Court hears Balkans genocide case (Serbia will be the first nation to be charged with genocide)

bbc ^ | 27 February 2006

[paudio]

The first trial of a state charged with genocide has opened in The Hague, where Bosnia-Hercegovina will accuse Serbia and Montenegro of war crimes. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is hearing the case, which Bosnia first brought 13 years ago.

It says Belgrade was responsible for crimes of genocide on its territory during the early 1990s Bosnian war.

Belgrade denies its intention was to wipe out Muslims in eastern Bosnia and says there is no proof of the claims.

[markomalley]

Sorry. But the article you cited stated that the Brits helped the Slovenians by providing equipment. The recognized Slovenia after they seceded from the Yugoslav federation in 1991. The Yugoslav Army tried to enter Slovenia in an effort to put down the secession. However, in large part due to this military aid provided by Britain, they were unsuccessful.

I see no evidence from this article that the Slovenians did anything other than defend their newly declared independent state.

Now if your POV is such that an independent Slovenia is a bad thing, then the actions of the Slovenian Army would be bad. If your POV is such that an independent Slovenia is a good thing, then the actions of the Slovenian Army would be good. In neither case is there any case to be made that they participated in any "ethnic cleansing" or "genocide" that involved Bosnia-Herzagovina, or, more to the point of this thread, any atrocities that impacted Kosovar Muzzies.

Now if the Slovenes attacked the Yugoslav border guards and cut off electricity, heat, and water to the barracks, that is entirely justifiable after Slovenia seceeded from Yugoslavia. Particularly if the Yugoslav border guards refused to leave the borders of the newly formed state of Slovenia. (Again, otoh, if you believe that their declaration of secession from Yugoslavia was illegitimate, then any actions to defend that declaration would also be illegitimate) -- however, cutting off electricity, heat, and water would hardly be considered any sort of "war crime."

[Lion in Winter]

You post such BS!

[markomalley]

You'll have to forgive me here, Joan, but I lived in the Friul during the 90s. I am well familiar with the "Balkanization" of the former republic of Yugoslavia. So allow me to comment on your posts.

Slovenian leadership declared secession from Yugoslavia unilaterally, against the Yugoslav constitution, which was illegal according to any international law.

It may well have been illegal under Yugoslav law, but I hardly can imagine how this would be illegal under international law.

JNA was under harassment over there from 1989 – due to the trial of the JNA sergeant and proven NATO spy Janez Jansa who, later had become Slovenian Defense Minister! Conflict was created by the Slovenians because Jansa was tried in Military Court (Court Marshal) on the OFFICIAL language in JNA-Serbo-Croatian! Question for you: who prosecutes spies in US Army and where? In what language?

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything, but OK...

The friction between JNA and Slovenia goes even more in the past: in 1982 a new Chief of General staff was appointed: a Croat Serb, admiral Branko Mamula. He tried to introduce some reforms in JNA. One of them was to put weapons and the equipment of the Territorial Defence (republics) units under the centralized, army care and command. As in any normal country, but, Slovenes started creating obstacles, and launched a smear campaign against him and the JNA and Yugoslav Defense Industry in 1986 in their press using unofficial “student” newspaper “Mladina” (Youth). The campaign was, more or less, laughable! The accused YU Army for exports of weapons to Africa and other countries (YU was 10the in the world in arms trade, at that time) as if that was something unusual and criminal. They conveniently forgot to mention Slovenian companies involved in that trade.

The question I would have, being currently in the Aerospace/Defense industry, would be did the companies independently contract with these African countries, or did they fill government contracts that the government then sold to other countries? In addition, wasn't Yugoslavia a Socialist country at that time with a centrally-directed economy?

So, the stage was set. Jansa was a spy, he openly admitted the fact, but, Slovenians decided that Army is guilty for contemporary law in Yugoslavia (Military Tribunal for such offenses committed by army staff!) and for using Serbo-Croatian language. The actual theft of documents from the Slovenian Army Headquarters and spying was irrelevant! At the end of the day, it was animosity against Belgrade and the Serbs. Simple.

That does seem reasonable. But if that is the case, wouldn't it be the logical and prudent thing to do to secede from the country, rather than deal with all of this ethnic strife?

