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.
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
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
Pil Lenau, writer, Denmark
Jennifer Whittall, computer artist, Victoria, B.C., Canada
TO ADD YOUR NAME WRITE TO slobodavk@yubc.net