[Fwd: Human Rights Bombing Campaign]Amnesty's rolle
Gunnar Mjaaland (gunnar.mjaaland@mr.telia.no)
Sun, 18 Apr 1999 15:57:07 +0200
>Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 07:06:59 +0200
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>Subject: [Fwd: Human Rights Bombing Campaign]
>
>Counterpunch is the periodical edited by Alexander Cockburn,
and
>independent critic. J
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>Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 15:36:36 -0600
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>From: Marvin Wingfield <marvinw@adc.org>
>Subject: Human Rights Bombing Campaign
>
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>>From: sandeep@icp.siemens.com (Sandeep Vaidya)
>>Subject: Re: [ADC-ITF] Amnesty's Silence
>>To: andyf@umich.edu (Andrew Freeman)
>>Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 13:02:54 -0700 (PDT)
>>Cc: matthias.gockel@ptsem.edu, poabbey@londonindex.co.uk,
adc-itf@leb.net,
>>
prevent@umich.edu, icpj-metf@umich.edu
>>Sender: owner-adc-itf@leb.net
>>
>>Here is an article from CounterPunch on Amnesty
International....
>>
>>
>> How the US State
Dept. Recruited Human Rights
>> Groups to
Cheer On the Bombing Raids: Those
>>
Incubator Babies, Once More?
>>
>> As the US stepped up its bombing
raids against Yugoslavia, Harold Koh,
>assistant
>> secretary of state for democracy,
human rights and labor, called the
>leaders of several
>> US human rights groups to a hastily arranged meeting at his offices in
>Foggy Bottom.
>> Koh started the session by telling the groups' leaders, who included
>Amnesty
>> International-USA's head Dr. William Schulz, that he was sorry that
>the administration
>> could not support the extradition of Pinochet. He stressed that while
>Madeleine Albright
>> cared deeply about human rights matters, the Defense Department had
>quashed the idea.
>> But, Koh said, there was good news. Albright had convinced the Defense
>Department
>> and Clinton that human rights concerns should be the driving force
>behind the bombing
>> of the Serbs. Koh said he hoped the human rights groups would
>enthusiastically support
>> the mission and promised that if they did, Albright might even meet
>with them in
>> person in the near future.
>>
>> Amnesty International has obediently hopped to State's tune, saying in
>a press release
>> "violations of human rights lie at the heart of the current conflict
>in Kosovo, and have
>> done so ever since it developed during the 1980s. It is therefore
>essential that the
>> effective protection and promotion of human rights should be the
>centerpiece of any
>> agreement to be reached on Kosovo." On March 29, the group called for
>increases in
>> military intelligence operations on the ground in Kosovo. Human Rights
>Watch has also
>> pressed the cause of military intervention, using their Kosovo Human
>Rights Flash to
>> draw attention to Serbian abuses. After a week of unrelenting missile
>attacks in
>> Yugoslavia and Kosovo, none of the Human Rights Watch reports included
>any tallies
>> of civilian casualties from the NATO bombings. Care Yugoslavia, an
>Australian
>> humanitarian aide group, said that over the first week, NATO bombing
>raids had killed
>> at least 15 ethnic Kosovars, when its bombs hit a refugee camp.
>>
>> A person who attended the meeting tells CounterPunch he was shocked
>that many of the
>> leaders endorsed Koh's rationale. "Human rights is just another
>affinity cause to be used
>> by Clinton and Albright when it suits them, rather than consistently
>and broadly". he
>> said. "Indeed, human rights concerns could be used as an excuse for
>extra-legal military
>> actions that bypass the security council and/or Congress."
>>
>> Readers may recall that one particularly successful propaganda
>campaign against Iraq
>> saw US government operatives using Amnesty International to advance
>the false and
>> easily disprovable story that Iraqis had murdered over 300 Kuwaiti
>babies in August,
>> 1990, by tossing them out of their incubators and letting them die on
>the floor. It's not at
>> issue here whether or not Iraqi or Serb forces are brutal. It's a
>matter of how human
>> rights organizations willingly become instruments of state policy.
>Somalia offers a
>> particularly vivid example of this.
>>
>> NATO, Sig Heil!