After the Slovenian independence JNA remained in the barracks. Then, Slovenians cut off electricity, water and phone lines. So, there were no OFFENSIVE actions from the JNA! None at all! They were lost! Slovenian TA moved and surrounded every single JNA unity in their barracks. For the propaganda purposes they sent civilians to demonstrate at the gates of the JNA barracks and prevent movement of vehicles in front of the friendly Austrian/German TV crews! Army was thirsty and hungry! Soldiers were sick but couldn’t be taken to the local hospitals! Only one civilian was killed (accident) in front of the cameras when one JNA vehicle tried to leave the barracks in Ljubljana and push its way through the crowd (after the long negotiations and warnings) to get 2 sick soldiers out. And, one overzealous woman fell under the armored vehicle.

Well, the death of that woman was a tragedy, without a doubt, and obviously an accident.

However, the question I'd have is this: Slovenia declared independence, right?

If that is the case, Yugoslav military or paramilitary would have no right to be in that country (Slovenia) except with the permission of the government, right?

Were the Yugoslav military ordered to leave (and refused) first, or did they cut off electricity and water without first ordering the Yugoslav military to leave? (Unless you can show me otherwise, I suspect the first to be the case)

Army leadership was lost and confused: they knew what was happening but federal presidency (their Commander in Chief) was paralyzed. No orders, nothing. And, soldiers had become clay pigeons! JNA tried to feed the soldiers using SA 341 Gazelle helicopters. Slovenians shot one down over the center of Ljubljana. You should see the faces of those murderous bastards gloating over the wreckage of the chopper and the burned bodies of the pilots (SLOVENIANS!!!) mixed with loafs of BREAD scattered on the street! Does Mogadishu and Black Hawk Down come to your mind!

No, Mogadishu does not come to mind. Slovenia had declared independence from Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav troops in their barracks were foreign troops that were violating Slovenian sovereignty. If the helicopter refused to land or to turn around, it is perfectly within their rights to shoot it down.

We could go on with this, but the bottom line is this: if the assertion is that Slovenia was right in declaring their independence, then they were right in each of the actions described. If, on the other hand, they were wrong in declaring their independence, they were wrong to take any actions at all. This is a POV issue...and the POV spins the independent facts and assertions of the story. The story's author obviously did not believe that Slovenia's secession was legitimate. OK, fine. If that is the case, he has the right to his POV. But the story is told in such a way that the facts are clouded by that POV.

Again, you'll have to show me where Slovenia declaring its independence is a violation of International Law. If you can do so, I will re-evaluate my POV. If not, then I'm afraid that I can't see where they did anything wrong. Sorry, FRiend.

[Lion in Winter]

Bosnian muslims ... BAD Serbians who gave in to to satan and became muslims long long ago!!

[markomalley]

But, anyway, this is SUCH a derailment of this thread that it isn't funny. I am on your side -- I think that war crimes were committed by Slick Willie and his toy soldier Wesley in regards to the attack on Yugoslavia in 1999.

I agree: Christian=good, muzzie=bad.

So why are you wanting to start a fight with me that really has little to do with the subject at hand?

[markomalley]

See post 45

[Lion in Winter]

When will Croatia compensate the Serbian people they forced out from their homes and lands at the point of a gun in Krajina?????

Croatians have TAKEN control of ALL Serbian property and as I read just the other day, have never paid a dime for any of it!!

[JMS]

Slovenia could have seceded under the Yugoslavian Constitution at the time but did not have the legal right to secede unilaterally from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. As regards recognition by any outside country, this contravened the Helsinki convention. From the Slovene perspective I'm sure that they don't see it this way so I agree with you re. POV. Still, because there was a mechanism for leaving the FRY, unilateral secession and then declaring Yugoslav troops occupiers is more a political argument than a legal one.

[markomalley]

Slovenia could have seceded under the Yugoslavian Constitution at the time but did not have the legal right to secede unilaterally from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

I don't know the internal laws of Yugoslavia that were in place in 1991.

As regards recognition by any outside country, this contravened the Helsinki convention.

I did a quick scan of the Helsinki Convention. It said the following:

IV. Territorial integrity of States

The participating States will respect the territorial integrity of each of the participating States.

Accordingly, they will refrain from any action inconsistent with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations against the territorial integrity, political independence or the unity of any participating State, and in particular from any such action constituting a threat or use of force.

The participating States will likewise refrain from making each other's territory the object of military occupation or other direct or indirect measures of force in contravention of international law, or the object of acquisition by means of such measures or the threat of them. No such occupation or acquisition will be recognized as legal.

and

VI. Non-intervention in internal affairs

The participating States will refrain from any intervention, direct or indirect, individual or collective, in the internal or external affairs falling within the domestic jurisdiction of another participating State, regardless of their mutual relations.

They will accordingly refrain from any form of armed intervention or threat of such intervention against another participating State.

