Kosovo and human rights

THE CONSEQUENCES OF KOSOVO INDEPENDENCE

SCAPEGOAT R.I.P.

TWO HUNDRED YEARS LATER

IF KOSOVO WHY NOT IRAQ

ANNIVERSARY OF SHAME

WAR ON TERRORISM SKIPPED THE KLA

WE CREATED A MONSTER

NATO'S BALKAN BLUNDER

JUSTICE OR POLITICS AT THE HAGUE

KOSOVO AND HUMAN RIGHTS

ADDRESS TO THE PARLIAMENT COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

THE TRAGIC BLUNDER IN KOSOVO

CONGRESSIONAL HEARING

A CRIME AGAINST THE TRUTH

NATO's BRUTE FORCE AN IMBECILIC POLICY

NEW RULES

EX-DIPLOMAT SPEAKS OUT AGAINST THE WAR

NATO BOMBING - RETURN TO BARBARISM

EX-DIPLOMAT RAILS AGAINST BALKAN WAR

KOSOVO AND HUMAN RIGHTS (part 2)

Some of the reason for this extraordinary media submissiveness can be explained by the secretive nature of the NATO decision making process and an all too willingness to assume that everything that NATO spokespeople like Jamie Shea told them, was the truth. As one critic has suggested, the military approach to media relations can be summed up by the slogan,” tell them nothing until its over and then tell them who won.” Nevertheless, I suspect the paramount reason explaining the reluctance of the media to question NATO aggression was because of a natural hesitancy to challenge a war that allegedly was being fought for humanitarian reasons.

Herein lies the danger of the new human rights dogma. In an age of political correctness there are few that are prepared to challenge the appropriateness of bombing people- especially if the bombing is for humanitarian purposes. The Progressive Conservative defense critic in the Canadian House of Commons on the opening day of the attack against Yugoslavia dared to question the validity of the bombing only to have his leader, Joe Clark, repudiate him the following day. Later the unfortunate man was removed as the defense critic; so much for even daring to question a war fought for the safeguarding of human rights! Needless to say there was no debate in the Canadian Parliament about the NATO decision to send Canadian armed forces to war. The Government was not questioned about the legality of the NATO attack or the appropriateness of taking such action without UN approval.

Perhaps the most perplexing question about the NATO action against Yugoslavia is why? Why the deep concern about the natural attempts by Serbia to suppress an armed rebellion that was rapidly developing into a full-scale civil war? There were many more appropriate targets if the concern was truly about human rights violations.

It is estimated that over three million Kurds have been dispossessed and over 30,000 killed by Turkish military forces. This is a human rights issue that makes Kosovo appear rather inconsequential in comparison. Our NATO leaders seem unconcerned about the human rights of the Kurds. What about East Timor where for almost 25 years the human rights of the East Timorese were being violated by President Suharto’s military forces using British aircraft and weapons. It is estimated that the Indonesian forces killed 200,000 East Timorese before finally last year a peaceful settlement was negotiated.

Why so little concern about the plight of the Iraqi children suffering as a result of the American and British led sanctions against that country? Two successive United Nations assistants under secretaries general have resigned in protest against the embargo. One of these, Hans von Sponeck, in addressing a public meeting this month in London stated that half a million children have died as a direct result of the sanctions and one out of every five children in Iraq go hungry. Nobody seems to care.

We have witnessed the reaction of our Western democratic leaders to the frightful humanitarian tragedy in Sierra Leone. Thousands killed and many more maimed by the drug crazed youths of the rebel army. There has been no rush to prevent human rights abuses in Sierra Leone.

Indeed it was the United States Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, who led a Western imposed peace settlement in that ravaged country that called for the sharing of power with the rebel leader, Foday Sankoh, the man chiefly responsible for the carnage. This is the same Madeline Albright who when asked if she thought the sanctions against Iraq were worth the lives of so many Iraqi children replied in the affirmative.

And so it goes, the list is a long one. Obviously the Western democratic leaders are selective about their human rights concerns. There was no suggestion of intervention in Chechnya another example of human rights violations on a scale that made Kosovo look like a picnic.

Canada’s Foreign Minister, Lloyd Axworthy would in all likelihood answer to this charge of inconsistency as he did in a speech last February at the New York University School of Law by saying, “for those who criticize humanitarian intervention on the grounds that it is inconsistently employed, I would ask: if the international community cannot intervene everywhere, does that mean we must not intervene anywhere?”

