For over two years now, Slobodan Milosevic has been on trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia – a Security Council institution of dubious legality – charged with 66 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Over 500,000 pages of documents and 5000 videocassettes have been filed as evidence by the Prosecution. There have been some 300 trial days. More than 300 witnesses have testified. The trial transcript is near 33,000 pages. Yet after all this time and effort, the Prosecution has failed to present significant or compelling evidence of any criminal act or intention of President Milosevic.
In fact, it has been revealed that some prosecution witnesses have been coerced to lie under oath, others have committed perjury. Former NATO commander Wesley Clark, was allowed, in violation of the principle of an open trial, to give testimony in private, with Washington able to apply for removal of any parts of his evidence from the public record they deemed to be against US interests.
President Milosevic was indicted during the 78 day continuous bombardment of Yugoslavia by US-led NATO forces, which used cluster bombs and depleted uranium, attempted to assassinate Milosevic by bombing his residence, killed thousands of civilians and caused billions of dollars of damage to the country’s infrastructure. This illegal act of undeclared war is in clear violation of the NATO Charter, the UN Charter, and International Law. Yet neither Wesley Clark, nor the leaders of NATO countries have been indicted for the crimes of which Slobodan Milosevic is accused.
The proceedings of the ICTY against Slobodan Milosevic, as a large and growing number of international jurists has publicly stated, respect neither the principles nor even the appearance of justice. According to Ramsey Clark, the former Attorney-General of the United States, “the spectacle of this huge onslaught by an enormous prosecution support team with vast resources pitted against a single man, defending himself, cut off from all effective assistance, his supporters under attack everywhere and his health slipping away from the constant strain, portrays the essence of unfairness, of persecution”. And now that presiding judge Richard May has resigned his position for unspecified health reasons, it appears inevitable, the issue prejudged, that the trial will nevertheless continue, in spite of the virtual impossibility that a new judge will be able to come to grips with the mountain of evidence presented so far.
If justice is not just, if prosecution is persecution, if international law is flouted in order to “enforce international law”, we are indeed now living in the dystopian world of George Orwell’s 1984. The neighborhood bully has decided the world is his back yard. The implications of this egregious use of “power politics” go beyond the unjust trial of Slobodan Milosevic: the “new world order” now being implemented is simply inhuman and intolerable. What can be done to change this cruel and criminal state of affairs?
Let us remember that it was not long ago that 15 million people marched on the same day in a gesture of international solidarity to say no to the Bush junta’s illegal war on Iraq. Now is the time for another such gesture. For if this trial continues, the only triumphs will be those of travesty over justice, power over principle, disinformation over truth. And many feel that the sum total of these acts constitutes state terrorism perpetrated on a virtually defenseless country and its legally elected president.
As artists, our work is to broaden our horizons, to become more human and to share that humanity. And to create. Destruction is intolerable to us. It is intolerable that courts be used to justify the killing of civilians, the destruction of a sovereign nation, and the demonization and imprisonment of that nation’s leader. Let us now create a massive demonstration of our humanity. Now is the time to make ourselves heard loud and clear, once again, by publicly denouncing this injustice. We urge you to join your efforts to those of the International Committee for the Defense of Slobodan Milosevic.
March-April 2004
Montreal-New York-Moscow-Paris
SIGNED:
Robert Dickson, poet (winner of the Governor General’s award for French poetry 2002), Canada
Harold Pinter, playwright, UK
Peter Handke, writer, Austria/France
Alexander Zinoviev, writer, philosopher, Russian Federation
Valeri Ganichev, writer (President of the Writers’ Union of Russia), Russian Federation
Vyacheslav Klykov, sculptor (President of the International Fund for Slavonic Literacy and Culture), Russian Federation
Dimitri Analis, poet, Greece/France
Valentin Rasputin, novelist, Russian Federation
Fulvio Grimaldi, filmmaker, journalist, Italy
Vladimir Kostrov, poet (winner of Tyutchev and Bunin awards), Russian Federation
Nadja Tesich, novelist, Yugoslavia/US
Rolf Becker, actor, Germany
Milos Raickovich, composer, Yugoslavia/US
Alan Mandell, theatre artist, US
Mick Collins, theatre artist, US/France
John Steppling, screenwriter, playwright, US/Poland
Joseph Goodrich, playwright, US
Godfred Louis-Jensen, architect, Denmark
David Morgan, poet, Canada
Larissa Kritskaya, composer, journalist, Russia/USA
Katarina Kostic, poet, writer, Canada
Paolo Teobaldelli, writer, philosopher, Italy
Cédéric Michaud, photographe, Nouvel-Ontario, Canada
Nikolai Petev, writer (President of the Writers’ Union of Bulgaria), Bulgaria
Luchezar Elenkov, writer, Bulgaria
Rashko Stoikov, writer, Bulgaria
Elena Alekova, writer, Bulgaria
Natasha Manolova, writer, Bulgaria
Dimitar Tochev, writer, Bulgaria
Dimitar Bezhanski, writer, Bulgaria
Borislav Peichev, writer, Bulgaria
Anzhel Vagenstein, screenwriter, Bulgaria
Benzhamen Varon, writer, philosopher, Bulgaria
Luna Davidova, actor, Bulgaria
Venceslav Kisov, actor, Bulgari
Snezhana Barova, pianist, Bulgaria
Antoinette Martens, painter, puppeteer, Canada
Pil Lenau, writer, Denmark
Milosav Popadic, novelist and translator, Sweden
Jennifer Whittall, computer artist, Victoria, B.C., Canada
