Holding two contradictory views but
blithely carrying on as if no
contradiction exists, the paper went on to say that public
sentiment had turned against Mr.
Milosevic, while pointing out that the new government
"had to deal with 10,000 pro-Milosevic protesters outside
his jail earlier this week."
Apparently, ordinary Yugoslav citizens
can massively rally in defence of
Milosevic, while still turning against him.
Apparently, industrial and civilian
infrastructure can be devastated by
outside forces, and the resulting economic ruin can be further
exacerbated by an economic embargo, and still
Yugoslavia's economic trials are
entirely the fault of civil war and internal corruption.
And apparently, Western countries can
offer $1.3 billion in loans that
Yugoslavia will be expected to repay in full, with interest, to
rebuild the economic and civilian
infrastructure that Western governments
themselves destroyed, and the loans are still "aid money"
and a "reward."
Destroying civilian infrastructure, by
the way, is a war crime, a point the
newspaper failed to mention.
Imagine the bank destroyed your house,
and when you applied for a mortgage to
rebuild it, they called the mortgage a reward, demanded you
sell off all your assets and insisted you turn over a son
as a condition of receiving "aid."
With the West's role in the ruin of Yugoslavia
overlooked, and all blame laid on Milosevic, is it any
wonder that the Western-backed and
controlled Hague tribunal is, as one newspaper puts
it, "widely seen by Yugoslavs as a biased 'kangaroo
court'"?
Another newspaper says that no one who
massacres civilians or commits crimes
against humanity can be confident he will escape the reach of
the law, Slobodan Milosevic,
offered as a prime example. But the claim is
massively contradicted by the continued freedom of dozens
of leaders who've committed crimes
against humanity and continue to do so with
impunity, while others, Milosevic again, are indicted on
trumped-up charges.
It would be more accurate to say that no
one who breaches humanitarian law
while in power and doesn't enjoy the favour of a Security
Council member, or isn't the head of a
Security Council government itself, is
beyond the reach of the law. Who controls the law, is vital.
While the UN War Crimes Tribunal at the
Hague is one way of denying some who
commit crimes a place to hide, it gives Security Council
members, through their veto, a perfect
place to hide. Since they control the
tribunal, and have a veto over it, heads of Security Council
governments, and their allies, can commit war
crimes aplenty, without the slightest
fear they'll be indicted. That's why lists of leaders who
are accused of committing war crimes and now have
nowhere to hide, a list which includes
Milosevic, doesn't include a single head of a
Security Council country, or any of its strategic allies,
though strong cases of war
crimes and crimes against humanity can be made against Bill
Clinton (Sudan, Afghanistan, Kosovo), Tony Blair, Gerhard
Shroeder and other NATO leaders
(Kosovo), Russian President Vladimir Putin
(Chechnya), Israel's Ariel Sharon (the Sabra and Shatilla
massacres for starters) and former
Indonesian dictator Suharto (East Timor and the
slaughter of up to a million Communists in Indonesia.)
When these leaders are indicted, the
claim that war criminals can't hide
may mean something. Today, the claim is no more than the
self-serving clap-trap of big powers.