Surely this is too convenient and facile an answer. If there is to be any sense at all in the structure of international security there must be some degree of consistency and criteria to determine when intervention in a sovereign state is warranted. What exactly are the new ground rules for humanitarian intervention? These, to my knowledge, have never been spelled out except in the vaguest of terms. The human security agenda deals in abstractions and generalities. It sounds great but so far has fallen far short of becoming a realistic formula for international action.

In contrast, we do know what the rules are now. The founders of the United Nations established them. They demand Security Council authority before armed intervention can be taken against a sovereign state. If Security Council authority is blocked by the veto power of one of the great powers then it is still possible to go to the General Assembly where a two-thirds vote would be sufficient to permit intervention.

Mr. Axworthy, our Foreign Minister has complained that the Security Council does not always respond to the challenges posed by the new human security threats. I would suggest if he is referring to Kosovo then there might be more than arguable grounds for believing the Security Council would have every right to contest this intervention.

Nevertheless, the point is that NATO didn’t bother even approaching the Security Council before bombing Yugoslavia. Nor did our NATO leaders choose to approach the General Assembly of the United Nations for authorization. The bombing of Yugoslavia was an illegal act, contrary to every precept of international law and the Charter of the United Nations. Quite a part from all the other serious implications of the NATO strike against Yugoslavia the trampling on the United Nations Charter is perhaps the most serious.

Having totally ignored the United Nations Charter it is curious to find that our NATO leaders place so much reverence on some of the subsidiary organs of the UN. The International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda receive lavish praise from NATO leaders. So far every attempt by international lawyers to get the Tribunal in the Hague to consider charges against NATO leaders for the most serious crime on the UN books; namely waging war, has met with no success.

This begs the question of who are the real war criminals. During my period in Yugoslavia as the Canadian Ambassador I witnessed how time and time again it was interference from the Western powers that did little to bring a non-violent and diplomatic solution to the problems of Yugoslavia. On the contrary, Western involvement complicated an already complex problem and ensured that a peaceful settlement among the several parties became impossible. American and Western European policy driven by selfish domestic issues contributed directly to the bloodshed and violence that tore the Yugoslav Federation apart.

As Yugoslavia began to experience the first signs of disintegration the United States policy of indifference and later ambiguity encouraged the extremists on all sides and undermined the authority of the central government. I was in Belgrade when US Secretary of State, James Baker assured the Yugoslav Prime Minister, Anton Markovic, that if the Slovenes attempted to break away from the Federation by illegal means then the Yugoslav army could be used to prevent secession. A few days later this is what happened but the United States then quickly withdrew its support for unity. The West abandoned the many thousands of Yugoslavs of different ethnic or religious persuasion who believed in a united Yugoslavia. The playing field was left to the extremists and those who wished to separate.

Later, as many thousands of Bosnians marched for peace fearing the inevitable blood bath of civil war, a peace settlement seemed to have been reached through the skillful negotiations of the Portuguese Foreign Minister, Jose Cutileiro. The so-called, Lisbon Agreement, of March 1992 held out the last hope that the three religious groups in Bosnia might live peacefully together. It was not to be. The United States dispatched its Ambassador from Belgrade to Sarajevo, who encouraged the Muslim leader, Alija Izetbegovic to withdraw his signature from the agreement he had signed along with his Serbian and Croatian counterparts. This US intervention guaranteed civil war in Bosnia and the death and displacement of thousands of people.

After the fighting broke out in Bosnia it was the United States that undermined every subsequent peace initiative that might have brought an end to the killing. The Vance/Owen and later the Owen/Stoltenberg peace plans were both subverted by the Americans so that the fighting was prolonged. Moreover, it was the United States that violated the arms embargo by providing arms and training to the Bosnian Muslims and the Croats. It appeared that the United States was determined to pursue a policy that prevented a resolution of the conflict by other than violent means.

The Americans were not alone. Germany’s determination to reassert its dominance in the Balkans led it to encourage and support Slovene and Croatian independence. Chancellor Kohl’s insistence that Slovenia and Croatia be recognized as independent states was the death sentence for Yugoslavia. Sadly it was also the death sentence for many thousands of Serbs and Croats.

Ustashi terror

Given the horrors experienced by the Serbian minority in Croatia during the Ustashi terror of the Second World War it was a certainty that without some guarantees of their civil and human rights the Serbian minority would take up arms to prevent being cut off from their Serbian brothers in Serbia and Bosnia. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the West’s new found obsession with human rights no Western leader gave a moment’s consideration to the human rights of the Serbian minority that at that time made up 12% of the population.
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