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.
Serbs should not accept a judgement against them, on the grounds of double standards and bias.
The court already rejected Serbia's claims against NATO saying it was not a UN country at the time, yet Serbia also was not a UN member during the Bosnian war, as it had been kicked out.
It also fails to account for attacks against Bosnian Serb civilians at the very beginning of the war by Muslims and Croats.
It did not even have or do an official census of Bosnia. It is not basing a judgement on the population make up of Bosnia, which doesn't show a genocide, but a landswap by three resident ethnic groups.
Census results, though not official, show that the Bosnian Muslims have the same percentage or more share of Bosnia's population after the war as before.
Serbia could then resign from the UN and other international organizations and throw out all the NGOs and western agents - saying they are only working to suck out all the money from the entire Serb population and giving them nothing but false promises.
Serbia should say that they agreed and implemented many UN orders, while the UN and the Muslims and Croats frequently disobeyed or got around the restrictions.
They need to ask why Croatia was freely able to send and station its soldiers in Bosnia during the entire war and that the soldiers did attack and ethnically cleanse Bosnian Serbs.
Yes, they are:
The Roma (singular Rom; sometimes Rroma, Rrom) or Romanies, sometimes called "Romany folk" in the United Kingdom, often referred to as gypsies or gipsies, are a diverse ethnic group who live primarily in Southern and Eastern Europe, Western Asia, Latin America, the United States and the Middle East. They are believed to have originated in the Punjab and Rajasthan regions of the Indian subcontinent. They began their migration to Europe and North Africa via the Iranian plateau around 1050.[27]
Most Roma speak one of several dialects of Romani[28], an Indo-Aryan language. They also speak the languages of the countries they live in. Some, like the Gitanos from Spain, have lost their knowledge of pure Romani, and speak patois languages like Caló.[29]
[...]
Polish Gypsies (http://www.photoagency.com.pl/cyganie.htm):
You gotta be kidding me. What massacre of "Krajina" Serbs? LMAO...shame on you Poljak...shame for spewing such garbage.
That's nice, but your links are garbage. I was there in person and to suggest that this was "the worst crime" that went down is pure crap. You don't even know your history enough to comment on the area....for instance, you use the term "Serbian Krajina", a completely made up entity without basis in history or fact. The Serbs got a raw deal in Kosovo, yes and the numbers attributed to them in BiH are inflated. But to pretend that they were the good guys is hilarious in its ignorance.
Did the Muslim mercenaries kill more Croat military than the Bosnian Muslim army? Did they kill more Croat civilians than the Bosnian Muslims?
Why isn't there any breakdown or separation of the casualties in this war-within-a-war from the main Bosnian war?
If you don't have any official answers, what is your estimates?
From what you've said, the Croats fought heavily against the Mujahadeen - significantly more than the Serbs did.
But on this issue, it's upsetting me that Komsic is considered representative of Bosnia's Croatians since only 2% gave him their votes...the Muslims voted him in.
This that you were "there in person" does not make you an objective witness, especially if you were on Croat/NATO/Muslim side. No more than Agim Ceku can serve as a witness. Did you meet Agim Ceku "there"?
You don't even know your history enough to comment on the area....
I followed this massacre day by day, using mass media which were in general hostile to the Serbs.
for instance, you use the term "Serbian Krajina", a completely made up entity without basis in history or fact.
Yeah sure, Serbian Krajina (pronounce Krayeenah) never existed, there was never Serbian Kosovo, all traces will be erased. Read my tagline Mr. Diocletian.
The Gypsies are genetically identifiable.
It's been over 11 years since the war ended - and about 13 exactly since the Croat-Muslim U.S. brokered peace deal which ended their fighting.
Don't you find it strange that there are no estimates to be found after all this time?
Poljak, I'll demolish you in any discussion on this topic so please spare yourself from embarassment and stop now.
There are estimates...try the hercegbosna.org site...I know Prpic had some stuff up there.
The same "Massacre of Krajina Serbs" where the Canadians were given medals for killing 27 Croats :
... Five years after the fighting, the man who commanded the group told members of Parliament about the horrific scene that followed the battle. Lt.-Col. James Calvin said Serbs were found murdered, their houses and livestock were burned, and their wells were poisoned.
