Posted on 02/24/2007 4:24:29 PM PST by Bokababe
Can a state commit genocide? Should an entire nation not just its presidents, generals, and soldiers be held responsible for humanity's worst crime?
In one of the most momentous cases in its 60 years, the U.N.'s highest court will deliver its judgment Monday on Bosnia's demand to make Serbia accountable for the slaughter, terrorizing, rape and displacement of Bosnian Muslims in the early 1990s.
If it rules for Bosnia, the International Court of Justice could open the way for compensation amounting to billions of dollars from Serbia, the successor state of Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia, although specific claims would be addressed only later.
It also would be a permanent stain on Serbia in the eyes of history, regardless of any effort by Belgrade to distance itself from the brutality of those years.
Reflecting the complexities, the 16 judges have taken 10 months to deliberate since hearing the final arguments last May. Officials at the World Court, as it is informally known, say just the summary of the judgment is likely to take three hours for Judge Rosalyn Higgins, the court president, to read. The full decision could be as thick as a book.
The court was created after World War II to adjudicate disputes among U.N. members, most often involving contentious borders or alleged treaty violations. Its decisions are binding, without appeal, and subject to enforcement by the Security Council if necessary.
Seldom before has it had to deal with issues that go to the heart of a nation.
Dozens of Bosnian survivors, including women from Srebrenica where some 8,000 men were killed in July 1995, were expected to stand vigil outside the baroque Peace Palace while the decision is being read.
The ruling comes 14 years after Bosnia first approached the court during the chaos of Yugoslavia's bloody disintegration, and 12 years after the end of the 1992-95 war. The political landscape has changed dramatically since then, with both countries separately aspiring to join the European Union. But passions have hardly cooled.
"This will be a very significant judgment, both from the perspective of the aftermath of the conflict and for international law generally," said Andre Nollkaemper, director of the Amsterdam Center for International Law at the University of Amsterdam.
Other courts already have ruled that acts of genocide occurred during the Bosnian war, when more than 100,000 people were killed in a Bosnian Serb campaign that gave the world the phrase "ethnic cleansing."
Two Bosnian Serb officers have been convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, set up in The Hague in 1993 even as the fighting continued to prosecute suspected war criminals. Gen. Radislav Krstic is serving a 35-year prison term for aiding and abetting genocide, and Col. Vidoje Blagojevic is appealing his 18-year sentence for complicity in genocide.
Milosevic died last year in his prison cell in the final weeks of his 4-year-long genocide trial. Two other Bosnian Serbs accused of orchestrating atrocities, Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic, remain at large, and critics accuse Serbia to this day of harboring Mladic.
But the World Court case is not about individuals. Bosnia says the Serbian state itself must accept blame.
It argues that Serbia's nationalist ideology incited genocidal hatred, its financial and military aid to the Bosnian Serbs gave them the tools for genocide, and Yugoslav army officers actively participated in actions to drive out the Muslims.
"It is the accumulation of solitary crimes the dreadful repetition of evil acts that emerges finally, clearly, as the super crime of genocide," Bosnia's U.S. advocate Thomas Franck told the judges last year.
Serbia says it's not that simple. Genocide, by definition, requires the clear intent to wipe out an ethnic or racial group, in whole or in part, at least from specific territories and Serbia says it never waged such a systematic campaign.
"A pattern of 'ordinary crimes' cannot be simply transformed into the crime of genocide," argued Sasa Obradovic, summing up Serbia's case last May. Rather, it must be "a specific crime, with a specific mental element."
The key is whether the judges are persuaded that the Bosnian Serbs were under the control of the Serb government an issue that might have been resolved had the Milosevic trial reached its conclusion. It was stopped when he died, and the massive amounts of evidence it heard are legally worthless.
The Yugoslav tribunal "has not been successful in establishing a proven link between the paramilitaries who did the killing and the government in Belgrade," said Johannes Houwink ten Cate, a historian at the Netherlands War Documentation Center and a professor of genocide studies.
