Radovan Karadzic: better victor’s justice than impunity
Posted on Wednesday 23 July, 2008
Filed Under International
The English translation – ‘desk murderer’, or something like that – doesn’t bring home every connotation of the German noun Schreibtischtäter. It includes a certain element of contempt for functionaries empowered to issue death warrants from the comfort of their office.
Back in 1995, in his role as political head of Bosnia’s Serbian irredentist minority, it was Radovan Karadzic – pictured after capture and in his hey-day – who signed the anodyne-sounding ‘Directive 7’. That’s exactly the kind of heading favoured by numerous regional administration officials the world over when issuing tediously dull documents that put the renewal of a municipally-owned water mains network out to tender.
Yet this was no humdrum local government mandate, destined to be taken halfway down the order paper of the relevant subcommittee. Directive 7 was an order to Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic to ‘create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope for further survival or live for the inhabitants’ of a town called Srebrenica
The result was the summary execution of 8,000 men, women and children, while United Nations-mandated Dutch peacekeeping forces simply looked on.
For 13 years since, Karadzic has found it only too easy to avoid capture, in a country where many are reportedly sympathetic to what he did. The likelihood is that if the government of Boris Tadic were not so keen to join the European Union, he would be at liberty still.
Comparisons to Hitler – advanced by Clinton era diplomat Richard Holbrooke, the main architect of the Dayton Accords – are ludicrously overblown. But Karadzic’s crimes certainly rank alongside those of such famous paper-shuffling Schreibtischtäter predecessors such as Adolf Eichmann.
Eichmann may have killed one Jew directly with his own hands, although his defence team disputed even that claim. His culpability in the holocaust, however, was not in a moment’s doubt, even if all he did was sign off the orders.
The likelihood is that Karadzic will now end up before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. That will result in the predictable stream of denunciation from controversialists of a range of political standpoints, from the hardline nationalist right to sections of the Stalinist-influenced or self-appointed anti-imperialist left.
ICTY – based in the Hague – represents the purest form of victor’s justice, we are bound to be told. Its indictees are disproportionately Serbian or Montenegrin. The posthumous charges tabled against the late Croatian president Franjo Tudjman and Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegović were mere token gestures designed to give the court a semblance of neutrality.
Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s envoy to NATO, maintains: “If the Karadzic case merits being considered in The Hague, then next to him in the dock should be those who took the decision to bomb entirely innocent people, hundreds of whom died during the ‘democratisation’ of the Balkans by the west.”
Even legalistic quibbles are possible. ICTY was established by the UN Security Council rather of the UN General Assembly. When former Serb president Slobodan Milošević stood in the dock, the contention that the court therefore has no legal authority was central to his case.
Many similar points could have been raised in relation to Eichmann. Legally speaking, Israel had no right to abduct him from sovereign Argentina, and probably it would have been preferable for him to be tried in a neutral jurisdiction.
Maybe clemency could have been exercised and the death penalty commuted to life imprisonment. But it would be difficult to maintain that what happened to the Nazi was in any real sense a miscarriage of justice.
Tell you what. I’ll grant each and everyone of the above objections to what will happen to Karadzic to anyone who wishes to raise them. Just allow me this in return; it is morally right that he be called to account and it is morally right that he be severely punished.
in the nature of the case, there is no way that the impending trial can be anything other than victor’s justice; but better that than impunity for mass murder.
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78 Responses to “Radovan Karadzic: better victor’s justice than impunity”
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strange, years ago you had to scan neo-nazi forums to see what they were up to, but now (thanks to Jock MacTrousers) you can see genocide denial everywhere
for those people who feel like adopting his filth, I suggest reading Preliminary List of Missing and Killed in Srebrenica, [PDF] it makes chilling reading
see http://www.domovina.net/srebrenica/page_006/Preliminarni_spisak_Srebrenica_1995.pdf
what a sad situation when socialist blogs become the home to deniers and revisionists
more filth http://leninology.blogspot.com/2008/07/what-are-odds.html
see the comments box, http://www.haloscan.com/comments/lenin/8174970196169998436/
strange, years ago you had to scan neo-nazi forums to see what they were up to, but now (thanks to Jock MacTrousers) you can see genocide denial everywhere
for those people who feel like adopting his filth, I suggest reading Preliminary List of Missing and Killed in Srebrenica, [PDF] it makes chilling reading
see http://www.domovina.net/srebrenica/page_006/Preliminarni_spisak_Srebrenica_1995.pdf
what a sad situation when socialist blogs become the home to deniers and revisionists
more filth http://leninology.blogspot.com/2008/07/what-are-odds.html
see the comments box, http://www.haloscan.com/comments/lenin/8174970196169998436/
more filth
at Lenin’s Tomb what are odds post, see the comments box, http://www.haloscan.com/comments/lenin/8174970196169998436/
“(thanks to Jock MacTrousers) you can see genocide denial everywhere for those people who feel like adopting his filth…” Modernity(New World Order)
Are you saying that the positive identifications from the Srebrenica report, and a recent interview with a rep of the ICMP, are not admissable as evidence? Why? Do you know of some other publicly accessible list of positive identifications i.e. of bodies corresponding to names on the ‘missing list’(even without time, cause and perpetrator of death established)?
