Balkans War – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Slobodan Milosevic Not Innocent – Still, Serbia’s War Crimes Deniers Get Field Day

September 7, 2016 by inavukic 22 Comments

Former Serbian president
Slobodan Milosevic
is led into the courtroom
of the UN War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague 2002
PHOTO : JERRY LAMPEN/AFP/Getty Images

Dubbed “the butcher of the Balkans”, Serbia’s late Slobodan Milosevic almost rose from the grave with a bright halo glowing above his head last month when a handful of apparent Serb war crimes and Slobodan Milosevic apologists briefly succeeded in convincing much of the unsuspecting world that The UN crimes tribunal in the Hague had acquitted/exonerated him of war crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina during 1990’s as part of joint criminal enterprise. Andy Wilcoxson and Neil Clark dropped into the world’s public arena a hotter than burning claim that sent members of Serbia’s leadership dancing in deliriums of denial and pathetic disregard for victims of horrible crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina during 1990’s and false interpretation of justice – oblivious to truth and reality.

Neil Clark served the world (via RT) the evidently calculating sensational claim that the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, who died 2006 in The Hague cells, was “exonerated… for war crimes committed in the Bosnia war …”. Clark appears to have let himself loose and reckless, saying: “The ICTY’s conclusion, that one of the most demonized figures of the modern era was innocent of the most heinous crimes he was accused of, really should have made headlines across the world. But it hasn‘t. Even the ICTY buried it, deep in its 2,590 page verdict in the trial of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic who was convicted in March of genocide (at Srebrenica), war crimes and crimes against humanity…There was no official announcement or press conference regarding Milosevic‘s exoneration. We’ve got journalist and researcher Andy Wilcoxson to thank for flagging it up for us…”

Well, hello Mr Clark – Karadzic’s trial was not Milosevic’s trial and Milosevic was not tried – he went on and died in prison before the evidence against him could actually be tested in the court of law.

Ah, Andy Wilcoxon. Well, he wrote on a pro Slobodan Milosevic website in July 2016 analysing snippets of the ICTY judgment against Radovan Karadzic as if they were snippets from a trial against Milosevic where adequate or applicable evidence against Milosevic was tested! Wilcoxon in essence pronounced Milosevic innocent of war crimes by addressing a handful of paragraphs in the 2,615-page ICTY judgment against Karadzic. How calculating and cruel can some articles appear!

Radovan Karadzic
40 year prison sentence
for war crimes in
Bosnia and Herzegovina against
Croats and Bosniaks
Photo: AP

So, it was more than four months from the time the ICTY in the Hague delivered 24 March its judgment against Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and sentenced him to 40 years imprisonment for war crimes committed against Bosnian Muslims and Croats during 1990’s war, which saw ethnic cleansing and genocide create the so-called ethnically clean Serb Republic within Bosnia and Herzegovina, that journalists Neil Clark and Andy Wilcoxson decide to interpret the ICTY Judgment against Karadzic as a finding of Slobodan Milosevic’s innocence and got the world thinking that Milosevic has in The Hague trial been found innocent of war crimes in Bosnia & Herzegovina. The full judgment does have 2, 615 pages (or 2,590 – depending on format at hand) and it takes time to digest that but one cannot but suspect that such articles purporting to confirm Milosevic’s innocence in Bosnia and Herzegovina were what “the doctor ordered” and to be used to feed Serbia’s deluded genocide denial, denial of any guilt in the war they started and played a critical role of aggression in it, regardless of whether that aggression was physical or verbal or political.

Truly disturbing stuff!

