Dear friends of the Slobodan Milošević International Committee for national sovereignty and social justice. We send warm greetings to you all — to Klaus Hartmann and Vladimir Krsljanin — from the International Action Center and Workers World Party.
We salute your great determination – 20 years of this heroic defense. All of us join especially in saluting the memory of Slobodan Milošević.
I had the honor to visit President Milošević under the most difficult grievous conditions of the Hague prison. And I recall even the dark prison walls, Slobodan Milošević’s determination to put NATO on trial, to turn the tables. He vibrated with plans and preparations. Those plans were cut short by criminal withholding of essential medicines and treatment. But in that kangaroo court Milošević stood tall.
I recall my visits to Belgrade with Ramsey Clark, so dearly missed, during the dark days of the NATO 1999 bombing. In 78 days, 480 schools were bombed – that’s how NATO makes war. Those NATO crimes can never be forgotten, but it’s the memory of the courage and the resistance that still holds and keeps us strong.
The U.S./NATO takeover of the Yugoslav federation began 30 years ago, in 1991. It was NATO that tore the Yugoslav federation apart. Economic sanctions, mercenary gangs and then relentless bombing and finally direct military occupation of Bosnia and Kosovo. As you know and as everyone participating knows, because President Milošević knew so well – ideas, they don’t die.
We published a book “The Defense Speaks: for History and the Future” – President Milošević’s opening statement before the phony “International Criminal Tribunal” at The Hague. It’s one of several books, but it is a ringing affirmation. Thirty years ago, 20 years ago, NATO looked all powerful. They were emboldened by their occupation in the Balkans to wage new wars: against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Emboldened.
And the current U.S. President Joe Biden was the biggest warmaker in the U.S. Senate. He pushed relentlessly for the bombing of Yugoslavia. Joe Biden was an architect of that criminal war and the every war since.
War is still being planned today, but the U.S. Empire is not all powerful. Today sanctions, economic sanctions, are its weapon of choice. Sanctions mean economic dislocation, hyperinflation, scarcity, shortages… That adds up to a crime against humanity.
The U.S. has imposed sanctions today on 39 countries, who comprise third of the World population, but their hold is finally breaking. The U.S. is using this weapon to deny millions of people in countries under sanctions, even the Covid vaccines and other essential medicines and foods.
But the wars come home. Today, the highest rate of Covid deaths in the World is in the United States. In contrast, China is shipping more than two billion vaccines in this year alone, to the World. People in China and Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Lebanon and Serbia, are in living ways challenging the U.S. sanctions and refusing to be starved.
For the past two years, the International Action Center has been engaged in an international campaign against the use of all U.S. sanctions. We’ve used petitions and statements and webinars, even during this pandemic. We’ve created teaching tools and graphics and reports to the U.S. Congress and reports to the UN and to so many international bodies. It’s called “The Sanctions Kill” campaign. We invite your greater participation in this effort.
And thank you for your support in signing those petitions labeling sanctions as crime against humanity. Denouncing it globally is a big task. But it will link people’s movements against sanctions. And for unity, for solidarity. It will build the unity you need to confront this monstrous imperialist system.
So, I conclude in sending our solidarity and our determination to continue!
Sara Flounders
(Speech at the International Conference MILOŠEVIĆ – AGAINST NATO CRIMES, FOR A NEW WORLD)