Serbian-organized UN Debate:
“Role of International Criminal Justice in Reconciliation” is a thinly veiled Serbian propaganda

Judge Theodor Meron Criticizes Serbian-Organized UN Debate

RFEL/RL (April 4, 2013)– The president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has criticized a scheduled Serbian-organized UN debate on the tribunal, saying it “poses questions in terms of fundamental respect for the rule of law.”

Judge Theodor Meron said, “It is not a [debate] in which my participation would make any significant contribution to the norms which I hold dear.”

Vuk Jeremic, the Serbian president of the UN General Assembly, scheduled the April 10 debate about the performance of the tribunal after two controversial ICTY acquittals.

The tribunal in November 2012 freed on appeal Croatian Generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac, who had been sentenced to jail for their roles in a 1995 offensive to drive Serbian rebels out of the Krajina region.

Meron, who was speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said, “Acquittals, just as convictions, show the health of the system.”

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Denying Genocide Won’t Promote Reconciliation

Richard Dicker
Director of international justice at Human Rights Watch
Huffington Post
April 9, 2013.

A public debate at the UN on April 10 will serve up a revisionist denial of the worst killings in Europe since the end of World War II: the ethnic slaughter in the former Yugoslavia that horrified the world in the 1990s. While the session’s ostensible purpose is to take “a closer look at the long-term impact of international criminal justice, in particular as it relates to reconciliation…” it is unlikely much thoughtful discussion will occur.

The debate’s convener, Vuk Jeremic, president of the United Nations General Assembly, is former foreign minister of Serbia. Under previous governments, Serbia had taken some significant steps to arrest war crimes suspects and prosecute wartime abuses by Serbian forces in Croatia and Kosovo. Angered by a tribunal appeals decision last November that freed two Croatian generals convicted of crimes against Serbs — admittedly a controversial reversal, Jeremic decided to use his General Assembly authority to organize a “debate” to serve as cover for an auto-da-fe of the tribunal.

One of the event’s reported keynoters will be Tomislav Nikolic, president of Serbia and leader of the Serbian Progressive Party. Nikolic had split from the Serbian Radical Party, whose founder, Vojislav Seselj, is on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The kind of reconciliation he seeks can be gleaned from his characterization of the mass killing in Srebrenica in July 1995. There in the course of a few days Bosnian Serb forces murdered as many as 8,000 Muslim [Bosniak] men and boys — the worst single act of killing in Europe since the Holocaust. The International Court of Justice and the judges of the Yugoslav tribunal ruled the killings genocide. However, in a June 2012 statement, President Nikolic, while recognizing “grave war crimes,” claimed that “there was no genocide in Srebrenica.”

The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal was established by UN Security Council resolution 827, on May 25, 1993, as the 1990s Balkan Wars spiraled downward into deepening horror. The Security Council, for the first time, determined that mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing amounted to a threat to international security, and the creation of the tribunal proved game-changing.

The Security Council’s act of creation spawned a series of country-specific international tribunals, all born of unspeakable human suffering. Resolution 827 signaled an end to the categorical impunity previously associated with such crimes and jump-started the momentum that led to the establishment of the permanent International Criminal Court.

A year later, following the genocide in Rwanda, the council created a second ad hoc tribunal, mandating it to bring about “national reconciliation” through trials. The ambitious objectives of reconciliation and deterrence became indelibly linked with the tribunals’ work. While well-intended, these far-reaching objectives have proven difficult. Complex criminal trials of military commanders and political leaders have not provided a ready vehicle for the broad goals of reconciliation and quick deterrence. Trials first and foremost involve determining guilt or innocence on a specific number of criminal charges. These proceedings do not provide a comprehensive historical accounting.

The great expectations that grew alongside the tribunals may also be linked to the romanticized conventional understanding of the impact of the Nuremberg trials in post-war Germany. These epochal trials began the process of reconciliation, but this took decades. The international and subsequent German trials forged the core of an irrefutable historical record of responsibility that has made revisionist denials difficult, but it took truth telling, public education, and wrenching soul searching to change attitudes and heal the scars brought about by mass crimes.

The tribunals’ important deterrent function has been frequently cited by diplomats, judicial officials and activists to bolster support for continued trials and funding. In domestic settings, the real prospect of criminal justice does serve as a deterrent, but crimes surely continue. On the highly varied and uneven international landscape, the inevitability of criminal sanction for mass crimes is far less certain. And international justice has been marked by a disturbing double standard — with a buffer of impunity for those in the most powerful governments and those they actively protect elsewhere.

