The Hague’s Court on Bosnia genocide « Political, Human, Environmental Respect

Posted by: Jose | February 27, 2007

The Hague’s Court on Bosnia genocide

I read:
The International Court of Justice in The Hague said the massacre of 8,000 men in Srebrenica was genocide, but Belgrade was not directly responsible.

But it said Serbia broke international law by failing to stop the killings.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6399319.stm

And my mind has started to fly. It could not be otherwise because the incrimination of a British author in Austria and his imprisonment because of his doubts on the Holocaust has been too recent.

The Nazi regime, according to the official news, massacred millions of Jews - they also killed millions of other ethnicities but this has not been stressed world-wide - during Nazism. This crime was condemned immediately after the end of the war although it had been happening before and during WWII and Germany has been made to pay dearly for it ever since, either in money or in kind. Germans are practically not allowed to raise their eyes before a Jew.

Another fascist regime ruled Serbia when the Srebenica butchery took place, and as you can see above Serbia broke international laws by failing to stop the killings.

I have some questions to ask.

1. Has the law changed so much since 1945 that its ruling considers two similar cases in a patently dissimilar way?

2. If the tribunal rules that Serbia broke the international law, why is it that it is not punished to indemnify, at least subsidiarily, what its subjects in a massive way did at that time?

3. Has the State of Israel protested against this decision?

4. All of a sudden a tribunal decides that the human life is so priceless that it cannot be compensated by any means. Are Muslim lives dearer than Jewish ones?

Sincerely I think that what The Hague Court of Justice - a U.N.’s organisation - has done is simply misadminister justice.

Something which will no doubt be voiced airily by the Muslim world, something more to add to the injustices we have been witnessing during the last times.

A doubt hovers before me, is this also a part of the fight against terror?

Posted in Justice

Responses

No way that Serbia could be found guilty - it would have opened a major can of worms regarding ultimate responsibility.

There is the on-going trial re: genocide in Darfur which neglects to take into account that it is a proxy war.
As one commenter on CiF said : ‘In both Sudan and Nigeria, the company behind the bloodshed is Chevron, which christened one of its tankers The Condoleeza Rice.’

Genocide was codified by the Nuremberg Trials - with the proviso that it does not apply to those in charge.

By: MerkinOnParis on February 27, 2007
at 10:37 am

Thank you, Merkin, for your quick response. I find myself at a loss to understand how it is possible the world does not judge those crimes against the humankind in some cases and it does in others. It is not very far in time now that Saddam’s were judged and sentenced by the US and some other minor countries as worthy of a cruel war.

According to Nuremberg, then, the US is not responsible for the destruction in Iraq, responsible will only be Bush and Co., but it is known the American tax-payer is paying for all those costs. The Spanish tax-payer paid for all the costs of the civil war, even though there was a side of the country who was responsible for it.

It is absurd that Germans pay for what their predecessors did, because there is not the slightest doubt they are paying for it.

Genocide, Merkin, is genocide. A murder is a murder and I feel you were trembling when you said what you said, because I also feel that we are all of us doomed if we let that recur and recur endlessly until each and every one of us who are not in agreement disappear off the crust of the Earth.

By: Jose on February 27, 2007
at 1:29 pm

I agree with you Jose, that this ruling will probably create even more contempt for the U.N. and the Western governments that control it by Muslims worldwide. This aspect is very troubling. I think measures to ease tension between the East and West are too few and far between.
Canada is ruling tonight on the constitutionality of Security Certificates (our version of the PATRIOT Act), this ruling will be watched closely by the Muslims here in Canada and world wide as well as by everyday civil rights watchers everywhere.

In more detailed response to your post. I have to ask, where were those U.N. Dutch peacekeepers the day the Serb forces massacred those in Srebrenica? Should the UN be held partly responsible for not blocking the massacre?

Some Jews did not want reparations from Germany after WWII. They believed that would be a kin to forgiveness. Something that many believed could never be given.

Who is really responsible in Serbia? The war-shocked civilians or the military-butchers and insane politicians that ordered and carried out the massacres themselves? I can’t believe all Serb civilians supported what happened in Bosnia. I’m not sure what the statistics were, or if poles could have even been taken.
Can average Americans be held responsible for what BuchCo. is doing in Iraq when according to poles, 70% of us say we don’t want our military there and think the war is wrong and unjust?

I have no answers, just more questions.
And one final rhetorical question, if the Balkans are any indication of the way things are going, are these conflicts and legal decisions going to cause rejection of multi-religious/cultural integration world wide?
Thanks for the post.

By: 1loneranger on February 27, 2007
at 10:18 pm

Urgh, I’m sure Poles have many different opinions about this topic. Stuff for a different thread perhaps. Not that Polls are ever accurate - but, I’m sure you know what I was trying to say. Sorry Poles out there.

By: 1loneranger on February 28, 2007
at 5:45 am

That’s the problem, really, also in my opinion. Answers is what we are after, but those answer never seem to come. The Tribunal that tried the genocide commented above belongs to the UN. And this is another question : is the UN also liable to being tried if necessary?