Wilcoxon in his article enumerates a selection of paragraphs from the Karadzic judgment that he says evidences Milosevic’s innocence but apparently fails to actually quote those paragraphs in full or link them to the actual ICTY Judgment (for the reader to access easily)! One of these paragraphs Wilcoxson heavily relies for his preposterous claim is paragraph 3460 and that one says:

“With regard to the evidence presented in this case (Karadzic case) in relation to Slobodan Milosevic and his membership in the JCE (Joint Criminal Enterprise), the Chamber recalls that he shared and endorsed the political objective of the Accused and the Bosnian Serb leadership to preserve Yugoslavia and to prevent the separation or independence of BiH and co-operated closely with the Accused during this time. The Chamber also recalls that Milosevic provided assistance in the form of personnel, provisions, and arms to the Bosnian Serbs during the conflict. However, based on the evidence before the Chamber regarding the diverging interests that emerged between the Bosnian Serb and Serbian leaderships during the conflict and in particular, Milosevic’s repeated criticism and disapproval of the policies and decisions made by the Accused and the Bosnian Serb leadership, the Chamber is not satisfied that there was sufficient evidence presented in this case to find that Slobodan Milosevic agreed with the common plan.” (Full Radovan Karadzic Judgment ICTY pdf here)

So, no sufficient evidence against Milosevic in Karadzic’s trial equals Milosevic’s innocence of the crimes as far as one can deduce from Neill and Wilcoxson’s incredulous claims. Wilcoxson enumerates several other paragraphs from the Karadzic judgment that mainly address meetings in Belgrade or in Pale (administrative centre of Serbian Republic then created by Serb’s as ethnically pure entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina) and tend to suggest Milosevic’s certain disagreement with the politics of Bosnian Serb leaders, but to me this is not evidence of Milosevic’s innocence. Indeed, Milosevic’s attitudes reportedly expressed at meetings do not necessarily automatically follow that he is innocent of the war crimes covered in Karadzic’s trial.

(L) Ivica Dacic, Serbian foreign minister
(R) Aleksandar Vulin, Serbian labour, employment minister
Photo: Tanjug/Nenad Milosevic

What’s even more disturbing is that most of Serbia’s media and some outside it promoted this deception for days, leaving that lie permanently available in the public domain. What’s further distressing and obscene is the fact that Serbia’s leadership via foreign minister Ivica Dacic (former member of Milosevic’s ultra-nationalist party) and labour and employment minister Aleksandar Vulin “have been expressing triumphant satisfaction for days about claims (Clark and Wilcoxson) that the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia’s verdict convicting former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic also said that former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic wasn’t guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Dacic has said that the Karadzic verdict also shows that Serbia itself was innocent of wartime crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina. But some Serbian analysts suggest that they are simply using these claims of Milosevic’s innocence in an attempt to rehabilitate the former leader’s policies and their own role in the wars of the 1990s, with which the country has never truly come to terms…”

Poor, wretched soul, Dacic, who accused the West of keeping quiet about Milosevic’s innocence because, if it spoke about the findings in ICTY Karadzic case about Milosevic’s innocence, then the West would tear down the justification for its politics towards Serbia! This man is truly mad! It doesn’t seem to cross his mind that Karadzic’s case was not Milosevic’s case and that the case did not pronounce Milosevic innocent nor would it have been just to do so (as all evidence tested was that to serve indictment against Karadzic).

An army of world’s top psychiatrists couldn’t heal this lot in Serbia from the devastating, dangerous delusions that include persistent and false sense of victimhood and denials of Serbia’s role in war crimes during 1990’s in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

But, wouldn’t you know it – Russian Pravda swiftly published a piece after Clark’s article saying that “International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague quietly acknowledged the innocence of former president of Serbia and Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic and went on with an interview with the French/ Russian journalist Dimitri de Koshko, another Milosevic apologist it seems, who went on to say: “Today, we are talking about the trial in The Hague that has seen its legal ending only now. Milosevic was posthumously and very quietly acquitted by the Tribunal.”

Unbelievable garbage! Nobody can be acquitted or found not guilty via a trial held against someone else!

The Tribunal did not acquit Milosevic. Trial against Milosevic stopped when he died. Did not continue! Did not finish. Perhaps Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina should join forces and seek to have it finished posthumously.