The ICC has had some local deterrent effect, but even the symbolic effect of seeing once seemingly omnipotent accused like Charles Taylor, Slobodan Milosevic, and Uhuru Kenyatta standing in the dock is just beginning to be felt. It will take substantially more trials and convictions for international justice to pack a meaningful deterrent punch.

And yet international trials for the most serious crimes do realize an important inherent good. While not necessarily bringing reconciliation or deterring future crimes in the short term, they can, by honoring victims, rendering justice and imposing punishment on the guilty, demonstrate the rule of law in the communities most affected by the crimes. And these trials signal that impunity for such crimes is ending.

These are some of the issues that should be aired in the General Assembly debate. Even though tomorrow there may be a few constructive offerings, these questions most likely will not be addressed.

The creation of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal moved the goal posts in enforcing fundamental human rights and the broader efforts toward international justice are rewriting key rules of international relations and diplomacy. Countries with a more constructive agenda need to find a way to debate these and other lessons as we near the 20th anniversary of the Yugoslavia tribunal.

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U.S., others boycott Serbian politician’s ‘unbalanced, inflammatory’ U.N. session

“The United States strongly disagrees with the decision of the president of the General Assembly to hold an unbalanced, inflammatory thematic debate today on the role of international criminal justice in reconciliation and will not participate.”

By Louis Charbonneau
(April 10, 2013)

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United States boycotted as “inflammatory” a meeting on international justice on Wednesday organized by a Serbian politician who heads the U.N. General Assembly – a session some nations say was intended merely to complain about the treatment of Serbs in war crimes tribunals.

The meeting and panel discussion were set up by former Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic, who is serving as president of the 193-nation assembly. Some U.N. diplomats have privately accused Jeremic of using the General Assembly to promote his own career and his home country.

Jeremic told Reuters in an interview that he considered the event a success, but added it was “regrettable” some important countries like the United States did not participate.

European and other Western nations have said Wednesday’s session on international justice was a thinly veiled attempt to attack the international war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which Serbia has criticized. Jordan and Canada joined the United States in boycotting the debate.

“The United States strongly disagrees with the decision of the president of the General Assembly to hold an unbalanced, inflammatory thematic debate today on the role of international criminal justice in reconciliation and will not participate,” said Erin Pelton, spokeswoman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations.

“We believe that ad hoc international criminal tribunals and other judicial institutions in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone and Cambodia have been critical to ending impunity and helping these countries chart a new, more positive future,” Pelton said in a statement.

Pelton added that it was especially problematic that the day’s events “fail to provide the victims of these atrocities an appropriate voice.”

A senior Western diplomat said on condition of anonymity that Jeremic’s decision to organize the meeting on April 10 – the day that Croatia’s Nazi puppet state was established in 1941 – ensured that the “whole event took on a Serbian feel.”

He added that Jeremic had refused to change the date after he was requested to do so by a number of delegations. Jeremic confirmed that to Reuters, but made clear he considered it an appropriate date that called attention to Nazi-era crimes.

‘VERY DELICATE TOPIC’

“This is obviously a very delicate topic, international criminal justice,” Jeremic said, adding it was the first time the General Assembly had debated it. He said about 82 countries either spoke or associated themselves with the position of a regional bloc presented during the debate.

There are “lessons to be learned with the aim of having a more perfect international justice in the future,” he said.

“I find it highly regrettable that some important members of the international community, like the United States, chose not to be a part of the debate,” he said.

Jordan’s U.N. ambassador, Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein, told a small group of reporters that Serbia’s approach to the session on international justice was “almost an impeachable offense” – ostensibly referring to Jeremic’s largely ceremonial post as the head of the General Assembly.

Since it was set up in 1993, the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has indicted 161 people for crimes stemming from the wars that shattered the Yugoslav federation, of whom 15 have been acquitted. Several dozen suspects remain on trial.

Serbia and its ally Russia have sharply criticized the tribunal over recent decisions to free two Croatian generals and a Kosovo Albanian former guerilla commander.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon defended the war crimes tribunals, the International Criminal Court and other methods of ensuring accountability.

“The system of international criminal justice has … given voice to victims and witnesses,” Ban said.

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic hammered away at the Hague tribunal in a 45-minute speech to the assembly, telling participants that the “prosecution has been favored over the defense” and the court was guilty of the “most flagrant violation of human rights.”

Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch said Nikolic was well known as a denier of the Srebrenica genocide. More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim [Bosniak] men and boys were killed in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in July 1995 by Bosnian Serb forces under the command of Ratko Mladic, who is currently on trial for crimes against humanity and other war crimes.

