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NEWS & LETTERS, March 2002
Column: Our Life and Times by Kevin A. Barry and
Mary Holmes
Milosevic on trial The trial of Slobodan Milosevic,
one of the late 20th century's most notorious war criminals, has finally begun
at the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. Predictably, he attempted
once again to sing his old tune of Serbia as the "victim" of its own
oppressed minorities, especially the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosova. Unfortunately for him,
Milosevic no longer controls a national propaganda apparatus and will be forced
to listen to witnesses recounting the mass rape, murder, and torture committed
by his forces. This was all part of an effort to "ethnically cleanse"
(his term) the former Yugoslavia of its religious and ethnic minorities to
create a Greater Serbia. These outrages included 1)
concentration camps that tortured and starved thousands of Bosnian Muslims and
Croats in 1991-93, 2) rape camps during the same period for Muslim and Croat
women, 3) the expulsion of two
million Muslims and Croats from their homes, 4) the massacre of 7000 Muslim men
at Srebrenica in 1995, and 5) the expulsion of nearly a million Kosovar
Albanians in 1998-99. Overall, the death toll stands at more than 200,000. This
clearly adds up to genocide, the most serious charge facing Milosevic. Those like ourselves who opposed his neo-fascist policies from the start are outraged that it took ten long years to bring him to trial, largely because NATO and the U.S. tolerated him, when they did not support him outright. Yet the racist mass media have concentrated on Milosevic, but not on the trials of the former Rwandan rulers who carried out an even more massive genocide in Central Africa. Nonetheless, the Milosevic trial is a necessary and important one and is undoubtedly a step forward. |
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