European and International Human Rights Issues
To the London Liberal Democrats, 23/3/2002

I feel honored to have this opportunity to speak to a distinguished audience who are committed to human rights and who do so much good work to advance the cause.

I am hopeful that the Liberal Democrat Party will perform serious soul-searching as to where the European Community has gone wrong. More importantly, I trust that you will issue a call to action beyond the endless analyses and prescriptions that politicians normally produce. One of the most shocking aspects of the genocide in Guatemala, Tibet, East Timor, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo is the fact that, notwithstanding the vows of the human race to never let genocide occur, this time genocide is occurring under the glare of the information age and against a background of more-than-sufficient early warnings and continuous intelligence updates. To a great extent, these genocidal acts have tested the resolve and commitment of the international community to stop and prevent such unspeakable crimes as we approach the threshold of the next millennium.

Since 1993, I have worked in Bosnia, and, in the last two years, in Kosovo too. On 11th of July 1995, the United Nations “safe area” of Srebrenica in Bosnia was overrun by Bosnian-Serb troops. Eight thousand civilians, literally the entire male population, was systematically massacred in cold blood in 4 days of carnage and delivered to their executioners by the international community. It was the worst massacre on European soil since the days of the Third Reich.

The title “safe area” became an obscenity. I denounced the “safe area” as “legitimised concentration camps, unprotected from aggression and cut off from help and supplies”. In April 1993 when the United Nations military units arrive in Srebrenica, they stripped the towns’ defenders of two tanks and a handful of artillery pieces they had captured from the Serbs.

After the fall of Srebrenica, there was only one voice who refused to be an accomplice to the cover-up: Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the former Prime Minister of Poland, who had been appointed by the United Nations as its envoy for human rights and had advocated the establishment of “safe areas”. In his letter of resignation shortly after the massacre, Mr Mazowiecki wrote, “one cannot speak about the protection of human rights with credibility when one is confronted with the lack of consistency and courage displayed by the international community and its leaders …. the very stability of international order and the principle of civilisation are at stake over the question of Bosnia. Crimes have been committed with swiftness and brutality and, by contrast, the response of the international community has been slow and ineffectual”.

The statements made by Mr Mazowiecki are as relevant to Kosovo as they were to Srebrenica.

The man who oversaw this genocidal slaughter was General Ratko Mladic, commander of the Bosnian-Serb army. Today General Mladic is an international fugitive from justice who is wanted for genocide, as is Radovan Karadzic, the political leader accused of giving General Mladic his orders. These men were regarded by United States and European diplomats as legitimate partners in the “peace process” rather than perpetrators of genocide. The man responsible for the onslaught of more than 300,000 people during the last 7 years is President Slobodan Milosevic. He was the architect of the genocide in Bosnia and he is now the commander-in-chief of the armed forces perpetrating war crimes and crimes against humanity in Kosovo. President Milosevic, in contrast to his usual moniker of “the butcher of the Balkans”, has been described by the United States’ diplomatic envoy Richard Holebrooke as “the guarantor of peace in Bosnia and Kosovo”.

The UN listened. Are they impotent or complicit? When Srebrenica was declared a “safe area” in 1993, those who had for 18 months tried to defend the town were obliged to hand over their weapons. In return, they were promised the tutelage and protection of the UN and its professional soldiers. In law, those who are placed in a position of responsibility (not least to the weak and vulnerable) are liable if they fail to fulfil that role. Does that premise alone qualify General Janvier, former Supreme Military Commander of Former Yugoslavia, Mr Akashi, former special envoy to the Secretary General, the Dutch battalion commanders, and many others to be considered to stand trial?

Srebrenica was no isolated butchery. The massacres were the culmination of three years of continuous slaughter, a programme of violence that was exposed to the world. It could and should have been stopped at any time by the huffing and puffing politicians and diplomats with the authority for clinical air strikes which would have stopped the Bosnia-Serb army from its persecution of civilians in Bosnia.

But it was not stopped, just as it has not been stopped in Kosovo. The programme was allowed to go on, to become the debacle that was Srebrenica.

From the international community, there were consistent lies, duplicity, cowardice, intrigue, appeasement and deals; deals like General Javier's treachery at Svorknik, the existence of which Akashi has denied over and over again …. General Janvier was once asked at a press conference what he thought of Mladic. His reply: “I think he is a professional soldier trying to defend his people”.

The international community wants to forget Srebrenica and is reluctant to apprehend the war criminals. It knows all too well that to bring to trial those responsible for the massacres will highlight its own liability.

The international community prevented the Bosnian government from defending its people through an arms embargo (the only mandate rigorously enforced). It created the treasurer’s concept of the “safe area”, it negotiated with and legitimised the position of President Milosevic, the architect of Greater Serbia. It betrayed the people of Bosnia and delivered them to their executioner.

The litany of false promises, hollow threats and betrayals is endless, and similar to what we are witnessing currently in Kosovo. Were they a product of a deliberate policy of appeasement?

The arrest of Karadzic and Mladic and the indictment and arrest of President Milosevic will be the real test of the international community’s commitment to the international rule of law. There will be no lasting peace without justice. If European leaders turned their back on the dead in Bosnia and Kosovo, they will have traded away everything that democratic nations claim they stand for.

