newsrackblog.com

As thousands watched, 465 newly identified victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre were reburied Wednesday, reports the Guardian’s Almir Arnaut, bringing the total identified and reburied to over 3,000. For readers who may have forgotten, Arnaut explains:

Up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed by Serb forces who separated men and boys from women on July 11, 1995, and killed the males over several days. It was the worst mass slaughter in Europe since World War II.

Dutch peacekeeping forces assigned to guard the so-called “safe haven” of Srebrenica were arguably overmatched by besieging Bosnian Serb forces; at any rate, they certainly proved unwilling to continue to protect the community. Arnaut:

Some 15,000 men tried to escape the slaughter by fleeing over the mountains toward the safe town of Tuzla. They were hunted along their 65-mile walk and killed if caught. Hazim Mehmedovic was 3 years old at the time, and was carried along the path in his father’s arms.

Hazim, now 16, arrived a few days ago from Copenhagen, Denmark, where he is living with his mother. Survivors today live in 107 countries around the world as refugees, he said.

For the past few days, he walked the escape route the other way from Tuzla to Srebrenica and arrived for the anniversary.

“I don’t remember anything and wanted to see where it happened. The Serbs shelled our group and killed dad while he was holding me in his arms. Someone else, I don’t know who, carried me the rest of the way to Tuzla,” he says.

While the victims are dead and beyond caring, the story continues to enrage and disgust. Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic — the military and political directors of the atrocity — remain at large. And in February, the International Court of Justice reprehensibly absolved Serbia of responsibility for the massacre — after refusing to subpoena documents plainly showing that the Bosnian Serb army was directed from and paid by Belgrade.

=====
MORE at this site:
06/04/2005: Video from Srebrenica massacre surfaces
07/12/2005: Srebrenica, 10 years later
02/26/2007: ICJ: Srebrenica was genocide. Serbian police were involved… …yet Serbia cleared of genocide (”reprehensibly” link above).
02/28/2007: Where’s Ratko? — includes specific ICTY charges against Ratko Mladic.
05/14/2007: Department of followups: …Bosnia (”refusing” link above)

UPDATE, 7/12: Mark Burgess (World Security Institute’s WSI Brussels Blog) reported in early June: “Survivors of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre are suing the United Nations and the Netherlands for what they say was a failure to protect civilians from Bosnian Serb forces.”

NOTE: The June 4, 2005 post is one of the most frequently visited posts at this site (via a Google image search to the video still), and the “outclick” to the video linked there is by far the single site people visit most often from here. I hope it’s not just rubberneckers or worse, but also people like Hazim who really need to know what happened.

An occasional review of further developments in stuff I’ve written about before.

# Terraforming Today, October 19, 2002 — As I wrote in 2002, it’s been established for some time that phytoplankton “blooms” — surges of growth of marine single celled plants– can be caused simply by adding relatively small amounts of iron to areas of open ocean. (Iron is a trace element the organisms need to grow and multiply.) Much of the biomass that isn’t converted into plankton-eaters eventually settles to the bottom of the ocean. The questions have been whether this could result in significant net removal of carbon from the atmosphere — and even if it did, would it be a good idea? Now we can add another one: is it commercially viable as a “carbon credit” scheme? In early May, the New York Times’ Matt Richtel reported in “Recruiting Plankton to Fight Global Warming“:

In an effort to ameliorate the effects of global warming, several groups are working on ventures to grow vast floating fields of plankton intended to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and carry it to the depths of the ocean. It is an idea, debated by experts for years, that still sounds like science fiction — and some scholars think that is where it belongs. [...]

In Europe, where there is a market for carbon credits, it is now worth only $2 to offset a ton of carbon emissions. But not long ago, that figure was $35, and it is expected to rise again as the limits imposed under the Kyoto Protocol on global warming start to bite. Planktos believes that it can make a healthy profit if it receives $5 a ton for capturing carbon dioxide. [...]

….[but] one unresolved question is whether regulatory bodies will even endorse iron fertilization as a valid means of carbon sequestration that would be allowed under any so-called cap-and-trade system to limit global warming gases.

One objection to the “Geritol tablet” global cooling theory are that at least some of the biomass settling to the bottom of the ocean may wind returning to the atmosphere later on as methane or nitrous oxide, both of which are worse greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide. Another problem is that large scale carbon and biomass dumps to the deep sea might well change the chemistry of the deep sea environment, disrupting ecosystems there.