Jordan, Britain and others complained that the victims of Srebrenica had no voice in Wednesday’s debate.
Croatian Ambassador Ranko Vilovic also criticized the session, saying, “Truth, justice and reconciliation were not the values for which this debate was organized.”

Some diplomats say Jeremic may be jostling to become the next president of Serbia, an allegation he brushed aside in his interview.

Envoys say that if he does not get Serbia’s presidency, he is likely to try to become the next U.N. secretary-general, a position that is expected to be filled by an Eastern European.

U.N. diplomats say Jeremic’s name has been mentioned as a possible candidate to replace Ban after his term ends in December 2016. While Russia would support Jeremic, U.N. diplomats said there were less divisive candidates from Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and elsewhere.

[Inserted by Bosnian Genocide Blog: According to Evelyn Leopold, veteran journalist reporting from the UN: "Jeremic had been rumored as a future president of Yugoslavia, and even a U.N. secretary-general. But he now can forget any prospect of a top United Nations post as the United States, Britain and others would certainly cast a veto."]

The European Union’s 27 member nations are attending the event but sending junior diplomats.

(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Will Dunham and Peter Cooney)

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US, Canada, Jordan boycott UN meeting on global criminal justice that excluded war victims

United Nations AP (April 10, 2013)– Barred from speaking at a U.N. meeting on international criminal justice, Bosnian activist Munira Subasic, who lost 22 close family members in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, said she felt powerless as she listened to Serbia’s ultranationalist president attack the U.N. war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia as politically biased.

Subasic said Wednesday that she believed that Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic was also denying the genocide at Srebrenica by Bosnian Serbs that killed some 8,000 Muslim [Bosniak] men and boys, including her husband and beloved youngest son, Nermin. It was Europe’s worst massacre of civilians since World War II.

As her hurt and anger rose, Subasic said she put on a T-shirt which she had brought as a gift for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, saying “Srebrenica” on which she had added the words “Justice Is Slow But It’s Reachable.” Next to her, she said, was a banner highlighting the genocide in the Serb-controlled half of Bosnia, Republika Srpska.

“All of a sudden I was surrounded by security … and in a very curt manner they told me that I have to leave the room,” Subasic told reporters.

She blamed U.N. General Assembly President Vuk Jeremic, a former Serb foreign minister, who organized the meeting and had banned her organization, the Mothers of Srebrenica, from making a five-minute statement. His spokesman Nikola Jovanovic said Jeremic has no personal security and doesn’t give instructions to U.N. security and speculated she was removed because of the T-shirt and banner.

Subasic’s expulsion followed a boycott of the meeting by the United States, Canada and Jordan because it didn’t include Bosnia’s war victims and gave Serbian officials a platform to attack the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal instead of focusing on the broader announced theme, the “Role of International Criminal Justice in Reconciliation.”

To protest the victims’ exclusion, Jordan’s U.N. Ambassador Prince Zeid al Hussein and Liechtenstein’s U.N. Ambassador Christian Wenewaser hosted a press conference for the Mothers of Srebrenica and the Association of Witnesses and Survivors of Genocide.

Zeid, who was a U.N. peacekeeper in Bosnia and served from 2002 to 2005 as the first president of the Assembly of States Parties for the International Criminal Court, encouraged other countries in the 193-nation General Assembly to boycott the meeting.

But it was impossible to say whether any did because Jeremic moved the meeting from the main General Assembly chamber, where all countries have nameplates and assigned seats, to a conference room where delegates sit anywhere. Jovanovic said 82 countries made statements.

Zeid expressed “indignation” at the way Jeremic exploited his position and the important theme to provide an opportunity for others to launch “an unmerited attack by the Serb Progressive Party against the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.”

Wenewaser said he and Zeid had urged Jeremic to include the victims, which is especially important because of the U.N. involvement in Bosnia and the failure of U.N. peacekeepers to protect civilians in Srebrenica, and look at the issues “in a comprehensive and in a balanced way” instead of “clearly driving a political agenda.”

“Unfortunately, that has not been possible,” he said.

The ambassadors also tried to get Jeremic to change the April 10 date of the meeting because it is the 71st anniversary of the founding of the pro-Nazi Croatian state, a fact mentioned by Nikolic.

Aware of the controversy, Ban as U.N. chief gave his “full and unequivocal support” to all international tribunals in an opening speech and called on all countries to support and strengthen the system of international criminal justice.

“Supporting the tribunals and courts means respecting — and not calling into question — their independence, impartiality and integrity,” Ban said. “It means implementing their decisions. And it means safeguarding them from those who seek to undermine them for reasons that may have more to do with politics than justice.”