>>
>> It's bracing to see the Germans taking part in NATO's bombing. It
>lends moral tone to
>> an operation to have the grandsons of the Third Reich willing, able
>and eager, to drop
>> high explosive again, in this instance on the Serbs. To add symmetry
>to the affair, the
>> last time Serbs in Belgrade had high explosives dropped on them was in
>1941 by the
>> sons of the Third Reich. To bring even deeper symmetry, the German
>political party
>> whose leader, Schroeder, ordered German participation in the bombing
>is that of the
>> Social Democrats, whose great grand-fathers enthusiastically voted
>credits to wage war
>> in 1914, to the enormous disgust of Lenin, who never felt quite the
>same way about
>> social democrats ever after. Whether in Germany or England or France
>all social
>> democratic parties in 1914 tossed aside previous pledges against war,
>thus helping
>> produce the first great bloodletting of our century. Today, with
>social democrats leading
>> governments across Europe-Schroeder, Blair, Jospin, Prodi-all fall in
>behind Clinton.
>> This is, largely, a war most earnestly supported by liberals and many
>so-called leftists.
>>
>> There's been some patronizing talk here about the Serbs' deep sense of
>"grievance" at
>> the way history has treated them, with the implication that the Serbs
>are irrational in
>> this regard. But it's scarcely irrational to remember that Nazi
>Germany bombed
>> Belgrade in the Second World War, or that Germany's prime ally in the
>region, Croatia,
>> ran a concentration camp at Jasenovac where tens of thousands of Serbs
>- along with
>> Jews and gypsies - were liquidated. Nor is it irrational to recall
>that Germany in more
>> recent years has been an unrelenting assailant of the former Yugoslav
>federation,
>> encouraging Slovenia to secede and lending determined support to
>Croatia, in gratitude
>> for which Croatia adopted, on independence in 1991, the German hymn,
>"Danke
>> Deutschland".
>>
>> So much for Serb feelings about Germany. Serbia has some reason to
>feel similar
>> resentment towards the United States. The biggest single ethnic
>cleansing of the
>> mid-1990s in the former Yugoslavia was conducted by Croatia under the
>supervision of
>> the United States, whose military generals and CIA officers issued
>targeting instructions
>> to Croatian artillery for the ethnic clearing. The targets were Serbs,
>living in Serbian
>> territory, in the Krajina. Heading the Croatian cleansers was
>president Franjo Tudjman,
>> who has rehabbed Nazi war criminals. Yet somehow it is Serbia's
>Milosevic who is
>> demonized here as Hitler.
>>
>> In 1999 Bill Clinton more or less left the UN's secretary general,
>Kofi Annan, to find
>> out from CNN about NATO's decision to bomb. The US game, abetted
>chiefly by
>> Blair's UK, is to make NATO the arbiter of Europe's borders and
>"security", and to
>> boycott the UN as a forum.
>>
>> The twentieth-century illusion of air power is once again being
>exposed. Now come
>> demands for ground troops and a route march into deeper madness, wider
>killing and
>> misery. The only chance is rising protest from Americans, from the
>world community,
>> from dissident countries in NATO with calls for a cease-fire and a
>genuine, UN
>> peace-keeping force in Kosovo with no troops from the contending
>parties and their
>> allies. Absent that, why not a drive for impeachment of Bill Clinton,
>on serious grounds
>> at last, for abusing Congress's war-making powers and also his sworn
>duty to uphold
>> the international treaties to which the US has set its name."
>>
>> Pick the Warmonger
>>
>> A quiz: Which US rep said: "At this point I support the NATO sponsored
>air-strikes
>> that are currently taking place." And which US rep said: "This is not
>a proud moment
>> for America...as bad as the violence is towards the ethnic Albanians
>in Kosovo, our
>> ability to police and stop all ethnic fighting around the world is
>quite limited, and the
>> efforts are quite simply not permitted under constitutional law."Yes,
>the first is from
>> the brass-lunged armchair bomber of Vermont, Bernard Sanders and the
>second from
>> Ron Paul, libertarian from Texas. How long will the long-suffering
>progressives of
>> Vermont tolerate their hypocritical rep without rebuke? CP
>>
>
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