Meanwhile, though, at least two companies — Planktos and Climos — are looking at the idea. Planktos is sending a ship, Weatherbird II, to the Pacific Ocean area near the Galapagos Islands to measure carbon uptake after iron releases.

# Wal-Mart wins another one, February 25, 2005; WalMartWorkersRights.org, July 17, 2005; Employee Free Choice Act, June 13, 2005 — Human Rights Watch (HRW) has published a study of Wal-Mart labor practices this month — Discounting Rights: Wal-Mart’s Violation of US Workers’ Right to Freedom of Association. From the introduction:

Wal-Mart is a case study in what is wrong with US labor laws. It is not alone among US companies in its efforts to combat union formation, following the incentives set out in unbalanced US labor laws that tilt the playing field decidedly in favor of anti-union agitation. It is also not alone in violating weak US labor laws and taking advantage of ineffective labor law enforcement. But Wal-Mart stands out for the sheer magnitude and aggressiveness of its anti-union apparatus and actions.

Between January 2000 and July 2005, even the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) found 15 labor law violations by Wal-Mart. The next closest “competitor” was Kroger — with 2. The HRW report describes a variety of illegal Wal-Mart anti-labor tactics in detail, including Discriminatory Hiring, Firing, Disciplining, and Policy Application; Union Activity Surveillance; “Unit Packing” and Worker Transfers to Dilute Union Support; Addressing Worker Concerns to Undermine Union Activity; Threatening Benefit Loss if Workers Organize; Interrogating Workers about Union Activity; Illegal No-Talking Rules; Discriminatory Application of Solicitation Rules; Illegal No-Solicitation Rules; and Confiscating Union Literature. There’s also a chapter on the Loveland, Colorado case I wrote about a couple of times back in early 2005 (see “Wal-Mart wins another one”.)

# ICJ: Srebrenica was genocide. Serbian police were involved… (yet Serbia cleared of genocide), February 26, 2007 — In early April, the New York Times’ Marlise Simons reported “Genocide Court Ruled for Serbia Without Seeing Full War Archive“:

Lawyers interviewed in The Hague and Belgrade said that the outcome might well have been different had the International Court of Justice pressed for access to the full archives, and legal scholars and human rights groups said it was deeply troubling that the judges did not subpoena the documents directly from Serbia. At one point, the court rebuffed a Bosnian request that it demand the full documents, saying that ample evidence was available in tribunal records. [...]

As part of its ruling, the court said that the 1995 massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, a designated United Nations safe haven in eastern Bosnia, was an act of genocide committed by Bosnian Serb forces, but that it lacked proof in this case that the forces were acting under Serbia’s “direction” or “effective control.”

The ruling raised some eyebrows because details of Serbian military involvement were already known from records of earlier tribunal cases. For instance, evidence showed that in late 1993, more than 1,800 officers and noncommissioned men from the Yugoslav Army were serving in the Bosnian Serb army, and were deployed, paid, promoted or retired by Belgrade.

These and many other men, including top generals, were given dual identities, and to help handle that development, Belgrade created the so-called 30th personnel center of the general staff, a secret office for dealing with officers listed in both armies. The court took note of that, but said that Belgrade’s “substantial support” did not automatically make the Bosnian Serb army a Serbian agent.

However, lawyers who have seen the archives and further secret personnel files say they address Serbia’s control and direction even more directly, revealing in new and vivid detail how Belgrade financed and supplied the war in Bosnia, and how the Bosnian Serb army, though officially separate after 1992, remained virtually an extension of the Yugoslav Army. They said the archives showed in verbatim records and summaries of meetings that Serbian forces, including secret police, played a role in the takeover of Srebrenica and in the preparation of the massacre there.

I’ve meant to write about this in its own post, but couldn’t figure out what else to say beyond spluttering in disgust. So rather than lose sight of it altogether, I’m just putting down a marker here. It seems to me there’s a back story waiting to be reported on this. One involves the “controversy” of whether Serbia and Montenegro could be held to account under international law, since this “rump Yugoslavia” was not strictly the former republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) in and of itself. A second, deeper controversy involved some judges’ 1996 opposition to the whole idea of holding nations — rather than individuals — accountable for genocide:

In [Judges Shi Jiuyong's and Vereshchetin's] view, the Convention on Genocide was essentially and primarily designed as an instrument directed towards the punishment of persons committing genocide or genocidal acts and the prevention of the commission of such crimes by individuals, and retains that status. The determination of the international community to bring individual perpetrators of genocidal acts to justice, irrespective of their ethnicity or the position they occupy, points to the most appropriate course of action. Therefore, in their view, it might be argued that the International Court of Justice is not the proper venue for the adjudication of the complaints which the Applicant has raised in the current proceedings.

