill-treatment in prison or in custody; had taken "administrative or disciplinary measures" in ten of those cases; and had sent ten cases to the courts, one of which resulted in an eight-year sentence.33 If true, Cuba's actions would constitute encouraging steps toward establishing accountability for prisoners' rights abuses. A February 1999 Criminal Code reform provided that prisoners "cannot be the objects of corporal punishment, nor is it permitted to employ any means againstthem to humiliate them or to lessen their dignity."34 The failure to create any penalties for committing such acts or to define them explicitly as crimes diminishes the potential impact of this reform. Furthermore, Cuba's retaliations against prisoners who denounce prison abuses and conditions and its ban on prison monitoring suggest a determination to cover up—rather than expose and punish—prison abuses.

Cuba detains untried individuals in a variety of institutions, ranging from police stations to state security headquarters and maximum security prisons (where they are improperly detained with convicted violent offenders). Heavy reliance on incommunicado pretrial detention heightens the risk that police or prison guards will brutalize detainees. On June 30, 1998, Cuban police arrested Reinery Marrero Toledo, alleging that he had ties with some neighbors who had been charged with slaughtering livestock (sacrificio ilegal de ganado).35 On July 9, 1998, agents of the Technical Department of Investigations in Havana (Departamento Técnico de Investigaciones, DTI) told his family that he had committed suicide by hanging himself with a sheet. However, a family member who viewed his corpse noted that it was heavily bruised and recalled that the police had cancelled his scheduled family visit the day before his death.36

On July 18, 1998, prisoners at the Nieves Morejón prison in Sancti Spiritus beat Adiannes Jordán Contreras, who was serving a ten-year sentence for piracy. Reportedly, the victim and her sister, Mayda Bárbara Jordán Contreras, who was serving a fifteen-year term for piracy, had decided not to wear prison uniforms or comply with other prison rules. The sisters believed that the prison's reeducator, Yeni Sánchez López, and two guards had ordered the beating as a reprisal.37

One former political prisoner who served in the Las Tunas Provincial Prison from August 1997 to February 1998 recalled several instances when guards used iron bars about the size of baseball bats, lightly-covered with cloth, to beat common prisoners. Some of these beatings occurred after prisoners insisted on a lightening of the prison regimen. He said that during his term at the Micro 4 Prisonin Havana, in 1996 and 1997, guards got drunk on weekends and on several occasions took prisoners out of their cells to practice martial arts techniques on them.38

Sexual Abuse

Members of prisoners' councils apparently commit widespread sexual abuse with the acquiescence of prison authorities. To a lesser extent, prison guards also commit sexual abuse and engage in sexual misconduct with prisoners under the guise of "consensual" sexual relationships. The prison systems' youngest inmates are most vulnerable to sexual abuse. While the former prisoners interviewed by Human Rights Watch did not know the exact ages of young prisoners who had suffered sexual abuse, they believed that many of these prisoners were under the age of eighteen. Cuba's full compliance with the Standard Minimum Rules' bar on detaining minors in adult facilities would help protect youths from this type of abuse.

Given the near absolute authority that guards have over prisoners' lives, even so-called "consensual" sex between guards and inmates constitutes a serious form of misconduct.39 Because prisoners are dependent on guards for the most basic necessities, guards' offer of, or the threat to eliminate, privileges or goods carries tremendous weight. Former detainees in women's prisons said that sexual relations between male guards and female prisoners were not uncommon. One prisoner recalled that when ranking prison authorities became aware of several of these relationships, they punished the prisoners, rather than the guards.40 One prisoner interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that a male prison guard at Las Tunas had received oral sex from a male prisoner in 1997. It was not clear if the sexual contact was "voluntary." The guard later was moved from his post, but he was not fired.41

The prisoners' councils, which are active in men's facilities, apparently rape younger detainees, intimidate them with beatings, or lure them into sexual relationships with offers of food (since prison authorities grant them control of food distribution), drugs, or other hard-to-obtain goods. Prison guards apparently permit these abuses in order to ensure the loyalty of the prisoners' councils, who they have improperly imbued with internal prison disciplinary authority. Human Rights Watch learned from a credible source that members of a prisoner council had subjected one male detainee to repeated rapes, which left the victim emotionally devastated.42 One former prisoner said that while the prisoners' council's sexual abuse was "constant," he knew of no case when a guard intervened.43 Another former prisoner said that guards permit the council members to practice sodomy and that there are "many cases of rape."44

