The Right to Crime

Armed  conflicts  in the former Yugoslavia keep  on  abating  and flaring up again. The general opinion is that everyone is at  war with everyone else. In these violent conflicts, the international humanitarian law is repeatedly grossly violated. At the  previous session of the Peace Conference for the former Yugoslavia  Executive  Board in Geneva in late June, Conference Co-chairman  Stoltenberg  said  crimes were being committed even during  the  very negotiations.

As regards the powers of the courts, the first which are to begin trying  war criminals are national courts, a well-known  stipulation  of the Geneva conventions. However, since  national  courts are not independent, since they have always been dominated by and dependent  on the ruling ideologies, one can expect them  to  try only  second-rate  criminals,  sacrificed by  the  political  and military power-wielders. The chief criminals will remain  outside the range of such administration of justice.

The authorities of both Serbia, Croatia as well as  Bosnia-Herzegovina, which insist on achieving national interests and advocate extremist  nationalism  as  the only trustworthy  tool  of  their official  policies,  have  proclaimed crime the  supreme  act  of loyalty to one's nation. The perpetrators of the crimes, the most horrendous ones, have often become the most fervent advocates  of

national  interests  in their communities. They  have  frequently been supported even by their religious communities, thus  invalidating all value systems. This way, they have obtained a kind  of immunity  so  that the prosecution of  criminals  is  practically rendered impossible. This immunity has in a number of cases  been made  official by the instalment of criminals in  the  countries' parliaments.

The provisions set in the Statute of the International court  for trying persons suspected of gross violations of the international humanitarian  law in the former Yugoslavia since early  1991  had undoubtedly instilled hope that justice would be served.

Instead  of  quelling  and preventing  any  future  international crimes for the first time since Nuernburg and Tokyo and in a completely new way, suited to the current developments in the  world and the growing threats of war arising from the disintegration of the  Eastern  and Central European totalitarian regimes  and  the states  they reigned in, the international community again fears itself. It has begun deviating from its initial intentions before it even tried to translate them into practice. Its leading  politicians are compromising themselves and the community by grossly violating all norms of international moral.

After the recent Washington summit, which invalidated the ultimatum to the Bosnia-Herzegovina warring sides to end conflicts  and open  talks, a turnabout  was made. The  international  power-wielders are now going along with those the most to blame for the war in the former Yugoslavia and the aggravation of the  Yugoslav crisis.  Peace Conference Co-chairmen Lord Owen  and  Stoltenberg opted for a Serbo-Croat proposal on ceasing hostilities. Serbia's and Croatia's Presidents, who seem to have agreed on re-arranging the  former Federation as far back as 1991 and regardless of  the ensuing consequences, have won the world's consent to retain  the territories they conquered in Bosnia-Herzegovina, an internationally recognised state and a United Nations member.

So,  this is how Bosnia-Herzegovina ceases to exist as  a  single state.  That  is the consequence of the war in  which  two  other independent  states - Yugoslavia (Serbia  and  Montenegro)  and Croatia  - have doubtlessly taken part. The latter has  also  won international recognition.

Similar  suspicions and apprehensions were intermittently  voiced at  the three-day talks on "War Crimes and War  Crime  Tribunal". The  symposium  was organised by the  Belgrade-based  Centre  for Anti-war Action and the Freiburg University Institute for Federalism.  The talks were a follow-up of an initiative  launched  by the  Anti-war Action Centre in the San Remo International  Institute  for  Humanitarian Law last December. The  participants  had then  discussed the problems of gross violations of the  international  humanitarian  law in the armed conflicts  in  the  former Yugoslavia.

Despite  the  shortcomings which can be ascribed to it,  the  War Crimes Tribunal, set up by U.N. Security Council Resolution  827, is  at present the most acceptable way to administer justice  and prevent new crimes.

Mostar,  Vukovar  and  Sarajevo have become  lasting  symbols  of savagery which no-one could have even dreamed was possible at the end  of  the 20th century. This is why the  participants  in  the symposium firmly urged the creation of appropriate conditions for putting war criminals on trial in keeping with the provisions  of the  Tribunal's  Statute,  for  prosecuting  the  plotters,  war-mongers,  instigators, accomplices and abettors in the  planning, preparation  and commitment of crimes. The posts these  perpetrators hold in their governments cannot prevent their  prosecution.

No-one  is  permitted to promise them that their crimes  will  be forgiven,  as Carrington, Lord Owen and even  Vance,  it  seems, already  have. The Fribourg talks attempted to propose a way  so that the gathering, protection and use of evidence be  controlled by experts. That is the only way to prevent the unending misuses. The fact that the Yugoslav authorities have cancelled all  future cooperation with U.N. Rapporteur for Human Rights Tadeusz Mazowiecki  will  not interrupt the work, but it  clearly  illustrates Belgrade's  intentions to cover up the traces of the crimes.  The participants in the talks also called for the  permanent protection  of witnesses which may come and often are  under  duress.

The idea of the international war crimes tribunal has been  seriously  endangered  by the unexpectedly altered  conditions  after Washington and Copenhagen, as well as the current course of  the Geneva talks at which the blackmailing manners of those the  most to blame for the conflicts in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina,  on the one hand, and the inconsistency and  ignominy  of the mediators, who ruthlessly discard their own plans but  nevertheless  hold on to their posts, on the other,  are  increasingly coming to the fore. The idea will fail unless a force appears,  a force which would bring into court Lord Owen, Stoltenberg, Major, Hurd, Kozyrev, Christopher, Yeltsin and Clinton together with the Croatian, Serbian and Moslem criminals. Maybe this would be  the only  way to end the reckless plunge into the revival of  totalitarianism  and  bloc divisions which the world had hoped  it  had seen the last of in late fall 1989. If this does not happen,  the international community will have no-one but itself to blame when it  loses  all  the prestige it had not so long  ago  striven  to attain.

(The  author is the Chairman of the Council of  the  Humanitarian Law Fund in Belgrade).