Rhetorical question, because I know you don’t.
any one interested in the tactics and methods of genocide deniers (like Jock McTrousers) should read http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/ where a team of people pull apart neo-nazi lies, crush David Irving clones and fight this sea of filth
Ok – why does it matter to discuss the scale of the Srebrinica massacre, and how it fitted in to the general killing in Jugoslavia.
Look at david T over at harry’s Place:
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/07/25/srebrenica-the-lessons-we-drew/
The use of the word “unique”, but it wasn’t unique.
The massacre of Muslims wasn’t even unique in Srebrinica, where leading up the the events in questin Bosniak militia had been kidnapping and murdering Bosnian Serb civilians.
It is correct that those respinsible for the massacre shoud be brought to justice (and they shouldn’t forget to prosecute the Dutch!), but Srebrenica wasn’t unique. that is the tragedy, and to suggest otherwise is a political narrative.
Why is it that hardly anyone cares about the massacre of 2500 serbs in Krajina?
Why is it that hardly anyone cares that under the very eyes of NATO, Kosovan militias have been murderering Serbs and Roma?
Newman wrote:
“Ok – why does it matter to discuss the scale of the Srebrinica massacre, and how it fitted in to the general killing in Jugoslavia.”
Sadly, if you don’t know the answer to that already, then explaining it to you won’t mean much.
But I congratulate you, you have plumbed depths that I didn’t think he then you would go to, granted you’re a bit more sophisticated than McTrousers, but not very.
Anyone who follows the extreme right will seen similar arguments, along the lines of:
“why does it matter to discuss the scale of the killing in Poland, and how it fitted in to the general killing in WW2″
It is a not very sophisticated form of deflection, who’s objective is to obscure that particular event behind a mountain of carnage, to treated not as a singular event with its own characteristics and causes, but as one of many and therefore not very significant.
It’s an old ploy, but pretty sick any way, as are Newman’s comments of:
“The massacre of Muslims wasn’t even unique in Srebrinica, where leading up the the events in questin Bosniak militia had been kidnapping and murdering Bosnian Serb civilians.”
Again making parallels, not treating the cold and calculating murder of over 8000 as worthy of remembrance or as an event on its own.
Rather Newman’s technique is to confuse a lot of issues and hope no one can unravel them.
I was wrong before, I had hoped that Newman was merely ignorant on this topic, now I see that it is his political malevolence which drives his views and need to push a revisionist agenda concerning Srebrenica.
what a sad man, what a decline.
So really Newman and McTrousers are not that apart, just a matter of degree.
Newman, Lenny-Symour, the RCP/Spiked online, Neil Clark…
The list goes on of those who use classic holocaust denial arguments to apologize and/or minimise the genocidal crimes of Karadzic and the Serb “ethnic cleansers”. These people really are beneath contempt: read Lenny “Seymore” Tombstone’s weasel words and -worse- the nutters and revisionists who are commenting on his blog, for instance.
Amazing, isn’t it, how these self-styled friends of the Muslims are so willing to apologise for and/or minimise, the mass murder of Muslims at Srebrenica. Any sensible Muslim observing these contortions will surely conclude that the support of the SWP and ‘Respect’ for the ‘Muslim cause’ in Britain and internationally, has not been based upon any kind of genuine, positive sympathy…but upon a cynical “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” calculation that merely reflects a negative mirror image of the priorities of the ruling classes of the West. And so cannot be relied upon.
