The Kangaroo Court at The Hague [14 February 2002]
Dear friends,
I am writing to you from The Hague.
I am here as part of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan
Milosevic. We have been talking to many journalists in an effort to break
through the barrier of misinformation about Yugoslavia and President
Milosevic.
As we told journalists in interviews which have reached millions of people,
the character of the so-called prosecution's case is already exposed, and
the trial just two days old.
Instead of making a dignified, factual opening statement, the prosecution
spent two days broadcasting a made-for-TV fictional movie, a rehash of all
the emotional images they have produced over the past 12 years as evidence
that the Serbs are monsters.
The pictures are presented without a shred of actual evidence. All we get
are ugly images and the assertions of the prosecutor/narrator. By running
this atrocity movie for two days, the ICTY hoped (not without reason) that
most reporters would leave The Hague before President Milosevic made his
statements.
What is perhaps most shocking, the prosecution has taken evidence
exonerating Milosevic and condemning NATO and, through the use of cheap
tricks, presented it as if it proved the opposite.
LIES ABOUT WHAT MILSOEVIC SAID AT KOSOVO FIELD IN 1989 - AGAIN!
For example, the "prosecutor" showed some footage of Milosevic delivering
his famous Kosovo Field speech in 1989. This footage included English
subtitles in which Milosevic said:
"Six centuries later, now, we are being again engaged in battles and are
facing battles. They are not armed battles, although such things cannot be
excluded yet."
This is supposed to prove that Milosevic used the 1989 speech to launch the
Yugoslav wars.
It is normal, if a prosecutor wishes to introduce quotes from a speech, to
distribute the entire text.
But this the 'Tribunal' did not do.
That's because if they had quoted almost any full paragraph from the speech
- let alone the whole speech - people would immediately see that the quote
above was a warning of the dangers of war. They would see it was part of a
call for unity between different national groups in Yugoslavia, and for
progress through equality and peaceful cooperation.
Take for instance the following uncut paragraph from the actual text (US
government translation) of Milosevic's speech. "For as long as
multinational communities have existed, their weak point has always been
the relations between different nations. The threat is that the question of
one nation being endangered by the others can be posed one day -- and this
can then start a wave of suspicions, accusations, and intolerance, a wave
that invariably grows and is difficult to stop. This threat has been
hanging like a sword over our heads all the time. Internal and external
enemies of multi-national communities are aware of this and therefore they
organize their activity against multinational societies mostly by fomenting
national conflicts. At this moment, we in Yugoslavia are behaving as if we
have never had such an experience and as if in our recent and distant past
we have never experienced the worst tragedy of national conflicts that a
society can experience and still survive! . FABRICATED PICTURES AND MIND
BOGGLING DISHONESTY
Another example - The prosecutor showed footage of what seem to be men
imprisoned behind barbed wire. These pictures have been used before. They
were taken by an ITN film crew in 1992. Photographs were compiled from this
footage and broadcast around the world, purporting to prove that the Serbs
had set up a death camp at Trnopolje in Bosnia.
Amazingly, this footage can be seen in the Emperors' Clothes movie,
JUDGMENT. What the Tribunal did not show was the rest of the footage from
the movie - where you can witness Penny Marshall and the other members of
her ITN film crew setting up their cameras inside a chicken wire and barbed
wire enclosure.
Some refugees came over to see what was happening. Penny Marshall talked to
them and filmed them through the wire, thus producing footage that made it
seem these men were fenced in. The film was then further doctored to create
the 'feel' of a Nazi death camp.
In the movie, JUDGMENT, one can hear Penny Marshall pressing the Muslim
refugees to say they are being abused. The man she is interviewing resists
her pressure. "No no, " he says. "They treat us good. It's a refugee center."
Thus the ICTY takes footage from a movie which proves that the death camp
stories were a lie, and uses them once again to broadcast the lie.
We have studied much data - both articles and transcripts from the mass
media, and original documents. We have also conducted our own interviews.
We can now prove that NATO's charges against Milosevic are lies.
These lies were originally broadcast to justify the breakup of Yugoslavia,
engineered by the U.S., German and British Establishments. Now because
Milosevic has refused to crawl, the prosecution is forced to justify their
attack on Yugoslavia.
When Milosevic tried to speak today, his microphone was once again turned
off by Judge May. This demonstrates the essence of NATO's attempt to deal
with Milosevic and others who want to tell the truth about what NATO has
done to Yugoslavia. Their method is a) broadcast lies over and over and 2)
try to silence Milosevic and everyone else who tells the truth.
But NATO and its 'Tribunal' have a problem. They are boxed in by their
previous propaganda. They have to prove the lies they made up over a course
of many years are true.
Thus this false trial has reopened the question of what really happened in
Yugoslavia. This gives those of us who want to get out the facts a new
opportunity.
And we are using it.
* Jared Israel * The Hague ***
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