A remarkable view for a judge on the International Court of Justice! This view didn’t prevail in 1996, but it was co-authored by a judge (China’s Shi Jiuyong) who was among the majority finding against Bosnia this February. As before, it seems to me that justice for Bosnians and Srebrenicans has foundered on legal pedantry and shortsightedness.

# Starbucks Challenge, November 20, 2005 — Just got a comment to this post alerting me to the documentary “Black Gold,” by Nick and Mark Francis, about Ethiopian coffee farmers and their struggle to get a decent price for their crop:

Tadesse Meskela, the representative of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union in Southern Ethiopia, seeks to circumvent the global commodity exchanges by tirelessly traveling the world selling premium grade coffee directly to coffee roasters who will pay more for his high grade product and who support the idea of paying farmers a living wage. He returns the profits to the cooperative members who use the extra income to build the schools and infrastructure needed to develop their communities.

At the Cancun conference, one African delegate explains, “Trade is more important than aid.” Seven million Ethiopians are dependent on aid and Africa exports a smaller percentage of world trade today than 20 years ago - only 1%. If that figure only doubled it would represent 70 billion dollars, five times the amount of aid the continent receives.

# Send some good thoughts Steve Gilliard’s way, March 9, 2007 — Mr. Gilliard is not getting better; a post-operative “system-wide infection” has him back in the ICU at his hospital. In addition to good thoughts, consider visiting his web site and clicking through on some ads, donating some money, or buying some of his handsome “Fighting Liberals” or “We Fight Back” t-shirts, coffee mugs or other items.

=====
NOTES: “Recruiting Plankton” item via Enrique Gili (”commonground”), who also linked my 2002 post (thanks); Human Rights Watch Wal-Mart report via Jonathan Tasini. Gilliard via digby and Avedon Carol.

Have you seen this man? He’s Ratko Mladic, the butcher of Srebrenica. The collective legal apparatus of Serbia, Europe, and the world need your help in finding him, because they apparently can’t find their own asses with both hands, a mirror, and all the lights on.

It’s been nearly a year since Serbia promised to deliver Mladic to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) by the end of April 2006, following an extension of a deadline by the European Union in relation to Serbia’s application for accession to that body. In the following weeks, the noose seemed to tighten with several arrests of people suspected of supporting Mladic, but the deadline came and went. A flurry of reports like this one suggested that Mladic had been located in a former Yugoslavian republic a few weeks earlier, was cut off, and that a team of British MI-6, CIA, and Serbian BIA intelligence agents was on the case. But nothing happened.

What is Mladic charged with, exactly? From the amended Mladic indictment handed by ICTY prosecutor Carla del Ponte on October 11, 2002:

RATKO MLADIC

with GENOCIDE, COMPLICITY IN GENOCIDE, CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, and VIOLATIONS OF THE LAWS OR CUSTOMS OF WAR, as set forth herein: [...]

25. As Commander of the Main Staff of the VRS,* General Ratko MLADIC, acting individually and in concert with other members of the joint criminal enterprise, participated in the joint criminal enterprise from no later than 12 May 1992 until at least 22 December 1996 in the following ways:

1. Planning, preparing, facilitating, or executing a campaign of persecutions, which included acts of genocide, within BiH,* by establishing control of the municipalities listed in Paragraph 36 of the indictment; attacking and destroying non-Serb towns and villages, as well as looting, destroying, and/or appropriating residential, commercial and religious properties in the municipalities; killing and terrorising the non-Serb inhabitants, and submitting them to cruel and inhumane treatment and conditions, including physical, psychological and sexual abuse, often in detention facilities; using non-Serbs for forced labour, including at front lines, and as human shields; imposing restrictive and discriminatory measures on the non-Serb population; and separating, deporting, and permanently removing non-Serbs who did not subjugate themselves to Serb authorities;

