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”
Stuff ‘legal rights’ ‘morally right’ and all the rest – so Eichmann got what he deserved and in an appropriate place – and stuff the International Criminal Court as well. As Dave implies it’s just a executive agency for those who run the world. They are not going to indict Kissinger anytime soon.
When you fight a war you seek to destroy the enemy. You may do that by trying to get your troops to kills their troops. You may also seek to destroy their morale by bombing their cities or massacring their civilians so as to sap their will to resist – or ‘create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope for further survival or live for the inhabitants’ as he put it. All are ‘legitimate’ military tactics, you don’t fight with one hand behind your back.
The question is whether you are on the right side in fighting the war, on the wrong side or whether there is no right and wrong side.
From all I have ever read about Karadzic he was a nationalist and genocidal tyrant. I do accept that all I know about him is from the Western media, which can introduce elements of doubt, but very little in his case.
He certainly should be bought to justice, although not for the war he fought a war, but for the reasons the war was fought.
But he should answer for what he did in front of the workers of Sarajevo and Bosnia, not in a victor’s court in the Netherlands.
All are ‘legitimate’ military tactics, you don’t fight with one hand behind your back.
‘Legitimate’ isn’t the word you’re looking for – you’re arguing for war without law. I’ve never understood why socialists would do this – it seems to me that the rule of law is basically a good idea, and that consistent attempts to implement it are likely to get us closer to justice, not further away. Would you argue against minimum wage or maximum working hours legislation?
Punchie
Isn’t the logic of your position that we should rip up the ‘bourgeois’ Geneva convention?
Phil,
Strangely, Southpaw more or less said what I was thinking – but I’d have phrased it that “war is the crime”: war is the negation of morality, law and rights, and it is hypocritical to try and have “rules of war.” Where I would differ, then, is that I would say war is to be avoided at all costs, for that very reason.
No, I’m in favour of reforms – such as NMW to the Geneva Convention to health & safety legislation.
I just appreciate what they are – temporary advances – that are ignored when those disadvantaged by them can do this, as demonstrated by the treatment of Islamist POWs in Iraq or ‘behind the lines’ (that is ‘our’ lines, not theirs) in Britain.
I’m not in favour of the ‘rule of law’ e.g. property laws, but socialist laws. I also don’t expect anyone to fight wars based on laws (whose laws?) if they want to win. The US didn’t nuke North Korea or North Vietnam because of possible domestic, USSR (and PRC?) reaction if they did, not because it may have been illegal.
Marxists would correctly rip up capitalist laws when necessary e.g. it may be hard to think of a situation where the Geneva Convention applies to a socialist revolution but any communists will necessary execute out of hand many from the ruling class, not through some sort of bloodlust but to save more people and the revolution – rather Allende had liquidated Pinochet and his cohorts before the coup than the massacres that followed.
The article is generally right but undermined by liberal assumptions and (some) naive beliefs in morals and rulers playing a bit fairly. Which would be understandable in a Green or LibDem but when the author calls himself a Marxist (see last article)…
I’m bemused by the term ‘self-appointed anti-imperialist left’. Is there an official body which hands out the franchises, then?
My partner works with a division of the police in Edinburgh.
She works with a section that takes action to protect children and women from abusive men.
There is another section that tracks and brings to justice dangerous and abusive men.
In the absence of a workers militia doing the same job in the name of a soviet, I am glad that they are doing that job.
I’m not in favour of the ‘rule of law’ e.g. property laws, but socialist laws
By the rule of law I mean the principle that all social activity can be governed by a set of rules which are equally binding on everyone. The rule of law is the form, not the content.
any communists will necessary execute out of hand many from the ruling clas
Last cigarette, up against the wall, bop bop bop. I thought that was the general area we were in.
Abraham Lincoln, soeaking to General Sherman: “I want you to raze the Shenandoah valley so that if a crow flies over it, it will need to take provisions”
Sherman replied: “I understand Mr president, I will leave them nothing but their eyes to cry with”.
Directive 7?
Now if Karadzic was in the chain of command and was responsible for the execution of hostages, which is illegal under international law – then it is right and proper that he should be punished. It would be better if the Serbian government had the political will to proscute him, but a Dave says any court is better than none.
The trouble is that placing a civilian population under siege, or mass bombing of a town are explicity not illegal under the law of war.
Mass civilian bombing – for example Hiroshima – is explicity legal under the geneva conventions.
The difficulty for the prosecution will therefore be to establish criminal intent – my reading of the instruction to “create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope for further survival or live for the inhabitants’ of a town called Srebrenica” is that it is not necessarily unlawful.
That is not to say that the actions of Ratko Mladic were lawful – if he ordered the massacre that took place (even if it was fewer victims than claimed) then he was guilty of murder.
BUt establishing that Karadzic was legally responsible may not be so easy as you think. Even if he is morally responsible.
(BTW – I look forward to those KLA bastards appearing in court some day.)
Mass civilian bombing – for example Hiroshima – is explicity legal under the geneva conventions.