Juvenile Justice

Cuban courts do not prosecute minors under the age of sixteen. Rather, "child welfare councils" under the direction of the Minister of the Interior can order children detained for indefinite periods in "reeducation centers."45 A multidisciplinary team examines the child and decides his or her fate. The child is represented by a lawyer from the Ministry of the Iinterior, but it is not clear whether the attorney represents the child's interests or the government's, nor if the attorney provides adequate representation.46 The indefinite term of detention alsois cause for concern, since international children's rights standards ratified by Cuba require that any restrictions on children's liberty are kept to a minimum.47

The Cuban system provides that juveniles from age sixteen to eighteen who receive prison sentences may serve those sentences in facilities holding detainees from the ages of sixteen to twenty, but they still risk being placed in prisons with adults.48 Several former Cuban prisoners told Human Rights Watch that they encountered youngsters whom they believed were under eighteen in adult prisons. Mixing minors and adults in detention facilities violates strict international rules against such practices, principally because the youths are at risk of abuse by the older, more powerful adult prisoners.49 Human Rights Watch also received reports that young Cuban prisoners were subjected to serious physical and sexual abuse in adult prisons.
242 Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, approved by the U.N. Economic and Social Council by resolutions 663 C, July 31, 1957, and 2076, May 13, 1977. 243 "Informe de la Fiscalía General de la República de Cuba," presented by Blanca Gutiérrez, Cuba's Attorney General for the Control of Legality in Penitentiary Establishments at the Instituto Latinoamericano de las Naciones Unidas para la Prevención del Delito y el Tratamiento del Delincuente conference, San José, Costa Rica, February 1997, p. 5.244 Cuban report to the Committee Against Torture, November 17, 1997 (CAT/C/SR.310/Add.1), March 25, 1998, para. 17.245 The government also has stated that it maintains files at each prison that are regularly updated to reflect the prisoner's legal and medical status. Prison officials and government prosecutors reportedly examine each of these files when they conduct prison inspections. Ibid., p. 6. Several former prisoners interviewed by Human Rights Watch stated that prison officials told them that they could not be released until the officials had received computer authorization from Havana to do so.246 In August 1998, Cuba told the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that it would begin to compile statistics on the racial makeup of its prison population in order to submit these to treaty bodies in the future. Cuba unconvincingly argued that its not having compiled racial breakdowns previously demonstrated that the government did not discriminate. Consideration of the Report Submitted by Cuba to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, August 13, 1998 (CERD/C/SR.1291), issued August 18, 1998, para. 7. One scholar noted that in the late 1980s "blacks and mulattoes [were] over-represented in the prison population." Alejandro de la Fuente, "Recreating Racism: Race and Discrimination in Cuba's Special Period," Cuba Briefing Paper Series, July 1998, p. 5. 247 "Lista Parcial de Prisiones y Centros Correccionales," Comisión Cubana de Derechos Humanos y Reconciliación Nacional (Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation, hereinafter, the Cuban Commission), Havana, December 31, 1996. 248 Cuban Report to the Committee Against Torture, para. 27.249 Ibid., para. 31.250 Human Rights Watch interview with Víctor Reynaldo Infante Estrada, Toronto, April 14, 1998. 251 Ibid.252 The Standard Minimum Rules prohibit prison authorities from granting prisoners any disciplinary authority over other prisoners. Article 28(1). As Human Rights Watch concluded in our global prison report: "No inmate should ever be placed in a position to exercise significant authority over other prisoners." Human Rights Watch, Global Report on Prisons (Human Rights Watch: New York, 1993), p. 46.

253 Frances-Libertés, Federation Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l'Homme, Medecins du Monde, and Human Rights Watch/Americas, Cuba: Situation des Prisonniers Politiques: Mission du 28 Avril au 5 Mai 1995: Rapport de Mission, December 1995. See also, Human Rights Watch/Americas, Improvements without Reform, October 1995.

254 Human Rights Watch interviews with former political prisoners; names withheld for security.

255 International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC Annual Report: 1996 (Geneva: ICRC, 1996), p. 8.

0 During the January 1998 papal visit to Cuba, authorities reportedly used an ambulance marked with a red cross to remove an anti-government demonstrator from the pope's January 23 open air mass in Havana. Juan Tamayo, "Cruz Roja Investiga Uso Indebido de Ambulancia," El Nuevo Herald, March 6, 1998. This incident called into question Cuba's respect for internationally recognized human rights and humanitarian standards, and specifically, the protective emblem of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.

