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10 May 1996
Show Trial Opens in Hague
Tom Edwards explains why the 'war crimes' trial of Dusko Tadic is a
propaganda exercise designed to shore up the authority of the great powers
over the rest of the world.
The first international war crimes trial in Europe since Nuremberg opened
to a media circus on Tuesday 8 May. Dusko Tadic, a Bosnian Serb cafe-owner
has been singled out to join Hitler's deputies Hermann Goering and Rudolf
Hess as the barbarians of the century.
Grant Nieman opened the case for the prosecution by arguing that 'when it
is the state that commits the crime, then the community of nations must
judge. Otherwise evil knows no bounds.' However, the case that Tadic acted
on behalf of the Serb Republic in Bosnia is slender. Tadic was neither a
soldier nor a prison camp guard, holding only the office of part-time policeman.
He has been singled out to be the first citizen of the former Yugoslavia
to stand trial for war crimes only because he was the first to be arrested.
He was the first to be arrested because he had moved to Germany to set up
a karate school, under his own name - hardly the act of a desperate war
criminal.
The Serb Republic have asked that any evidence of crime should be passed
on to them so that its citizens can be made answerable where there is a
case against them. But the intent of the war crimes tribunal is not to try
any one Serb, but to try the Serbs as a whole. Sitting in judgement of Dusko
Tadic is a propaganda exercise designed to paint the Serbs in the worst
light.
In keeping with a propaganda trial the evidence against Tadic is supplied
by media moguls like the Guardian Newspaper, Independent Television News
and Newsday magazine - all of whom campaigned vociferously for Western intervention
against the Serbs.
Not only will the trial evidence make it seem that 'Serbs are war-criminals',
but the very fact of trying Tadic in the international court will make a
moral point: 'The Serbs cannot be trusted to act in accordance with ordinary
norms of civilised behaviour, so West European judges and prosecutors will
have to try Tadic'.
Prosecutor Nieman was lying when he said that 'the community of nations
must judge' when 'it is the state commits the crime'. The prosecutors office
of the International War Crimes tribunal has made it very clear that there
is a double standard when it comes to punishing war crimes. On 5 July 1995
they said that 'As a political organ of the United Nations, the Security
Council is not called upon to repress serious violations of international
humanitarian law on a consistent and uniform legal basis' (Prosecutor's
response to the defence's motion filed on 23 June 1995, p 28, Dusko Tadic
Case No IT94-I-T). In other words war crimes will only be punished if the
voting members of UN Security Council decides that it is expedient.
The United States government clarified the point that Western war crimes
are beyond criticism, while those imputed to the West's enemies will be
punished. They said 'It is unconvincing to suggest that the Security Council's
failure to take similar action with respect to conflicts of past decades
in Korea, Vietnam, Algeria, Cambodia and the Belgian Congo somehow stops
it from acting now' (Amicus Curae Brief Presented by the government of the
United States of America, p 18, Dusko Tadic Case No IT94-I-T).
What is unconvincing is the idea that the Security Council's partisan decision
about what constitutes a war crime and what does not was nothing more than
a 'failure', as if it had just slipped their minds. It is unlikely that
the United Nations will seek to lay charges of war crimes against the Israeli
Defence Forces for their missile attack on the UN refugee camp at Qana in
the southern Lebanon - the United States has promised to veto any action
against its ally Israel on the security council. The decision as to who
is to be dubbed a war criminal and who is not is, as the prosecutors office
of the Tribunal says 'political', not a question of justice.
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