Which bit is it explicitly legal under? Some CND people did a fair amount of work in the 1980s trying to establish that the city-targeting strategy was a war crime, and I doubt they would have bothered to pursue it very far if that was the case.
if he ordered the massacre that took place (even if it was fewer victims than claimed)
I was waiting for someone to bring that up. Because obviously lining up 2,000 or 4,000 or 6,000 men and boys and shooting them in cold blood is an entirely different crime from doing the same to 8,000, and anyone who insists on trumpeting the figure of 8,000 is clearly attempting to… er, what exactly?
I think Phil is right, that the rule of law is important.
It also removes the difficult area of morality in war out of the debate – one of the noticeable aspects of war is that it involves a huge shift in attitudes towards the morality of killing. And that shift in attitudes accelerates the longer the conflict endures – due to desensitisation, the “autonomy of violence”, etc.
Personally i have always found the idea that killing a soldier is more acceptable than killing a civilian morally objectionable. The purpose of war is to impose your political will upon your adversary through violence, once you have accepted that basic premise as valid then it seems morally arbitrary who you kill. Is some 18 year boy old less deserving of life just becasue he is in a khaki suit?
But morality aside, following the law is a constraint that sets some limits to the escalation of reprisal, and also confines war from utterley consuming all moral boundaries.
Sp Phil is also correct that the bop bop bop up against the wall mentality is disastrous.
As Ed points out the Cheka executions were similarly outside any framework of law. Indeed the issue that the Social Revolutionaries fell out with the Bolsheviks was over the question of legality, as the 2nd Supreme All Russian soviet had abolished the death penalty.
One of the reasons that I think the Trotskyists are so dangerous is that they justify the deviation of the Russian revolution away from legality and towards arbitrary violence. Not only did they do so in Russia at the time (the left opposuition supporting the arbitrary execution of 100 Czarist hostages in 1926 for example – that caused an international crisis for the USSR’s government) – but they do so retrospectively by implying that the terror started with Stalin. Wheras of course Trotsky was just as much i favour of mass terror as Stalin – Trotsky even wrote a book called “In defence of Terrorism”.
Newman wrote “The difficulty for the prosecution will therefore be to establish criminal intent – my reading of the instruction to “create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope for further survival or live for the inhabitants’ of a town called Srebrenica” is that it is not necessarily unlawful.
That is not to say that the actions of Ratko Mladic were lawful – if he ordered the massacre that took place (even if it was fewer victims than claimed) then he was guilty of murder.”
IF??? wtf, are you suggesting some doubt over his culpability?
again “as for “”create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope for further survival or live for the inhabitants’ of a town called Srebrenica” is that it is not necessarily unlawful.”
ever heard of murderous euphemisms?
does the point need to be spelt out for you?
it is perfectly possible to use fairly innocuous sounding words which have real murderous consequence, ie. “Evacuated to the East”
Phil
Mass civilian bombing is legal under the geneva conventions – i looked it up once before – and wil happily do so again when i get a chance.
CND’s argument is I believe that the Hiroshima bombings are illegal under international legislation against genocide.
I think the two areas of law contradict one another.
I don’t understand your point about the numbers. I agree with you that it was still a crime however many people were killed. Even if it was only one person it is murder and a war crime.
But it probably was less than claimed.
But it will create a further sense of injustice in Serbia – and feed further animosity – that the people who comitted the first war crime in Yugoslavia, the execution in Slovenia of three Yugoslav army prisoners in 1991 are not being tried, and no EU pressure is being brought to bear on Slovenia over this.
Modernity.
We are talking about the law. In international law certain forms of killing civilians are lawful. Some forms of killing civilians are unlawful.
It simply is a fact that ordering the army to kill civilians is not necessarily unlawful. As many British veterans of RAF bomber command know full well.
This prosecution will presumably be based upon establishing that Karadzic actually broke the law, not on whether or not he is a horrible person.
There will be a problem in establishing that he broke the law “beyond reasonable doubt” because the instruction quoted by dabve could have been interpreted by Ratko Mladic in ways that were lawful.
Based upon the information from the media it seems that Ratko Mladic is almost certainly guilty of a war crime.
Based upon the information already in the public domain it is harder to make a judgement about Karadzic. He may have had no operational control, and he may have intended the army to have acted lawfully. the p9nt here is that it is perfectly possible to kill civiliand and make their life intollerable in war – while still staying withing the law.
It is therefore a good thing that he will be tried in a court, and the judges will hear the evidence and hopefuly if the evidence shows he broke the law he will be punished. If the evidence doesn’t show beyond reasonavble doubt that he committed a crime he should be acquited.
Andy
thanks for explaining that, but it isn’t news to anyone that’s served on a jury or has a pulse.
I am asking you direct questions:
1) do you feel there is, in YOUR view, some doubt over Karadzic’s guilt in these matters
2) you seem to think that less than 8,000 people were killed at Srebrenica?
3) on what basis do you think that ? a hunch? some evidence? which is it?
” …are you suggesting some doubt over his culpability? ” – Modernity (is that a code for New World Order?)
No need for a trial then, eh?
” …Based upon the information from the media it seems that Ratko Mladic is almost certainly guilty of a war crime.
