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Back to index to Milosevic statement
THE DESTRUCTION OF YUGOSLAVIA In the international public, for a long time and with clear political intentions an untruthful, distorted picture was being created in terms of what happened in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Accusations levelled against me are an unscrupulous lie and also a tireless distortion of history. Everything has been presented in a lopsided manner so -- in order to protect from responsibility those who are truly responsible and to draw the wrong conclusions about what happened and also in terms of the background of the war against Yugoslavia. There is a fundamental historical fact that one should proceed from when seeking to understand what happened and which led to everything that happened in the territory of Yugoslavia from 1991 until the present day, and that is the violent destruction of a European state, Yugoslavia, which was derived from the statehood of Serbia, the only ally of the democratic world in that part of the world over the past two centuries. There is no doubt that this fundamental historic fact is going to leave an imprint on European history in the times to come. A multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-confessional state was destroyed, a state that had its historic and international legal legitimacy. In its territory, according to the dictat of Germany and Vatican, assisted by the United States and the European Community, pure nation states, miniature nation states, were established. The state that was destroyed was a member of all international organisations starting with the first postal union from 1884 through the League of Nations, the International Label Organisation, the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and all other specialised agencies of the United Nations all the way up to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Whose merit was this that this sovereign state was destroyed? According to the Nuremberg principles, this constitutes the gravest international crime, a crime against peace. Whose merit was it that a war happened in which tens of thousands of civilians were killed, hundreds of thousands of people wounded and maimed? Thousands of people lost their homes and fled from their homes, mostly Serbs, and also there are millions of damage in terms of property. The -- this is -- not speak of the ecological disaster involved. The international community will have to face up to all of this. It is not only that a state was destroyed. The United Nations system was destroyed. Also the corpus of principles upon which the world civilisation was based has been destroyed. In addition to that, never in history has a state disappeared by sheer coincidence. There was a great deal of rhetoric involved in the destruction of Yugoslavia. When the crisis first broke out, all the way up to the present day, everything that has been said, including what this so-called Prosecution said, is wrong. Yugoslavia did not simply disappear into thin air, as Mr. Robert Badinter tried to explain, and in this way he resorted to some kind of legal metaphysics. This country was destroyed through a plan, violently, and through a war which continues to be waged, and a series of war crimes were committed in this war.
THE SECESSION OF SLOVENIA An American theoretician, a prominent one, Stephen John Steedman, noted, rightly so, in 1993 in the periodical Foreign Affairs that at the beginning of the war, and I am quoting: "Slovenia or some other state did not exist. There was only one state; Yugoslavia." So it is logical to take that as a point of departure in any kind of legal analysis. Yugoslavia, which was headed at this most critical time by a member of the Presidency from Croatia, Stjepan Mesic, the Prime Minister of the country at the time was also from Croatia; Ante Markovic. The Foreign Minister was also from Croatia; Budimir Loncar. As for the top echelons of the military, and we heard about that here, among the 16 top generals, there were only two Serbs. The majority were Croats, Slovenes, and people with other ethnic backgrounds. This state had a strong armed force that was in a position to keep the conflict under control and to prevent it from happening altogether. However, this government let paramilitary formations, arms smugglers, have their way, even the narco Mafia, when we look at the end of this process in Kosovo. However, this government acted in concert with the European Community, notably Germany and the Vatican. As early as the end of June 1991, the European Community asked for the legitimate army to remain within barracks and in this way to turn the army voluntarily into detainees within their own country, which is only logical -- and it is only logical that this led to secession and to the creation of paramilitary formations. The secession of Slovenia happened in 1991, and it was accompanied by armed action. In June 1991, the Slovenian military formations without any cause killed in cold blood JNA soldiers who were securing the border towards Austria and Italy and took over border posts. From the point of view of the UN charter, from the point of view of general legal principles recognised by civilised nations, this is a classical example of an armed rebellion against a state. Therefore the state is duty-bound to take all necessary measures in order to restore law and order. We know that when acting on orders given by the federal