By Ted Belman
Top UN court rules Serbia did not commit genocide – The top U.N. court ruled 13 to 2, on Monday that Serbia did not commit genocide through the killing that ravaged Bosnia during the 1992-95 war, but said Serbia had failed in its obligation to prevent and punish genocide.
This is the first time a state has been on trial for genocide, outlawed in a U.N. convention in 1948 after the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews.
Although the killing of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men in Srebrenica did constitute genocide, Serbia was not responsible and was not complicit in the massacre, Judge Higgins said.
This decision lead me to investigate just what the crime of “genocide” is.
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 1948. The total number of states who have ratified the convention is currently 137.
The Convention (in article 2) defines genocide as
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“…any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Simply put, it is a crime of genocide to “kill[ing] members of a group”.
Wikipedia advises
The convention was passed in order to outlaw actions similar to the Holocaust by Nazi Germany during World War II. Because the convention required the support of the Soviet Union and the Communist bloc, it excluded actions undertaken by those nations. As a result, the convention excludes from the definition of genocide the killing of members of a social class, members of a political or ideological group, and that of cultural killings.
The United States became a state party to the convention in 1988, though only with the proviso that it was immune from prosecution for genocide without its consent. This proviso was also made by Bahrain, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, Yemen, and Yugoslavia.
The American Heritage Dictionary, for example, says that genocide is “The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.”
Thus, the law redefined the term to apply when “part” of a group is the victim rather than the entire group. Furthermore, a “group” may be “national” or “religious”. Also “systematic and planned” was deleted from the crime.
In this decision, only 8000 victims were involved. Some argue that 5000 of these were simply missing. How many Taliban or Iraqi were killed in the attack on Afghanistan and Iraq? I am sure many multiples of this figure. So why don’t these killings fall within the crime of genocide. There is nothing in the law which distinguishes one from the other.
I will be interested to read what the court had to say about when a killing of part of a group becomes a crime of genocide.
Article I: The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.
Israel is a signatory to this treaty and thus has the obligation “to prevent and to punish” perpetrators.
Louis Rene Beres discuses the application of this law to Hamas and Fatah in a 2003 article in FrontPageMagazine in an article titled Genocide
No doubt many have argued its application to Israel’s killings of Palestinians.
The National Post reports more of the findings of the Court,
Here are the highlights of the court’s ruling:
“Serbia has not committed genocide, through its organs or persons whose acts engage its responsibility under customary international law;
“Serbia has not conspired to commit genocide, nor incited the commission of genocide;
“Serbia has not been complicit in genocide, in violation of its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide;“Serbia has violated the obligation to prevent genocide, under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, in respect of the genocide that occurred in Srebrenica in July 1995;
“Serbia has violated its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide by having failed to transfer Ratko Mladic, indicted for genocide and complicity in genocide, for trial by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and thus having failed fully to cooperate with that Tribunal;
“Serbia shall immediately take effective steps to ensure full compliance with its obligation … to transfer individuals accused of genocide or any of those other acts for trial by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and to cooperate fully with that Tribunal;
“The case is not one in which an order for payment of compensation, or … a direction to provide assurances and guarantees of non-repetition, would be appropriate.â€
Melana, thank you for your explanations in your posts # 7 & 8. While I do not doubt your analysis as to why Serbs who have immigrated to the West have not taken up the cause of setting history right, I still have trouble understanding that Serbs would just swallow their pride at being so poorly treated by alleged historical revisionists and just focus on fitting into the great American mould.
As for celebrating their culture privately only, I would have to say that the ex patriot Serbs in America for instance are not fitting in as so many other ethnic and national groups with their own distinct culture take every advantage of making a public and very assertive display of their culture, kindly supported financially by government. I am not certain that levels of American government contribute to promoting cultural diversity, but our Canadian government, both federal and provincial do.
Anyway, I encourage you to continue to stand up for what you believe and keep trying to get other Serbs to stand with you. The Western Serb communities have the greatest interest in getting their story out. They may not see that now but people such as you must keep trying to show them that it is now and in future in their best interests to get their story out in public.