1 The Standard Minimum Rules call for "food of nutritional value adequate for health and strength, of wholesome quality and well prepared and served." Article 20(1).

2 Human Rights Watch interview with Edelberto Del Toro Argota, Toronto, April 12, 1998.

3 Human Rights Watch interview with Víctor Reynaldo Infante Estrada, Toronto, April 14, 1998.

4 Excerpted from Cuba's December 1997 report to the United Nations Committee Against Torture, by Pablo Alfonso, "Comida en Prisiones es Balanceada, Dice Gobierno," El Nuevo Herald, February 12, 1998.

5 "Informe de la Fiscalía General," p. 8.

6 As mentioned above, this practice violates the Standard Minimum Rules prohibition on granting prisoners authority over one another. Article 28(1).

7 Prison labor conditions are discussed below, at Labor Rights: Prison Labor.

8 The Standard Minimum Rules call for prisoners to have access to drinking water whenever they need it. Article 20(2).

9 Human Rights Watch telephone interview with José Miranda Acosta, Toronto, May 7, 1998.

10 "Informe de la Fiscalía General," p. 8.

11 Glenn R. Randall and Ellen L. Lutz, Serving Survivors of Torture: A Practice Manual for Health Professionals and Other Service Providers, (Washington: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1991), p. 20.

12 Ibid., pp. 35-36. Human Rights Watch interview with Dr. Omar del Pozo Marrero, Toronto, April 14, 1998.

13 Articles 25(1) and 22(3), Standard Minimum Rules.

14 The cases of Aurelio Ricart Hernández, who died on February 19, 1997, in the Micro 4 Prison in Havana, and Pedro Armenteros Laza and Sebastian Arcos Bergnes—two political prisoners who Cuban prison doctors failed to treat for serious conditions and who died as a result of those illnesses after their releases—are discussed below, at Treatment of Political Prisoners: Denial of Medical Treatment.

15 Articles 61 and 37.

16 "Informe de la Fiscalía General," p. 11.

17 Human Rights Watch interview with Rosalina González Lafita, Toronto, April 13, 1998.

18 Strip-searches of several political prisoners' relatives are detailed below, at Treatment of Political Prisoners: Hardships for Political Prisoners' Family Members.

19 María Arena v. Argentina, Case No. 10,506 (October 30, 1996). The commission ruled that such searches constitute degrading treatment, an arbitrary interference with personal privacy, and violate the right to protection of the family. For further discussion of this practice, see Human Rights Watch/Americas, Punishment Before Trial: Prison Conditions in Venezuela (Human Rights Watch: New York, 1997), pp. 82-86.

20 Standard Minimum Rules, Articles 6(2), 41(2), 41(3), and 77(1).

21 María de los Angeles González Amaro, "La Iglesia Católica y Pastoral Carcelaria," Agencia de Prensa Independiente de Cuba (APIC), June 18, 1996.

22 Marvin Hernández Monzón, "Sufriendo por la Fé, " Cuba Press, February 23, 1998.

23 Human Rights Watch interview with Dr. Omar del Pozo Marrero, Toronto, April 14, 1998.

24 Agence France Presse, "Revista Dice Impiden Actos Religiosos a los Presos," El Nuevo Herald, April 19, 1998.

25 Articles 21(1) and (2), 77(1), and 78.

26 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that everyone has the right to hold opinions without interference and the right to manifest his or her beliefs in public. UDHR, Articles 19 and 18.

27 Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Raúl Ayarde Herrera, Toronto, April 21, 1998.

28 Standard Minimum Rules, Article 40.

29 Ibid., Articles 71, 72, and 76(1).

30 "Informe de la Fiscalía General," p. 11.

31 Several cases of guards beating prisoners due to their political opinion are discussed below, at Treatment of Political Prisoners: Beatings.

32 This practice is discussed further below, at Treatment of Political Prisoners: Criminal Charges for Denouncing Abuses.

