Editorial

All War Criminals Should be Put on Trial

On June 28, in response to pressures from the United States and Western European powers, the Serbian government handed over Slobodan Milosevic to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. Milosevic has now been formally charged with committing war crimes against the Albanian population of Kosovo. It is expected that further charges will be forthcoming in relation to crimes against humanity in Bosnia. In exchange for Milosevic, Serbia received almost two billion dollars in foreign aid.

There are some, acting on the basis of Cold War habit or the thesis that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", who would have us believe that Milosevic is an innocent victim of American intrigue. Some have gone so far as to claim that he was a staunch defender of socialism in Yugoslavia and that it is the duty of progressive people everywhere to support him.

It is the position of Modern Communism that Milosevic is neither an innocent victim nor a socialist. There is little doubt that he is guilty of war crimes against the Albanians of Kosovo, as well as against the Bosnian Muslims and Croatians. In fact, he is personally responsible for the destruction of Yugoslavia and the death of hundreds of thousands of its citizens, including tens of thousands of Serbs. It was Milosevic who systematically fuelled Serb national chauvinism during the late 1980s and who rode the resulting wave of nationalist hysteria to power. It was Milosevic who stripped Kosovo of its autonomy in 1989, fired tens of thousands of Albanian workers, shut down Albanian schools and universities and implemented a policy of naked state terrorism against the Albanians in Kosovo. Those acts led directly to the secession of Slovenia and Croatia and eventually gave rise to an armed uprising by the Albanians in Kosovo. The fact that this struggle was hijacked by the United States to pave the way for its own aggression and occupation of Kosovo in no way justifies the activities of Milosevic.

As such, we think that it is entirely appropriate that Milosevic be put on trial for crimes against humanity. What is inappropriate is that he should be the only one. It is well-known that numerous Croatian and Bosnian leaders were also responsible for massacres of civilians. Why are they not in the dock next to Milosevic?

It is also an established fact that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is guilty of crimes against humanity in connection with the 1982 massacres of Palestinian men, women and children at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon. In fact, Sharon was judged "personally responsible" for the massacres by the Kahan Commission established by the Israeli government, but no further legal action was pursued. The United States has not demanded that he be surrendered to the War Crimes Tribunal before any further military aid is sent to Israel.

There are also volumes of evidence of crimes against humanity being committed by U.S.-installed regimes in Latin America, Indonesia, Southeast Asia and South Korea. Yet none of those criminals has been indicted by a War Crimes Tribunal.

The list would be incomplete if we did not include every U.S. president since Harry Truman and every senior U.S. policy advisor during the same period. The crimes against humanity of men such as Henry Kissinger and Robert MacNamara during the Vietnam War, General Colin Powell and others during the Gulf War and the architects of the war against Yugoslavia should surely warrant them an audience with a War Crimes Tribunal. Various Russian leaders and generals should join them for atrocities committed in Afghanistan and Chechnya and, of course, many others could be added to the list.

What all of the untried war criminals have in common is that they are either Americans, allies of the Americans or potential allies of the Americans. It is this double standard that needs to be eliminated. Those who commit crimes against humanity should be held accountable to humanity, regardless of whose friend they happen to be. The spectacle of one set of war criminals deciding which war criminals should be tried and which should be applauded is truly an obscenity and, in a sense, yet another crime against humanity.