Editorial from Kommunistisk Politik
No. 14, July 7, 2001

Milosevic in The Hague

The world has been witnessing an amazing play close to the extradition of the former Yugoslav leader to the UN (read: the imperialist powers') war crimes tribunal in The Hague in Holland.

Milosevic became a commodity, and the Serbian government headed by Djindjic delivered this commodity at the time scheduled by the US. On the way, Djindjic and Co. broke the constitution of Yugoslavia numerous times, caused the collapse of the government, and has questioned the existence of what is today's Yugoslavia. It was revealed once and for all that the so-called President Kostunica is just a figurehead, who according to himself has not even been informed about the extradition of Milosevic.

The drama elapsed by stages. When the Djindjic government did not succeed in obtaining a parliamentary majority for an amendment of legislation making the extradition possible, it violated the law again: the extradition was decided by a decree. Then Yugoslavia's supreme legal authority, the Constitutional Court of Yugoslavia, found this decision illegal, too. After that, Milosevic was nevertheless extradited to The Hague on the time appointed, close to the Serbian national day and the so-called donor conference in Brussels, and at the price agreed upon.

The ministers and media of the US, NATO and the EU are vying for describing this cynical human trade and the constitutional violations as "historic" and "great advances".

The commercial value of the former Yugoslav president proved to be approximately $12 billion. Besides a stream of billions of dollars from the US and the EU, two thirds of Yugoslavia's considerable foreign debt will be amortized.

No extradition equals no dollars. That the so-called "democrats" of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) are in the pocket of foreign capital, and that Djindjic has proved to be an installed lackey, is indisputable.

To the West, "democracy" is what serves them. It is that simple. And "justice" is recognition of every aggression by crushing the opponent. Milosevic should not have been extradited, because the UN war crimes tribunal is a tribunal of the victors, and because it is an outrage on the laws of Yugoslavia and its apparent democracy, and because it is part of the new political restructuring of imperialism.

It should be added that there is nothing good to say about Milosevic. Ironically, he is now becoming a martyr, and revisionists all over the world can praise him as a "communist", or at least as a "socialist" and "anti-imperialist". The crimes and victors' justice of the US, NATO and the EU cannot explain the fact that Milosevic's Great Serbian nationalism and national policy of repression, including the ethnic cleansings of and massacres of Albanians and other nationalities, was a catastrophe for the Yugoslav peoples of all nationalities and has completely failed.

Milosevic's policy of Great Serbian dominance in Yugoslavia contributed to the West being able to carry out its plan of splitting Yugoslavia into a number of small states and protectorates where dollars, euro and D-Mark are the real currencies. Looking further backward, Milosevic and his regime was a monstrous product of the special Yugoslav revisionism, Titoism.

The borders of the Balkans are, according to a former German Foreign Minister, back to where they were before the First World War when the imperialist powers fixed them in 1912 and laid the foundations of the "powder keg of the Balkans". This powder keg will continue smouldering as long as the peoples of the Balkans do not decide their future themselves on the basis of mutual recognition of all legitimate national rights.

The imperialist new order, or better, the reconstruction of the old imperialist disorder, will never be able to remain, no matter how many soldiers, weapons and dollars are being put into it. The national and social contradictions have not been solved, and a durable solution can only be created if there is no imperialist interference. The bloodthirstiness of imperialism and national chauvinism in the former Yugoslavia for the past ten years belongs to the big tragedy of two centuries.

NATO-Denmark and EU-Denmark has arrogantly thrown itself into the imperialist power game on the Balkans, sending soldiers and with the former Defence Minister as chief of the protectorate called Kosovo. Denmark and the Danish soldiers have nothing to do there and must go!

July 2, 2001

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