The indisputable facts are that Slobodan Milosevic presided over and oversaw the worst atrocities committed against humanity since WWII on European soil. Serbia’s soldiers as they entered Croatia’s Vukovar in 1991 with guns, knives, bombs, tanks sang: “Slobo, Slobo (meaning Slobodan Milosevic) bring us some salad, there’ll be meat – we’ll slaughter the Croats”; thousands of Bosniak men and boys slaughtered in Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina under the banner of Serb superiority and land theft – to just mention the very tip of the horrendous iceberg of war crimes committed.

Has Milosevic been exonerated of war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina? Has he been found or declared innocent? Heck no – not by a court of law; just by handful of journalists twisting and bending facts about the most serious matter of human existence – crime – to suit a political agenda that has nothing to do with justice. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

US based attorney Luka Misetic, who has significant experience in ICTY trials and appeals for war crimes recently tweeted the following on the matter (click on image to enlarge):

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Aleksandar Vulin, Andy Wilcoxon, Balkans War, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosniaks, Croatia, Croats, genocide, ICTY, International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, Ivica Dacic, Muslims, Neil Clark, Radovan Karadzic, Serbia, Serbs, Slobodan Milosevic, Slobodan Milosevic not exonerated of war crimes, Srebrenica, Vukovar, war crimes

Insidious Peddling of the Myth of Persecution of Serbs

December 16, 2012 by inavukic 58 Comments

Sarajevo Markale Market victims/ Photo: www.srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com

Sarajevo Markale Market victims/ Photo: http://www.srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com

On 7 December 2012 the New York Times’ (NYT) Opinion section published an article by David Harland titled “ Selective Justice for the Balkans” in which Harland wants the public to think that the Serb victims of the 1990’s war in the former Yugoslavia are unfairly treated, ignored by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague because the ICTY prefers the “friends of the West”. This is the same David Harland who was behind the myth that “ it was unclear who fired the shells” at Sarajevo Markale 2 market on 28 August 1995 which resulted in a massacre of civilians.
There was no doubt that Serbs fired the shells but Harland thought it best not to point the finger at Serbs in order to avoid Serbs being alerted to a possible NATO Strike (!).
(The first Markale Massacre occurred on February 5 1994 when 68 people were killed and 144 wounded in Sarajevo. The second Markale Massacre occurred on August 28, 1995 when a mortar shell killed 37 and wounded 90 people.)
In his “Selective Justice for the Balkans” Harland is at it again!
Creating and/or peddling another myth to protect the Serbs who waged a horrid aggression in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
He says: “Altogether, almost all of the West’s friends have been acquitted; almost all of the Serbs have been found guilty. These results do not reflect the balance of crimes committed on the ground”.

If anyone is selective it is David Harland. That is what his article in New York Times represents.

Friedrich Nietzsche once said: “Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torment of man”. The Italian proverb “live in hope and die in despair” would lead us to believe that while we happily may live in hope that things will change for the better, unless we actively contribute to realising our hopes, we may die in despair, indeed.

For just over one week I have lived in hope that New York Times would publish my response to David Harland’s article. This was not to be and there was no way I was going to die in despair – tormented by Harland’s crafty bias that purports to create or feed the insidious myth of persecution of Serbs. So I’m publishing here my reaction sent to NYT.