Prime Minister, Ante Markovic, the commander of the 5th army, a Slovenian, General Konrad Kolsek, informed the government of Slovenia that the Yugoslav People's Army will regain control over the border and that this task would be carried out. The Slovenian leadership, instead of making it possible to carry these decisions out peacefully, these decisions taken by the federal authorities, said that they are taking this challenge and that they would resort to force in order to oppose it, and that's what they did. Their paramilitary forces, which then included 36.000 persons illegally armed, were used by Slovenia to launch an armed offensive. All of them knew full well that the Yugoslav army, educated in the spirit of brotherhood and unity, would not shoot at Slovenians who they considered to be their own citizens. So actually the killing of JNA soldiers was a mere premeditated crime. It was no war. Grave war crimes were committed. Not even military medical institutions were spared. The troika of the European Community toured the area and described the dramatic situation. There is a long list of crimes and there is also film material documenting the crimes of the Slovenian paramilitary forces, and this footage was shot by an Austrian TV company. Due to the time constraints that you have imposed upon me, I do not have the possibility of playing these tapes now, but I am going to call certain witnesses and show them then. On the 10th of July, 1991, the European parliament passed a resolution condemning not the rebels, not the secessionists, but the legal force, the Yugoslav People's Army. And inversion was carried out between the victim and the executioner, and in this way the European Community and the United States fuelled the war. I am pointing this out because it has been said time and again ever since that this is what happened in the former Yugoslavia, and this is a formula that was resorted to all the time.
THE SECESSION OF CROATIA In Croatia, crimes against the Serbs started even earlier, even before secession was declared. The same methods in the same areas where the genocide against the Serb people started in 1941 by the Ustasha formations in the so-called Independent State of Croatia. World experts who studied genocide, the genocide that occurred in different places and at different times, for example, Leo Cooper, Peter Drost, Ted Gertz, Louis Horowitz, George Cram, and others came to the conclusion that genocide over a people can occur only once. Any further attempt would turn into civil war. And this thesis was confirmed in Croatia. The genocide over the Serbs in Croatia in 1941 started by making lists and calling upon groups and giving -- in order to ostensibly give them information. However, they were not given information. Serbs were killed and sent off to concentration camps. This time, when similar things were done, the Serbs resisted, and they felt seriously manipulated by politicians who had defended ideals of fraternity and unity and then called upon the people in a different way. Old Ustasha formulas and old Ustasha symbols were resorted to. Laws were passed along the fast track and the Serbs lost their status of a constituent people. With the army isolated in barracks, the Serbs in Krajina were prepared to die, but they were not to submit themselves yet to another genocide. A long time before the secession of 1991 in Croatia, armed groups functioned there. The so-called voluntary peoples protection forces; Zebra, Black Wolves, the Wolves from Vukovar, et cetera. In Zagreb on the 28th of May, a military parade was organised a month before secession where arms were shown, arms that particularly came from Germany. These were only preparations for what would happen later. Groups of paramilitaries were transferred from Croatia to Bosnia at that time because President Tudjman had announced a change of borders and that the borders of Croatia would be moved to the Drina. In July 1991, the armed paramilitaries in Croatia started a frontal war. From the 20th of July until the 4th of August, there were 75 attacks against the JNA. Serb houses were set on fire and individual crimes against Serbs were transformed into mass liquidations. In the cornfield near the village of Jankovci, 65 Serbs were slaughtered. All of them have been identified. In the village of Svinjarevo 25 were killed, and so on and so forth. Entire villages in the area of Papuk and Slunj were razed to the ground. The most widespread form of terror over the Serbian people were forcible evictions, and this was the strongest link between the years 1941 and 1991. These activities began in Western Slovenia immediately after the HDZ won the elections. A psychosis was created so that people would be encouraged to move out. Various methods were used. Serbian children were mocked in school. The people were brought into police stations. Serbs were dismissed from work on a large scale, their houses were bombed. The Crisis Staff in Slavonska Pozega on the 28th of October, 1991, issued an order on the eviction of Serbs from 24 villages; Oblakovac, Orijaca, Slatina, and so on, within a 24-hour period. This order was broadcast on the radio and published in the press. Those who refused to comply were taken to concentration camps. A large scale exodus of Serbs in the areas of Podravska Slatina, and Daruvar took place. From July to August 1991 to the -- 1992, many Serbian villages were ethnically cleansed. Documents on all this were submitted to the European Community.
BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA War activities were then taken to the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The ideological foundations were laid in 1970 with the Islamic declaration of Alija Izetbegovic. This was a secret platform. Later on, in 1984, a book by the same author was published on Islam and the West, and then the Islamic declaration was published again in 1990. It is well known that it states that there can be no peace and co-existence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic faiths. This is repeated many times in all these books and publications. At the Bosnian and Herzegovinian Assembly session on the 21st of December 1991, Izetbegovic said he was willing to sacrifice peace for a sovereign Bosnia and Herzegovina. There was mass mobilisation and civil war started with abundant financial help arriving from Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other Islamic countries. After this, many Mujahedin arrived. On the 6th summit of the organisation of the Islamic Conference held on the 9th of December, 1991, before the war was fully developed and before Bosnia and Herzegovina was recognised, support was given to their brothers in faith, support for the creation of the first Islamic state in Europe. Even today Bosnia and Herzegovina does not have a majority Muslim population. Not only was there substantial financial help, but Alija Izetbegovic was feted and honoured at the Islamic Conference held in Djeda on the -- from the 1st to the 2nd of December 1991. They also extended their concern to two areas in Serbia; to Kosovo and the area of Raska, or as they called it, Sandzak. The first holy warriors, the Mujahedin, arrived from Afghanistan, Lebanon, Morocco and Pakistan, armed with weapons sent by the CIA to the rebels in Afghanistan. A group of 400 members of Hezbollah arrived in Sarajevo as military instructors. Following the tradition from World War II of a joint action under the auspices of Nazi Germany against the democratic coalition to which the then Yugoslavia belonged, Tudjman and Izetbegovic, the two leaders of the rebels, signed an agreement stating that the armed forces of the Croatian Defence Council would be part of the unified armed forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This was followed by the expulsion of Serbs from areas under the control of Muslim forces. Tens of thousands of people were expelled from Mostar, 2.000 from Gorazde, and so on. As happened in Croatia, in Bosnia and Herzegovina allegedly retired American officers were sent to be instructors of the Muslim army. Combat operations developed and moved from the north toward the south, and they were finally transferred to the territory of Serbia, that is to Kosovo. [.....]
INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION OF THE SECESSIONIST STATES The involvement of the West, primarily the Vatican and Germany, was evident from the very beginning. Donald Horowitz, the well-known American theoretician, presented arguments in his study on ethnic and national conflicts, that they take on their worst form, war, when they gain international support. And this is precisely what happened on the territory of Yugoslavia. The war on this territory was a synchronised activity by secessionist forces and external forces who, in preparing the bloodshed and fuelling the bloodshed, implanted into Yugoslavia Ustasha extremists and Nazis, Islamic fundamentalists and Albanian terrorists whose role was to be the detonator for the outbreak of the conflict. The external forces in the initial phases acted behind the scenes, supplying the secessionists with arms and money and infiltrating mercenaries into the country. The final destruction of Yugoslavia was perpetrated through institutional deceptions. In the final act from -- the final document from Helsinki, the USA and other countries promised to respect the integrity of all the countries in the area, all the states, and said that they would refrain from any activities against the territorial integrity and unity and independence of every signatory country. This was signed in Paris in 1990. Only a year after this, the international community acted openly on the political scene as the main force for the destruction of Yugoslavia. In Brioni on the 7th of July, 1991, a declaration was signed on the peaceful resolution of the conflict in the SFRY. Relying on these documents which I have mentioned, the European Community promised to seek a peaceful solution and to respect the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia, which was the only legally protected entity, which actually gave it the mandate to mediate in this conflict. The whole process started from several -- there were several possible solutions that were proposed, and concessions were proposed that could be relied on. Instead of all this, Lord Carrington, at a meeting on the 18th of October 1991, set out an ultimatum, and there was no alternative to the disappearance of Yugoslavia. This was the model applied by Hitler