Based upon the information already in the public domain it is harder to make a judgement about Karadzic…”
Based upon the information from the media, Saddam Hussein had WMD, and was an imminent threat to Europe and the USA, as is Iran now! Is a self-styled ‘socialist’ seriously arguing that we take NATO propaganda seriously because it’s on the telly.
I have no doubt that some massacres took place – the Dutch government report has plenty of eyewitness accounts, unlikely to be complete fabrications – but I’ve seen no evidence that this was more than dozens here and there, at most, sporadic and spontaneous, and not systematic. Not nice, but par for the course in a bloody civil war – Srebrenica had been used as a base for the murderous terrorising of nearby Serb villages, for years.
But, so far there has been NOT ONE body identified as having been summarily executed by Serbs at Srebrenica.. So far only 45 bodies from the missing list have been identified from sites around Srebrenica – see the link to the forensic evidence submitted to the ICTY below – with the cause of death, or who did the killing, not ascribed. Since then, there has been a constant drip, drip, in the media, mostly for the (NATO front) International Committee on Missing Persons, claiming thousands of new identifications – in the words of the chief Operating Officer of the ICMP, on 12 Mar 2007 ( see below for details and link), the ICMP does not establish date, place or cause of death, or ethnicity. So it is inappropriate to claim that the bodies identified (if accurate; he also admits that the ICMP’s procedures aren’t transparent) were summarily massacred by Serbs after the fall of Srebrenica.
The forensic evidence submitted to the ICTY is available on an Anti-Serbian -’ Balkan Witness Debate: the Srebrenica Massacre ‘ – website on the internet at
http://tinyurl.com/2vbdno ( Scroll down to page 90, Annex B: positive identifications, and count them for yourself – I make it 45, with manner of death, and who did the killing, not ascribed)
The forensic evidence, presented to the ICTY, DOES date from 2000, but the website was last updated on Dec 12, 2007 – so I assume that, on such a virulently anti-Serbian site, if there WAS any more substantial, concrete evidence, they would be shouting about it. But the most important point is that, for years before the ICTY kangaroo courts, and ever since, the media have been presenting the figure of 8000 as a proven fact.
The International committee for missing persons is a Nato creation, staffed almost entirely by Nato personnel( listed on their website), and so should be discounted as an objective authority – it is just a propaganda vehicle – they claim that there are 2000 + identified dead from Srebrenica without offering any evidence. If they really did have evidence, it would be screaming at us from all our media – instead they offer us a film of some guys getting out of a van, somewhere, and ask us to believe that this proves 8000 were killed at Srebrenica – pull the other one!
Yes, the International Committee of the Red Cross have missing lists – what does that prove? The missing lists were compiled by the Serbs’ enemies – they are propaganda, and even if they were accurate they prove nothingl
.On 14 March 2007, Glasgow’s ‘Scotsman’ newspaper posted, on its website, an interview with Adam Boys, ICMP’s Chief Operating Officer and Director of Finance since September 2000 at:
http://tinyurl.com/6re88b ( the interview has disappeared, but the blog discussion, in which Boys participates, which is the imporant bit, is still there)
Balkan Witness, a site dedicated to rubbishing the work of Parenti, Herman, Johnstone et al posts a link to this, I guess as the most up-to date evidence of the 8000 figure, under the banner:
“To date the ICMP has positively identified about 3000 bodies of Srebrenica victims and has partial remains of about 1000 more. The ICMP still predicts that about 8000 were killed in the massacre. ”
A blog debate follows in which Boys participated, In his replies to posts #33 and #34 Adam Boys
stated:
“The date of death, manner of death, and who did the killing are a matter for the courts. ”
It will be a decision for the (Nato-appointed) regional governments whether a list of those identified from Srebrenica will be available online.
Asked whether there is: ” a publicly accessible database, broken down by date of death, place remains found, cause of death, ethnicity (established by DNA from relatives) etc. details? ”
Boys evades the question by answering ” There is the ICRC list of missing. It does not show ethnicity. Neither do our records. ” I take that as a NO.
Asked whether there are ” scientific reports detailing the methodology, results and interpretations?”
Boys says yes. I look forward to these being made available for public scrutiny.
Those figure just seem to keep melting away, don’t they.
And, in case anyone should bring up the Bosnian Serb ‘confession’ , I couldn’t put it better than Ed Herman:
“But didn’t the Bosnian Serbs “confess” that they had murdered 8,000 civilians? This has been the take of the Western media, but again demonstrating their subservience to their leaders’ political agenda. The Bosnian Serbs actually did put out a report on Srebrenica in September 2002, [67] but this report was rejected by Paddy Ashdown for failing to come up with the proper conclusions. He therefore forced a further report by firing a stream of Republica Srpska politicians and analysts, threatening the RS government, and eventually extracting a report prepared by people who would come to the officially approved conclusions. [68] This report, issued on June 11, 2004, was then greeted in the Western media as a meaningful validation of the official line-the refrain was, the Bosnian Serbs “admit” the massacre, which should finally settle any questions. Amusingly, even this coerced and imposed report didn’t come near acknowledging 8,000 executions (it speaks of “several thousand” executions). What this episode “proves” is that the Western campaign to make the defeated Serbia grovel is not yet terminated, and the media’s continuing gullibility and propaganda service.
