Report from Sofia -- BULGARIAN ANTI-FASCISTS HOST TRIBUNAL ON NATO WAR CRIMES
Sofia, Bulgaria, Oct. 2 and 3, 2000
Two delegations from Yugoslavia traveled to this ancient Balkan capital in late September. Neither got much international media coverage, but for different reasons.
On Sept. 27 leaders of the US-backed "Democratic Opposition of Serbia" met here quietly with representatives of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and NATO officials. They signed a "letter of intent" pledging that when they came to power they would raise prices, privatize state industry and dismantle Yugoslavia's free health care system. That was the price the US and other NATO powers demanded for the hundreds of millions of dollars they pumped into the campaign to overturn Yugoslavia's Socialist Party government and for the promised lifting of Western economic sanctions.
Members of the other group had experienced a different form of Washington's largesse. They had lost children, parents, spouses and friends to the hail of NATO bombs and missiles that descended on Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999. They came to tell an international tribunal of the price the US and NATO imposed on Yugoslavs for not accepting the IMF's "economic restructuring" plan.
Yugoslavia and Bulgaria have a lot in common. They are neighbors closely related by language, culture, history and topography. They both had socialist revolutions at the end of World War II. And over the past decade they have both been targets of US-directed wars of destruction. Against Yugoslavia that war was waged with bombs, missiles, CIA-backed terrorism and economic sanctions. In Bulgaria it took the form of IMF dictated "shock therapy" imposed by the same type of "democrats" the US now backs in Yugoslavia. In 1990 a similar US-funded movement grabbed power in Bulgaria after a campaign of "destabilization." Today the average Bulgarian lives on 58 cents a day.
"For the past 10 years, life here has been a catastrophe," says Dr. Mimi Vitkova, who was Bulgaria's health minister from 1995 to 1997. "We were never a rich country, but when we had socialism our children were healthy and well-fed. They all got immunized. Retired people and the disabled were provided for and got free medicine. Our hospitals were free.
"Today," she continues, "if a person has no money, they have no right to be cured. And most people have no money. Our economy was ruined. We had a lot of industry, but after privatization many plants shut down. We lost our trade with the Soviet Union, with Africa, Latin America and, of course, Yugoslavia. Officially unemployment here is 17 percent, but in many parts of the country it is 35 percent or more. At least 1 million of our most educated people have emigrated abroad. We were promised if we 'privatized' we would get access to West European markets, but it never happened. Instead we get are tiny loans from the International Monetary Fund."
Dr. Vitkova is a member of the Bulgarian Antifascist Union, originally formed by partisans who fought the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II. While Bulgaria's monarchy sent troops to aid the Axis in Yugoslavia and Greece, Bulgarian revolutionaries fought alongside Yugoslav partisans against Hitler's troops.
"Our organization is made up of people who swore to never allow fascism to return," Vitkova said of the union. "Bulgaria was one of the the few countries where all Nazi collaborators were punished. But today the pro-NATO regime is trying to clean up history, saying that Bulgaria never had fascism. Our main activities are educational, but they are not only excursions into the past. We may face the same forces in the future. Our people will not submit to the economic dictatorship that now rules our country."
On Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, the Antifascist Union hosted the fifth hearing of the East Europe?based International People's Tribunal on NATO War Crimes in Yugoslavia. Previous hearings had been held in Russia, Ukraine, Germany and Yugoslavia itself. The tribunal cooperates with the Commission of inquiry on NATO War Crimes headed by former US attorney general Ramsey Clark. Judges from Bulgaria, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Poland, Burkina Faso, Germany and the United States heard wrenching testimony from Yugoslav victims of NATO's bombing campaign. The hearing was opened by Antifascist Union president Vladimir Velkanov and tribunal president Mikhail Kuznetzov of Russia. The US antiwar movement was represented by Bill Doares and Lara Kretskaya of the International Action Center and the US Commision of Inquiry.
"NATO took everything from me," Olivera Simic of Novi Pazar told the judges. She described how her husband had gone with their 2-year-old son to buy parts for their car on May 31, 1999. That was the day generals at the Pentagon decided to destroy the center of Novi Pazar. Simic, pregnant, stayed home. She only heard the explosion that demolished the city's central department store, killing her husband, son and nine other people.