But soon after, Nikolic delivered a lengthy attack on the Yugoslav tribunal, saying it targeted Serbs, overlooked Croats and Bosnians, and made “unjust legal decisions based on untruths and rendered under political pressure.” He also questioned the court’s impartiality and objectivity “when there is a systematic atmosphere of a lynch-mobbing of everything that is Serbian,” and said unlawful arrests, kidnappings and gathering of evidence “are a rule where Serbs are concerned.”

“From the point of view of science and ethics, the Hague trials may be seen on a par with the processes held by the Inquisition,” Nikolic said. “The proceedings against Serbs are motivated by punishment and revenge.”

During the 1990s Balkan wars, Nikolic was deputy leader of the extremist Serbian Radical Party, which was even more hardline than the late strongman Slobodan Milosevic — who plunged the region into its ethnic conflagration. Nikolic was also a disciple of Vojislav Seselj, a firebrand right-wing politician who at the closing session of his war crimes trial at The Hague, Netherlands, last month retold the history of the war from a Serb perspective, claiming that Serbs had been subjected to a “genocide.”

Erin Pelton, spokeswoman for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, said the United States would not participate in the “unbalanced, inflammatory” meeting which failed to provide victims of atrocities a voice.

Among those invited who declined to attend were David Tolbert, president of the International Center for Transitional Justice; Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch; President of the International Criminal Court Song Sang-Hyun and President of the Assembly of States Parties for the International Criminal Court Tina Intelmann.

At the last minute, a highly controversial panelist was added — Canadian Maj. Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, the first commander of Sector Sarajevo. A Facebook initiative by a Bosnia-based organization called Stop Genocide Denial launched a petition drive asking Ban to boycott the meeting and ban MacKenzie because of serious allegations of misconduct against him “that include alleged visits to a rape camp run by Bosnian Serbs in 1992.”

Subasic also criticized his inclusion, saying girls and women who were raped at the camp still suffer as do the survivors of Srebrenica.

Two months ago, she said, a doctor at a laboratory doing DNA analysis called and told her that they had found remains of her youngest son “that I loved the most” — two bones, one from one grave and another from a grave 25 kilometers (15 1/2 miles) away.

“I didn’t give birth to a son without a head or arms or legs, but now I have to take him out that way,” Subasic said.

She said it was a very sad day coming to the United Nations because the U.N. “did not learn something from the past.”

“I felt the same way I felt in 1995,” Subasic said. “I had rights to nothing. That’s how I felt in the building of the United Nations.”

But on an optimistic note, she said, “I think justice will find a way to conquer the evil.”

That’s the message on the T-shirt which she said she delivered to the secretary-general after she was expelled from the General Assembly meeting.

As a victim of genocide, Subasic said, “I will never forgive. I will never forget.”

She urged the world to make sure that mothers do not suffer the way the mothers of Srebrenica continue to suffer.

Subasic said she would like her granddaughters to have friends that are Serb, Croat, Jewish, Roma or American, and she called on people everywhere “to love others and different people — and not to allow for hatred. I think hatred is the worst thing. I don’t hate anyone.”

Then, she said, “I will lie in peace. I will know that I did something that made a difference in this world.”

Associated Press Writer Aida Cerkez in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, contributed to this story.

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Bosnian Activist Says UN Meeting Was Biased

Edith M. Lederer
United Nations, AP (April 11, 2013)

Bosnian activist Munira Subasic lost 22 close family members in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of thousands of Muslims by Bosnian Serbs, yet she was barred from speaking at a U.N. meeting where Serbia’s ultranationalist president attacked the international body’s war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia which has been prosecuting leaders of the genocide.

A meeting on the subject of international criminal justice and reconciliation called by current U.N. General Assembly President Vuk Jeremic — a former Serbian foreign minister — quickly became a debate Wednesday that focused primarily on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

Jeremic was accused by human rights groups and some countries of using his position to turn the meeting into a forum for unfair criticism of the tribunal’s work. The United States, Canada and Jordan boycotted the meeting, and Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic’s attack on the tribunal was criticized by the European Union and others who spoke.

The Yugoslav tribunal has held that while atrocities were committed by all sides, genocide was only committed by Bosnian Serbs, including the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica — a perspective that has been criticized by many Serbs. It was Europe’s worst massacre of civilians since World War II. [note: the Serb side was responsible for some 90 percent of all war crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina]

Since she couldn’t speak, Subasic said she put on a T-shirt she brought as a gift for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon saying “Srebrenica” when she believed that Nikolic was denying the genocide that had claimed the lives of her husband and beloved youngest son, Nermin. On it, she had added the words “Justice Is Slow But It’s Reachable.” Next to her, she said, was a banner highlighting the genocide in the Serb-controlled half of Bosnia, Republika Srpska.