Forensic evidence
http://tinyurl.com/2vbdno
Adam Boys Interview
http://tinyurl.com/6re88b
I think the Geneva conventions contain explicit prohibition of *naval* bombardment of civlians – aerial bombradment has never been included.
Andy Newman wrote (twice) on Srebrenica.
“But it probably was less than claimed.”
“That is not to say that the actions of Ratko Mladic were lawful – if he ordered the massacre that took place (even if it was fewer victims than claimed)”
Which claims are you disputing and which are you citing?
Victor’s justice IS impunity, for the truly guilty.
” …are you suggesting some doubt over his culpability? ” – Modernity (is that a code for New World Order?)
No need for a trial then, eh?
” …Based upon the information from the media it seems that Ratko Mladic is almost certainly guilty of a war crime.
Based upon the information already in the public domain it is harder to make a judgement about Karadzic…”
Based upon the information from the media, Saddam Hussein had WMD, and was an imminent threat to Europe and the USA, as is Iran now! Is a self-styled ‘socialist’ seriously arguing that we take NATO propaganda seriously because it’s on the telly.
I have no doubt that some massacres took place – the Dutch government report has plenty of eyewitness accounts, unlikely to be complete fabrications – but I’ve seen no evidence that this was more than dozens here and there, at most, sporadic and spontaneous, and not systematic. Not nice, but par for the course in a bloody civil war – Srebrenica had been used as a base for the murderous terrorising of nearby Serb villages, for years.
But, so far there has been NOT ONE body identified as having been summarily executed by Serbs at Srebrenica.. So far only 45 bodies from the missing list have been identified from sites around Srebrenica – see the link to the forensic evidence submitted to the ICTY below – with the cause of death, or who did the killing, not ascribed. Since then, there has been a constant drip, drip, in the media, mostly for the (NATO front) International Committee on Missing Persons, claiming thousands of new identifications – in the words of the chief Operating Officer of the ICMP, on 12 Mar 2007 ( see below for details and link), the ICMP does not establish date, place or cause of death, or ethnicity. So it is inappropriate to claim that the bodies identified (if accurate; he also admits that the ICMP’s procedures aren’t transparent) were summarily massacred by Serbs after the fall of Srebrenica.
The forensic evidence submitted to the ICTY is available on an Anti-Serbian -’ Balkan Witness Debate: the Srebrenica Massacre ‘ – website on the internet at
http://tinyurl.com/2vbdno ( Scroll down to page 90, Annex B: positive identifications, and count them for yourself – I make it 45, with manner of death, and who did the killing, not ascribed)
The forensic evidence, presented to the ICTY, DOES date from 2000, but the website was last updated on Dec 12, 2007 – so I assume that, on such a virulently anti-Serbian site, if there WAS any more substantial, concrete evidence, they would be shouting about it. But the most important point is that, for years before the ICTY kangaroo courts, and ever since, the media have been presenting the figure of 8000 as a proven fact.
The International committee for missing persons is a Nato creation, staffed almost entirely by Nato personnel( listed on their website), and so should be discounted as an objective authority – it is just a propaganda vehicle – they claim that there are 2000 + identified dead from Srebrenica without offering any evidence. If they really did have evidence, it would be screaming at us from all our media – instead they offer us a film of some guys getting out of a van, somewhere, and ask us to believe that this proves 8000 were killed at Srebrenica – pull the other one!
Yes, the International Committee of the Red Cross have missing lists – what does that prove? The missing lists were compiled by the Serbs’ enemies – they are propaganda, and even if they were accurate they prove nothingl
.On 14 March 2007, Glasgow’s ‘Scotsman’ newspaper posted, on its website, an interview with Adam Boys, ICMP’s Chief Operating Officer and Director of Finance since September 2000 at:
http://tinyurl.com/6re88b ( the interview has disappeared, but the blog discussion, in which Boys participates, which is the imporant bit, is still there)
Balkan Witness, a site dedicated to rubbishing the work of Parenti, Herman, Johnstone et al posts a link to this, I guess as the most up-to date evidence of the 8000 figure, under the banner:
“To date the ICMP has positively identified about 3000 bodies of Srebrenica victims and has partial remains of about 1000 more. The ICMP still predicts that about 8000 were killed in the massacre. ”
A blog debate follows in which Boys participated, In his replies to posts #33 and #34 Adam Boys
stated (in posts 37 and 38):
“The date of death, manner of death, and who did the killing are a matter for the courts. ”
It will be a decision for the (Nato-appointed) regional governments whether a list of those identified from Srebrenica will be available online.
Asked whether there is: ” a publicly accessible database, broken down by date of death, place remains found, cause of death, ethnicity (established by DNA from relatives) etc. details? ”
Boys evades the question by answering ” There is the ICRC list of missing. It does not show ethnicity. Neither do our records. ” I take that as a NO.
Asked whether there are ” scientific reports detailing the methodology, results and interpretations?”