2. Planning, preparing, facilitating, or executing a protracted military campaign of artillery and mortar shelling and sniping into civilian areas of Sarajevo and upon its civilian population and institutions, killing and wounding civilians, and thereby inflicting terror upon its civilian population;
3. Planning, preparing, facilitating, or executing an operation to take UN military observers and UN peacekeepers as hostages following NATO air strikes on 25 and 26 May 1995;
4. Planning, preparing, facilitating, or further executing the campaign of persecutions, which included acts of genocide, after the capture of Srebrenica in July 1995, by forcibly transferring the Bosnian Muslim women and children from the Srebrenica enclave to Kladanj; capturing, detaining, summarily executing, and burying thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica, all of whom were either separated from the group of Bosnian Muslim refugees in Potocari or captured from the column of Bosnian Muslim men escaping the Srebrenica enclave; and exercising command and control over an organised and comprehensive operation designed to conceal the execution campaign by exhuming bodies from the initial mass graves and reburying them, en masse, in isolated secondary locations; [...]

Most of this post was written in the summer of 2005, in anticipation of Mladic’s capture. As 2005 drew to a close, I kept dating it with a future date — “July 1, 2006″ … “December 31, 2006″ … “December 1, 2007″ — to keep it at the top of my drafts list as time passed.

But of course I was kidding myself. Now that Serbia has been acquitted of genocide by the ICJ (the acronym stands for “International Caricature of Justice“), I don’t see Mladic being turned over any time soon; any time ever, really. So my hat’s off to you, Ratko, wherever you are; if it’s a choice between you and the judges of the ICJ, at any rate, the better man has won.

There used to be a little Reader’s Digest section called “Laughter makes the world go round.” But that bit of pablum surely deserves a corollary when it’s people like Mladic doing the laughing. Like Hitler’s laughter at his Tischgespraeche, Mladic’s laughter somewhere today is slowing a shabbier, sadder world in its tracks.

You know what? I hope the ICTY doesn’t find Mladic — I hope the Bosnians do. But you know what else: wouldn’t it be just a complete disgrace — not to say disaster — if Al Qaeda did?

=====
* Abbreviations: “VRS”: Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina/Republika Srpska; “BiH”: Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

It occurs to me that the ICJ decision acquitting Serbia of genocide in the case of the 1995 Srebrenica massacres simply bookends the international commmunity’s deep involvement — even complicity — in those atrocities. The senior officers of a Dutch “peacekeeping” battalion assigned by UNPROFOR (United Nations Protection Force) to safeguard the town decided they didn’t want to be a tripwire and stood aside as Ratko Mladic’s forces occupied the doomed town. In their defense, it’s not clear what higher levels of UNPROFOR would have done, if anything, had the Dutch forces actually engaged the larger and better armed Bosnian Serb forces advancing into the enclave, bent on killing any men or boys left there. As David Rohde wrote in “Endgame“:

The international community partially disarmed thousands of men, promised them they would be safefuarded and then delivered them to their sworn enemies. Srebrenica was not simply a case of the international community standing by as a far-off atrocity was committed. The actions of the international community encouraged, aided and emboldened the executioners.

A survivor recounts what happened to his father, who had taken refuge with hundreds of other Srebrenicans on the grounds of the Dutch compound in Potocari, just north of Srebrenica:

My case is one of the most terrible in terms of the international community’s role. The Dutch major Robert Franken told me to explain to my father that he can remain on the base. My father asks what will happen to his younger son and my mother. Franken tells me: “Hasan, tell your father that if he does not want to stay, he can go too. And there’ll be no further discussion.” My father had three seconds to decide whether he wants to stay on the base, to go on living with his elder son, or go and die with his younger son and his wife. He chose to leave. A month ago, at the court in The Hague, Major Franken coolly states that he gave him a choice. What sort of choice?

– Hasan Nuhanovic, 15 July 2005, to the Croatian newspaper Globus, as cited in a 2005 article by Guido Snel.

It’s true that the blame for Srebrenica belongs belongs mainly with Ratko Mladic, Radovan Karadzic, and their followers; they are the ones who compelled Srebrenicans to make the bitter choices they did. But it’s also true that the Dutch peacekeepers in Srebrenica and their superior officers in Sarajevo and at the United Nations in New York had a duty to the world and their own honor to do better than they did. We’ll never know how much difference more courage might have made.

Likewise, now we’ll never know how much difference a little judicial courage might have made — only that thirteen judges failed to do their duty to the world and their own honor; far from assisting human progress, they have thwarted it. And not even at gunpoint, but in a comfortable courtroom in what were presumably well paid and (until now) highly honored positions.