33 Cuban report to the Committee Against Torture, March 3, 1998, para. 25.

34 Law Number 87 (1999), Article 1, modifying Law Number 62 (1988), Article 30.

35 Criminal Code, Article 240.

36 Orlando Bordón Gálvez, "Sospecho 'Suicidio' de Recluso," Cuba Press, July 9, 1998.

37 Public letter from Amado J. Rodríguez, Coordinator, Human Rights in Cuba, Miami, August 13, 1998.

38 Human Rights Watch interview with Marcos Antonio Hernández García, Toronto, April 13, 1998.

39 For a detailed discussion of this issue, see Human Rights Watch, All Too Familiar: Sexual Abuse of Women in U.S. State Prisons (Human Rights Watch: New York, 1996), pp. 4-5, 217.

40 Human Rights Watch interview with Rosalina González Lafita, Toronto, April 13, 1998.

41 Human Rights Watch interview with Marcos Antonio Hernández García, Toronto, April 13, 1998.

42 Human Rights Watch interview; name withheld for security.

43 Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Raúl Ayarde Herrera, Toronto, April 21, 1998.

44 Human Rights Watch telephone interview with René Portelles, Toronto, April 21, 1998.

45 United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, "Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention," (CRC/C/8/Add.30.), issued February 15, 1996.

46 Ibid. The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, G.A. Res. 44/25, November 1989, entered into force September 2, 1990, Article 37(d). Cuba ratified the Convention on August 21, 1991.

47 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 37(b); and U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (Beijing Rules), G.A. Res 40/33, November 29, 1985, Article 17.1(b).

48 The February 1999 Criminal Code reform stated that minors younger than twenty should be held in separate establishments from older detainees or in separate areas of the same detention facilities. Law Number 87, Article 1. It is too early to tell whether this provision will result in the segregation of minor and adult detainees.

49 Beijing Rules, Article 26.3.

The Legacy of Srebrenica

by Bogdan Ivanisevic - Human Rights Watch

Wed Mar 15, 2006 20:15

The 1995 massacre in Srebrenica occurred because Bosnian Serb leaders, intoxicated by hatred and an illusory sense of omnipotence, lashed out savagely against the country’s Muslim population. But the international community also bears responsibility for the worst crime in Europe since World War Two. After promising protection to the inhabitants of Srebrenica, the United Nations and NATO allowed the “safe area” to fall. That responsibility is compounded by the continuing failure to bring to justice Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the two men indicted as the principal architects of the Srebrenica genocide.

The Dutch United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) battalion based in Srebrenica failed to take the military action necessary to save the town. Robust NATO air strikes that could have stopped the Serb onslaught were never authorized, despite repeated requests from Dutch peacekeepers on the ground.

The fall of the Srebrenica safe area was the foreseeable consequence of U.N. and NATO policies on the use of force during the Bosnian conflict. The U.N. Security Council had authorized air strikes by NATO if U.N.-designated “safe areas” in Bosnia – Sarajevo, Bihac, Srebrenica, Tuzla, Zepa, and Gorazde – were attacked. But throughout the war the U.N. adopted a position of “neutrality ” that in practice meant inaction, even when Bosnian Serb forces attacked “safe areas” or the warring parties otherwise violated ceasefire agreements. Key NATO countries—including the United States, France and Britain—conveniently hid behind the U.N. position.

Isolated air strikes in 1994 were too limited in scope and number to deter further offensives. In May 1995, when NATO targeted Serb heavy weapons around Sarajevo in response to continuing attacks against the capital, Serb forces responded by taking hundreds of U.N. peacekeepers hostage. The Bosnian Serb leadership announced that their threats to U.N. soldiers would end only if the international community stopped air strikes. NATO never formally renounced the use of air strikes, but by June 18, 1995, the U.N. hostages had been released.

Serb forces led by General Ratko Mladic and under overall command of Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic began the attack on Srebrenica on July 6. The U.N. command declined to call in NATO air strikes on the positions of the advancing Serbs despite repeated requests by the Dutch battalion in Srebrenica. The four hundred lightly armed Dutch soldiers in and around Srebrenica had neither the authorization nor the capacity to repulse the Serb offensive. The Netherlands later launched an investigation into the shattering failures of that time: but the responsibility was much broader than that. The world simply looked away. The limited NATO air strikes launched on July 11 came too late to have any impact. The rest is tragically well known: the Serbs entered Srebrenica, and in the following week killed between 7,000 and 8,000 Muslim men and boys.