Boys says yes. I look forward to these being made available for public scrutiny.
Those figure just seem to keep melting away, don’t they.
And, in case anyone should bring up the Bosnian Serb ‘confession’ , I couldn’t put it better than Ed Herman:
“But didn’t the Bosnian Serbs “confess” that they had murdered 8,000 civilians? This has been the take of the Western media, but again demonstrating their subservience to their leaders’ political agenda. The Bosnian Serbs actually did put out a report on Srebrenica in September 2002, [67] but this report was rejected by Paddy Ashdown for failing to come up with the proper conclusions. He therefore forced a further report by firing a stream of Republica Srpska politicians and analysts, threatening the RS government, and eventually extracting a report prepared by people who would come to the officially approved conclusions. [68] This report, issued on June 11, 2004, was then greeted in the Western media as a meaningful validation of the official line-the refrain was, the Bosnian Serbs “admit” the massacre, which should finally settle any questions. Amusingly, even this coerced and imposed report didn’t come near acknowledging 8,000 executions (it speaks of “several thousand” executions). What this episode “proves” is that the Western campaign to make the defeated Serbia grovel is not yet terminated, and the media’s continuing gullibility and propaganda service.
Seems to me that those missing 8,000 (or however many) must be hiding out in the hills with Maddy mcCain.
If you win a war your right if you lose well your wrong.
But lets be honest we have nothing to shout about in this country, Blair caused a war then left to make millions off the back of his nice cozy dealings with Bush, I do not know if we should shoot this bloke or give him a kiss and say you did no different mate then Blair. difficult when one day our own leaders might face a trip to court.
Modernity:
I am asking you direct questions:
1) do you feel there is, in YOUR view, some doubt over Karadzic’s guilt in these matters
2) you seem to think that less than 8,000 people were killed at Srebrenica?
3) on what basis do you think that ? a hunch? some evidence? which is it?
Answers
1) yes. I think there is certainly enough presumption of guilt for him to face trial. Whether he is actually guilty I don’t know.
(The same applies to Mladic – it is not yet forensically proven that he gave the orders – if he did then he should be convicted and punished.)
2) The number 8000 has been agreed by media convention, it may be less. I am sure there was a massacre, and it was terrible however many were killed.
3) The onus of proof is on those claiming the number, not on those askin
asking questions
)
Andy mentions something above I’d said about Cheka. I wrote this on Shiraz Socialist’s site. They’re far too busy trumpeting their shocked self-righteousness and pointing fingers at various bad people on that site to have noticed it (and I note that Modernity, above, is doing his usual trick of demanding that Andy answer a series of ‘do you still beat your wife’ questions). Here’s the comment I made, I’d be interested in any sensible answers.
“When you watch that terrible grainy video footage they’re playing on the news of boys and men being unloaded from a truck and, hands tied behind backs, being made to squirm face down in the mud before, presumably, being shot in the back of the head don’t you wonder whether Cheka executions looked like that too?
I don’t mean this as red-baiting point. I’m genuinely interested as to what followers of Lenin and Trotsky make of this. Doesn’t it trouble you when you see those pictures?”
And there is something to this question isn’t there?
Andy,
Trotting out the argument used by Holocaust Deniers is unedifying, perhaps you’d be better looking at this
http://www.domovina.net/srebrenica/page_006/Preliminarni_spisak_Srebrenica_1995.pdf
You may also like to bear in mind that claiming one million dead in Iraq,as you’ve done for as long as the placards have been printed, demands an onus of proof.
Anything so far produced pales in comparison to what has been produced on Srebrenica.
Newman wrote:
“2) The number 8000 has been agreed by media convention, it may be less. I am sure there was a massacre, and it was terrible however many were killed.
3) The onus of proof is on those claiming the number, not on those askin”
Andy,
could you please clarify your views?
As you seem to be suggesting, but not openly stating, that you disagree with the generally accepted death toll at Srebrenica of 8,000?
I’m curious as to why you would think otherwise?
do you instinctively disagree with such figures merely because they come out from the media?
Or do you disagree with them because you have evidence to the contrary?
So what facts lead you to believe that less people were murdered at Srebrenica?
The question for me is whether it matters exactly how many men and boys were killed at Srebrenica, and if so why. We don’t know that six million Jews died in the Holocaust; the number may have been as high as seven or eight million or as low(!) as four million.
Bear in mind that numbers can always be adjusted downwards. Historian 1 says that camp X killed nearly 200,000 people: 200,000 were sent to the camp, 2,000 died of disease and 2,000 survived. Historian 2 agrees on the death toll but says that 250,000 were sent to the camp, 50,000 died of disease and 4,000 survived. Then Historian 3 looks at the logistics and says that the most that the camp could have admitted while it was open was 100,000. Choose your figures carefully and you can ‘prove’ that the death toll was under 50,000.
In the case of the Holocaust, the precise number is a subject for academic debate, not a live political issue, because getting the number right won’t change the history that people generally agree on. The Srebrenica death toll, unfortunately, *is* a political issue – but it’s an area of politics which I don’t think the Left should have anything to do with.