As I have noted a number of times before, I am not familiar enough with the Yugoslav and Balkan war history to judge whether the Serbs have wrongly been painted the villains, but I have learned enough to think that at the very least, that sorry slice of Balkan history deserves a close second look.
……more of the same “are you still beating your wife?” argument by assertion crap that we have come to expect from Western media, NATO/EU governments and international bodies like the ICJ at The Hague, Netherlands, beholden to those governments for its very existence……..
The US administration of Clinton failed to prevent genocide when it armed + trained + gave political-diplomatic backing to three separatist Nazi/Fascist+Islamist terrorist groups in ex-Yugoslavia: Croatia(Franjo Tudjman), Bosnia(Alija Izetbegovic), Kosovo (Hashim Thaci+Adem Demaci+Ramush Haradinaj+Agim Ceku). Clinton is DIRECTLY responsible for KNOWINGLY aiding+abetting the genocide+ethnic cleansing of Serbs,Gypsies,Jews in Krayina-Croatia + Bosnia + Kosovo……..
How about this from cbs news’ website for the dead giveaway of the Srebrenica Goebbels style “Big Lie” by the West…..
What a marvellously quaint + symbiotic relationship we have here between the Hague ICJ and The Hague ICTY Stalinist show trial “war crimes tribunal”! Talk about an incestuous revolving door relationship+conflict of interest!……..
The ICJ by its very own admission in the cbs news report cited above, relies on a NATO/EU+ George Soros NGO funded (read OWNED) kangaroo “court” in order to determine whether or not a supposed “genocide” (8,000 Islamist troops supposedly executed at close range by Bosnian Serbs) even occurred in the first place!
THAT MY FRIENDS, SAYS IT ALL……..
Think how their above definition of “genocide” will (not “if”) apply in the not too distant future when the Arabs bemoan a supposed “genocide of Palestinians” in the West Bank or Gaza and Israel has to defend herself against a barrage of media+government lies in preparation for a Western NATO/EU (flying the flag of the UN) takeover “in the interests of safeguarding peace between Arabs and Jews and preventing world war 3”…… All they need is just the “right type of international crisis in the Middle East” to act as a “trigger”,i.e., the pretext to do to Israel what they did to Yugoslavia/Serbia…..
I put the comments below on another thread but they are even more appropriate+applicable here rather than there…….
If 8,000 “men and boys” (western media & government code words for ISLAMIST JIHADIST FASCIST TROOPS)were executed at close range by AK-47 military assault rifles and dumped in mass graves, there would have been by now – after nearly 12 years of time elapsed – THOUSANDS OF BOSNIAN MUSLIM MALE CORPSES ALL WITH BULLETS IN THEIR BACKS AND/OR BACK OF THEIR HEADS DUG UP AND FORENSICALLY EXAMINED……
….this of course NEVER HAPPENED AS 8,000 BODIES SHOWING SIGNS OF EXECUTION WERE NEVER FOUND…….
The place was crawling with UN troops, media people from many different countries, NATO+EU+ CIA/MI6 operatives, was being filmed + photographed by unmanned aerial reconnaisance vehicles, photographed by CIA spy satellites, etc, etc….
……even the Dutch troops who came on the scene shortly afterwards in the adjoining village of Bratunac said they never saw any evidence of a large scale massacre. Hiding and disposing of 8,000 bodies under all this surveillance without being detected would be about as likely as launching an elephant to the moon with a sling shot…..
