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Hague Court Rejects Genocide Accusations in Balkans War
The Court fails to point out, despite abundant proof, that genocide was committed by American-led NATO forces. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) rejected the accusations of genocide by Croatia and Serbia but stressed their responsibility in the deaths of civilians during the war in the Balkans. The president of the high court of the UN, Peter Tomka, read the judgment in both cases. First, he noted that “Serbia did not commit genocide in Croatia during the war” in the Balkans. He repeated the same with respect to Croats and their Operation Storm, which was deployed by Zagreb in the summer of 1995, and in which the victims were Serbs and Croatian Serbs. The ICJ emphasized the “responsibility” of Belgrade and Zagreb, respectively, “for failing to prevent genocide“. Tomka said that in order to formalize an indictment for genocide it is necessary to find enough proof that “it was specifically intended to kill members of a group, either physically or psychologically” adding that “the court does not recognize enough evidence to show this.” “The Court finds conditions of genocide in some but not in all cases analyzed and presented in the case that pits Croatia and Serbia” in relation to the events that occurred between 1991 and 1995, during the war that broke the former Yugoslavia apart.” During sentencing, Tomka added that “Serbia can not be accused of genocide in the city of Vukovar since there was no such a State during that period.” The President of the ICJ referred “to the large number of killings committed” during that conflict, but said it could not provide an exact total, and urged collaboration between both parties for the identification and people who are still missing. “The former Yugoslavia was a socialist state established before the convention” on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Tomka said, adding that the incident “does not constitute a violation of the convention because it did not exist as a state before”. Croatia took its case to the ICJ in July 2, 1999, accussing the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia of having violated the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in their territory from 1991 and 1995. As a basis to justify the jurisdiction of the ICJ, Croatia invoked Article IX of the Convention of 1948, which, it claimed, Serbia was also a part of. In 2002, Serbia filed preliminary objections on jurisdiction and admissibility of the case, but in 2008 the Court had jurisdiction to pursue the complaint of Croatia against Serbia for genocide. Belgrade also accused Zagreb of violating the convention of 1948 during the execution of “Operation Storm” in 1995 during which it “murdered national and ethnic Serbs in Croatia, especially in Krajina”. Croatia stated in its 1999 complaint that the army of Yugoslavia, headed by Serbs and Belgrade orders, committed genocide in their attacks on Vokovar and Skabrnja in 1991. Serbia presented his case in 2010, claiming that Croatian forces committed genocide during the exodus of 200,000 Serbs fleeing the Croatian advance. It is believed that some 21,000 people were killed in Croatia during the four years of war in the former Yugoslavia. Some 13,000 of this total were Croats, according to historian Ivo Goldstein. Serbia and Croatia have normalized their relations since the end of the war in 1995. So if neither of the two parts committed genocide, who did it? It was NATO’s claims of genocide by Serbs which fueled the accussations by Croats, and those claims have been deemed false. NATO’s hugely successful anti-Serb propaganda In the 1990s helped create the myth that the Sebs were solely responsible for the killing of tens of thousands. “I think what NATO did by bombing Serbia actually precipitated the exodus of the Kosovo Albanians into Macedonia and Montenegro. I think the bombing did cause the ethnic cleansing. I’m not sticking up for the Serbs because I think they behaved badly and extremely stupidly by removing the autonomy of Kosovo, given them by Tito, in the first place. I think what we did made things very much worse and what we are now faced with is a sort of ethnic cleansing in reverse,” said Lord Peter Carrington, a former British Defence Secretary. “I think it’s a great mistake to intervene in a civil war. I don’t think Milosevic is any more a war criminal than President Tudjman of Croatia who ethnically cleansed 200,000 Serbs out of Kyrenia with the secret help of the CIA. Nobody kicked up a fuss about that. I think we are a little bit selective about our condemnation of ethnic cleansing, in Africa as well as in Europe,” added Carrington. “The goal in Kosovo was to limit Serbia’s geographic influence and to ignite a chain of events that would lead to Milosevic’s ouster. Those goals were achieved: Milosevic was forced from power in the fall of 2000, largely because of a chain of events stemming from that war,” explained Robert D. Kaplan. “General Wesley Clark, the former Nato commander and presidential hopeful, will testify next month at the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic under conditions of strict censorship and confidentiality imposed by the United States. Washington is believed to be fearful of potentially damaging revelations about its Balkan realpolitik during the 1990s and in the Bosnian War,” explained the London Times in 2003. “NATO’s obsession with its strategy of hope was tried once before in 1999, […] Read the rest below at the source link
Source: http://real-agenda.com/2015/02/04/hague-court-rejects-genocide-accusations-in-balkans-war/