I completely agree that victor’s justice is better than no justice. That’s what I thought with Saddam Hussein too: the process was unbelievably flawed, which meant it had very week legitimacy in anyone’s eyes, but it was utterly right that he be punished in such a way. Not sure how many Dave’s Part readers would agree with me there!
Andy says: “BTW – I look forward to those KLA bastards appearing in court some day.”
I am interested in the contrast between the language you use for the Serbian cleansers and the language you use for the KLA. “Those KLA bastards” , according to Serbian figures, may have been responsible for close to 2000 deaths, of which around a third were civilians. Not an acceptable number, but not comparable with Karadzic.
(And, incidentally, some have appeared in court. Rustem Mustafa (17 years in prison), Latif Gashi (10 years), Nazif Mehmeti (13 yrs), Haradin Bala (13 years) and others have been tried and convicted by either the ICTY or an international panel of judges in Kosovo. (Ramush Haradinaj, Fatmir Limaj and Isak Musliu, on the other hand, were acquitted by the ICTY.)
Phil
There are a lot of questions interwoven here.
You are correct that there is no live political issue about the numbers killed in the Nazi holocaust. While there may be a legitimate area for specialist enquiry among professional historians – the political question is closed.
In Yugoslavia the question is not closed for two reasons.
Firstly, Karadzic is going to face trial, and so maybe will Mladic.
I think there is clearly enough evidence for them to face trial. In the course of formal court proceeding I hope that it will matter to determine what actually happened – the victims deserve it.
But the number does matter for another reason which is that the popular narrative is that NATO intervened to stop Serb butchery.
while everyone is aware of the thousands massacred at Srebrinica, there is no popular awareness of the massacre of 2500 Serbs in Krajina by Croatian forces during just a few days in August 1995.
the question of numbers matters because in reality the terrible masacre at Srebrinica was perhaps the worst incident but only one of a pattern of atrocities committed by all sides in the war.
Human Rights Watch – who typically lean towards a US State Department view of the world – nevertheless documented in detail a number of atrocities by the KLA against ethnic Serbs:
http://www.hrw.org/reports98/kosovo/Kos9810-10.htm#P1008_157285
There is a political problem that if only the atrocities by Serbs are considered serious, but people who commit atrocities against Serbs are feted and fast tracked into the EU, then that is stoking more resentment, more sense of grievance, and more hatred for the future.
Andy,
I would be grateful if you could answer the points in my post of 13:43, 24 July 2008?
‘Andy,
could you please clarify your views?
As you seem to be suggesting, but not openly stating, that you disagree with the generally accepted death toll at Srebrenica of 8,000?
I’m curious as to why you would think otherwise?
do you instinctively disagree with such figures merely because they come out from the media?
Or do you disagree with them because you have evidence to the contrary?
So what facts lead you to believe that less people were murdered at Srebrenica?’
What’s wrong with terror? It’s a shame the French Revolution didn’t keep it going and guillotine Napoleon rather than see him rise to Emperor. All revolutions (or processes leading to revolution) need to use terror – rather 10,000 counter revolutionaries dead than the millions that could perish if you allow the old regime an opening back (or to maintain) power. Can you imagine what the Syrian regime, for example, will do to any supporters of any half cocked revolution there?
I also detect a sympathy that originates in Stalinism, in some of the above towards those associated in some way with regimes in the former socialist (sic) countries. A good example of this is Milosevic, about whom quite a few took the view that as he had been a ‘communist’, and the West are attacking him, he must be good (I’ve seen similar about Mugabe).
Milosevic was a bigoted tyrant (see his famous speech to Serbs in Kosovo) although he would once have been a loyal member of the Yugoslav Communist Party. But Karadzic (according to Wikipedia) didn’t come into politics until the end of ‘socialism’ (sic) and was first active as a Green – which may explain a lot, reducing the world’s population to make the planet more sustainable, maybe?
So whilst I wouldn’t necessarily believe a word the BBC or NATO says about him – and some of the above comments may show how the issue has been falsely reported (or it may not have been) – he has a case to answer and, as the article title states, ‘better victor’s justice than impunity’.
And really who give a fig whether such and such conduct breaches such and such subclause in some holy writ of law. Who writes these laws (and also manufactures the loopholes)?
Was the war right or wrong or neither? Was the conduct of X in the above right or wrong or neither? These are the questions that the accused should answer to workers.
There’s an obit in the Independent today for a Croatian concentration camp commandant. I can’t see how the crimes he committed were any worse than the kinds of things that SPP advocates.
Th trouble with mass execution of ‘counter revolutionaries’, SPP, is that the application of the description ‘counter-revolutionary’ always becomes rather fuzzy, elastic and, in the end, a kind of lie. Most people caught up in political terror are not the plotters or the commanders or the torturers and in many cases are entirely innocent – just in the wrong place at the wrong time. You know, like those boys being unloaded from the truck somewhere in Bosnia and being made to squirm in the mud while some sadist (perhaps armed with rationalisations about the necessity of terror as well as a gun) puts a rifle to the back of their heads. I should think that a rounded up group of ‘counter-revolutionaries’ look pretty much identical to those Bosnian boys when they are taken away to be shot.