ICRC (International Committe of the Red Cross)& media press reports back in August-September 1995, categorically stated that at least 2,000 to 3,000 of Izetbegovic’s troops made it safely to Tuzla (a Muslim controlled town) and were re-incorporated into the Bosnian (Muslim) Army “without their families being informed”. Izetbegovic’s own Bosnian government said at the time that a further 5,000 Srebrenica men (read troops) made it safely through to Bosnian Muslim lines!! (now you can understand how they came up with the figure of 7,000 – 8,000 supposedly executed”: 5,000 who “went missing” but instead made it safely to Muslim lines + 2000 to 3000 who also “went missing” but were re-incorporated into the Bosnian Muslim army of Izetbegovic “without their families being informed”)
There were ZERO PRESS REPORTS DURING THE ENTIRE MONTH OF JULY 1995 OF ANY KIND OF MASSACRE OCCURRING – ONLY STORIES ABOUT “MISSING BOSNIAN MUSLIMS” WHO WERE LATER DISCOVERED NOT TO BE MISSING AT ALL ACCORDING TO PRESS REPORTS AT THE TIME. WHY? It just doesn’t make any sense – unless you recall what happened about a month later in August 1995 and the US government’s despicable role in it from beginning to end……
Why did it take an entire MONTH for the Bosnian Muslim government and Western governments + Western media to get the story out that a supposed massacre of “Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica” allegedly happened in July 1995?……..
Here is why: in early August 1995 the Croatian Fascist government of Franjo Tudjman was – with the enormous help of Clinton in Washington via the mercenary ex-Pentagon generals firm called MPRI – busy murdering and ethnically cleansing the remaining 300,000 civilian Serbs in the “Krayina” province adjoining Croatia proper.This was a hideously brutal Nazi style ethnic cleansing campaign unseen since the days of the Einzatsgruppen German troops slaughtering Jews in WWII.Almost the entire remaining population of the “Krayina” province adjoining Croatia was expelled in the largest ethnic cleansing operation of the 1991-1995 wars……
This of course generated a little negative press coverage for Clinton and NATO/EU governments, so they decided that the best way to counter all this negative publicity of their proxy Fascist Croatian army murdering thousands of Serbs in Croatia and expelling 300,000 more was to get that hysterically insane phony Jew, Madeleine “meddlin Halfbright” Albright, to hold up a doctored CIA photograph at the UN and make up a story about “thousands of muslim men and boys slaughtered in Srebrenica with their bodies dumped in a mass grave in a soccer field at Novo Kosaba”
Of course, the area turned out to have not 7,000 or 8,000 bodies, but 33 BODIES IN TOTAL – hardly surprising in a war zone – with none of them showing evidence of execution by rifle shot at close range…..
For the last 12 years all the western media and NATO/EU governments have shown is bodies of muslim military casualties killed in battle with the better trained & disciplined Bosnian Serbs, then thety merely get CNN and proven idiotic liars like Oliver Kamm to say “hey look how monstrous those terrible serbs are…look at all those corpses!!”
….whenever the media and NATO/EU + Washington haul out yet another hackneyed, cliched “shock horror! another mass grave discovery in Srebrenica!!” story, we are expected to suspend and jettison any kind of skepticism or critical reasoning and just accept what we are told, because “scholarly & authoritative sources” according to Kamm (read NATO/EU + Soros NGO backed sources – some of them flying under the UN flag)SAID SO!!……
Naturally, they NEVER show us the NEARLY FOUR THOUSAND bodies of the Serbian children,women,elderly hacked to pieces,burned and beheaded from April 1992 to July 1995 in Srebrenica(many while still alive having limbs cut off,stomachs torn open, eyes + tongues + sexual organs cut off)CRIMES PERPETRATED BY IZETBEGOVIC’S ISLAMIST JIHADIST FASCIST TROOPS – LED BY NASER ORIC (freed by the Hague NATO/EU war criminal “judges” after serving only 3 years!)….
These Jihadist Islamist crimes of Izetbegovic’s warlord,Naser Oric, were witnessed by French UN general Philipe Morillon, and by Dutch UN troops,all of it painstakingly documented and submitted to the NATO owned Hague ICTY kangaroo court,who decided that it was all rather irrelevant as it didn’t fit the image of the NATO/EU+Washington backed Izetbegovic Jihadist Fascist Muslims as “peace loving secular moderates” who the Western media LIED about for the last 16 years in order to support the NATO/EU+Washington war policies…..