“All of a sudden I was surrounded by security … and in a very curt manner they told me that I have to leave the room,” Subasic told reporters.

Subasic blamed Jeremic, who had banned her organization, the Mothers of Srebrenica, from making a five-minute statement, for her expulsion. His spokesman Nikola Jovanovic said Jeremic doesn’t give instructions to U.N. security and didn’t seek to remove her.

The U.N. Security and Safety Service said Thursday that Subasic and another activist carried out “a short demonstration” by displaying T-shirts and small placards with anti-Serbian slogans in violation of U.N. rules and were “discreetly” escorted out of the building.

The U.S., Canada and Jordan boycotted the meeting because it didn’t include Bosnia’s war victims and gave Serbian officials a platform to attack the Yugoslav tribunal instead of focusing on the broader announced theme, the “Role of International Criminal Justice in Reconciliation.”

To protest the victims’ exclusion, Jordan’s U.N. Ambassador Prince Zeid al Hussein and Liechtenstein’s U.N. Ambassador Christian Wenewaser hosted a news conference for the Mothers of Srebrenica and the Association of Witnesses and Survivors of Genocide.

Zeid, a U.N. peacekeeper in Bosnia who served from 2002 to 2005 as the first president of the Assembly of States Parties for the International Criminal Court, encouraged other countries in the 193-nation General Assembly to boycott the meeting.

But it was impossible to say whether any did because Jeremic moved the meeting from the main General Assembly chamber, where all countries have nameplates and assigned seats, to a conference room where delegates sit anywhere. Jovanovic said 82 countries made statements, which continued into Thursday.

Zeid expressed “indignation” at the way Jeremic exploited his position and the important theme to provide an opportunity for others to launch “an unmerited attack by the Serb Progressive Party against the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.”

Wenewaser said he and Zeid had urged Jeremic to include the victims, which is especially important because of the U.N. involvement in Bosnia and the failure of U.N. peacekeepers to protect civilians in Srebrenica, and to look at the issues in a comprehensive and balanced way instead of “clearly driving a political agenda.”

“Unfortunately, that has not been possible,” he said.

The ambassadors also tried to get Jeremic to change the April 10 date of the meeting because it is the 71st anniversary of the founding of the pro-Nazi Croatian state, a fact mentioned by Nikolic.

Erin Pelton, spokeswoman for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, said the United States would not participate in the “unbalanced, inflammatory” meeting which failed to provide victims of atrocities a voice.

Among those invited who declined to attend were Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch; President of the International Criminal Court Song Sang-Hyun and President of the Assembly of States Parties for the International Criminal Court Tina Engelmann.

Aware of the controversy, U.N. chief Ban gave his “full and unequivocal support” to all international tribunals in an opening speech and called on all countries to support and strengthen the system of international criminal justice.

“Supporting the tribunals and courts means respecting — and not calling into question — their independence, impartiality and integrity,” Ban said.

But soon after, Nikolic delivered a lengthy attack on the Yugoslavia tribunal, saying it targeted Serbs, overlooked crimes by Croats and Bosnians, and made “unjust legal decisions based on untruths and rendered under political pressure.”

“From the point of view of science and ethics, the Hague trials may be seen on a par with the processes held by the Inquisition,” Nikolic said. “The proceedings against Serbs are motivated by punishment and revenge.”

During the 1990s Balkan wars, Nikolic was deputy leader of the extremist Serbian Radical Party, which was even more hardline than the late strongman Slobodan Milosevic — who plunged the region into its ethnic conflagration.

Subasic said that two months ago a doctor at a laboratory doing DNA analysis of Srebrenica victims called and told her that they had found remains of her youngest son “that I loved the most” — two bones, one from one grave and another from a grave 25 kilometers (15 1/2 miles) away.

“I didn’t give birth to a son without a head or arms or legs, but now I have to take him out that way,” Subasic said.

She urged the world to make sure that mothers do not suffer the way the mothers of Srebrenica continue to suffer.

Subasic said she will know that she did something that made a difference in the world if her granddaughters and others learn from the past and have friends from different religions, ethnicities and countries.

“I think hatred is the worst thing,” she said. “I don’t hate anyone. I don’t hate even those who perpetrated crimes, and those who killed my family.”

Associated Press Writer Aida Cerkez in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, contributed to this story.