I insist that perhaps the right solution would be that the International Court of Justice tries those people responsible, empowering the UN to intervene in the particular country, not against the whole of the people, but against those directly responsible. In the case of Bush & Co. a special force would be entitled to reach the White House and there detain them. Utopian, isn’t it? Before doing that it would need, of course, the cooperation by the American people.

No, not so easy, indeed.

As to polls, I have seen many of them are presented in such a way that the responses are as they are sought to be. Not trustable really.

By: Jose on February 28, 2007
at 11:50 am

I agree that there is a lot of politics involved in deciding which crimes go to ICJ trial and which do not. In particular, it is impossible to try anyone who is still in power. That would be like holding a trial for a common criminal before first arresting them. I sincerely hope - and believe - that the governments of the US, UK, Israel etc will eventually be brought to trial, but its not going to happen straight away.

As to this particular verdict, it’s very problematic to take a country to court. Serbians perpertrated the Srebrenica massacre, but it is almost nonsensical to say that Serbia as a whole is guilty. It seems that the government of the time was guilty of implicitly condoning the massacre, and it has been found guilty of doing so. That is still entirely different to the crimes of the Nazi regime, who ordered and organised their genocide. It’s still a crime, but not the same crime.

I’m not sure in what way you think that Germans pay for the Nazis’ crimes. The Nuremberg trials tried and punished the Nazis, but having learned from the catastrophic treaty of Versailles the allies did not impose any collective punishment on the German state.

The German government of the late 1940s was of course a distinct entity from the regime that started the holocaust, whereas Serbia has known no such revolution. Even so, would it be appropriate to punish the country? Collective punishments are unfair, and spread poverty and (justifiable) resentment.

This verdict condemns the (in)actions of the Serbian government as a whole. That’s not without meaning in and of itself, but it would be counterproductive to pass sentence (beyond perhaps compelling Serbia to help Bosnia to recover from damages it sustained during the wars). The individuals responsible, on the other hand, can and must be punished.

By: Dave On Fire on March 1, 2007
at 3:56 pm

Germans pay with their support of the state of Israel. I have had friends living in Germany where they have witnessed severe vexations by Jews of German subjects. And I believe financial compensations have always been paid to Jews by the Germans.

It seems the totality of the Germans are condemned to be obliging to Jews for aeons to come.

By: Jose on March 2, 2007
at 9:42 am

Jose, not so simple. sorry.
At Yalta, Stalin asked that 50,000 of those involved should be put in a pit and shot.
Roosevelt, thinking it was a joke, said ‘ok 49,000′.
Churchill said that he would not have it, at all.
Anyone who has seen Oswiencim would agree with Stalin.
I have been there many times and still don’t have an answer.
Recently, there have been any reports of the rapes taking place in Iraq.
Rapes carried out by the people trained by the US forces.
Much the same as we saw before Sreb - rape used as a weapon.
One Iraqi comment was ‘ that is the way they were trained’
Value judgement? yes.
.

By: boldscot on March 3, 2007
at 1:04 am

Stalin never joked. His regime proves it.

What I have in mind about Srebenica is that by sentencing individuals for crimes committed under the aegis of a state leaves the victims powerless to claim for what it is their due compensation. We must think that Bosnian properties were razed by the Serbs - the Serbs in general - by commission or by omission. Also those murdered were mainly wage-earners: the male population, leaving their families in the most absolute of miseries.

Somebody must pay for it, don’t you think?

By: Jose on March 3, 2007
at 7:08 am

And yes, Boldscot, that is the fiend on the loose, able to dispose of life and spirit.

Disgusting, indeed.

By: Jose on March 3, 2007
at 7:10 am

http://geobay.com/a7db40
.
Dahr Jamail gives a different perspective because he not embedded with the military - though how he has not been ‘iced’ is well beyond me.
The following two links deal with the use of violence against women as a deliberate tool in the ‘war of terror’.
.
http://geobay.com/91a098
.
http://geobay.com/868974

Who pays?

By: boldscot on March 3, 2007
at 12:00 pm

Hi Jose, same as last week, my last post has been ‘on and off’ the site a coupla times today.

By: boldscot on March 4, 2007
at 12:41 am

Boldscot, I observe that in your two comments that were sent for moderation, there were included two links and more. Two links or more in comments has been found to be a source of problems through hackering. So perhaps the problem would be settled if you sent extra links in separate comments.

I’d say that’s the cause of these delays, because your other comments without links have no problems at all.

By: Jose on March 4, 2007
at 8:09 am

Curiously enough, Boldscot, Stalin is notorious for his persecutions and killings, and for the help he received from Russian Jews. Even the Russian Revolution received a decided support from Jews. One German Chancellor, a Jew, eased Lenin’s return to Russia.

By: Jose on March 4, 2007
at 11:56 am

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The Hague’s Court on Bosnia genocide

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