Mladic and Karadzic were indicted for genocide in Srebrenica in 1995. Their continuing freedom, a decade later, is a profound moral failure for NATO and the international community. The number of arrest attempts against both men by NATO peacekeepers can be counted on one hand. Instead of taking the action necessary to bring the men to justice, NATO has instead offered a series of excuses—from ignorance of the men’s whereabouts to concerns over reprisals—to justify its failure. As Human Rights Watch has documented, those excuses are simply not credible. While arresting Mladic is now a matter for Serbia, Karadzic is almost certainly still in Bosnia. His arrest by NATO forces in long overdue.

Human rights abuses by Chavez?

Wed Mar 15, 2006 20:21

Read this:

Venezuela: Curbs on Free Expression Tightened
(Santiago, March 24, 2005) — Amendments to Venezuela’s Criminal Code that entered into force last week may stifle press criticism of government authorities and restrict the public’s ability to monitor government actions, Human Rights Watch said today.

By broadening laws that punish disrespect for government authorities, the Venezuelan government has flouted international human rights principles that protect free expression.

“By broadening laws that punish disrespect for government authorities, the Venezuelan government has flouted international human rights principles that protect free expression,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “While countries across Latin America are moving to repeal such laws, Venezuela has enacted further restrictions on the press that will shield officials from public scrutiny.”

The amendments extend the scope of existing provisions that make it a criminal offense to insult or show disrespect for the president and other government authorities. Venezuela’s measures run counter to a continent-wide trend to repeal such “disrespect” (or “desacato”) laws. In recent years, Argentina, Costa Rica, Paraguay, and Peru have already repealed such laws, and other countries like Chile and Panama are currently considering legislation that would do so.

The human rights bodies of the United Nations and of the Organization of American States have repeatedly urged states to repeal such provisions.

The president, vice-president, government ministers, state governors and members of the Supreme Court are already protected from disrespect under the law. The new provisions extend this protection to legislators of the National Assembly, members of the National Electoral Council, the attorney general, the public prosecutor, the human rights ombudsman, the treasury inspector, and members of the high military command.

Anyone convicted of offending these authorities could go to prison for up to 20 months. Anyone who gravely offends the president, on the other hand, can incur a penalty of up to 40 months in prison.

Other amendments increase the penalties for defamation and libel. Penalties for defamation have been increased from a maximum of 30 months of imprisonment to a new maximum of four years if the statement is made in a document distributed to the public. Those convicted would also have to pay a fine of up to 2,000 tax units (currently equivalent to more than US$ 27,000). The penalty for libel rises from a maximum jail term of three months to a new maximum of two years.

These changes to the criminal code follow a Law on the Social Responsibility of Radio and Television, which entered force in November and imposes wide-ranging administrative restrictions on radio and television broadcasting.

“These new provisions add to the arsenal of press restrictions already at the government’s disposal,” Vivanco said. “By further criminalizing criticism of government authorities, these laws will restrict the public’s ability to monitor abuse by those in power.”

what is this NONSENSE ?

Wed Mar 15, 2006 20:55

A link to a piece about 29 men being killed in a village isnt genocide by any means. Links to stuff about how crap cuban prisons are arent genocide either . Pieces about chavez fining people ( he had grounds to execute them after that disgraceful coup) arent genocide either. Nowhere near genocide .

And yet again there is no proof that this massacre of 7- 8000 ever took place . None . It didnt happen at Zepa only a few miles away so why just srebrinica ?They say the serbs hid the bodies , dug them up , hid them again but no satellite photos . Serb forces short of petrol facing advancing Muslim and Croatian armies , being bombed from the air successfully hiding these mass graves which none of the many satellites over the area can spot .There was certainly a war in which a lot of combatants were killed . There was a bizarrely ordered and ill organised retreat at srebrinica that turned into a rout . No doubt about that . There were serb atrocities too , no doubt about that either. Hardly surprising when the commander of the Bosnian muslim troops in that area had openly boasted to the media how hed cut the heads off local serbs prior to its fall . And there is not a word about the fate of the serbs who lived within that area under the rule of the Bosnian muslim army . But there is no evidence of genocide . None .

And Milosevichs 4 year trial with no legal team is certainly an indicator that this genocide seems very hard to spot .