in 1941. Nazi values won the day. The right to the destruction of a state to secession was given priority over preserving a state and the right to preserve a state, a member of the UN. The paradox is that the right that was given to the secessionists of Yugoslavia is denied, for example, to the Irish by the British, and so on. Let us remember that there was a time when Serbian fighters fought together with the allies in World War II and that then the troops of the so-called Independent State of Croatia, as well as some forces from Bosnia, also then within the Independent State of Croatia, fought on the side of the Nazi forces. At that time the well-known Handzar Division from Bosnia was sent to France as part of the convicts unit, and there they committed unprecedented crimes. Let us go back to Carrington's document, which was the first blow against the sovereignty of Yugoslavia. This is an evident deception. This is something that transformed further negotiations into a farce. After this, the secessionist republics were recognised under strong pressure from Germany and the Vatican, against the elementary principles of international law, the practice of the United Nations, and the practice of a leading power, the USA. On the basis of Smithson's declaration from the 7th of January 1932, the United Nations -- United States promised not to recognise countries arising from violent changes. This principle first became the regional rule of the USA and then entered the universal rules of international law. This time America trampled on its own law. In July 1991, before the war started, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany, Genscher, advocated that Croatia and Slovenia be recognised right away. A parallel action was waged by the Vatican. The ambassador with the Holy See, Thomas Patrick Milady, in mid-1991, the Vatican initiated an unprecedented action and led the forces lobbying for the recognition of Croatia and Slovenia. In August 1991, Pope John Paul II sent Archbishop Torano to Yugoslavia. On his return, he submitted a report stating that Serbia was indisputably the aggressor. This was another shameless lie. This was hypocrisy on the part of a spiritual leader. Aggression on one's own country is something that only be conceived of maliciously. However, this was accepted by the press and there was perfect coordination between the Vatican and Germany. In December 1991, Genscher visited the Vatican. On his return on the 19th of December, he announced that Germany would recognise Croatia and Slovenia regardless of the positions of other countries. And this was carried out on the 23rd of December. The Vatican did this on the 13th of January 1992. Germany and the Vatican were led by their historical geostrategic interests. For years they worked on the destruction of Yugoslavia. This was stated by Helmut Kohl in the magazine Politics International, issue 66. He said that the creation -- that the decisive period started when Kinkel became head of the security service of Germany, and he established close links with the Ustasha emigres. These were forces which worked on the break-up of Yugoslavia, according to the writings of the well-known American analyst Eric Schmidt-Birnbaum. These were Josip Balovic [phoen], Josip Boljkovac, Franjo Tudjman, and Stjepan Mesic, the present Croatian president. Mesic confirmed his role on Slovenian television by stating that the idea on the break-up of Yugoslavia was something he wanted to transmit to those who had the strongest influence on its fate, Genscher and the Pope. "I met Genscher three times. He made it possible for me to contact the Holy See. The Pope and Genscher agreed to the total break-up of Yugoslavia." End of quotation. After this, recognition followed by other members of the European Community in January 1992. In the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, this happened on the 6th of April of the same year. On the very date of Hitler's attack on Yugoslavia in 1941; the 6th of April. The federal entities were recognised, and in there, as it is stated, "internationally recognised borders." However, never in any international document were the administrative borders recognised. There was not even an internal document about these borders. What is most important in all this, recognition is a one-sided political act, whereas the establishing of borders is a process, an internal process. The units that were recognised did not meet the elementary prerequisites to be recognised as states. For a state to be recognised, it needs to have a legitimate state apparatus, stable political structures, there must be a monopoly of power within the territory, full control over the use of power, and, what is most important, a state has to express its strength and its ability to provide security on the international and internal levels. None of this was complied with. There was a bloody civil war which will be recorded as something unique in modern history but in a very negative way. In legal circles throughout the world, the recognition