Those judges may coolly reply that at they have done what international law and international justice demand. But Hasan Nuhanovic may well ask: what sort of law? what sort of justice?

…yet Serbia cleared of genocide, failed to stop killing (Alexandra Hudson, Reuters):

ICJ President Judge Rosalyn Higgins said the court concluded that the Srebrenica massacre did constitute genocide, but that other mass killings of Bosnian Muslims did not.

But she said the court ruled that the Serbian state could not be held directly responsible for genocide, so paying reparations to Bosnia would be inappropriate even though Serbia had failed to prevent genocide and punish the perpetrators.

A summary of today’s rulings can be read at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) web site, along with detailed verdicts and dissents and a recording of Judge Higgins’ reading of the decisions.

This photo accompanied the Washington Post paper edition of the linked story.
Its caption: “Surrounded by photos of victims of the 1995 massacre of Muslim men
and boys in Srebrenica, Bosnian women in Tuzla react to television news reports
from The Hague, where the International Court of Justice ruled that the Serbian
government, which had helped arm and finance the Bosnian Serb forces, was not
responsible for the genocide.” (Photo by Damir Sagoli - Reuters)

Fifteen select judges took a long time to come to these decisions, and did so by fairly sizeable margins (13-2 against Serbian responsibility for genocide, 10-5 for having jurisdiction, 11-4 not even complicit in genocide, for crying out loud, etc.).

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that they came to the best decision they could in accordance with international law and specifically the international law of genocide — despite being aware that Serbian police units were videotaped participating in Srebrenica killings; that the International Criminal Court had enough evidence to put the Serbian head of state Slobodan Milosevic on trial for genocide; and that one of the chief architects of the Srebrenica massacres, “General” Ratko Mladic, remains at large and has been acknowledged to have been on the Serbian military payroll after going underground.

We may therefore provisionally conclude that either that body of law or its application by the worthy jurists of the ICJ is so limited as to be useless. This seems like a black day for justice as mere laypeople like me or those waiting for justice in Bosnia will understand it.

Useless? Useless at best. Between them, Serbia and the ICJ have now apparently identified the level of deniability and legal hocus-pocus needed to dodge a genocide verdict and the reparations that might have entailed. I wonder whether that’s what the ICJ’s judges, creators, and supporters intended, but I think that’s what they got. In the future, the piety that “if you want peace, work for justice” will have a bitter, fraudulent ring if you’re from Sarajevo, if it didn’t already. To say nothing of Srebrenica. You’d be much better off praying for close air support, or taking up arms with a fury yourself. Darfurians will be justified to take note. In fact, they’d better: the Sudanese government certainly will.

===
ADDENDA: From Judge Vice-President Al-Khasawneh’s dissenting opinion:

…the Judgment considers two documents presented by the Applicant, in which there is reference to the “Scorpions” as “MUP of Serbia” and a “unit of Ministry of Interiors of Serbia”. The paragraph notes that the authenticity of the documents was disputed by the Respondent presumably because “they were copies of intercepts, but not originals”. But it is plain that if the Court insisted on original documents, it would never be able to render any judgments. Be this as it may, the other reason advanced to undermine the importance of these documents is that they are not addressed to Belgrade, the senders being “officials of the police forces of the Republika Srpska”. But this in itself does not deny their probative value. When an official of the Republika Srpska sends a telegram to his superior in which the Scorpions are described as “MUP of Serbia” or “a unit of Ministry of Interiors of Serbia”, there is no reason to doubt the veracity of this statement.

From Judge ad hoc Mahiou’s dissenting opinion as translated by ICJ (emphases added):

I cannot subscribe to most of the substantive findings reached by the Court by way of what I believe to be: a timorous, questionable view of its role in the evidentiary process, a deficient examination of the evidence submitted by the Applicant, a rather odd interpretation of the facts in the case and of the rules governing them and, finally, a method of reasoning which remains unconvincing on a number of very important points. [...] In my view, the Respondent’s responsibility appears clearly established in respect of Republika Srpska’s actions, either because of the very close ties between that entity and the Respondent, resulting in the Respondent’s implication in the ethnic cleansing plan carried out between 1992 and 1995, or because of the relationship of subordination or control between the Respondent and those who played a crucial role in that ethnic cleansing, which extended to the commission of genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

EDIT, 2/27: Photo, caption added.