Tudjman

by Lady Bracknell

Wed Mar 15, 2006 22:17

None of the Anti-Milosevites have even deigned to mention the role Franco Tudjman played in starting all of this, or indeed the role the German Govt play by recognising the break-away croat statelet. The Same statelet run by the same political/ethnic grouping which fought for Hitler in the second world war

Anti-Milosevic Left

by Partizan

Thu Mar 16, 2006 00:46

True many stalinists supported Milosevic but many leftist strongly oppposed Chetnik fascism, including the British group Workers Aid for Bosnia who actually risked their lives to bring material aid to the multi-ethnic defenders of Tuzla in northern Bosnia and to the miners of Kosova.

For one example see the Australian leftist Michael Karadjis's book on the Balkan conflict at: http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2001/435/435p24.htm.

Im sorry Milosevic died because it deprives the victims of genocide, many of whom I met during the Bosnian war, of justice. As for those so-callled leftists who justify or negate that genocide they are in good company with Le Pen and the various fascist swho backed Milosevic, along with the unlikely bedfelllows of the Israeli state and Sadaam Husein.

Bosnian ss

by tito

Thu Mar 16, 2006 02:16

The Bosnian muslims have their own history of vile collaboration with Hitler , as do the Albanian muslims of kosovo

Wasp

by Gay Geori - Pooves for Peace

Thu Mar 16, 2006 10:10

I didn't copy and paste anything. John did, sadly, so in line with editorial guidelines it should go. It's also available on frontpagemag.org

Raw Nerve Touched at Fort Langley.

by The Great Djerginski - None

Thu Mar 16, 2006 11:49

The piece on news manipulation during the Balkan Wars has touched a raw nerve at Langley that they have increase Ron's workload. He forgot to tell us that Lenin avoided paying a tram fare when he was 10 years old. You are just a poorly paid liar for the Americans Mr Greori. You'll find that 30 pieces of silver will not go far with the multinationals and criminal gangs who now run the Balkans.

Me Mickey, Me Bollix As You Irish Say

Thu Mar 16, 2006 12:14

There's at least three direct copy and pastes of lengthy articles on this thread, you tool. None of them by me. I never copy and paste. Poorly paid, I will; agree, is true.

Who Is The Stooge

by Frank Waters - None

Thu Mar 16, 2006 12:15

You are the naive stooge John Byrne.

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

"It's hard not to feel that by dying in his cell, Slobodan Milosevic finally succeeded in his determined effort to cheat justice."

Thus the opening sentence of a New York Times editorial, Tuesday March 14. The editorial cited without comment Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the United Nations tribunal, who told an Italian interviewer that "the death of Milosevic represents for me a total defeat."

The editorial ended with words of praise for the high purpose of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) established by the U.N. Security Council in 1994.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn03142006.html

Kowtow Lefties

Fri Mar 17, 2006 09:54

I have to say that the Workers Party has been the only Irish political party to give Milosevic a fair crack of the whip. The others were cowed into the abject, misleading bleatings of the popular press.

Frank Waters - Copy and Paste

Fri Mar 17, 2006 11:09

Your contribution is a direct copy from the tiresome and discredited counterpunch and should be removed. I've reported you...

More revelations

Fri Mar 17, 2006 11:15

So you are an informer as well as a poorly paid lair.

More Work For Langley

by The Great Djerginski

Sat Mar 18, 2006 13:24

Looks like Sean Garland's people have got it right again. A large proportion of Fort Langley's personnel must be on their case. I hope they go carefully.

Text of Slobo's 'Kosovo Field' speech

Sun Mar 19, 2006 16:13

This is a translation of the speech mentioned in my comments
(see here: http://www.indymedia.ie/index.php?obj_id=53&story_id=74...42390)

in the thread 'Milosevic is Dead'
(see here: http://indymedia.ie/article/74779 )

excerpt:
Serbia has never had only Serbs living in it. Today, more than in the past, members of other peoples and nationalities also live in it. This is not a disadvantage for Serbia. I am truly convinced that it is its advantage. National composition of almost all countries in the world today, particularly developed ones, has also been changing in this direction. Citizens of different nationalities, religions, and races have been living together more and more frequently and more and more successfully.
(Link: http://globalresistance.com/articles/jared/milosaid.html)

The translation appears to be provided by Jared Israel, who runs the site 'The Emperor’s New Clothes' ( http://www.tenc.net/ )

I can't personally vouch for the accuracy of Mr Israel's translation, not being a speaker of the Serbian language, but have in the past found his work to be both accurate and fair. Which is certainly NOT something one could accuse the mainstream media of.

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