Blatant U.S. intervention in Yugoslav elections protested; Group calls for investigation
29 Sep 2000
In response to the emergency situation in Yugoslavia caused by the open and extensive intervention in that nation’s election process by the U.S. and West European governments, the International Action Center is calling for the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry to investigate U.S. manipulation of elections and other interference in the internal affairs of sovereign countries.
This intervention has taken the form of military pressure, with NATO naval maneuvers in the Adriatic and Mediterranean Seas and threats of resumed bombings, economic pressure that a 9-year-long embargo would be relieved only if the vote went against President Slobodan Milosevic, and direct financing of organizations and parties that oppose the Milosevic-lead coalition.
The IAC, founded in 1992 by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and other anti-war activists, has played a leading role in the anti-war struggle in the United States and in the fight to end sanctions against Iraq, Yugoslavia, Cuba and other countries.
In calling for the creation of the Commission of Inquiry Ramsey Clark drew attention to past U.S. manipulations of elections, giving the examples of Nicaragua, where the popular Sandinista government was voted out in 1990 and where Washington injected $54 million into that poor country. He also spoke of countries where the U.S. overrode the electoral process and organized violent coups to put in their own person, as with Mobutu in Zaire (now Congo), or in Chile, Haiti and Iran.
“In all cases where the U.S. put ‘its man’ in office,” said Clark, “the people wound up worse off than before. Think of what Mobutu did to the Congo, what Pinochet did to Chile, and that under the U.S.-backed governments after the Sandinistas in Nicaragua that country was reduced to one of the poorest on the earth. After the election in each country, U.S. money stopped coming in.”
The U.S. never kept its promises of aid to develop Nicaragua. Currently Taiwanese bankers and industrialists are the major exploiters of low-paid Nicaraguan labor in the “free-trade zones,” where conditions of work in the sweatshops are about the worst in the world. The money Washington put into the country was not a promise of things to come but an investment expected to earn a quick return.
“We need,” said Clark, “to expose the way the U.S. government takes advantage of elections to put in a regime of their choice, and how this has always been harmful to the people of that country.”
The U.S. government has boasted that it injected $77 million into Yugoslavia to build up the opposition to President Slobodan Milosevic and his governing coalition. Another $105 million has been authorized on September 26th by the U.S. House of Representatives for similar use.
“To put this amount in perspective,” said IAC co-director Sara Flounders, “The U.S. has voted more money to subvert an election in little Yugoslavia than the total funds both major U.S. Presidential candidates have raised. This year Al Gore has reported $47 million in contributions and George W. Bush $87 million. And that’s for a rich country with almost 300 million people.
“This money goes a long way in Yugoslavia—a much poorer country with only 11 million people. It’s as if some foreign country recently a U.S. enemy put tens of billions of dollars behind a candidate in the U.S. And this is only hard money. What about the millions of dollars in soft money from the Soros Foundation and the NGOs?”
“You can only imagine,” continued Flounders, “the hysteria it would arouse if that happened here. Those taking the money would be labeled as traitors, refused the right to run and probably charged with crimes.”
Flounders said the Commission of Inquiry was calling on others who have the detailed information to show just what methods were used to influence the Yugoslav elections as well as other elections in the past. Others may want to illustrate how the U.S. government tried to buy elections in their countries. She also suggested that organizations in the other NATO countries might want to investigate what the governments there have done to manipulate the Yugoslav elections.
“The Yugoslav people heroically faced NATO bombing for 78 days last year,” she said. “Now they are facing an equally heavy barrage of high-tech propaganda beamed in from the most powerful lie machine the human race ever saw. We plan to reveal the insides of that machine and expose its dangers to the world.”
For more information, call 212-633-6646 or look at the IAC web site at www.iacenter.org.
International Action Center
39 West 14th Street, Room 206
New York, NY 10011
email: iacenter@iacenter.org
web: www.iacenter.org
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phone: 212 633-6646
fax: 212 633-2889
YUGOSLAVIA IN CRISIS