Organ harvesting in China: postscript and followup, 7/19/2006; The perfect crime against humanity?, 7/16/2006 — Respected South China Morning Post (SCMP) reporter Mark O’Neill picks up the Falun Gong organ transplant charge (his piece begins at 5:55 minutes into the podcast), and finds the Kilgour-Matas report “lends extra weight” to the allegations, as an SCMP anchor puts it. O’Neill’s print article is quoted on a China studies listserv:

The report, mainly based on testimony provided by Falun Gong practitioners outside China, concludes that the government and its hospitals, detention centres and courts have since 1999 put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong members, removing their hearts, kidneys, livers, corneas and other vital organs for sale at high prices to local and foreign patients. [...]

Three pieces of evidence are the most persuasive. One is official statistics that show a sharp rise in organ transplants since 2000. From 1994 to 1999, there were 18,500, and, from 2000 to last year, 60,000. A tripling of these operations does not prove the allegations, but the harvesting of Falun Gong organs would provide an explanation.

The second is the transcript of an interview by Mr Kilgour in the US with the ex-wife of a surgeon who said that, between the end of 2001 and October 2003, her husband removed corneas from 2,000 Falun Gong patients. [...]

The third piece of evidence pointing to the possibility of the harvesting is material from websites offering organ transplants.

Makin’ an honest living, 6/8/2005— Last year the Justice Department suddenly reduced damages it was seeking in a high profile lawsuit against the tobacco industry from $130 billion to — ahem — $10 billion. On July 20, Justice Department political appointee Robert McCallum was deposed about the incident after a June ruling compelling McCallum to do so. Former Justice Department official Sharon Banks — now working for the winner of that ruling, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) — charges McCallum misled Congress:

Eubanks said McCallum mischaracterized a court order in his statements to Capitol Hill, making it appear that U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler criticized the government’s embrace of smoking cessation as a remedy in the lawsuit. McCallum cited the judge’s order in explaining why he reduced the government’s request.

Eubanks pointed out that the judge later rejected the tobacco industry’s arguments and allowed Eubanks’ expert witness to testify that the companies should pay $130 billion for smoking cessation.

McCallum claims an appeals court ruling requiring “forward looking” damages dealt a “body blow” to the Justice Department’s case. The DOJ’s Office of Professional Conduct says McCallum was not influenced by political motivations.

Race to save the Lord God Bird, 5/09/2005 — The Chicago Tribune’s Annie Bergman reports (”Birders find no new confirmation of rare woodpecker in Arkansas,” 5/18/2006):

Search teams exploring an Arkansas swamp for better evidence of the ivory-billed woodpecker said Thursday they had no new confirmation of the bird’s existence, and wildlife managers said there was no longer a reason to limit public access to the region.

“Certainly we’re somewhat disappointed,” said Ron Rohrbaugh of the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, N.Y. “We’ve had enough of these tantalizing sounds and we still have a lot of hope that there might be a pair, especially in the White River area.”

Srebrenica, 11 years on, 7/11/2006 — Accused Serbian war criminal Ratko Mladic is still at large. But Serbia’s bid to join the EU is stalled until Mladic is arrested, and Serbian officials are scrambling to come up with an approach to do so. Even Hague prosecutor Carla Del Ponte seems to think this time it’s for real:

Facing pariah status, Serbia presented EU officials with an “action plan” for Mladic’s arrest earlier this month, hoping that a serious show of effort would placate del Ponte and persuade the EU to restart talks.

“Since the action plan was adopted, I think the political will to arrest Mladic exists for the first time,” del Ponte said. “I would like to see the operational plan and be involved.” [...]

The plan has not been made public but it is said to include a media campaign to convince Serbs that it is necessary to arrest Mladic, who is accused of orchestrating the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims. A government survey published on Thursday showed 51 percent of those polled opposed Mladic’s extradition, 34 percent supported it and 15 percent were undecided.

To me, this seems more like a way to look like you care about catching Mladic than a way to actually catch Mladic. But what do I know.

=====
NOTES: Follow title links to earlier posts on this blog backgrounding the followups above. The McCallum items are from the AP and the Washington Post’s Pete Yost, respectively. The Mladic item is via a Reuters 7/29 article.
EDIT, 8/27: Listserv name deleted by request.

Zdravko Ljubas, published at Monsters and Critics:

Mourners gathered Tuesday in the eastern Bosnian village of Potocari, near the town of Srebrenica, for the burial of 505 victims of the 1995 massacre in that town.

