U.S. court rules against Serb leaders
The rape charge & Washington's war propaganda
By Sara Flounders
On Aug. 10, a federal court in New York ruled that Radovan
Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader during the civil war in
Bosnia seven years ago, must pay $745 million in damages for
the crimes of rape, torture and genocide committed during the
civil war.
Of course, no money is expected to be recovered. The
charge was originally filed in 1993 for propaganda purposes
at the height of the Bosnian civil war. The decision seven
years later received the full front page and three inside
pages of coverage in the Aug. 11 edition of Newsday, and wide
attention in other media.
How could a U.S. federal court in New York even have
jurisdiction over what happened in another country to people
who had no connection to the United States?
This "trial" is part of a continuing effort to give the
U.S. government the basis to charge and convict leaders of
any country that is the target of CIA destabilization. It
revived all the charges that were used to justify U.S.
military intervention and occupation in the Balkans.
Karadzic is not charged with committing any of the crimes
directly. He is charged as the leader of a government that
has been a target of continuing demonization.
Karadzic could not travel to New York or present any
defense in this one-sided trial. He is in hiding in Bosnia
after being indicted on similar charges at the court
established at The Hague by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright--the so-called International Criminal Tribunal for
the Former Yugoslavia.
Of course, no testimony presented in the U.S. federal
court in New York or the Tribunal based at The Hague even
mentioned Washington's role in manufacturing the break-up of
the Yugoslav Federation, fomenting the civil war and bombing
civilians in Bosnia and Yugoslavia.
But the criminal role of the United States, Germany and
other Western governments has been well documented by
people's tribunals in New York, Berlin, Rome, Athens, Moscow
and Kiev, Ukraine, over the past year.
NATO bases the real goal
The charges of genocide and mass rapes in Bosnia were the
beginning of a massive, well-orchestrated public relations
campaign to demand U.S./NATO intervention in the Balkans.
Claiming to be a force for peace and stability in a bloody
civil war, the Pentagon has now established a whole network
of military bases in Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Kosovo,
Hungary and the Czech Republic.
Serb towns in Bosnia were the targets of more than 4,000
U.S. bombings in 1994 and 1995. In 1999 the Pentagon and NATO
bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days.
The charge of rape made against the Serbs shaped the views
of millions of people who previously had little interest in
the Balkans.
In late 1992 and early 1993, sensational news reports
charged that mass rapes were a planned, deliberate strategy
of the Bosnian Serb leadership.
Women are the first victims in every war. Rape and the
degrading abuse of women are all too often carried out as a
stamp of conquest by invading armies imbued with patriarchal
attitudes.
But the charge of rape has also often been consciously
used as an essential prop of war propaganda. The supposed
defense of women is used to mobilize armies and to galvanize
blind hatred.
A lie repeated becomes fact
Without any examination of the highly biased sources, the
major Western media gave lurid descriptions of rape camps
where it was claimed that between 20,000 and 100,000 Muslim
and Croatian women were raped. This crystallized the public
view that Serbs were the evil aggressors and Muslims and
Croatians the helpless victims.
The charge that 30,000 women and girls had been raped
originated with the foreign minister of Bosnia, Haris
Silajdzic, in order to stall peace talks in Geneva in late
1992.
In January 1993 the Warburton Report authorized by the
European Community estimated that 20,000 Muslim women had
been raped as part of a Serb strategy of conquest. This
report was widely cited as an authoritative, independent
source.
No coverage was given to a dissenting member of the
investigative team--European Parliament President Simone
Veil--who revealed that the estimate of 20,000 rapes was
based on interviews with only four victims, two women and two
men.
The Croatian Ministry of Health in Zagreb was the main
source on which the Warburton Report based its estimate of
20,000 rapes.
Because the charge of systematic Serbian rapes of Muslim
and Croatian women has been repeated so often, it is now
accepted as an undisputed fact.
Publications vied with each other for sensationalized
accounts. USA Today told the story of a 5-month-old baby who
was supposedly the result of Serbian rape. The New York Times
carried a photo story with the caption, "Two-month-old baby
girl born to a teen-age Muslim woman after she was raped in a
Serbian detention camp." The war was not yet nine months
old.
Ms. Magazine ran a cover story that accused Bosnian Serb
forces of raping for the purpose of producing pornographic
films. No such films were ever found and the charges were not
supported by the findings of Helsinki Watch or Human Rights
Watch.
Croatian (Dis)Information Center
The woman who was the star witness and main media
spokesperson in the New York trial and judgment, Jadranka
Cigelj, is a paid propagandist who worked for the Croatian
Information Center.
She was well known in radical Croatian nationalist
circles. She was also the vice-chair of Croatian President
Franjo Tudjman's fascist HDZ Party.
The HDZ is closely linked to the Ustashe Party that led
Croatia during the Nazi occupation in World War II.
Perhaps because of her fascist political background, in
interviews Cigelj always brands the Serbs as "far worse than
the Nazis."
Cigelj's rape charges are extensively quoted in almost all
articles and testimony on rapes in Bosnia. However, her
accounts have changed several times.
Thomas Deichmann, a German researcher and journalist, has
documented Cigelj's varied testimony and her political
background in a chapter of the book, "War, Lies and
Videotape," published by the International Action Center.
In one publication produced by the Croatian Information
Center, Cigelj charged that a Serbian reserve officer raped
her. In a later article with Roy Gutman of Newsday, she
charged that Zeljko Mejakic, the Serbian commander of a
refugee camp, and two camp guards raped her.
Later, in a German publication, her story changed again.
She testified in the highly publicized case of another man,
former Serbian soldier Jezdimir Topic, who faced deportation
from the United States in 1999.
Cigelj offered to become a key prosecution witness against
another Serb, Dusan Tadic, at the Hague Tribunal. She was
rejected because she was seen as an unreliable source.
However, Cigelj has been featured in documentaries,
received financial awards, and was the main spokesperson of a
25-city U.S. tour organized by Amnesty International.
None of the discrepancies in her story or her right-wing
political activities was reported in the coverage of her
testimony against Radovan Karadzic.
Capitalism promotes sexual slavery
Nowhere in Newsday's three pages of coverage recounting
charges of Serbian rapes in Bosnia were the conditions women
face today under NATO occupation even mentioned.
Throughout Eastern and Central Europe, in Russia and the
former Soviet republics, the chaos and dislocation of the
capitalist market have eroded the enormous gains women made
under socialism.
A decade ago these countries guaranteed full employment
and two years paid maternity leave. Now unemployment of 30-40
percent is the norm. Health care and child-care services have
collapsed.
Women's organizations were understandably outraged by the
lurid reports concerning mass rapes in Bosnia seven years
ago. They would make a contribution if they focused their
resources on exposing the conditions for women living under
U.S. domination today.
U.S. troops and bases do not protect women. They exist to
protect the extraction of profits for giant capitalist
institutions. In every U.S. military operation an entire sex
industry of bars, strip joints and brothels is created around
the bases.
This experience of Vietnam, Thailand, Korea and the
Philippines is now the reality around U.S. bases in Tuxla,
Bosnia, and at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo.
At the United Nations Beijing Plus Five Conference of
10,000 women in June, the worldwide status of women was
examined. It was estimated that more than half-a-million
women from Central and Eastern Europe are shipped abroad each
year as part of the worldwide trafficking in prostitutes.
Bosnia was cited as one of the worst examples. (New York
Times, June 11)
Flounders is co-director of the International Action
Center in New York. Background materials for this article
appeared in two IAC books, "NATO in the Balkans" and "War,
Lies and Videotape," both available at leftbooks.com.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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