By contrast, he said, the Nuremberg trial of Nazi war criminals found a clear chain of command to the Holocaust.
The Bosnia-Serbia dispute is not a criminal case, and the standards of proof are looser than "beyond a reasonable doubt" required for a criminal conviction. It is enough that a majority of judges find a "balance of probabilities" to find Serbia liable.
Before the judges even address Serbian responsibility, they must first rule on whether they have jurisdiction a tricky question on which the same court has contradicted itself in the past.
Serbia argues it was not a U.N. member when the murders happened, and therefore cannot be judged by the U.N. court.
Yugoslavia's U.N. membership was suspended in 1992, and Belgrade was only readmitted as Serbia and Montenegro in 2001. Montenegro split from Serbia last year, and has asked the court to remove its name from the case.
In 1996, the court rejected Serbia's move to dismiss Bosnia's genocide suit, ruling that it had jurisdiction. Three years later, Serbia itself applied to thecourt to intervene to stop the NATO bombing campaign against it during the war in Kosovo. The court ruled by a majority of one it had no standing because Serbia was not a U.N. state.
"Technically, the court is not bound by its earlier rulings," Nollkaemper, the law professor, told The Associated Press. "Whatever the court decides, it will be incompatible with some part of its earlier case law."
LOAD-DATE: February 23, 2007
The U.N. is evil, period. It is awash in the terrifying hypocrisy of people with too much time on their hands.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot with the "World Court"? I don't need no steenkin world court.
Why we belong to this collection of unproductive Islamic and communist bloodsuckers has no rational answer. It represents no one but bureaucratic internationalists who want to steal the wealth created by productive people.
In the eyes of stupid and wicked people. But God is above and He is the Supreme Judge of all.
"Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O congregation? do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons of men?
Yea, in heart ye work wickedness; ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth.
The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.
Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear;
Which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely.
Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: break out the great teeth of the young lions, O LORD.
Let them melt away as waters which run continually: when he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces.
As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.
Before your pots can feel the thorns, he shall take them away as with a whirlwind, both living, and in his wrath.
The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.
So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth."
(Psalm 58)
One of the unfortunate side effects of liberty is the problem of accommodating statists and internationalists. Whenever, people free themselves from the bootheels of these thugs, we let them off after they flee our uprising. then we forgive and forget. Then the crud comes back wearing sheep's clothing. And it starts all over again. In the next bloodletting, we need to hold these pieces of crud accountable, kill them and then forgive. The International Court of Criminals is trying is damnest to accommodate communists and Islamists.
And for the Serb bashers. The statist media told us the Serbs were killing over a hundred thousand Albanians. These stories evaporated after the bombing was over. Thank you Clinton, General Clark, and Newt.
Sir Walter Scott said: "Oh, the tangled webs we weave when we practice to deceive."
Exactly who voted these people into taking charge of Yugoslavia?
This is, plain and simple, an illegitimate seizure of power by unelected interlopers over a sovereign nation. At least Milosevitch was properly elected to office, which is more than these self-righteous whited sepulchres can claim.
No doubt the Germans will vote against it. Such pronouncements can be retroactively declared as well.....
Let me present you with a scenario:
1. The Hague finds Serbia "guilty of genocide" & assesses billions of dollars in damages:
a. Kosovo is gone and Serbia has lost all legal ability to fight for her, because no country will assist in defending "a country found guilty of genocide".
b. The entire country of Serbia would basically go into recievership, because it will be bankrupted for generations.
c. Serbia would be turned into a third world country overnight.
d. All the Serb young people would leave, because there would be no future for them there -- so that all traces of "Serb" and "Christian" would essentially be cleansed from what was a Christian country for the last 1300 years the county -- within a single generation .
e. There would be zero chance of Bosnian Serbs ever joining Serbia, as long as financial "reparations" are coming in to Bosnia and leaving Serbia. The Bosnian Serbs would be held hostage by the Muslims because they have no other place to go, other than to exit the country individually. Bosnia, which is now less than half Muslim, would become completely Muslim within a generation.
