Arrest of Milosevic continues U.S. attack on Yugoslavia
By John Catalinotto
Under pressure of an imminent U.S. aid cutoff, the pro-West regime in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, took former President Slobodan Milosevic into custody early in the morning of April 1 local time--just before the midnight March 31 U.S. deadline in Washington.
Milosevic’s arrest is a further step in the criminal U.S.-NATO plan to turn the Balkans back into a colony of U.S. and Western European imperialism.
Milosevic had led Yugoslavia for 13 years while its people attempted to resist aggression from the United States and other NATO countries. This aggression included subversion, sanctions, support for right-wing nationalists in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia, fomenting a guerrilla war in Kosovo, and finally a vicious 78-day bombing campaign in the spring of 1999 directed at Yugoslavia’s civilian population and infrastructure.
Because Milosevic led the party and the government that tried to resist for 13 years, Washington, London, Berlin and their allies have demonized him.
U.S. and European Union spokespeople have made it clear that they will continue to pressure the new Belgrade authorities to extradite the three-times-elected president to a pro-NATO tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.
There they want to try Milosevic for alleged war crimes. The NATO leaders hope that a show trial that finds him guilty will allow them to hide their own crimes against the peoples of the Balkans.
Washington’s “New World Order” has been unable to bring either peace or prosperity to the Balkans. It relies instead on bribes, fear and intimidation to buttress its rule.
Like the Roman Empire, U.S. imperialism tries not only to defeat its declared enemies but to humiliate them.
It has even humiliated its clients in the new Belgrade regime by forcing them to arrest Milosevic on a U.S. timetable. It is making them jump on cue to get $50 million in aid and U.S. backing for access to World Bank and International Monetary Fund loans.
U.S. government spokespeople have made it clear that the enemy is not just Milosevic, but all Serbs who resisted.
With so much at stake, those who oppose war and aggression are demanding that Milosevic be freed and that the tribunal in The Hague be abolished.
First attempt failed
On March 30, seven jeeps carrying heavily armed and masked commandos—who the authorities claimed were Serbian police—surrounded Milosevic’s home in the Dedinje neighborhood of Belgrade.
He was at home with his political ally and wife Mira Markovic, their daughter, and a group of comrades from the Socialist Party of Serbia, who had come to defend him.
Yugoslav army troops also guarded his Dedinje home. The Yugoslav army's roots are in the partisan movement that drove the Nazi occupiers out of Yugoslavia. This force is considered more independent of NATO and less under the control of the pro-West regime than the Serbian police.
The SPS defenders successfully resisted the first commando attack that night. The SPS also called on the population and especially party members to come out to give symbolic resistance.
Despite the dangers in facing down armed commandos, hundreds of people came to Dedinje.
The new Belgrade authorities were working on a short deadline. Washington had given them only until March 31 to hand Milosevic over to The Hague or at least arrest him. They stepped up the pressure with a 36-hour siege of his home.
Washington called out more of its own puppet forces in Yugoslavia. Members of Otpor, an ostensibly independent student organization came out on the streets against Milosevic. The Washington Post reported last Dec. 11 that Otpor was trained in tactics by State Department operatives.
In addition, unabashedly pro-Western Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic ordered thousands of Serbian police into the streets to intimidate the people.
An April 1 SPS statement noted that more police were used to arrest Milosevic than were defending Serb land against KLA terrorists near the Kosovo border.
According to reports from Belgrade, as many as 400 people had come to defend the SPS leader on the afternoon of March 31. This crowd dwindled as the day wore on.
Finally, after hours of encirclement and pressured negotiations, Milosevic decided to agree to the arrest. He was taken into custody and placed in the Central Prison in Belgrade.
The new Serb authorities first charged him with misappropriating funds and abuse of power. Apparently their evidence is weak, because they have added charges stemming from his allies’ attempt to defend Milosevic during the siege, and later said he would be charged with murders.
These charges are really only a smokescreen for the political battle directed by the NATO powers. The SPS’s enemies need this screen. Despite the setbacks, sacrifices, and disappointments faced by the population, there is still a widespread feeling of national pride and unwillingness to completely submit a Yugoslav president to NATO.
NATO wants him in The Hague
U.S. President George Bush, German Foreign Minister Joshka Fischer, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and French President Jacques Chirac had barely congratulated the Belgrade authorities for the arrest before they demanded the next step—extradition to The Hague tribunal.