“And really who give a fig whether such and such conduct breaches such and such subclause in some holy writ of law” – you’re misrepresenting other people here for an easy swipe at a straw man. Who has said law represents ‘holy writ’? Andy put it quite well above when he suggested that rule of law during war provides some kind of restraint that can help to set limits to the escalation of violence.
Th trouble with mass execution of ‘counter revolutionaries’, SPP, is that the application of the description ‘counter-revolutionary’ always becomes rather fuzzy, elastic and, in the end, a kind of lie.
One of the first steps in the Final Solution was the ‘Commissar Order’: German troops invading Russia were told that every Red Army platoon had a Commissar, and that when troops were captured all the Commissars should be shot. Now, I don’t think that was true in the first place, but even if it had been there wasn’t someone who could speak Russian in every Wehrmacht platoon. So what did the Kommissarbefehl mean in practice – how did they decide who to shoot? Presumably they just picked out the brainy-looking ones, the ones with Jewish surnames or the ones with glasses (the Khmer Rouge approach).
In practice, I don’t trust the red terror to be any more discriminating. Vile and criminal acts may be unavoidable in revolutionary situations, but that won’t make them any less vile and criminal.
Incidentally, my mother-in-law and her family were on the receiving end of a bit of revolutionary justice in Ukraine in the 1930s (although they lived, thankfully). They weren’t Fascists or saboteurs, just born in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Punchdrunk asks – “what is wrong with terror?”
Well one very good reason why the terror was problematic in the Russian revolution was that it was the first incidecne of illegitimacy by the Bolshevik government.
The 2nd All Russia Congress of the Soviets had abolished the death penalty.
the cheka committee neverhteless voted to execute the Czarist admiral of the Baltic Fleet.
This was beyond the remit they had been grnated, and contained a number of problems.
i) As eraly as 1918 it whowed that the Bolsheviks considred that the party was above the rule of law.
ii) It provoked a disastrous political split with the left SRs, who ironically turned to terrorism against the Bolsheviks (leading to another aspect of “what is wrong with terror”!! – who decices which terror is good)
It is impossble to look at the socialist governments in Afghanistan and Grenada without seeing the disastrous effect of terror turing in on the party itlsef and leading to moral corruption and loss of legitimacy. And I say that as someone broadly sympathetic to those experiments
I am still slightly mystified as to why Andy Newman is so unable to clarify his views on the massacre at Srebrenica
it seems strange that he queries the totals, without being able to specify his reasons for doing so?
I shan’t assume the worst, that he’s motivated by some political mouse and thus needs to question the 8,000, I don’t think that’s the case
it’s probably truer to say that Andy doesn’t know much about it or or is too lazy to research the subject, but can’t admit it, possibility for fear of showing weakness? shame
still its peculiar, for a political activist, to seemingly have such a firm conviction and yet not have the courage to spell it outas to why?
for those of you without any inclination to revisionism or similar strange behaviour, I have collected together various reports, facts and links on the massacre at Srebrenica
http://modernityblog.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/radovan-karadzic-and-denial/
ops, mouse=malice
I think you’re being a bit kind there.
Andys placards can’t possibly be under researched.
“A million dead in Iraq”
“A million dead from sanctions”
“0 dead in Tibet”
“Not sure about Srebrenica”
Its an agenda.
There’s a the world of difference between killing identified enemies e.g. the officers of the enemy army and just killing people for their ethnicity or other reactionary reasons etc. It’s completely dishonest for those above – e.g. the comparison with the Croatian Concentration Camp commander – to just merge these two unrelated groups.
Now of course in a ‘terror’, that is being conducted for the right reasons, some who shouldn’t be killed will be – but strenuous efforts should always be made to minimise or even eliminate this.
The “description ‘counter-revolutionary’ always becomes rather fuzzy, elastic and, in the end, a kind of lie.” – It should never be so and does not need to be.
I don’t think I have ever read, say, in the writing of a Russian exile in Paris in the 20s one of them say – ‘fair enough, we were trying to overthrow the Soviet, so they shot my father’ It’s ‘always we did nothing and we were the innocent victims of red terror’ a bit like you would never hear the British government say ‘fair enough, the consular official arrested by the Russians last week was in fact an MI6 spy.
I suppose it must be that everyone the Bolsheviks ever shot was innocent (and the diamonds hidden in their underwear got there by mistake) and MI6 either doesn’t exist or its agents are so good that they have never, ever been caught.
Southpawpunch must be punch-drunk. Either that or he is being deliberately silly.
Modernity
I have learned before not to waste my time answering your leading questions.
Punchdrunk seems very ignorant of Russian history.
the terror was just that – the people killed were often not guilty of anything, but were killed in reprisals.
In particluar the 100 Czarist prisoners killed in 1926 in reprisal for the assassination of a Soviet diplomat in Warsaw had no connection whatsoever with any political opposition.
This is why the sensible people in the CPSU politburo, Chicherin, Tomsky, Rykov et all opposed the murders.
andy.
What makes you wary of the Srebrenica death figures?
You’re very clear other wars casualty rates.