To be fair to Neil Clark Jim, he’s now writing about 8000 dead at Srebrenica,after years of claiming 2-4000.
Hold on lads ( Modernity, Denham, etc), we’re in agreement about the most important matter! You are essentially saying that the ICTY and the ICMP are not credible sources. I couldn’t agree more! I do wish you’d share your secret sources with the rest of us, though.
For a wide discussion of human rights and the left (relevant to this thread) see:
http://shirazsocialist.wordpress.com/2008/07/25/in-praise-of-the-human-rights-left/#comments
This part seems to have become a refuge for zionazi nuts who are too extreme even for Harry’s Place.
” In-praise-of-the-human-rights-left…” HO HO HO
Who’s that? Aardvarkovitch, Cohen, Hitchens, Netanyahu, that American guy that’s always on the telly who can’t speak very well?
Shut up Napier.
“Zionazi”: what a sick, anti-semitic term. Whatever criticisms you may have of Jewish nationalism and the leadership of Israel, to equate Zionism with Nazism is simply despicable and worthy of anti-semites like Atzmon and Lenny “Seymour” Tombstone.
Jim, the courageous Jock Mc Where’sMyTrousers (not his real name I suspect) has already passed over to the other side of the mirror.
Been reading too much of the Emperor’s New Clothes I think.
Next he’ll be on about the ‘myth’ of the Hutu genocide in Rwanda.
Jock McTrousers is either deliberately lying or can’t be bothered to look up simple facts. If only 45 bodies gave been found, then who are the 3,215 people buried at Potocari, just east of Sreberenica?
And the number of victims identified so far? 5,200 according to Kerry-Ann Martin, senior forensic anthropologist at the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), cited recently on the excellent “Srebrenica Genocide blog”, a vital resource for those who woud rather honour the victims of genocide than whitewash the perpetrators.
I shall assume Andy Newman is just too lazy to do some basic homework. The figure of 8,000 hasn’t been conjured out of thin air. The Bosnian government’s Federal Commission for Missing Persons in 2005 issued a list of 8,106 dead and missing – it’s not just a list of names either, it gives the victims’ dates of birth, their parents, and their registration numbers.
Subsequent research has pushed the number up to 8,470.
If McTrousers, or any of the other apologists, thinks these named individuals are not dead, then perhaps they’d like to tell their grieving relatives where they are.
Jock McTrousers is either deliberately lying or can’t be bothered to look up simple facts. If only 45 bodies gave been found, then who are the 3,215 people buried at Potocari, just east of Srebrenica?
And the number of victims identified so far? 5,200 according to Kerry-Ann Martin, senior forensic anthropologist at the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), cited recently on the excellent “Srebrenica Genocide blog”, a vital resource for those who woud rather honour the victims of genocide than whitewash the perpetrators.
I shall assume Andy Newman is just too lazy to do some basic homework. The figure of 8,000 hasn’t been conjured out of thin air. The Bosnian government’s Federal Commission for Missing Persons in 2005 issued a list of 8,106 dead and missing – it’s not just a list of names either, it gives the victims’ dates of birth, their parents, and their registration numbers.
Subsequent research has pushed the number up to 8,470.
If McTrousers, or any of the other apologists, thinks these named individuals are not dead, then perhaps they’d like to tell their grieving relatives where they are.
” If only 45 bodies gave been found [ I said 'positively identified from the missing list, cause or perpetrator of death not ascribed'], then who are the 3,215 people buried at Potocari, just east of Sreberenica? ”
Yes, that’s the point. Who are they? If you know, please tell us, and link to your source.
Until then, I can only go on the most recent statement from Adam Boys, a senior official of the International Committee on Missing Persons, in March 2007 at http://tinyurl.com/6re88b ( posts 37 and 38):
” There is the ICRC list of missing. It does not show ethnicity. Neither do our records. ”
and
“The date of death, manner of death, and who did the killing are a matter for the courts. ”
THE ‘MISSING LIST’ IS NOT, AND WAS NEVER, JUST A LIST OF MISSING MUSLIMS. Ed Herman has comprehensively demolished the ‘missing list – I know you’re familiar with that, so I’m not going to rehash it here.