Now we’ve got some gullible idiotic US Jewish organizations + Jewish papers to cheer on for the same type of barbaric vicious Jihadist Fascist KLA killers who are in control of Kosovo demanding independence or else there’ll be more Islamist murders, more terrorism, more destruction of property…..
sound familair?……….(to be continued)…..
Summary of Judgement
Oh and add to it, that the Muslims (Bosnian & Kosovo Albanians) already had other Muslim organizations behind them and the money & resources of the Saudis to back them. The Croats & Slovenes had Germany, & the Roman Catholic Church & all its connections (including universities), behind them for organizing. Serbs had to start from scratch, and had to do it pretty much alone while already under attack.
M
“Perhaps efforts have been made to light a fire under the Serb communities now living in the West, but to no avail. If that is the case, then why is that the case? If it is so important for the aforementioned that the real history get before the public and the world, attention should I think be given to finding a way to light that fire for truth under the world’s Serbian communities.”
Bill,
There are a number of reasons for the problems in organizing “the Serbs” and none of those excuses are adequate:
1. As crazy as it sounds, most of us Serbs were raised to be “Americans”, first — to practice our religious Faith, but beyond that, to blend in with the American way of life. Those of us born here, for the most part, see “being Serb” as part of our private life, not our public life. While that attitude has served us well, individually, in terms of social and economic success, when it comes to “coming out of the closet as Serbs”, most of us find it rather embarassing to have to do that, especially when we have to compete for attention with the other groups.
2. Serbs are “all chiefs and no Indians”. We are for the most part a stubborn, headstrong group of people — that’s a strength in standing up to evil and a weakness in terms of cooperation with one another.
3. We want to move forward and deal with the pain of the past. Twenty years ago, I sat in a room full of Serbs, many of whom had lost family members to the WWII Ustashi genocide of Serbs in Croatia. Privately, we had all known who these people were and what had happened to them, but we could not convince them to tell their tale to anyone on the outside. I’ll never forget what one of them told me: “it’s not the Croats fault — they were taught how to hate while we were taught how to love.” Nothing we could say could get them to realize that if no one knew, then it could happen again. Or “to forget was to dishonor those who lost their lives”, because their answer was that the best way to “honor their lives was to go on living”.
4. Most Serbs who came from over there in this generation, are also trying to move forward. Many lost their homes over there and more — and they have neither the time nor the inclination to get involved politically over here in the US.
5. Those that have the inclination don’t have the means. Those that have the means, don’t have the inclination.
6. None of us ever saw this coming — and by the time we did, it was too late. The seccessionists were organized and had power & money behind them before any of this ever even started. Most American Serbs were so taken aback that all we could hope for was that “the truth would eventually out”. Sure, there others like me, writing letters, caling our congress people, but no one was listening. It has been like fifteen years of banging our heads against the wall. And thing that has opened people up to beginning to listen was 9/11 — and now this Utah killer. Those aren’t things WE did — those are things that THEY did. Like some Serbs said to me — “t seems like if Serbs had been the perpetrators of some horrendous act like 9/11 then maybe people would be wandering around muttering “Serbian means peace” instead of “Islam means peace”, but Serbs just don’t have it in them to hurt America!”
As I said before, none of these excuses are adequate for doing nothing — and I have been active from the beginning so I need no excuses — but it may give you some insight into the “why” of why Serbs haven’t organized properly.
Melana
Bill
I believe that the Serbs are beginning to turn the tide. James Jatras was interviewed on CBS. He has been hired by Serbia to lead their PR campaign. Watch this short video of his remarks.
Also Julia Gorin is also doing PR for them. She wrote a great article on FrontPageMag titled Radical Islam’s Dupes. Her articles have also been published in Jewish Press and the American Spectator.
I had previously asked of Nathan Pearlstein, Petern North or F. Gil-White or all of them as to why ex Serbs now living elsewhere in the West have not banded together to put their story that paints the Bosnian Muslims as the true villains before the public. The answer was something along the lines that former Serbians living in the West are not united or organized sufficiently to mount an effective information campaign.
