Enemies of Truth and Justice

Last Thursday (June 10), seven men were convicted by the Hague Inquisition (a.k.a. the ICTY) for "genocide" in Srebrenica. Naturally, the news made headlines all over the world, as yet another allegedly incontrovertible proof that Srebrenica was "the worst atrocity since WW2" in Europe, where the evil Serbs deliberately murdered 8,000 innocent civilians.

Fortunately for the cause of truth, there are people in this world who don't take ICTY press releases at face value, and actually bother to read what their verdicts contain: a bunch of nonsense, fabrications, unfounded assumptions and "logic" that would be expected of failed law school applicants, not these supposed paragons of international justice.

As the folks at Srebrenica Historical Project explain, the Tribunal once again based the entire process on the testimony of "crown witness" Drazen Erdemović, who claimed (among other things) to have seen a Lt. Colonel at the site where he claims to have executed 1200 people. Since anything Erdemović says must and shall be treated as gospel truth, the "judges" reasoned thus:

“There is no evidence before the Trial Chamber of any other Lieutenant Colonel in Pilica at this time. In light of this, the Trial Chamber is satisfied that there is no other reasonable conclusion available on the evidence but that the Lieutenant Colonel whom Erdemović saw at Branjevo Military Farm and in Pilica town on 16 July was Popović. (paragraph 1134)

Being as there had to have been a Lt. Colonel in the area (otherwise Erdemović would be lying, and we can't have that, right?), then there shall be one. See how easy it is to establish "facts" when you can just make them up? Of course, there was a tiny little problem of Erdemović actually not recognizing Col. Popović in a line-up, but worry not - the ICTY had that covered as well:

“The Trial Chamber has carefully considered the fact that Erdemović was unable to identify Popović in a photo line up … However, the Trial Chamber considers that given the traumatic circumstances in which Erdemović met Popović and the significant passage of time since then, Erdemović’s failure to identify Popović in a photo line up does not raise a reasonable doubt as to the Trial Chamber’s conclusion that the man whom Erdemović saw at Pilica on 16 July was, in fact, Popović”. (paragraph 1135)

Never mind the evidence, then, or the burden of proof, or reasonable doubt - the "judges" simply know what happened, because, well, they just do. Better than Erdemović himself, even!

There are other, no less significant, incongruities in the June 10 verdict, which you can read at the SHP site. What I want to address here, once again, is the ICTY itself.

The media often refer to the ICTY as the "UN War Crimes Tribunal." In the Balkans, the shorthand for it is "The Hague." This was done deliberately, as The Hague is actually home to the International Court of Justice, a legitimate UN court adjudicating disputes between states. The ICTY, however, was established by a body (the Security Council) that has no authority to establish courts - because it lacks judicial powers. It's elementary logic that one cannot delegate the powers one does not have in the first place. Of course, we live in a world where laws are creatively interpreted to serve the needs of the political class, so it's not surprising that the ICTY is considered legitimate simply because the people who established it say it is.

The ICTY's role isn't to punish the guilty, effect reconciliation or serve the course of justice. It is to write the history of the Yugoslav Succession Wars as one of "greater Serbian aggression", by accusing the entire political and military leadership of the Serbs (be it in Serbia or the territories of present-day Croatia and Bosnia) of a preposterous grand conspiracy. By doing so, it seeks to label the Serbs as perpetrators of "genocide" (which has been redefined to mean just about anything). This is also meant to absolve not only the other parties to the conflict, but also the European powers, the U.S. and NATO, of any wrongdoing. At the same time, imposing the genocidal label on the Serbs is meant to neutralize any investigation of the actual genocide committed between 1941 and 1945 by the Croatian Ustasha (whose primary victims were Serbs, Jews and Roma, in that order). It also helps whitewash the atrocities of Nazi Germany, e.g. the Holocaust.

To truly counter the Tribunal's lies, one must expose them for what they are. One has to have the courage to say the Emperor is wearing no clothes. For years now, the ICTY and its sponsors have been deceiving the world, claiming that this was an independent, legitimate court of law. It is not hard to expose this as the proverbial Big Lie - as you've seen above, it can be done simply by quoting the Tribunal's own verdicts and the idiocy contained therein. There is a limit to how many people they can lie to, and for how long.

This fight has only just begun.