March 2004
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Artists’ Appeal for Milosevic
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For over two years now, Slobodan Milosevic has been on trial before the
International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia – a Security Council
institution of dubious legality – charged with 66 counts of war crimes,
crimes against humanity and genocide.
Over 500,000 pages of documents and 5000 videocassettes have been
filed as evidence by the Prosecution. There have been some 300 trial days.
More than 300 witnesses have testified. The trial transcript is near 33,000
pages. Yet after all this time and effort, the Prosecution has failed to
present significant or compelling evidence of any criminal act or intention
of President Milosevic.
In fact, it has been revealed that some prosecution witnesses have been
coerced to lie under oath, others have committed perjury. Former NATO
commander Wesley Clark, was allowed, in violation of the principle of an
open trial, to give testimony in private, with Washington able to apply
for removal of any parts of his evidence from the public record they deemed
to be against US interests.
President Milosevic was indicted during the 78-day continuous bombardment
of Yugoslavia by US-led NATO forces, which used cluster bombs and depleted
uranium, attempted to assassinate Milosevic by bombing his residence, killed
thousands of civilians and caused billions of dollars of damage to the
country’s infrastructure. This illegal act of undeclared war is in clear
violation of the NATO Charter, the UN Charter, and International Law. Yet
neither Wesley Clark, nor the leaders of NATO countries have been indicted
for the crimes of which Slobodan Milosevic is accused.
The proceedings of the ICTY against Slobodan Milosevic, as a large and
growing number of international jurists has publicly stated, respect
neither the principles nor even the appearance of justice.
According toRamsey Clark, the former Attorney-General of the United States,
“the spectacle of this huge onslaught by an enormous prosecution support team
with vast resources pitted against a single man, defending himself, cut off
from all effective assistance, his supporters under attack everywhere and
his health slipping away from the constant strain, portrays the essence of
unfairness, of persecution”. And now that presiding judge Richard May has
resigned his position for unspecified health reasons, it appears inevitable,
the issue prejudged, that the trial will nevertheless continue, in spite of
the virtual impossibility that a new judge will be able to come to grips with
the mountain of evidence presented so far.
If justice is not just, if prosecution is persecution, if international
law is flaunted in order to “enforce international law”, we are indeed now
living in the dystopian world of George Orwell’s 1984. The neighborhood
bully has decided the world is his back yard. The implications of this
egregious use of “power politics” go beyond the unjust trial of Slobodan
Milosevic: the “new world order” now being implemented is simply inhuman
and intolerable. What can be done to change this cruel and criminal state of
affairs?
Let us remember that it was not long ago that 15 million people marched on
the same day in a gesture of international solidarity to say no to the
Bush junta’s illegal war on Iraq. Now is the time for another such gesture.
For if this trial continues, the only triumphs will be those of travesty
over justice, power over principle, disinformation over truth. And many feel
that the sum total of these acts constitutes state terrorism perpetrated on
a virtually defenseless country and its legally elected president.
As artists, our work is to broaden our horizons, to become more human and
to share that humanity. And to create. Destruction is intolerable to us. It
is intolerable that courts be used to justify the killing of civilians, the
destruction of a sovereign nation, and the demonization and imprisonment
of that nation’s leader. Let us now create a massive demonstration of our
humanity. Now is the time to make ourselves heard loud and clear, once
again, by publicly denouncing this injustice. We urge you to join your
efforts to those of the International Committee for the Defense of
Slobodan Milosevic.
Robert Dickson, poet (winner of the Governor General’s award for French
poetry 2002), Canada
Harold Pinter, playwright, UK
Peter Handke, writer, Austria/France
Alexander Zinoviev, writer, philosopher, Russian Federation
Valeri Ganichev, writer (President of the Writers’ Union of Russia),
Russian Federation
Vyacheslav Klykov, sculptor (President of the International Fund for
Slavonic Literacy and Culture), Russian Federation
Dimitri Analis, poet, Greece/France
Valentin Rasputin, novelist, Russian Federation
Fulvio Grimaldi, filmmaker, journalist, Italy
Vladimir Kostrov, poet (winner of Tyutchev and Bunin awards), Russian
Federation
Nadja Tesich, novelist, Yugoslavia/US
Milos Raickovich, composer, Yugoslavia/US
Mick Collins, screenwriter, US/France
John Steppling, screenwriter, playwright, US/Poland
John Goodrich, playwright, US