of the rebel forces caused great astonishment and was condemned. Cedric Thornberry, the leader of the UNPROFOR, stated, I quote: "When Ambassador Cutileiro notified us of the decision to recognise, General Morillon and I were astonished." The French newspaper Figaro called this legal hypocrisy. General MacKenzie, in his memoirs, states, "Although we were not diplomats, all of us in uniform were sure that fighting would break out all around us as soon as recognition is announced." Special envoy of the UN, Cyrus Vance, stated that recognition of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina by the European Community and the United States, I quote: "Led to the war that is being waged on the territory of Yugoslavia." He said this in September 1992. The recognition of fictitious states in a civil war represents an indirect form of aggression against the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. Along with a powerful media campaign and a -- deluding the international community by violation of international law and the laws of the United Nations, the secessionist states were recognised as members of the UN. The rest of the Yugoslavia, the core part of Yugoslavia, were imposed with sanctions in May 1992, and the country was isolated, and in July of the same year they were excluded or expelled from the United Nations only because we did not accept, by a stroke of the pen, to have the existing state deleted, the state in which we were living. In this legal chaos and this moral decline of the leading powers in the post-Cold War period and of the Vatican, the way was opened for craziness and lawlessness from the borders in the south to Kosovo -- in the north to Kosovo in the south. This ad hoc Tribunal was formed also with the one and only objective of covering up the piled-up mistakes of a Western policy and to justify the crimes, the destruction of a state, and the highly technological barbarism committed by NATO countries in their three-month bombing of Yugoslavia. Mass crimes were committed against its citizens, medieval heritage of the Serbian people in Kosovo was destroyed, and so on and so forth. By instrumentalising extremely complex events in the territory of Yugoslavia and by placing the responsibility on Yugoslavia and myself personally as aggressors, a very obvious tactic was used to close the circle and prevent logical thinking based on empirical principles. Senseless, vulgar theories about bad guys and rough state cannot serve to explain historical facts and provide the historical responsibility for the destruction of a state. The joint criminal intent existed but it didn't proceed from Belgrade, however, nor did it exist in Belgrade at all. Quite the contrary. It existed through the joint forces of the secessionists, Germany and the Vatican, and also the rest of the countries of the European Community and the United States.
LEGALITY OF THE TRIBUNAL During my first appearance in this place and then on several occasions after that, I questioned the legality of this so-called Tribunal. During the trial, you have provided me with a lot of arguments in support of my position. I will not dwell on the lack of the legal basis for the establishment of this Tribunal. I would just like to recall that the source of judicial power can only come from international treaties and not resolutions, as stated by the UN Secretary-General himself in a statement to the Security Council on May 3rd, 1993. However, you owe a response to the international community of where does the right of the Security Council come to suspend legal treaties? We have the legal -- the Geneva Conventions from 1949 as well as Additional Protocols to punish war crimes which place the responsibility for a trial of such cases on national courts. An international court can have authority only if it was created by a lege artis [?] act and if it is of a general nature. This Tribunal lacks both elements. The act of the establishment of this Tribunal is of an individual nature. It's a political nature. The elementary legal principle is equality. So then we have the question why were not courts formed for all the wars that are being waged throughout the world and that had been waged at least in the past decade of the 20th century. Although there are no principled reasons for not doing something like that and to apply to everybody if such a thing were legal. In other words, this Tribunal represents the most serious form of discrimination against one country, and it is a violation of the protection against all forms of discrimination. At the very beginning, I requested that this institution uses its authority from Article 96 of the UN Charter and to ask the permission of the General Assembly and to ask the International Court of Justice, legally the highest judicial instance in the UN system which is authorised to interpret the Charter and to provide its legal opinion on whether the Resolutions of the Security Council establishing this Tribunal were in accordance with the UN Charter or not. The fact that this