The write-up by David Harland, entitled “Selective Justice for the Balkans”, which resembles more a cheap Serb propaganda flyer than an article, published New York Times OP-ED on 7 December 2012 is truly disturbing especially as Mr Harland is the executive director of Center for Humanitarian Dialogue. A dialogue requires two sides and Mr Harland failed miserably in presenting many facts that are pertinent to his story.
He omits to point out who started the war in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. He says not a single word who, how and why destroyed Vukovar, ethnically cleansed it of non-Serb population and murdered hundreds of innocent people on Ovcara in 1991. He says not a word of mass murders of Croatians in Skabrnje in 1991 days after Vukovar massacres. He mentions not a word about who ethnically cleansed one third of Croatia and occupied it, he mentions not a single word of the fact that by end of 1993 there were 1 Million displaced and refugee Croatians and Muslims in Croatia – it is therefore not true that “more Serbs were ethnically cleansed than any other community” in that war. He says not a word about who killed civilians in Sarajevo Market from a nearby hill in August 1995. He says not a word about Srebrenica genocide in 1995. But he talks about living in “a town in Bosnia where the decapitated heads of captured Muslims were displayed in the marketplace” – he does not say which town nor who put the heads there, nor how he knows the decapitated heads were of Muslims. He talks of displaced Serbs from Croatia and that someone will have to answer for that. Perhaps Mr Harland should investigate records in Belgrade, where he may find that in 1995 Croatian Serbs were ordered to evacuate in 1995. Perhaps he may find that the reason why so many Serbs who fled Croatia then still remain displaced not because of what Croatian authorities have done or omitted to do, but because the very displaced persons are burdened by their own guilty conscience of the horror they put the Croatians and non-Serbs through before August 1995, when Operation Storm liberated the Serb occupied and ethnically cleansed Krajina.
Mr Harland says that, given the number of crimes committed during that war, by all sides, it’s not just that mainly Serbs have been convicted of war crimes. He goes as far as saying that “these results do not reflect the balance of crimes committed on the ground”. He omits to inform that crimes committed or suspected of having been committed by individuals have been and are still being processed in courts in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. These though, are a different “breed” of war crimes than those that have reached the corridors of ICTY. Those that are processed by the ICTY fall into a category that is massive and that often took the form of the so-called joint criminal enterprise, genocide…
“Convicting only Serbs simply doesn’t make sense in terms of justice, in terms of reality, or in terms of politics”, says Mr Harland. Convictions in criminal courts only deal with justice and reality, or evidence. And the evidence so far assessed in ICTY has reflected the reality that was: Serb aggression – most brutal at that. It is only logical that there will be more Serbs than any other ethnic group represented in convictions dealing with that war.
“The Croatian leaders connived in the carve-up of Yugoslavia, and contributed mightily to the horrors on Bosnia and Herzegovina,” claims Mr Harland in his cheap pamphlet (as Croatian lawyer and journalist Zvonimir Hodak of www.dnevno.hr called Mr Harland’s article). Evidence and corroboration does not cross Harland’s mind!

Perhaps Mr Harland considers that the Croatian democratic referendum in 1991 to secede from Communist Yugoslavia was a conniving plan to carve up Yugoslavia?

Mr Harland seems to know a great deal (?). So, given that, does he know that the Serbian Republic entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina was created with crimes, on genocide and ethnic cleansing? One wonders why Mr Harland cares so little and so selectively about all the victims of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Croatia. One possible reason that springs to mind is that he wishes to perpetuate the preposterous idea that it was the Serbs who were persecuted. He feeds into the Serbs’ persecution complex so as to validate it! What other motive could explain his utterly outrageous assertion that Serbs were the ethnic group that was ethnically cleansed the most, in that conflict. Is it persecution when one is justly convicted of crimes one has committed? Not in my book, but in Mr Harland’s or Serbia’s book that seems to be the case.
Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps.(Syd)

P.S.
New York Times did publish a Letter to the Editor regarding Harland’s article on 11 December 2012. The regretful thing is that Letters to the Editor can only be up to 150 words long and this is a miserable rule which in no way contributes to a healthy balance in journalism.