Elitza Yovanovic was at home on April 5, 1999, the day the US Air Force bombed the town of Aleksinac. "Aleksinac was my Hiroshima," she says. She was not in the house when the missiles hit, but her aunt and uncle, her husband's parents and most of her friends died that day. She tried to dig her aunt out of the rubble but it was too late. Her mother, a doctor, was wounded and died a few months later. Yovanovic's 6-year-old daughter survived the bombing but still asks when her left leg will grow back.
Branko Brudaro recalled how he and his wife had decided to send their 9-year-old daughter to stay with his in-laws in rural Montenegro, far from any roads or military or industrial targets. They could not escape the Pentagon reach. On April 13, Brudaro's daughter, his wife's sister and her daughter were killed by NATO bombs.
Milos Markovic is a journalist in the cultural section of Serbian television. He was working late the night of April 23 when US missiles destroyed the TV station. "We stumbled outside through smoke and fire only to see our colleagues' heads and arms lying on top of cars and in the streets." Markovic noted that Western correspondents often worked overnight at Serbian TV facilities but none were there the night the missile hit.
Stoyanc Petrovic's grandson was killed in the bombing. He himself was hospitalized with a fractured leg when NATO missiles hit the hospital. 20 patients and medical workers died.
A representative of Iraq told of the 9 years of destruction inflicted on his country by US-directed war and sanctions, which have taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of children.
The tribunal also heard testimony about the murder and persecution of Serbs, Romas, Gorans, Turks and other minorities in Kosovo inthe 13 months of NATO-KFOR occupation. The judges unanimously found the leaders and military commanders of NATO guilty of war crimes against the people of Yugoslavia. The final verdict called for the abolition of NATO as a "criminal organization," an end to the occupation of Kosovo and for reparations to the Yugoslav people from the NATO powers. IAC representative Doares closed the tribunal with a denunciation of US- NATO interference in the Yugoslav elections, which he called a "continuation of the war." He compared the IMF's destruction of the Bulgarian economy to the devastation of Yugoslavia by NATO bombs and missiles and drew applause when he called NATO and the IMF "two arms of the same monster."
Judges from other East European and former Soviet republics were familiar with the role of NATO and the IMF. One of them was Pantaleymun Georgadze, general secretary of the Communist party of the former Soviet republic of Georgia. He told IAC representatives that while most Georgians now live on the edge of starvation, the US- backed Shevardnadze wants turn Georgia into a NATO base. "They want to make the Caucasus a zone of war like the Balkans," he said. Georgadze's son, once the republic's minister of security, has been froced into hiding for opposing the Shevardnadze regime. Representatives from Ukraine told how the NATO-backed "democratic" regime in their country has also destroyed their country's industry while dragging Ukraine into NATO's "Partnership for Peace." NATO held maneuvers in Ukraine last summer.
Among the Bulgarians attending the hearing was Blagovesta Doncheva, a former schoolteacher who was once an anticommunist "dissident. Now an anti-NATO activist, she was arrested for protesting Clinton's visit to Bulgaria in 1999. She was deeply concerned about Western intervention in the Yugoslav elections. "They did exactly the same thing in 10 years ago in Bulgaria," Doncheva says. "The Bulgarian 'Union of Democratic Forces' was flooded with money, cars, trucks, computers from the CIA and the Soros Foundation. They made big promises, and we believed them. Then the IMF and World Bank destroyed the very fabric of our society. Our industry was shut down, our pensions were taken away. Earlier women could retire at 55 and men at 60; now no one can retire. Our seniors are eating out of garbage bins, children are dying in the streets from drugs and malnutrition. The last 10 years have been the most awful of my life. For us, stopping NATO and the IMF is a matter of survival."
International Action Center
39 West 14th Street, Room 206
New York, NY 10011
email: iacenter@iacenter.org
web: www.iacenter.org
CHECK OUT THE NEW SITE www.mumia2000.org
phone: 212 633-6646
fax: 212 633-2889