I went to Kosovo on a fact-finding mission during the month of July 1998 to document violations of international human rights and humanitarian law resulting from the escalation of military and paramilitary operations carried out by the Yugoslav Government. I decided to see for myself what was happening to the population of ethnic Albanians who live in Kosovo. A BBC crew from Newsnight travelled with me to document my efforts.

The Kosovo province is in the heart of Europe. It is the size of Wales, with two million inhabitants, 90% of which are ethnic Albanians known as Kosovars. Ten percent are Serbs and other minorities. I want to give you a short chronology of facts during the last 25 years.

War crimes and crimes against humanity have and are being committed against the civilian population in Kosovo. For more than a year we have been faced with unspeakable evidence of continuing Serb atrocities. The stories of Kosovo are hauntingly familiar. The same perpetrators feature in all of them: only the names of the victims are different. The frequency and manner of the killings, beatings and harassment remains the same. Repression is a daily reality for ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. President Milosevic is yet again engaged in his loathsome strategy of ethnic cleansing.

The Serbian military, paramilitary and special police units have continued to rise. It is believed that between 50-60,000 armed soldiers are engaged in the latest military offensive against the people of Kosovo. Hundreds of villages throughout the region have been attacked by Serb forces using tanks, missiles, helicopter gun ships disguised with Red Cross emblems, heavy artillery cannons, rocket propelled grenades, armoured vehicles with machine guns and mortar rounds.

The offence by Serb forces against the ethnic Albanians began in February 1998, a few months before I arrived in Kosovo. On 8th July the Contact Group issued a statement. They found Serbian security forces “to have shown some measures of restraint”. They noticed “some improvement in the access to Kosovo for international humanitarian organisations such as the UNHCR and the ICRC”. Furthermore, the Contact Group “was prepared to promote a clear and achievable path towards Belgrade’s full integration in the international community, including participation in the OSCE”. The Contact Group’s goal, they stated, continues to be that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia should reap the benefits of membership of international, financial, and political institutions. There is no doubt that this statement gave the green light to President Milosevic to carry out his offensive against the civilian population during the summer and the autumn of 1998. His campaign against the Kosovo Liberation Army was seen as having the useful effect of making Kosovo Albanians understand they will have to accept less - much less - than independence.

Until recently, the leaders of the European Community have tolerated the offensive against the people of Kosovo hoping it will cut the KLA down to size and bring them, weakened, to a negotiating table. “As long as the Yugoslav security forces avoid collateral damage, there will be some international tolerance for going after the KLA,” a well-known diplomat said on 27th July 1998 to Reuters. Serbian military and paramilitary troops have systematically uprooted the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo. More than 300 towns and villages have been destroyed. Now they are beginning to go after big cities like Pristina. Houses have been burned down, buildings gutted by fire, crops destroyed, livestock slaughtered. We have seen the separation of men from women. Men are slaughtered or mysteriously disappear. There have been reports that Serbs have systematically raped ethnic Albanian women. Old people and children are being massacred. Thousands of people are dead or missing, just as they were not long ago in Srebrenica in Bosnia.

As a result of the recent brutal attack, we are faced once again with the tragic spectacle of over 300,000 innocent civilians driven from their homes by force. At least 50,000 are living without shelter, hiding in the forest.

What will western leaders do if President Milosevic continues to show their latest ultimatum the same contempt he has shown in the past to the many penultimate and ultimate threats already made? The worst choice the international community can make is to keep on willing the troops up the top of the mountain like the grand old duke of York. If you will remember, he marched them up to the top of the hill and he marched them down again. And when they were only half way up, they were neither up nor down. That is where we are at the moment, even if you may think that we are on the brink of taking military action against Milosevic.

Albanians have given up many of their legitimate demands in order to give peace a chance. In response, they are experiencing some of the most brutal aggression at the hands of the Serbian military forces since the conflict began over a year ago. The international community has been slow and hesitant. “Hesitation,” said President Clinton, “is the licence to kill.” Are we to understand that the international community has given the worst butcher in Europe – President Slobodan Milosevic – a licence to kill?

In Kosovo there has been a structural failing of the decision-making process within NATO and the European Community. But it is more than that, it is the failing of political leadership and moral authority, not only within the Contact Group (which includes the US) but also on Kosovo's doorstep within Europe itself.

It was about 7 o’clock in the evening, with dusk falling, when we were suddenly stopped by a Serbian military force. They got into the car, forced me and the camera man into the back, and drove the vehicle away.

By the time we got to the military base it was already dark. There were hundreds of shirtless Serbian military personnel wearing bandanas, like some grotesque parody of Rambo. This base is notorious as a place where torture and execution take place. The constantly repeated question was, “What are you doing in this village?” As we later learned from our translator, Serbian snipers had us in their sights throughout our time spent in Donji Prekaz. We kept telling them we were from the BBC but this left them completely unmoved.

They held us hostage at gunpoint and we were forced to stand facing the car with our hands above our heads. They subjected us to body search and interrogation, and wanted to take our translator away to a separate location. They proceeded to thoroughly search our vehicle and documents, and demanded to view the video footage we had collected. That afternoon, my crew had filmed me walking through Donji Prekaz. I was unable to provide a commentary that day because I was very ill and had lost my voice, and we had decided that voiceover would be added later in London. This deeply puzzled our captors who, after viewing the video three times, suspected that we were tricking them.

My loss of voice proved a blessing.