JAIL WESLEY CLARK! FREE MILOSEVIC!
NYC, 16 December 2003
US National Section of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic organized and hold a picket in front of the presidential campaign headquarters of General Wesley Clark. His office was presented with the formal indictment drawn up by Attorney Christopher Black and others for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia along with the charges made by Amnesty International and others. ICDSM-US press release was also presented and hundreds of leaflets were handed out, protesting the conditions of the secret testimony of Wesley Clark at the ICTY, the ICTY itself, and the treatment of President Milosevic.
The leaflets also contained a long list of violations by Wesley Clark as well as by the ICTY, including the most recent one regarding the violation of the inalienable right of the Serbian people to choose their own government, violated by the ICTY in their effort to thwart the election of Slobodan Milosevic to a seat in the Serbian parliamentary elections Dec. 28th. The leaflets were well received and caused many supportive discussions.
A 30 foot banner was unfurled on the sidewalk in front of the Wesley
Clark’s offices. The picket was lively and lasted for 45 minutes.
People shouted slogans like "Jail Wesley
Clark! Free Milosevic!" A cable TV program in NYC covered the event.
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ICDSM-US
U.S. National Section of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan
Milosevic
Press Release #3 Email: info@icdsm-us.org <mailto:info@icdsm-us.org> December 16, 2003 Website: www.icdsm-us.org <http://www.icdsm-us.org/> Telephone: 212-726-1260 Yahoo group: icdsm-us
For Immediate Release:
PRESS CONFERENCE AND DEMONSTRATION SCHEDULED TODAY IN NEW YORK TO PROTEST
THE SECRET TESTIMONY OF GEN. WESLEY CLARK AT THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL - GEN.
WESLEY CLARK TO BE SERVED WITH INDICTMENTS FOR WAR CRIMES
December 16, 2003
Today the U.S. National Section of the International Committee for the Defense of Slobodan Milosevic (ICDSM) will hold a press conference and demonstration at the presidential campaign offices of Gen. Wesley Clark at 40 West 25th Street in New York City at 1 PM to protest his wrongful and outrageous secret testimony on behalf of the prosecution at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Representatives of the ICDSM-US, will serve indictments for war crimes on Gen. Wesley Clark at his presidential campaign headquarters. Today’s event will coincide with a similar protest and press conference organized at The Hague with other national sections of the ICDSM yesterday.
We accuse Gen. Wesley Clark, former NATO commander and current U.S. presidential candidate, of war crimes against the people of Yugoslavia during the 78-day bombing of that country in the spring of 1999. As commander of that war Gen. Clark is guilty of directing thousands of bombings of civilian targets in Yugoslavia resulting in the deaths of several thousand civilians.
As a war criminal Gen. Clark is unfit to testify as a prosecution witness. Moreover, his secret testimony is an improper and unlawful manipulation of judicial practice, making a mockery of any claims by the ICTY at The Hague to uphold standards of justice or international law. While the ICTY purports to be concerned with war crimes committed in Yugoslavia, it has refused to indict a single NATO government official. But by allowing the U.S. government to screen, censor and control the conditions of Gen. Clark’s testimony, the ICTY has completely destroyed any legitimacy to these proceedings.
As NATO commander of the 78-day NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999:
Š Gen. Wesley Clark willfully violated the principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal, the Geneva Convention and United Nations Resolutions of 1950 regarding crimes against peace.
Š Gen. Wesley Clark willfully violated the Helsinki Accords of 1975. In seeking to detach Kosovo from Serbia, Clark violated the guarantees undertaken by all signatories that the territorial frontiers of the states of Europe would not be altered by force.
Š Gen. Wesley Clark willfully violated articles 48-58 of the 1977 Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions relating to the protection of the civilian population.
Š Gen. Wesley Clark willfully violated the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict by ordering the destruction of Serbian religious and historical sites.
Š Gen. Wesley Clark willfully violated the 1980 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. By seeking to bully Yugoslavia into accepting the so-called Rambouillet agreement, Clark was guilty of violating Articles 51 and 52 of that treaty.
Š Gen. Wesley Clark willfully violated NATO's own charter which claims that it is a defensive organization that will only resort to force if one of its members is attacked.
Š Gen. Wesley Clark willfully violated the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer (1985, UNEP), the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (1987) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992).
Š Gen. Wesley Clark is directly responsible for the atrocities committed at the Grdelica Gorge where a civilian train with 56 passengers was incinerated.
Š Gen. Wesley Clark is directly responsible for war crimes relating to the targeting of the Serbian Radio and Television headquarters in Belgrade where 16 journalists and staff were murdered.
Š Gen. Wesley Clark is responsible for numerous other acts in violation of international law and for war crimes relating to the targeting and deaths of civilians in Yugoslavia.
Today’s demonstration also protests the outrageous actions by the ICTY banning most if not all contact and communications by President Milosevic and fellow prisoner Vojislav Seselj with the outside world. This purpose of this decision, taken on Dec. 12, is openly admitted as prevention of the elections of President Milosevic and Dr. Seselj to seats in the upcoming Serbian parliamentary elections of Dec. 28. This attempt by the powers running the ICTY to suppress the right of the Serbian people to choose their own government is a violation of the inalienable natural rights of the Serbian people to freely elect their own representatives.
The U.S. Section of the ICDSM rejects the legitimacy of this trial and that of the ICTY itself. But at the same time we cannot stand by without protesting the gross violations of fundamental legal, democratic and human rights visited upon Slobodan Milosevic by this court. We view this trial as an act of political warfare against the people of Serbia and against the basic democratic rights of the whole of humanity that cannot be allowed to succeed.