This tribunal, known as the International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia, was set up by the United States, Britain, France and Germany specifically to try people from the former Yugoslavia for alleged war crimes.
It has always been funded by these NATO countries. It has especially close relations to the United States.'
It has refused to hear charges against U.S. and other NATO country leaders for war crimes against the civilian population of Yugoslavia.
It is obvious why the NATO leaders want Milosevic before the tribunal. They want to use the case to absolve themselves of blame for the war and all the crimes they committed.
Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Rubin, appearing on CNN March 30, said that the United States should see the local arrest of Milosevic as “a first step” toward getting him before the ICTY.
Rubin’s marriage to CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour—who was CNN’s main reporter from the Balkans throughout the crisis there—reflects the close, cooperative relationship between the corporate media and the U.S. government in prosecuting and justifying the war against Yugoslavia.
This relationship clearly continues. After the arrest of Milosevic, all reports in the Western corporate media put the entire blame for the war on him and on the SPS.
Some go beyond blaming Milosevic. They blame all Serbs. For example, Blaine Harden’s article in the April 1 New York Times, headlined “Milosevic is accused, but all of Serbia is on trial,” was one of the more viciously anti-Serb.
Harden wrote similar anti-Serb diatribes for the Times in mid-May 1999 when NATO was preparing a ground attack on Yugoslavia.
Many in the media have been advising the Bush administration not to release the promised $50 million in aid to Yugoslavia until more steps are taken to turn over Milosevic to The Hague.
The new Belgrade regime itself fears that under the impact of a continually declining standard of living and its obvious subservience to NATO, it will soon lose any support among the population. It thus wants to destroy Milosevic and the SPS to wipe out organized resistance.
Djindjic has already seen tens of thousands demonstrate against NATO on March 24, called out by the SPS to mark the second anniversary of the war.
Big Lie exposed
For a year after the NATO forces began to occupy Kosovo in June 1999, anti-war forces in the United States, Western and Eastern Europe held people’s tribunals charging NATO with war crimes for their aggression against Yugoslavia.
In the United States, the International Action Center, led by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, made a strong case that not only had NATO forces purposely attacked civilian targets, squeezed Yugoslavia with sanctions and destroyed the environment, but that NATO country’s leaders had also planned and instigated the war.
Finally, long after the war, some of the truth began to break into the media. On Feb. 8, the major German television network ARD broadcast a special on the war entitled “It Began with a Lie.” This showed that the charges of mass murder, genocide and organized “ethnic cleansing” made against Belgrade were inventions of the U.S., German and other governments.
The media are not taking note of any of this, however, in reports about Milosevic’s arrest.
International anti-war forces say ‘Free Milosevic’
Within the NATO countries, those groups that organized the tribunals and similar anti-war actions have spoken out against the illegal arrest of the SPS leader.
On April 2, the International Action Center held an informational picket line outside Grand Central Station in New York. As thousands of commuters and office workers passed, protesters demanded that Milosevic be freed and NATO leaders put on trial.
In Rome the same day, the group that had held an anti-NATO tribunal submitted a note to the Yugoslav Embassy protesting the arrest. This group, called the Ramsey Clark Tribunal, is working to expose and abolish The Hague Tribunal.
In Berlin, a popular German tribunal leader, Wolfgang Richter, told the newspaper Junge Welt April 2 that “NATO is the criminal and belongs in The Hague before the International Court.” He said that the United States and NATO countries should be paying reparations to Yugoslavia instead of threatening to withhold aid.
In Brussels, the Belgian Workers Party wrote, “This witch hunt [against the SPS leaders] is the continuation of the policy of conquest followed by NATO, the United States and the European Union for the last 10 years in the Balkans.”
Speaking for the IAC in New York, Sara Flounders told Workers World: “It is vitally important that protests, even protests that can only now be symbolic, are held against this new crime by the U.S. and NATO against the Yugoslav people. Washington’s New World Order is full of contradictions and conflicts, from the collapsing stock market to bitter rivalries between U.S. and European corporations, to the dangers of new U.S. aggression against China and Russia. A new struggle will awaken, a struggle against what is really Washington’s new empire.
“Now whatever we can do to show the way will set the groundwork for that new struggle and help it to victory,” said Flounders.
posted 4 April, 2001
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