”Milosevic has the truth on his side”
Junge Welt, June 18, 2003
http://www.jungewelt.de/beilage/index.php?b_id=12
Cathrin Schütz spoke to former US attorney general Mr. Ramsy Clark about his support for former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, who is indicted at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague
Mr. Clark, when former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was being
extradited to The Hague in June 2000, you rushed to Belgrade to try to
stop this from happening. As a political activist, what were your arguments
for supporting Mr. Milosevic?
First you have to go back 10 years, long before his illegal extradition to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. Yugoslavia was a country that the United States and the great powers of Europe intended to destroy. Mr. Milosevic was its president and led its heroic defense.
The idea of Yugoslavia was to create a federation of Slavic peoples in Southern Europe, in the Balkans, to prevent and avoid what had been centuries of violence and war. I’ve always believed this was one of the most hopeful opportunities humanity has had to create stable conditions and peace.
Following World War II this idea held together with a very high level of unity and a history of independence that was unparalleled in the borderline states between the USSR and the NATO forces. Yugoslavia was able to maintain its independence from both the USSR and the USA and defy them both. It was able to provide conditions 90 percent of the trade of its six republics was within those republics.
The big powers wanted to destroy Yugoslavia to more easily permit the exploitation of a proud and defiant people. First Slovenia, the richest republic, separated to satisfy the selfish economic interests of neighboring states. Then Croatia split with Germany’s strong support for its separation from Yugoslavia. Then Bosnia demanded to separate—and the Western powers came up with plans to split Bosnia itself up into different enclaves with the Vance-Owen checkerboard peace plan. Bosnia could only be viable if integrated with neighboring republics.
Then finally there was Kosovo, in Serbia itself, under attack in 1999. To carry out this foreign aggression against Yugoslavia required the demonization of its leadership. I defend that leadership as part of defending Yugoslavia against foreign aggression. If you want peace on earth you have to protect countries that stand up to the U.S. and other world powers.
Besides being a political activist you are an attorney. You have charged that the ICTY is illegitimate. What do you mean by that?
First of all, the ICTY was not lawfully created. To create a criminal tribunal, the UN Security Council had to usurp powers not given by the UN Charter. No person aware of the history of the UN’s founding, let alone any serious historian, would believe for a minute the five dominant powers that became the permanent Security Council members would have allowed the UN to begin if they had the slightest belief it could create a criminal court that could prosecute them for Nuremberg-type war crimes.
And yet Madeleine Albright introduced the ICTY and pressured the Security Council to suddenly seize this power and create the court. The ICTY’s purpose was to pressure U.S. enemies and their leadership by determining that genocide occurred in Yugoslavia. The charges focused on Serbs, the most populous group in the federal republic, and thus were based not on equal justice under the law. It could only prosecute for acts in Yugoslavia. Because the court appears to be neutral, and almost exclusively charges Serbs with alleged war crimes, it becomes a way to carry out war by other means.
The U.S. always insists it is above the law and can’t be prosecuted, not even by and International Criminal Court. The ICC is at least created in accord with law. Ninety countries have ratified the ICC, and 130 approved, while ICTY and others like it are illegitimate in conception. Washington identifies enemies in Liberia, in Cambodia, in Iraq, and tries to use the court to remove them from the scene.
Besides the illegality of the court, there is the ridiculous way it made charges against Pres. Milosevic. In the middle of the 1999 bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, when the U.S. is trying to negotiate with him, to make him surrender, the court brings charges relating to Kosovo, saying that Milosevic has forced a migration. Meanwhile NATO is bombing all over Kosovo as well as Serbia, killing hundreds of people and driving hundreds of thousands out of their homes, and foreign interests are arming enemies of Yugoslavia within Kosovo.
The court brought in charges regarding Bosnia and Croatia much later, long after the civil war in Bosnia, long after hundreds of thousands of Serbs were driven out of the Crayina region, and with the knowledge that Mr. Milosevic had no direct control over what happened there. This is contemptible.
Mr. Clark, why have you endorsed the demonstration set for June 28 at The Hague in solidarity with Mr. Milosevic?
I support the June 28 demonstration because the court should be recognized as illegitimate in its conception, and because it is important to let the world know what is happening in The Hague. We want to live by rule of law and not by political power that can demonize people.
Mr. Clark, the majority of the population in the West, including big parts of the left, considers the Serbs in general and Slobodan Milosevic in particular as among the world’s biggest war criminals, responsible for all bloody conflicts during the break-up of the country. How do you confront a position like that?
There’s a sad phenomenon we have to be concerned about. People who care deeply about peace, human rights, justice, can also be manipulated by the mass media. This media machine, controlled by concentrated wealth, has the ability to not only reach everybody with its propaganda but to block out other messages and debates. In the 1990s it saturated people with the idea that Milosevic had committed such crimes.
Yet the same forces that accused Milosevic of these crimes were themselves responsible for the bloodshed and warfare in Yugoslavia, as I explained before. This happened also with regard to Iraq. The U.S. led sanctions that killed 1.5 million people, a half-million of them children under the age of 5. Yet the media all blamed Saddam Hussein for deaths of Iraqis during sanctions, but the U.S.-led sanctions prevented food and medicine from getting into Iraq.
People who really want peace can’t be taken in by propaganda that makes them think that by hating the demonized person you can find peace and human rights. You’ll instead find war, injustice and indignity.
Mr. Clark, you have met with Mr. Milosevic at Scheveningen and know of his defense strategy. How do you see its impact?
The court has tried to stop Mr. Milosevic from defending himself effectively. He is confined. When I visited him the court manipulated the rules so he couldn’t really have private visitors. His visitors were monitored visitors. This makes it hard to plan a defense. It gives away the strategy. You can’t really talk. The Yugoslav lawyers were treated miserably. He decided to defend himself.
At some real sacrifice of his health he has worked incredibly hard to prepare and defend himself. Having lived though the experience, and with a remarkable memory and comprehensive knowledge about people and events he has been able to wage a tremendous defense. His advantage was only that in a real sense he had truth and right on his side. He didn’t have to be cunning and make things up.
He made a strong opening statement, more than a lawyer can make as he had the knowledge and authenticity from being in the political leadership. His cross-examinations have also been strong, as he knows the personalities of witnesses and could destroy their testimony. He has gotten some help, as he has the right to represent himself and still have assistance of council. I think his self-defense has been a remarkable testament to his strength, dignity and honor and history will record it as a heroic effort.
One thing you can
see is the staggering problem the prosecution has. It has the power and
wealth to go anywhere but still can’t put on a convincing case. They’ve
had to ask for extensions and more time - another 100 days recently -
because they haven’t been able to make the case. It doesn’t’
mean it can continue. The court is now trying to cut him off from documentation
from Yugoslavia, which is illegal. Still, the defense will finally be
put on and will be powerful.