In “Selective Justice for the Balkans” David Harland claims that recent acquittals of Croatian and Kosovar defendants accused of war crimes against Serb civilians in front of the U.N. war crimes tribunal demonstrate bias in favor of West’s “friends.” But he misses the point of the tribunal, which is not to deliver justice for past wrongs equally for “all sides,” fostering reconciliation, but to carefully measure each case on its own merits. The case against Croatian generals rested on a technical reading of the legally allowed distance between legitimate targets and civilian objects; the case against Kosovar defendants collapsed due to poor witness protection and lack of clear evidence. We should judge the work of the tribunal by its legal expertise, not by the political outcomes we desire.
Jelena Subotic, Atlanta
The author is assistant professor of political science at Georgia State University and author of “Hijacked Justice: Dealing with the Past in the Balkans.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Balkans War, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, David Harland, ethnic cleansing, ICTY, Jelena Subotic, New York Times, Serbia, war crimes, Zvonimir Hodak

Human Rights Easy Street in the UK

May 8, 2012 by inavukic 11 Comments

Mass grave Vukovar – unearthed 1998

Milan Sarcevic, a Serbian, is accused of taking part in the 1991 Vukovar massacre, one of the worst atrocities of the Balkans war, when up to 300 wounded Croats were beaten, executed and buried in a mass grave.

The 60-year-old first came to Britain more than a decade ago and, when refused asylum, returned to Croatia in September 2002.

Having put in another asylum claim, he returned to Britain in 2003 and his case was neglected for nearly eight years, during which time his family had settled in the United Kingdom.

He initially admitted being a Serb fighter in Croatia, later claiming he was unaware of the massacre.

But now, Daily Mail reports, Milan Sarcevic has been allowed to stay in Britain because throwing him out would violate his human rights; i.e. right to family life.

“The Home Office refused his application in February last year and accused him of taking a ‘direct role in massacre of the Croatian prisoners’.

Before an immigration appeal judge he ditched his earlier story and claimed he did not know about the massacre until ten years later and that he ‘didn’t fire his gun’ during the battle for Vukovar.

The judge ruled evidence of his involvement was ‘not conclusive’ and did not warrant breaching his family rights under Article 8, saying there was evidence of his ‘strong family life’.

The judge added: ‘At best, there is a possibility that the appellant may have participated but that is not enough to . . . permit the serious interference that would result in the appellant being removed to his family life and that of those around him.’

Sarcevic’s wife has also been given the right to stay in Britain, because she has depression and is seen as a ‘suicide risk’ if returned to Croatia.

Tory MP Andrew Percy said: ‘It’s totally wrong that this man has had the opportunity to have two goes at the asylum system.

‘It’s inexplicable. It’s nonsense to use this Article 8 right to family life. He can easily go back to Serbia and enjoy a family life there.’”

Article 8 of the relevant Human Rights Act:

Right to respect for private and family life

Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

The learned Judge in this case, in London, seems to have ruled on Sarcevic’s rights to a family life with bias and the ruling is unsafe, in my opinion. Clearly he disregarded the point from above Cl.2. which refers to “the protection of morals”, at least. That is, given that the Judge himself admitted to the possibility of Sarcevic having participated in the heinous war crime of massacre at Ovcara, Vukovar, the minimum standard expected from a court is that its ruling does not simply and easily erase even the possibility of Sarcevic having committed war crimes. There is no protection of morality here when the possibility of Sarcevic having participated in massacres exists. Sarcevic had reportedly told the court that he had “no blood on his hands …”. Instead of relying seemingly overwhemingly on Sarcevic’s testimony, the Judge should have called for further investigations into the matter before making his ruling on Sarcevic’s right to family life in Britain. This more so as the Home Office in UK was the authority that accused Sarcevic of taking a direct role in the Ovcara massacre in 1991. One would expect that the Home Office would not have trumped up the accusations just for fun or political games.

Certainly, there is absolutely no good morality protected by the Judge’s ruling, here. It’s more the case of shaky or suspect morality being protected.

If Sarcevic participated in Vukovar massacre 1991 he is one lucky man on Human Rights Easy Street: The UK court believed his words 100% even though it had no 100% backing for that out of his factual personal history.

This truly brings home how very vulnerable this shallow and wrong Human Rights ruling leaves the British citizens (and those of any other ‘Western’ country) amidst the torrents of asylum seekers they’re faced with every day. No one would want to deny human rights to anyone but there must be a standard of acceptable proof that an individual’s application for asylum is genuine and not an escape from prosecution for possible war crime of massacre, and the like. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)