Balkan Witness

This blog is not active. For content, please go to http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/ 

For our new page on the Russian war on Ukraine, see http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/ukraine.htm

Why Milosevic Decided to Settle When He Did

Why Milosevic Decided to Settle When He Did A study by a U.S. Air Force contractor. The content of this lengthy document is well summarized in its table of contents. By Stephen T. Hosmer, RAND, 2001

Linked from http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/articles-reports.htm

The Long Shadow Of The Seselj Verdict

Seselj helped set up paramilitary units to carry out his plan. Serbian paramilitaries drove tens of thousands of Muslims and Croats from their homes in eastern Bosnia and around Sarajevo, killing at least 900 people. By Gordana Knezevic, April 7, 2016

The Long Shadow Of The Seselj Verdict

Linked from http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/articles-trial.htm

 

Judith Armatta’s blog

Judith Armatta’s blog will cover important Balkans issues as well as other topics. You can sign up to follow the blog by going to the lower right corner and entering your e-mail address below the word “Newsletter.” www.juditharmatta.com/blog/

She is the author of Twilight of Impunity: The War Crimes Trial of Slobodan Milosevic (2010). See an excerpt from her book at http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/Parenti-TwilightOfImpunity.pdf .

Judith Armatta, Twilight of Impunity: The War Crimes Trial of Slobodan Milosevic (Duke University Press, August 2010)
Judith Armatta discusses her book. Interview with Transitions Online, October 5, 2010

Search Balkan Witness for some other articles by Judith. http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/search.htm

 

The Acquittal of Vojislav Seselj

On March 31, 2016, a trial chamber of the ICTY acquitted paramilitary leader Vojislav Seselj of all charges. In doing so, they ignored and thereby undermined the entire jurisprudence of the ICTY over the last two decades. They also ignored the facts long established in other cases. As Judge Flavia Lattanzi stated in her scathing dissent: “[T]he majority sets aside all the rules of international humanitarian law that existed before the creation of the Tribunal and all the applicable law established since the inception of the Tribunal in order to acquit Vojislav Šešelj.” And, as Jelena Subotic wrote for Balkan Insight: “The embarrassment is in the rewriting of the history of the Yugoslav breakup in a manner that is not only outside all major scholarly consensus, but also in direct contradiction with what the ICTY itself has concluded in its previous cases.” …

By Judith Armatta, April 1, 2016

http://www.juditharmatta.com/blog/2016/04/01/default

Linked from http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/articles-trial.htm

 

War-crimes denier Stephen Karganovic in trouble for fraud

Bosnian Serbs Probe Srebrenica Lobbyist’s Alleged Fraud Balkan Insight, April 8, 2016

Stephen Karganovic was funded by the Republika Srpska, until he was caught embezzling government funds and cheating the government out of taxes owed.

Linked from War Crimes Deniers

Places of suffering and places of remembrance. Documentation from wartime Bosnia

Places of suffering and places of remembrance Documentation from wartime Bosnia, including large searchable database and photos, 1991-1995 Downloadable PDF Center for Nonviolent Action, Sarajevo and Belgrade, 2016

Linked from http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/articles-bosnia.htm

STATEMENT by FLORENCE HARTMANN SUPPORT COMMITTEE

On Thursday, March 24, the day when the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicted Radovan Karadzic, former political leader of Bosnian Serbs, to 40 years in prison for genocide and crimes against humanity, journalist Florence Hartmann, who was alongside associations of victims of the Bosnian war, was brutally arrested by the court guards, and was admitted into the war criminals’ detention unit to execute a 7 days jail -sentence.

The coincidence of these two facts casts a terrible shadow on a day that should have been marked as the triumph of justice. This is a senseless and sickening event for anyone in the world, defending freedom of information and more generally human rights.

Florence Hartmann was the spokesperson of the ICTY Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte from 2000 to 2006, before being prosecuted as a journalist by her former colleagues, now both judge and party, for contempt of court. The motive: in her book Peace and Punishment (Flammarion, 2007) she revealed the terms of a secret negotiation between the tribunal and Serbia in the trial of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. In this negotiation, the Tribunal agreed not to disclose some evidence of continuing and decisive involvement of the Serbian state in the Bosnia and Herzegovina war.

 

Let us emphasize strongly that these elements were already known to authorized areas, and that at the moment when she wrote Florence Hartmann was not in the employment of the ICTY anymore, but had resumed her profession as a freelance journalist. She never stole documents or had unethical behavior, as has too often been heard here and there. Her only credo is that the public has the right to the truth, and it is the duty of journalists to inform. That’s why she said it was crucial to publish this information.

 

Her support committee raised the 7,000 euros fine in two weeks and deposited it into an account that the Tribunal refused to withdraw. Her sentence was upheld on appeal in 2011, and definitively commuted to seven days in prison. The fact that the trial has been linked to the Milosevic case was in itself an outrage and absurdity. The fact that she now finds herself detained in the same detention unit as war criminals she relentlessly fought by her bravery, her unwavering commitment and writings, we considered it outright perversion of an institution that we ourselves helped to create in 1993.

 

We continue to believe that the establishment of the ICTY was a huge step forward in the still young history of international criminal law. It is indeed its existence which led to the arrest of the chief mastermind of this war, Slobodan Milosevic, 5 years after the end of fighting, and opened the way for the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) where it is not impossible to imagine that one day a Bashar Assad could end up in the dock.

 

The very conditions of the arrest of Florence Hartmann, a rare violence, evoking an ambush, while the associations of victims tried to resist the onslaught of the Court guards, marred forever the memory of this day . A week in prison is of little consequence, some will say. But what is Florence Hartmann doing in the neighborhood of war criminals, not far from Radovan Karadzic convicted of genocide? Why is she placed in isolation, lights on with round the clock surveillance, with guards opening the window every 15 minutes, without communication with the outside world?

Like Carla del Ponte, we demand her immediate release, and more, we demand her rehabilitation. Today she is prevented from working in international organizations and in the media because of this heinous sentence; only a total rehabilitation will allow her to resume her professional and personal life, in abeyance and drastically affected by this injustice.

RELEASE AND REHABILITATE FLORENCE HARTMANN NOW!

 Release Florence Hartmann Petition

Serbia ‘In Denial’ Over Srebrenica Genocide

Ignorance and denial of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide is still widespread in Serbia, a debate at Belgrade’s Centre for Cultural Decontamination was told this week. Nemanja Stjepanovic from the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre said that 21 years after the genocide took place, all the facts about the massacres have been established in detail thanks to court testimonies and evidence. “Ignorance and a lack of information could have been the excuse for not accepting the crimes back then. Today, there are no more excuses. Every denial of the Srebrenica crime means approval for it,” Stjepanovic said. By Ivana Nikolic, BIRN/Balkan Insight, March 8, 2016

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/srebrenica-still-burdened-with-denial-and-ignorance-03-08-2016

Linked from http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/serbiannationalism.htm

Kosovo: The year the West lost its strategic direction

http://www.democratizationpolicy.org/the-year-the-west-lost-its-strategic-direction-e18n67f

The dialogue approach to helping Kosovo gain full sovereignty through full integration of the Serb minority and removal of Serbian state institutions from its soil has been burdened by a multitude of challenges that need to be addressed. By Bodo Weber, Koha Ditore, January 5, 2016

Linked from http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/articles-postwar-kosovo.htm