Tribunal has given it the right to decide for itself whether it was established in a legally valid way and then concluded, as could be expected, that it was done in a legal way does not mean that this conclusion is correct or that it even had the right to reach such a conclusion. Namely, this so-called Tribunal, just like any other Tribunal, is not authorised to bring judgements on its own legality. That is why this decision is legally invalid. Courts are authorised to decide on their own authority on whether they are competent, on whether they are competent to decide on a question or not. However, the question of the jurisdiction of a court and the question of its legality are two separate issues. The question of legality has precedence over the question of authority, because if a court is not legal, then the question of its authority or jurisdiction is pointless. As opposed to the question of its own authority, no court can decide on its own legality, because by tradition it is not permissible to judge in one's own matter. Also, this illegal Tribunal does not have the right to deprive persons before it from an answer of whether they are facing a legal or an illegal organ, particularly if there is a legally valid way to resolve this question, because the person in question then is denied justice, if this is not allowed to be answered. However, I'm afraid that the people in authority in this institution are aware that the International Court of Justice would be in accordance with the view of their previous president, Mohamed Dejoui [phoen], stated in his book The New World Order, and control of the legality of the acts of the Security Council where, amongst the acts or the laws that he mentions as controversial, both Resolutions referring to this Tribunal are cited. This Tribunal is not an International Tribunal and it is not an independent organ, as you wish to present it. Amongst the public, there has been an ideological fiction. The international community, which is allegedly behind this Tribunal, is actually a deception. The ideal to establish the Tribunal came from Kinkel after he succeeded Genscher, the main criminal in the destruction of Yugoslavia. The idea was taken over by Madeleine Albright, and the costs of the preliminary activities as well as later activities were funded by the Soros Foundation who also founded a coalition for international justice as an NGO in order to provide "assistance" to the Tribunal. "Assistance" please I would like to place in quotes, to these who are writing the transcript. These members and other NGOs, some of whom today are working in this Tribunal today, were engaged in 1992 in Bosnia and Herzegovina to gather the evidence on alleged crimes by Serbs. Albright presented this before the US Congress, engaged different lobbies and different media for the purpose of fabricating a certain image which would influence the public. Sometimes they have called her the mother of the Tribunal. [.....] The drafter of the Statute, Michael Scharf, of the Tribunal gave a very precise assessment of the Tribunal in an interview to the Washington Post on October 3rd, 1999. I quote: "The Tribunal is a useful political channel which serves to diplomatically isolate rogue leaders and to strength political will in the world, to apply sanctions and to enforce power." In other words, the Tribunal is an instrument of war and not of justice. This was confirmed in Globe and Mail, a Canadian magazine, by Marcus McGee, who stressed that the Tribunal, I quote: "Is a part of the NATO war strategy." So this is a private justice only known to them imposed by a war coalition, and the intention is to return the judiciary to the medieval era. In the world this Tribunal is called a propaganda instrument of NATO, so there can be no question of any independence at all. We also need to add that since 1996 there has been a constant communication between the NATO Secretary-General and your Chief Prosecutor. And on 9th of May, 1996, a memorandum was signed by the Chief Prosecutor and the Supreme Commander of NATO for Europe about the modalities of cooperation. Therefore, NATO, and not the United Nations, have taken over the role of the Tribunal policemen, and that is why this Tribunal cannot be considered an international institution at all but an institution of NATO. Another factor supporting this claim, your own Article 32 of the Statutes provides that expenses for the Tribunal should be covered by the regular budget of the United Nations, but in practice the money comes from very morbid sources, dark sources like the Soros Foundation, different other foundations, and also from Islamic countries. The bulk of the money comes from NATO itself. According to NATO spokesman Shea, I quote: "NATO is the biggest financial source for the Tribunal." He stated this on the 17th of May, 1999, in Brussels. We also need to recall that Soros is also funding the liberation army of Kosovo, the KLA, and their main propaganda newspaper, Koha Ditore.
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