During a commemoration titled ‘Do Not Forget!’ which marked the 11th anniversary of the massacre, 505 caskets wrapped in green were laid in fresh graves next to nearly 2,000 victims of the Srebrenica massacre buried in the Potocari Memorial Centre during the last three years.

Here’s my post last year on the subject. Another year on the lam for Mladic and Karadzic; basically, they’re getting away with it. But Serbia? Not so much — talks to join the European Union have ended. I guess holding on to a couple of raggedy thugs must be worth it to the whole country.

Video from Srebrenica massacre surfaces, 6/4/05 — Serbian news agency B92 reports that “Slobodan Medic, Pera Petrasevic, Aleksandar Medic, Aleksandar Vukov and Branislav Medic have been indicted for war crimes against civilians allegedly committed on July 17, 1995.” I wonder whether any of these were the “Scorpion” paramilitary policeman who shouted at a victim, “What are you trembling for?” shortly before helping kill him.

Srebrenica, ten years later, 7/12/05 — In late September, Serbian foreign minister Vuk Draskovic acknowledged that his country’s failure to capture Srebrenica war criminal Ratko Mladic was “jeopardising Serbia’s bid for closer ties with the European Union and Nato and its position in forthcoming talks on Kosovo’s status.” (BBC).

There’s been a recent flurry of activity on this front. First, US diplomats seem to be renewing pressure on Serbia to produce Mladic — on Friday Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns announced he would be visiting Belgrade next week to demand the captures of Mladic and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. Reuters:

Burns’ pressure comes despite an EU move last month to back opening talks with Belgrade on its eventual membership in the wealthy bloc that had long been held up due to the fugitives. … Defiance would keep Serbia excluded from NATO and could prompt the United States to again suspend aid to Serbia, which it resumed this year after Belgrade handed over lower-profile fugitives, Burns said. The two men are indicted for genocide in the 1992-95 Bosnian war including the massacre 10 years ago of up to 8,000 Muslims in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica. “It’s a lack of political will on the part of the Belgrade authorities,” Burns told reporters. “It does not stand to reason that these people cannot be found.” “They ought to be able to do this and until they do this they will not have a normal relationship with the United States,” he added.

Meanwhile, Yugoslavian war crimes chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte seems to be nearly a kingmaker in Serbian politics, strongly urging the selection of a defense minister who has pledged his cooperation. Focus 1 reports:

Zoran Stankovic has promised the chief prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal, Carla Del Ponte that he would, as future SCG Defense Minister, extradite Ratko Mladic in the following two months, the Serbian Blic newspaper reports citing a source close to Serbia Government. [...] Immediately after meeting with Del Ponte, both Vujanovic and Djukanovic said to be ready to make … Stankovic new Minister of Defense and [yield] the post of SCG Army HQ Chief-of-Staff to Montenegro/.

But it’s not at all clear whether Stankovic — the former chief of a military medical academy — has the juice to deliver what he’s promising. Vukovic, Kostunice et al may be willing partners with Del Ponte — and still relatively weak assets in the hunt for Mladic and Karadzic. The European Union should be strongly on its guard with Serbia as that country’s nominal leadership seeks to join its ranks. The real power still seems to be elsewhere.

Ten years ago, the worst massacre in Europe since World War II took place in and around the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica. The civilized world dithered, did nothing, and let it happen. Almost worse yet, that civilized world often seemed to believe that dithering, inaction, and forlorn, toothless “peacekeeping” missions were in and of themselves civilized behavior to be proud of.

On July 11, 1995, the Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica fell to Bosnian Serb forces under Ratko Mladic, despite its nominal defense by 600 Dutch peacekeepers. Men and boys — in uniform or civilian — were separated from the female inhabitants. A Wikipedia account describes what happened when this group attempted to head towards the Bosnian town of Tuzla:

They were estimated to number about 12,500 in total. In their attempt to escape, they were surrounded by Serb forces who opened fire on them, using anti aircraft cannons and heavy machine guns. Hundreds were killed in the ambush, with many more wounded being systematically executed later on. Those who chose to surrender or were captured were later taken away by Serb forces and executed as well. Serb forces continued to pursue what remained of the group, killing hundreds more until they had escaped to Bosnian government held territory. Of the 12,500 men who attempted the escape, about 5,000 made it to safety.