They will likewise in all circumstances refrain from any other act of military, or of political, economic or other coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by another participating State of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.

Accordingly, they will, inter alia, refrain from direct or indirect assistance to terrorist activities, or to subversive or other activities directed towards the violent overthrow of the regime of another participating State.

The problem is that this convention was looking, not at a civil war, but at invasions from one state to another. Nowhere in the convention does it deal with issues of succession, civil war, or other internal strife (with the exception of the portion of the document dealing with each state's requirement to respect the human rights of its own citizens -- but that is a separate issue altogether.

So, again, if one state recognizes the legitimacy of another state (like Britain did with Slovenia), its assistance to Slovenia is not interfering in the internal affairs of a third state (Yugoslavia), even though that third state does not recognize the legitimacy of the second state.

Sort of like the situation with Turkish Cyprus, if you ask me...

Of course, Slovenia was admitted to the OSCE in 1992, so the point would be moot after a short period of time.

Having said this, though, you are correct in your assessment that it was more of a political issue than a legal one. But it's all politics, though, isn't it?

[zagor-te-nej]

Excluding some 30,000 Albanians living in the south-east, the Jews who emigrated in earlier times from Spain, a few Osmanli Turks, the merchants, officials. and Austrian troops, the rest of the population (about 98 per cent) belong to the southern Slavonic people, the Serbs. Although one in race, the people form in religious beliefs three sharply separated divisions: the Mohammedans, about 550,000 persons (35 per cent), Greek Schismatics, about 674,000 persons (43 per cent), and Catholics, about 334,000 persons (21.3 per cent).

Catholic Encyclopedia, 1910

[markomalley]

That's good for 1910.

Let's look at a little more recent numbers:

Ethnic groups: Serb 37.1%, Bosniak 48%, Croat 14.3%, other 0.6% (2000)

Religions: Muslim 40%, Orthodox 31%, Roman Catholic 15%, other 14%

Background: Bosnia and Herzegovina's declaration of sovereignty in October 1991, was followed by a declaration of independence from the former Yugoslavia on 3 March 1992 after a referendum boycotted by ethnic Serbs. The Bosnian Serbs - supported by neighboring Serbia and Montenegro - responded with armed resistance aimed at partitioning the republic along ethnic lines and joining Serb-held areas to form a "Greater Serbia." In March 1994, Bosniaks and Croats reduced the number of warring factions from three to two by signing an agreement creating a joint Bosniak/Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. On 21 November 1995, in Dayton, Ohio, the warring parties initialed a peace agreement that brought to a halt three years of interethnic civil strife (the final agreement was signed in Paris on 14 December 1995). The Dayton Peace Accords retained Bosnia and Herzegovina's international boundaries and created a joint multi-ethnic and democratic government charged with conducting foreign, diplomatic, and fiscal policy. Also recognized was a second tier of government comprised of two entities roughly equal in size: the Bosniak/Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Bosnian Serb-led Republika Srpska (RS). The Federation and RS governments were charged with overseeing most government functions. The Office of the High Representative (OHR) was established to oversee the implementation of the civilian aspects of the agreement. In 1995-96, a NATO-led international peacekeeping force (IFOR) of 60,000 troops served in Bosnia to implement and monitor the military aspects of the agreement. IFOR was succeeded by a smaller, NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) whose mission was to deter renewed hostilities. European Union peacekeeping troops (EUFOR) replaced SFOR in December 2004; their mission is to maintain peace and stability throughout the country.

Source: CIA World Fact Book

 

Now if you'd like to speak to the history, we can talk about the history. Would you like to talk about the Byzantine-era history, the time of an independent kingdom of Bosnia, the Ottoman ages, the decades under Austria-Hungary, or what?

[eleni121]

When were the hyenas let loose in Brussels? Why are hyenas allowed to play judges in Brussels?

Have the Euroweenies gone mad...again?

[ma bell]

GAB-1955 wrote: I was listening to broadcasts from Radio Yugoslavia on the shortwave

So, govorim srpski? Do you speak Serbian, how well do you speak? Who won the world series back in 1999?

Let us read what you can say (errr..write). Repeat all what I wrote in these 3 paragraphs here in Serbian, please? hvala (from you), Nema ne cemu!

ps...back in the day (1999), Radio YU...well, another time....

[ma bell]

you knew people/ US soldiers I take it, that were deployed there... May I ask where were they deployed, i.e which FOB/Base? If they were ARNG, forget it, they are horrible units to be with/attached to. What did they tell ya? BTW, I have been to Kosovo numeruous times. Your National Guard buddies must have been buddy buddy with thoes KLAers they worked with.