Others have noted the monemental efforts they had made on their own to get the Serbian side of the story out before the public only to find that the MSM was unreceptive to the history they were recounting.
The question is therefore, with those aforementioned who are so dedicated to getting the truth out, not to mention J. Israel and others, why have they not taken the lead in approaching various Serb organizations to provide them with the evidence and lighting a fire under those Serbs to take the lead in getting their story out?
The main effort to correct the distorted history of the Serb – Bosnian Muslim Balkan wars of 1992 – 95, should come from Serbian organizations that have an even greater vested interest it would seem, to get the real story out before the public.
Perhaps efforts have been made to light a fire under the Serb communities now living in the West, but to no avail. If that is the case, then why is that the case? If it is so important for the aforementioned that the real history get before the public and the world, attention should I think be given to finding a way to light that fire for truth under the world’s Serbian communities.
Gil-White comments on this admission.
The National Post article also reports,
This is a dangerous admission.
This is another attack against the Serbs.
The UN decision amounts to saying this: “The Serbs killed a lot of people but, technically, it they didn’t kill so many people that one can call this a “genocide.” This is nonsense, because the Serbs did not kill a lot of people.
In Bosnia, the Bosnian Serbs, who were mostly peasants, as opposed to the more urbanized Bosnian Muslims, owned and lived on 70% of the land — because they were peasants. The Bosnian Muslims of Alija Izetbegovic wanted to cleanse Bosnia of non-Muslims and this required attacking the Serbs, who merely defended their homes. The allegations that the Bosnian Serbs were supposedly massacring Bosnian Muslim civilians required spectacular hoaxes, such as the claim that a Bosnian Serb refugee camp where the Serbs were giving medical assistance, food, and shelter to those Bosnian Muslims who didn’t agree with Izetbegovic and were running away from his terrorist repression (initially a majority), was supposedly a Bosnian Serb death camp where Bosnian Muslims were being murdered. To see the entire context (carefully documented) of this hoax, read Part 3 of “What Really Happened in Bosnia?”:
“Part 3. Who started the war in Bosnia? And who committed genocide? Was it the Bosnian Serbs, as NATO and the mass media alleged, or the Bosnian Muslim followers of Alija Izetbegovic?”
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/ihralija3.htm
In Kosovo, NATO’s own forensics:
1) Showed that the accusation that there had been a Serbian massacre of Albanian civilians in the town of Racak was a hoax.
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/ranta.htm
2)Showed, after the bombing, that the total body count was 2788. That’s the total body count, and it includes not only Albanian civilians, but Serbian civilians, KLA terrorists, Serbian soldiers, everything. Of these, no more than 788 can have died *during* the NATO bombing according to NATO’s own estimate of 2000 dead due to KLA fighting with Serbian government forces prior to the NATO bombing.
Here is the key argument.
a) Given that NATO had to rely on the Racak hoax to accuse the Serbian government of murdering Albanian civilians, there were no massacres of Albanian civilians *before* the NATO bombing.
b) Given that *after* the NATO bombing, with complete NATO military control of Kosovo, NATO’s own forensics could document no more than 788 dead *during* the bombing; and given that only a fraction of the 788 are Albanian civilians; and given that the KLA was taking credit for murdering quite a few Albanian civilians who disagree with it, and that NATO had to apologize for many Albanian civilians killed by its bombs, non-Serbian fire can easily account for a fraction of 788 bodies. Ergo, NATO has in fact failed to show that the Serbs killed even *one* Albanian civilian.
You may see the documentation for all this here:
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/freezer1.htm
Zero murders, I think, is a very low number of dead. Certainly not high enough to justify the accusation of “genocide.” So the UN is right that the Serbs did not commit genocide. But the UN is implying that the Serbs are responsible for the deaths of *some* innocent civilians. Which, pray tell?