And the ICMP, whose figures you quote, clearly state that there is at present NO BASIS FOR STATING THAT THESE BODIES ARE MUSLIMS WHO WERE SUMMARILY EXECUTED BY SERBS AT SREBRENICA. That’s the meaning of: “The date of death, manner of death, and who did the killing are a matter for the courts. ” [for brighter readers: sorry to have to spell that out]
But I know you don’t believe in fair trials for opponents of the NWO.
“Next he’ll be on about the ‘myth’ of the Hutu genocide in Rwanda.” Andrew Coates
Yes, that has been proven to be another piece of propaganda. I don’t know why you people pretend to be on the ‘left’ – actually, I DO know…
So the 500,000 to 800,000 (minimum and maximum estimates) victims of the Rwandan genocide are also still alive, are they? Maybe the evil imperialists are hiding them somewhere in New York.
Perhaps Pol Pot didn’t kill any Cambodians wither, and maybe the Indonesian massacres in East Timor are a figment of overheated liberal imaginations.
But, returning to Srebrenica, the authorities of Republica Srpska (the statelet inside Bosnia-Herzegovina that is the fruit of genocide) admitted, in a statement of June 2004, that 7,779 men and boys from Srebrenica were dead or missing. Now why would they do that, if the real number of dead was just 45?
Srebrenica is the only atrocity, of the vast number committeed by the Bosnian Serb Army and the assorted Serb militias, that the Republica Srpska has ever admutted to.
The International Commission on Missing Persons has a list of over 7,000 missing rom Srebrenica, and its forensic experts have been working on mass graves scattered acrss eastern Bosnia. Not something an international body would do, if it believed the massacre was a fiction.
In 2005, Doune Porter, Senior Forensic Anthropologist with the ICMP, said: “The perpetrators of the massacre went to enormous lengths to hide the evidence. When it became apparent that satellite imagery could pinpoint the locations of the large mass graves, they went in again using heavy machinery and dug up the bodies and then reburied them in smaller mass graves that they hid better.”
And, if you bother to look up the website of the ICMP itself, you will find the following: “ICMP has assisted in making 13,879 identifications of different individuals since the DNA labs went on line in November 2001. Of that number 11,639 are relevant to persons missing from the BiH (Bosnia-Herzegvina) conflicts… 5,660 were identifications of persons missing from the 1995 fall of Srebrenica”.
So much for “only 45″ bodies. McTrousers is clearly slandering the work of the ICMP, which has been painstakingly identifying the dead through DNA analysis, using a data base of blood samples from the surviving relatives. The ICMP has positively identified 5,660 victims, and the work of locating the bodies continues.
I note that McTrousers cites the notorious genocide denier Ed Herman as a source – that is as credible as citing David Irving as a source on the Nazi holocaust.
Paul Fauvet is not an atrocity denier, he is an atrocity congratulator. He supported the Operation Storm that cleared the Krajina of some 200 000 Serbs. Check him out on the Shiraz site here comment 19.
I’ve just read that,and nowhere does he justify ethnic cleansing.
Of course he justifies the Croats retaking croatian territory.
But please don’t lie Dr.
A dr of alternative medicine is it?
No, Tim, a Doctor of Philosophy, in History for the record, from a reputable university. I’m against quackery of all sorts, and political quackery is supporting reactionary nationalist movements, whether they be in this instance Serbian, Croatian or whatever.
Fauvet is against ‘ethnic cleansing’, but supports a military action that involved a massive expulsion, the biggest single one of the Yugoslav disaster, of people and the killing of several thousand. He’s against ‘ethnic cleansing’ in theory, but in favour of it in practice. Do not accuse me of lying, Tim; Fauvet condemns himself in his own words. Do you agree with him?
Let’s extend Fauvet’s argument. A Serb nationalist might defend the Srebrenica massacre on the grounds that it served to stop the Muslim militias/soldiers killing Serb villagers in the vicinity of the city. The Israeli historian Benny Morris actually says that the expulsion of the Arabs in 1948 didn’t go far enough; had they kicked ‘em all out, voilà, no Palestinian problem today. Supporting Operation Storm is as disgraceful as supporting the Srebrenica massacre, or the expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948.
As for Krajina being Croat territory, this is part of the problem of the question of national self-determination in a place like Yugoslavia. Self-determination for Croatia meant leaving in that country several hundred thousand Serbs who did not wish to be in it. How about self-determination for them? Don’t they count?