[FormerLib]

For those of us in the US, we can only think how these legal precedents will play out when Aztlan makes it move.

Will the people of these United States stand in the same docket where the Serbs stand today and answer for Manifest Destiny or removing Saddam from Iraq?

The Serbs may not have always conducted themselves as we would prefer our friends to do, but they have always been at war with our enemies.

[FormerLib]

The Croatians are cutting their own throats as they must now welcome in the Muhammedans to do the work that the Serbs, now scattered to the winds, used to do.

It is justice, but in a perverse way.

[Banat]

What I don't buy is that the Serbs were innocent victims of aggression.

They weren't? Not even, say, Militsa Rakich, the 3-year-old Belgrader killed by a NATO cluster bomb while on the potty?

However, Serbia, like the other powers, have to realize and admit they were fighting a religious and civil war and they were breaking the laws of land warfare in doing so.

Maybe. But since there were no "innocent parties" in the Balkans, why was Serbia singled out for punishment? Serbia did not even fight in Bosnia and Croatia. The Yugoslav Army had no personell in either country following the break-up. The YA left Croatia in 1991, and Bosnia in early 1992.

Punishing Radic and Milosevic, and punishing the Croat and Bosnian commanders who committed war crimes, is the right thing.

I agree, but who's Radic?

Some Serbian nationalists haven't admitted there was a war crime committed at Srebrenica even after bodies have been dug up.

All 8,000 or so bodies have been dug up? I'll settle for 4,000. What, not even 4,000? OK, 2,000. Huh? Don't tell me they still haven't found even a quarter of them! Could it be because there was no genocide in Srebrenitsa?

Until Serbia faces reality, no one is going to support them in anything. That's sad.

What reality? Facing up to a fictional genocide, such as Srebrenitsa? What is sad is the policy of double standards and the exclusion of any possibility that a) Serbs, too, were victims and that b) most of what you know about Bosnia probably has no basis in reality

I bet you had no idea that during a battle in the central Bosnian town of Vitez, for example, the local Vitez detachment of the HVO (Bosnian Croat Forces) were securing the right flank of a Bosnian Serb Army unit, since the latter were slightly short on troops and needed to retreat? [Globus, Croatian weekly magazine, 5 Dec 2005.]

Or that in the Bosnian northwest, the Tsazin Muslims (led by Fikret Abdich) almost exclusively sided with the BSA against other Muslims. The first mistake a newbie to the Wars of Yugoslav Succession makes is pigeonholing the conflict. You cannot simplify it by framing it into a "Serb-Croat-Muslim" context. Alliances and interests on the ground often disregarded the ethnic boundaries. But telling it like it was would've been a hard sell - hence the watering down for the gullible masses who cannot process anything involving more than 3 actors and taking longer than 10 seconds to explain.

Enter Rudder & Finn, Hill & Knowlton and others. The Croats and Muslims paid up; the Serbs did not. This is what for all intents and purposes determined both the fate of the Serbs and the official history of the region.

So, what YOU know is more likely than not based on the PR firms' version of the War.

[F-117A]

Don't forget how deeply involved Weasley Clark was in this disastrous venture.

It's late, but I'll share some of my thoughts on Weasley in Bosnia tomorrow.

[DTA]

>>>>>>>Now if the Slovenes attacked the Yugoslav border guards and cut off electricity, heat, and water to the barracks, that is entirely justifiable after Slovenia seceeded from Yugoslavia.<<<<<<<

Pardon my slovenscino, this is utter bull. According to Charter of Helsinki and Charter of Paris, no violent redrawing of European borders is allowed.

Secessionist Slovenia has breached the key legal framework of European security and set the Balkan dominoes in motion.

[Banat]

The Yugoslav Army tried to enter Slovenia in an effort to put down the secession.

Not quite. The YA was a federal institution, therefore, the troops had been stationed in all six republics since the end of WWII. The reinforcements were sent in only after the TO (Territorial Defence; a Yugoslav equivalent of the U.S. National Guard structure) had attacked the barracks and taken over the external borders of Yugoslavia (the Yugoslav-Italian & the YU-Austrian stretch of the border in the Socialist Republic of Slovenia). The YA acted in accordance with the Yugoslav Constitution ("preservation of the territorial integrity").

The YA was at the disposal of the Federal Executive Council, which, through the Supreme Command (consisting of representatives from all 6 republics), commanded the troops.