Don’t be silly Tim
i am equally cautious about the other estimates you mention.
There’s a the world of difference between killing identified enemies e.g. the officers of the enemy army and just killing people for their ethnicity or other reactionary reasons etc.
Read my comment about the Commissar Order again. That’s precisely my point – in practice there isn’t a world of difference or even, necessarily, any difference at all.
Andy,
don’t worry
I prepared links to the major reports on Srebrenica, you can even read the names of the dead, should you still be “sceptical” on this issue
the data include the victim’s full names, date of birth and even ID number.
You might even look up the early Serbian government’s provisional report which tallies with the overall figure of around 8,000+
a lot of the reports are in the regional languages, but the figure work is plain enough
and of course, as you have access to the web, you can always carry out your own research should you wish to indulge in a bit of “revisionism”!
see http://modernityblog.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/radovan-karadzic-and-denial/
‘Commissar Order’ was issued by the Nazis in WW2. So communist terror = nazism? Forgive me if I don’t bother rebutting further infantile points of yours.
-
The terror after the Russian revolution was in many parts including the killing of class enemies and those killed in reprisals or held as hostages.
The use of hostages can be effective as the Israelis are well aware when they have to surrender their prisoners in exchange for their soldiers. Any terror is likely to need such tactics.
It’s just factually wrong to say that victims were “often not guilty of anything” Some may have been just hostages but the Bolsheviks didn’t just shoot people out of a psychopathic bent.
In Smithfield, London on 15 June 1381 the rebellious peasants, who the previous day had taken the capital and summarily executed those hiding in the Tower of London (including the Lord Chancellor, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Treasurer) came face to face with Richard II and the Mayor of London. The Mayor ran Wat Tyler (the peasant leader) through with his sword. The peasant army was enraged and advanced but they hadn’t clearly seen what had happened to Tyler.
And at that moment on that day, centuries ago, in that field lit by the sparkling of summer sunlight on unsheathed swords, they actually held time in their hands for a second or two.
It’s a moment that I fear may only come along once every few hundred years but it’s
that almost intangible opportunity that any communist strives continuously to see created.
The peasants could have slaughtered the King, the Mayor and his entourage and moved decisively to end feudalism. They hesitated – and they were lost.
The King claimed that Tyler had just been knighted, all their demands – including for their freedom – would be met and he said “You shall have no captain but me.” The crowd hesitated but then succumbed to the King. Maybe they did not want any more violence or trusted the King, as opposed to his avaricious henchmen.
It didn’t take them long to realise their grievous mistake. The King took that opportunity to reorganise his forces and commence to slaughter all those that he had fooled that day in Smithfield. The King now had a new message for them: ‘Peasants you were and peasants you are still. You will stay as slaves, except now things will be much harder for you.” And peasants they remained for nearly another 300 years until the execution of Charles I.
To attempt revolution without accepting the need for terror, violence and extrajudicial killing is to ensure you fail.
If we ever get that opportunity that Tyler, John Ball and, er, Jack Straw let slip through that fingers that day it will be very important that we do not stop until Westminster Square, Soho Square, the bar of the most expensive hotels in Cardiff, the village square in Prestbury, the hospitality tent at the most upscale event at the Edinburgh Festival and many more places are knee deep in the blood of FTSE100 company directors, senior military officers, bewigged judges, Tory MPs, Labour Party hacks and more.
Because without red terror, every estate, town, city and village would be swamped waist deep in our blood in the terrible counterrevolution that would follow.
I realise Tim and Modernity have short attention spans, so my post above must have gone over their heads. So let me restate it as briefly as possible.
45 bodies were identified from Srebrenica, date, cause of death, ethnicity, if established, not made explicit. SEE LINK in previous post .to the forensice evidence submitted to the ICTY.
In the 5 years between the ICTY and the statement I LINK TO in my previous post, from a senior official of the ICMP, there have been many media announcements of new bodies being discovered and identified; according to Adam Boys of the ICTY,
“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. ”
Boys evades 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. ”
IS THAT PLAIN? Even the original missing list, never claimed there were 8000 MUSLIMS missing!
SUMMARY: AS OF MARCH 2007, THERE WERE 45 BODIES FROM SITES AROUND SREBRENICA IDENTIFIED AS BEING ON ‘THE MISSING LIST’, ETHNICITY NOT MADE EXPLICIT;. MORE BODIES MAY HAVE BEEN IDENTIFIED, BUT IT IS NOT KNOWN WHETHER THEY WERE ON THE MISSING LIST, WHEN THEY DIED, WHO KILLED THEM, OR WHETHER THEY WERE SERBS OR MUSLIMS. IS THAT CLEAR?
So communist terror = nazism?
This is, of course, not what I said. What I did say was that I don’t trust the red terror to be any more discriminating. Vile and criminal acts may be unavoidable in revolutionary situations, but that won’t make them any less vile and criminal.
Congratulation to Punchdrunk for explaining so clearly the advantages of working for socialism through democratic institutions instead of his fantasies:
“Because without red terror, every estate, town, city and village would be swamped waist deep in our blood in the terrible counterrevolution that would follow.”