The two leaders most directly responsible for the massacres, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, are said to have carefully planned the aftermath of the fall of Srebrenica, right down to the number of buses needed to transport Muslim men to their deaths, according to a review of a Dutch book on the atrocities.

As brutal as this story is, a recent broadcast — on Serbian TV — of portions of a ‘training’ video shot during the events made Srebrenica inescapably horrifying to many Serbs. In the video, members of a paramilitary Serbian police unit, the so-called “Scorpions,” abuse and eventually execute six Bosnian Muslim men. According to one translation, one of the Serbs shouts at a victim, “What are you trembling for?” The broadcast had an effect on at least one Serbian, judging by this Newsweek account comparing the reactions of victims and perpetrators:

While Nura watched her son killed by the man identified as Medic, the accused killer sat in Serbia watching his past unfold before him, with his own daughters sitting at his side. “The police will come,” he told his family. “I might not be back.” He fled but was arrested a few days later. His teenage daughter, shocked into silence, has been unable to speak since.

Sadly, many of those responsible for the massacres — most notably Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic — have not been captured and brought to trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. May they be apprehended, convicted, rot in jail, and then in hell.

I remember how enraged I was as it became clear that thousands had died after the fall of Srebrenica, right under the *@# noses of their supposed protectors: Janvier, Akashi, Chirac, Clinton, Major, Annan, Voorhoeve, Karremans. I can only imagine how those affected must have felt and still feel.

The United Nations all but died for me then — an unworthy, worthless tissue of pettifoggery, unable to back up words with deeds or even deeds with words, not merely useless but literally harmful to those who counted on it, its administrators and personnel more wedded to process and protocol than human rights or the simple concept of honor.

That may have been an overreaction, or at least an insufficient one. The bitter truth is that the U.N. may well be the best available political alternative for many of the jobs it tries to do, but it was either poorly designed or has become poorly staffed for the one job so many once hoped was its raison d’etre: world peace.

Even ideals as grandiose as a United Nations or as simple and right as the human rights of a besieged minority will ultimately go undefended and unrespected, if people aren’t allowed to actually fight for them when necessary. If it can’t answer the “you and what army?” question, a United Nations that purports to be the authority for legitimate military force should probably drop that pretense, stick to issues it can resolve, and concede that it will take men and women with blood in their veins to settle the greater ones.

Links
Srebrenica: A Cry From the Grave (PBS)
Timeline: Siege of Srebrenica (BBC)
Srebrenica massacre (Wikipedia)
Srebrenica: A ’safe’ area (Netherlands Institute for War Documentation)
Women of Srebrenica (Bosnian NGO; many eyewitness accounts).
Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica: Europe’s Worst Massacre since World War II (David Rohde; Pulitzer prize, 1996).

=====
EDIT, 7/12: wording rearrangements for clarity in final paragraphs, link to ‘trembling’ post added.

Your (nearly) all Mladic, (nearly) all the time blog notes that the London Sunday Times is reporting that Ratko Mladic — responsible for numerous war crimes during the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia — has been holding out for money, and that a deal has been struck:

ONE of Europe’s most wanted war crimes suspects, General Ratko Mladic, has struck a deal for $5m (L2.75m) “compensation” if he gives himself up before the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia — which was carried out by his forces.

Officials close to the negotiations said Mladic, who has spent a decade on the run, demanded the money for his family and bodyguards in return for an agreement to surrender to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague.

The deal was brokered by a shadowy circle of Serb oligarchs, many of whom made their fortunes under Slobodan Milosevic, the former president already on trial in the Hague.

The $5 million figure is reportedly pegged by Mladic to a US reward for information leading to Mladic’s arrest. Another tidbit is that Russian FSB intelligence operatives are involved in the negotiations, seemingly confirming the “Politika” report noted here last week. On the other hand, London Times reporters Eve-Ann Prentice and Tom Walker say sources tell them Mladic’s current location is in a Belgrade suburb, not a former Soviet republic.

Prosecutors in The Hague reportedly don’t care about the details of how Mladic is arrested, and I suppose I agree this deal would be OK with me — get the rest later. Once Mladic is testifying, the whole thing is liable to come crumbling down around deniers and defenders of Milosevic regime crimes:

…Mladic’s evidence could influence Milosevic’s trial. One source said: “He’ll sing like a canary, just you see.”

Meanwhile, Austrian newspaper “Der Standard” reports that the Croatian government has arrested ten people in connection with the Srebrenica massacre video played at the Milosevic trial earlier this month.