First, I would like to say that I have no sympathy for Ratkan Mladic. He has an appalling record, for which he is justly facing eleven charges - SEE HERE. The Srebrenica massacre, which he oversaw, claimed 8000 lives, and he richly deserves to be brought to trial.
But there are certain aspects of this case that make me feel uneasy. The Mladic trial reminds me of the trial of Rudolf Hoss, the Commandant of Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Hoss had overseen the murder of about 1 000 000 people during his reign as camp commandant, a number that dwarfs the number killed by Mladic's merry men. At the end of the war, Hoss was captured, put on trial and hanged at the scene of his crimes - in the camp itself. A Polish survivor of the camp later spoke of his disappointment that only one man had been executed for the murder of so many. He was right - about 8000 to 10 000 men and women had "worked" at Auschwitz. Following the hanging of Hoss, no more than 2 000 Auschwitz "staff" were ever tracked down and punished. This was not an isolated case - many, if not most, SS and Gestapo operatives involved in The Final Solution were never brought to justice - SEE HERE.
That's my first point. Mladic did not act alone, even if he was in charge. Why are his subordinates- the men who relayed his orders and the men who pulled the triggers- not on trial? To use that dreary Marxist term - this appears to be "tokenism".
Next - let's cast our minds back to the European tribal war of the 90s - aka the breakup of Yugoslavia. We have forgotten how NATO planes bombed Serbian targets in the Spring of 1999, even though it was pretty controversial at the time. No wonder. The bombing struck at Serbia not just militarily, but hit a good many civilian targets. The campaign was supposed to protect the Kosovo non-Serbs from the Serbs and (Tony Blair's words) "prevent an impending humanitarian disaster".
So we were told. In fact the NATO bombing made the situation worse. The actual "ethnic cleansing" only began after the bombing, not before. Who will stand trial for this error of judgement?
NATO violated international law on numerous occasions during the campaign. The UN Security Council's permission is needed to launch miltary action. It was not even requested. The bombing also broke NATO Treaty Article 5, which states that force can only be used in self-defence. Again - where is the trial being held for this?
According to Human Rights Watch, 500 Serbian civilians died during the bombing, and a number of civilian targets were hit, including hospitals, schools and Serbian Radio and Television buildings in Belgrade. Amnesty International said at the time:
"NATO forces violated the laws of war leading to cases of unlawful killings of civilians".
Thousands of unexploded NATO bombs litter the Serbian countryside to this day.
I repeat - I approve the arraignment of Mladic - but should he be tried alone?
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People compartmentalise what they do, which was nicely satirised in a Private Eye cartoon in which a carpenter making crosses says, "I just make them; nothing to do with me what they’re used for afterwards." Or more seriously, “I only drove the trains to Auschwitz”. By reducing your involvement to a minimum in your mind, you also reduce the responsibility you feel.
ReplyDeleteAdd to that the fact that many of the perpetrators will feel no guilt at all about what they’ve done: they were defending their families, their homes, their people and their homeland. That is a heady mixture of excuses for the crimes that were committed, and to them their actions were justifiable. Such self-deception should not get in the way of prosecuting the guilty.
Serbia were anxious to get this man on trial as quickly as possible in order to be rehabilitated in the world. Being the pariah state of Europe is not a position they would want to maintain forever, but as far as I can see there are no demands for all the underlings to be tried, except perhaps among the powerless families and friends of the victims.
I’ve no sympathy for Ratkan Mladic, but one man should not stand for the crimes of many, and there should be others lined up in the dock alongside him.