Self-determination for Bosnia-Hercegovina meant a majority of people of that country not wishing to be within it: the last elections prior to its secession saw massive Croat and Serb votes for Croat and Serb national parties. Secession for BiH was a recipe for utter chaos and bloodshed; does this excuse atrocities by Serb and Croat secessionists? Not at all, but those who cheered the break-up of Yugoslavia should not be shocked at what happened; they cheered the process that led to the slaughter.
In the Balkans, self-determination for one nation/nationality means denying it for some other one. It means justifying murder and expulsions. Fauvet is open enough to admit it; so is Morris in the Israel/Palestine context. But no socialist (or just decent person) can accept that. That’s why I opposed the break-up of Yugoslavia.
I did not oppose Serb nationalism by cheering on rival nationalisms; I have always held that the national rivalries of the area have never been overcome by the establishment of dwarf states which inevitably have their own minorities to kick about.
You may as well arguie that someone supporting the Red Army in Poland is supporting ethnic cleansing,as 5 million germans left.
Its meaningless.
Doesn’t matter what you say to the likes of Paul Fauvet. Don’t know why I bother. But here goes again:
“5,660 were identifications of persons missing from the 1995 fall of Srebrenica”. – Paul Fauvet
How do you know? As I have pointed out repeatedly, in the words of the ICMP’s chief operating officer, Adam Boys, in March 2007:
“The date of death, manner of death, and who did the killing are a matter for the courts. ”
” … the ICRC list of missing. It does not show ethnicity. Neither do our records. ”
Again, as of now, the only ‘positive identifications’ of bodies as being of people named on the ‘missing list’ (which included Serbs too, and also a lot of double counting), found in sites around Srebrenica, are those submitted as forensic evidence (which I link to in previous posts) to the ICTY in 2000, which number 45, and do not ‘show ethnicity’ or attribute cause or perpetrator of death.
FAUVET AGAIN:
” Srebrenica is the only atrocity, of the vast number committeed by the Bosnian Serb Army and the assorted Serb militias, that the Republica Srpska has ever admutted to.”
I’ve posted Ed Herman’s take on that above, but here’s some more. The membership of the governments of the ‘republics’ in NATO-occupied Bosnia have to be ‘approved’ by the Nato/UN occupation authority. Republika Sprska was subjected to sanctions, and its government was sacked several times until they came up with some stooges who would sign that ‘confession’.
I’ve already pointed out that the ICMP is not an independent humanitarian organisation(are there any?) but is staffed, at executive level, almost entirely by NATO personnel; you can check this on their website.
Amd. as I said before, yet again:
Boys evaded the question of whether there will be ” a publicly accessible database, broken down by date of death, place remains found, cause of death, ethnicity (established by DNA from relatives) etc. ”
So we just have the ICMP’s word for it, that is Nato’s word! And they don’t have any vested interest do they? I mean, they went in for ‘humanitarian’ reasons didn’t they? 5,660 new bodies at Srebrenica, from the same team that brought us WMD in Iraq, the Iranian threat, and, since you mention it, the spontaneous genocidal impulse of the Hutus.
Dr Paul writes “As for Krajina being Croat territory, this is part of the problem of the question of national self-determination in a place like Yugoslavia. Self-determination for Croatia meant leaving in that country several hundred thousand Serbs who did not wish to be in it. How about self-determination for them? Don’t they count?”
Let’s replace a few words “As for the Sudetenland being Czechoslovak territory, this is part of the problem of the question of national self-determination in a place like Czechslovakia. Self-determination for Czechoslovakia meant leaving in that country several hundred thousand Germans who did not wish to be in it. How about self-determination for the Sudeten Germans? Don’t they count?”
That, of course, was the argument of a certain Adolf Hitler.
It would have been nice if the Yugoslav Federation had stayed in existence – but Milosevic’s determination to impose Serb supremacy and to tear up the arrangements inherited from Tito made sure that it could not. Once the federation disintegrated, the only legitimate successor states were the six republic and two autonomous provinces.
Arguing otherwise opened the door to catastrophe.
sigh
As a lifetime socialist and internationalist it beats me how Lefties end up batting for the likes of Karadzic. Would they, pray tell me, be doing the same for the Indonesian generals (I live in Indonesia)or the fascists who run Burma? Frankly speaking, I am more than happy that the people of Srebrenica and elsewhere in the Balkans will see some sort of justice done, much better that than impunity.