Francisco Gil-White
Editor, Historical and Investigative Research
http://www.hirhome.com
That The International Court of Justice found that the Serbians actions against the Bosnian Muslims did not rise to the level of genocide, will be a welcome finding for those who have been advocating that it was the Bosnian Muslims who were relatively speaking the more savage, brutal and in a word evil, than the Serbs.
What is interesting however is that surely evidence was presented of at least Bosnian Muslim excesses in their war against the Serbs, yet there is no mention of that in the news reports coming out this morning. Learning whether the ICJ considered evidence of Bosnian Muslim wrongs or if it did, whether it decided that those wrongs were not worth considering, will have to await a more thorough reading of the court’s decision.
Also of interest is that the two definitions of genocide, taken from the The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and The American Heritage Dictionary fit the actions and intent of much of the Muslim and Arab world vis a vis Israel, including the Palestinians and the charters of both Fatah and Hamas.
There has been a great deal of controversey and consternation and outright anger fostered in the Jewish world and Israel over U.N. appointed agencies or bodies, such as the ICJ and UNWRA as well as U.N. appointees such as John Dugard, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 and Louise Arbour, High Commissioner for Human Rights.
In 2004 the ICJ issued an advisory opinion that Israel’s security fence was illegal, which court, acting on its own initiative, considered the matter and rendered that opinion without judicial authority.
UNWRA’s madate has shaped UNWRA into a pro-Palestinian advocate and enabler, if not supporter of Palestinian terrorism against Israel.
Louise Arbour, speaking on matters pertaining to the Israel – Palestinian conflict, routinely condemns Israel and expresses sympathy for Palestinians.
John Dugard has now issued a U.N. report that Anne Bayefsky in her article posted to Israpundit today, characterizes as Dugard claiming that Israel’s actions vis a vis the Palestinians amounts to seeking racial domination over them.
The one thing in common with the U.N.’s ICJ, UN Commision for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, UNWRA and Dugard is that in voicing their pro-Palestinian views and dictums, they all ignore Israel’s side of the equation bound up in Israeli rights, circumstances and history. In their considering only the Palestinian narrative of revisionist history and their alleged rights and accusations of Israeli wrongs, also ignore Palestinian intractable hatred of Jews and Israel and their acts of terrorism against Israel that by any reasonable standard rise to the level of war crimes perpetrated by those who lack humanity.
It appears that the ICJ similarly failed to consider wrongs of the Bosnian Muslims and only weighed the evidence of Serbian wrongs against the definition of genocide.
It is not enough to just decry that the UN and its various agencies and representatives charged with investigatory, legal and spokesperson authority for the U.N. have turned right and wrong, reason and insanity, and good and evil on their heads. There is more than enough reason to focus on how to set things right side up and to start the process to do just that.
One good way to start is for the Americans to cut funding or seriously threaten to kick the UN out of town unless it starts to live up to its ideals instead working so hard at widening the gap between those U.N. ideals and the U.N. anti-ideals actions.
12 years ago, on a trip to Europe, I sad to a German – with whome I discussed about Srebrenica – that the truth will come out one day. Sincerely, I did not think it would take “only” 12 years. But on the other hand, today I had a look on the German news
http://www.tagesschau.de/aktuell/meldungen/0,1185,OID6455856_NAV_REF1,00.html
and there I realised that probably in Germany it will finally take the time I supposed until the truth will come out, since the offical German first chanel news titles :
“International Court speaks of genocide – Belgrade is guilty of complicity”
Actually, they did not really change anything from the Court’s decision, but put everything together in a manner that the reader gets exactly the opposite impression. That’s exactly the way the Germans reported about ex-Yugoslavia during the 1990-ies. And nothing has changed.
This recalls me three things.
First : They did the same to Sharon, “he had have prevented the massacre” (but they did not prevent neither !)
Second : Next week (monday in Jerusalem) we celebrate Purim, hence next Shabbath is “Shabbath Zakhor” where we read from the Thorah :
Thirdly : Rav Soloveitchik said that the Germans are Amalek. Don’t forget.