f. The Muslims in Serbia, used to third world conditions, would stay in Serbia and reproduce like rabbits. The entire country would become Moslem within a generation. Eventually with all the Serbs gone and Muslims in their place, they would rename the country, declaring themselves "victims" and escape Serbia's debts.
g. Montenegro will be gone. She can't stand alone in that neighborhood and she already has an internal Muslim problem, now she would be surrounded by Muslims.
h. Macedonia would be gone -- for similar reasons.
h. Within a generation, all traces of Orthodox Christianity would be wiped out of the former Yugoslavia where it had been the predominant religion. What would be left would be five new Muslim countries and two Roman Catholic ones. How long do think it would be before Croatia and Slovenia would be next? How long until Greece has problems?
And don't forget:
Australia for the Aboriginals
The US versus the Amerindians
The Germans versus the Jews/Gypsies
Indonesians versus the East Timorese
and many others
The difference is that there was no Bosnian genocide. The main atrocity in former Yugoslavia was the massacre of Serbian Krajina [pr. krayina] by NATO, Croats and Muslims. This centuries old land and society spanning over large parts of Croatia and some of Bosnia is purged of its original inhabitants (many of whom died in the process of fleeing).
Serbian Krajina is erased physically and is being erased from maps and human memories. Still you can see the ruins of Serbian towns but they will be cleaned up or renovated by the new settlers.
It seems fit that in our brave new world the actual victims will be found guilty and perpetuators will have victim status.
And don't forget: Australia for the Aboriginals
The US versus the Amerindians
The Germans versus the Jews/Gypsies
Indonesians versus the East Timorese
You need a cup of coffee before posting. I can't speak to the Aussies because I don't know their history.
The US versus the Amerindians? Most Native Americans died from New World diseases before they ever came into conflict with Europeans. Many died fighting through campaigns started by themselves as well as by Europeans. This is not genocide. The Indians were already adept at warfare hacking each other up long before Europeans arrived. They were merely at a strategic disadvantage for living in the stone age. Now, Amerindians are carrying out the "Reconquista" as they pour over the Mexican border to swarm North America.
The Germans versus the Jews/Gypsies? The Jews have already done a good job exacting settlements through the courts against the Germans and Swiss hoarders. Genocide is defined by what the Germans did to the Jews. Who doesn't know about the Holocaust except for Ahmadinejad. Who are the Gypsies? Are they an identifiable ethnic group? Or, were they just a collection of East European wanderers who got caught up in the NAZI killing machine along with the Jews, Christians, and others who goaded the German sensibilities of Aryan mythology and purity?
Indonesians versus the East Timorese? This is where I know you need a pot of coffee. I already listed that one.
If you believe there are many others, you should list them. You need to keep your focus on those cutthroats who are likely to carry out the genocide. The Muslims and communists have a strong historical record of mass killing. They own the International Court of Criminals. As ideological transnationalists, they are collaborating to gain control over nations again. Chasing genocidal illusions about America and Australia shows you have not yet sorted out the confusion spread by the Muslims and Communists about Europeans.
Yawn.
The settlements were for money and art which was stolen, much which was traced and found, from the Jews and from slave labor in the camps. Being paid for forced labor or money stolen is why Germany is paying.
One must point out that the Bosnian war dead includes many thousands of Serbs killed in the war by Muslims and Croats, and it includes all sides of the 3 ethnic armies fighting withing Bosnia.
Additionally there were mercenaries all over the world killing Bosnians of all ethnicities.
Most mercenaries fought with the Croats and Muslims.
Croatia was permitted to station brigades within Bosnia throughout the entire war while Serbia adhered to the UN agreements to pull out Yugoslav troops and even place sanctions on the Bosnian Serbs, which left them starved for fuel.
I presented "a worst case scenario" -- which hope to God never happens!
Point is that the Euro-Nazis have done all they can to bring Serbia under its boot heel. If they decide in favor of this genocide ruling, they would finally have them there. Add into the mix the potential EU law on "genocide denial" and Serbia would have a sock stuffed into its mouth permanently.
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