Some soldiers at Sunday's medal ceremony said they wished they could have done more. "In the Medak, we got there kind of late, and that really affected me," said Master Cpl. Philip Tobicoe. "That really bothered me...."
In a CBC video (can't find the link right now), the Canadians talked about cutting down the bodies of two young Serb girls who had been burned alive. Even hours later, their bodies were so hot that they burned through their bodybags. Many of the Canadians suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for years afterward.
Your blanket denials mean nothing, Diocletian.
I'm not denying what happened at Medak two years prior to Oluja, but to suggest that either was the "biggest crime" during the war years is laughable.
Oh really? There are tones of demographic data, still not erased by your Ministry of Truth. Look at the leftmost part of this map, the area from Knin north, east from Adriatic. BTW, I use term SERBIAN Krajina on purpose, same way as I say Serbian Kosovo.
Vojna Krajina included such overwhelmingly Croat counties such as Karlovac, Slavonski Brod, Nova Gradiska, and Varazdin. These towns alone made the Vojna Krajina majority Croatian and we're not even touching upon the smaller towns and villages scattered throughout the rest of the Vojna Krajina.
Try again, LOL.
We are not talking just about Medak, but about destroying the ENTIRE REGION inhabited by couple hundred thousand of Serbs for centuries - Operation Storm of 1995.
Poljak, what happened in 1991 to the 150,000 Croatians who lived in the regions occupied by the Serbs?
Of course, you can INCLUDE Croat counties of Vojna Krajina to change the picture and to confuse some people.
But I am talking about the SERBIAN region around Knin. The region purged by Operation Storm of 1995.
Try again, LOL.
Try what? Play word games with you? Just focus on the extent and purpose of Operation Storm instead of using Red Herring tricks.
Red Herring again? Not able to stick to the topic?
Just focus on the extent and purpose of Operation Storm instead of using Red Herring tricks.
The purpose of Storm was to liberate occupied Croatia and allow 150,000 Croatian refugees thrown out of their homes by the Serbs to return home after four years. It was a great success. We told the Serbs that they'd get sold out by their cousins in Belgrade and they didn't listen. We offered them maximal autonomy and they still didn't listen. They should have heeded the words of Svetozar Pribicevic, the leader of Croatia's Serbs in the first half of the century, when he warned them that Belgrade would always use them as a tool.
You're welcome for the history lesson, btw. Any time you want actual facts and history about the region feel free to flag me.
You are playing games. Technically these counties were not part of Serbia as the were settled by the Serbs when Serbian state did not exist. After WWI they were part of the Yugoslav Kingdom and after WWII they were included in the Croat and Bosnian republics by the Communists. So in a superficial way you are "right".
If you think that such tricks will confuse everyone, you are mistaken. What you are proving is your disingenuity.
Do you need any more education on these matters or is that enough for you this evening?
Croatian history ping. A. Pole is quite ignorant of history, demographics, and geography. Hopefully he's learning a thing or two tonight.
Indeed BEFORE Muslims attacks and the defensive creation of Vojna Krajina by the Hapsburgs around 1600 AD, this area was Croatian.
Serbs lived there longer than English speaking people in New England.
Croatians continued to live in Vojna Krajina as the majority while the Orthodox began to arrive.
True
Thus proving that there was no such thing as "Serbian Krajina" until it was invented in 1990 by the SDS. The Croatian Serbs often would cite Vojna Krajina as a justification, but "RSK" never corresponded to Vojna Krajina and the Serbs would always fail to mention that Vojna Krajina had a Croat majority. The capital of "Serb Krajina", Knin, was never even in Vojna Krajina. They gerrymandered to create RSK, a fictional entity.
True, yet the part including Knin was ethnically Serbian at the time the 1995 Operation Storm began. This where couple hundred thousand Serbs lived.
However the county of Slunj, occupied by Serb forces, had a Croatian majority of 67% and the Serbs 29.8% in that same census. Slunj had some 35,000 people. Drnis, with 21,000 people was 78% Croat and 21% Serb in that same census. The situation wasn't as cut and dry as some wish to make it. At the time of Oluja, some 150,000 Serbs continued to live behind Croatian lines, some 175,000 lived in the occupied regions of Dalmatia, Kordun, Lika, and Banija. Some 100,000 lived in occupied Eastern Croatia.
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