by DIANA JOHNSTONE
Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch’s international justice program since it was founded in 2001, has worked at Human Rights Watch since 1991. PHOTO/Human Rights Watch
Do international criminal tribunals contribute to reconciliation between parties to armed conflicts? On April 10, the question was discussed during a “thematic debate” at the United Nations General Assembly – but not by everybody.
The United States boycotted the affair.
Why? It was organized by a Serb.
Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch took on the task of warning people away in an article in the Huffington Post. The debate “will serve up a revisionist denial The Serb organizing the conference was Vuk Jeremic, who used to be Serbia’s foreign minister before becoming current president of the UN General Assembly, a position which allows such special thematic debates to be organized. With the moral weight of Human Rights Watch behind him, Dicker wrote that “the government Jeremic served is dominated by the nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRP), whose founder, Vojislav Seselj, is on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal on Former Yugoslavia” (ICTY). Dicker accused Jeremic of deciding to “organize a ‘debate’ to serve as cover for an auto-da-fe of the tribunal.”
Vuk Jeremic is a Serbian politician, President of the United Nations General Assembly for the 67th session of the United Nations General Assembly. He was also a Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Government of Serbia from 2007 to 2012. PHOTO/Wikipedia
Take that, you Serbs! We know what you’re up to! Except that, incidentally, there has never been a Serbian government dominated by the Serbian Radical Party. That party ceased to exist during the ongoing decade-long incarceration without trial of its leader Seselj – which is perhaps precisely why Seselj is being kept indefinitely in The Hague. The government Jeremic served was in fact the submissively pro-Western Democratic Party government of President Boris Tadic, which spent its years in office doing everything it could to please its tormenters in the European Union, the United States and the Tribunal. But never mind the facts: those Serbs are all alike, extreme nationalists, of course.
Having disposed of the Serbian sponsors, Dicker concluded: “Countries with a more constructive agenda need to find a way to debate these and other lessons as we near the 20th anniversary of the Yugoslavia tribunal.”
Of course, Human Rights Watch could have brought its “constructive” views to the April 10 conference. All that was needed was for its executive director Kenneth Roth to accept the invitation from Jeremic, who also invited other champions of the ICTY.
Erin Pelton, spokeswoman for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, said the United States would not participate in the “unbalanced, inflammatory” meeting. Indeed, why should the Superpower that has systematically ensured its own immunity from the International Criminal Court discuss international criminal law with indictable riffraff?
So the debate was left to those beyond the pale of “the International Community” – such secondary countries as Argentina, South Africa, Russia, China, Cuba, India, Algeria, Turkey, Brazil, etc., etc.
Jeremic posed the paramount issue of the conference in his introductory remarks: “how international criminal justice can help reconcile former adversaries in post-conflict, transitional societies.” He ventured to suggest that: “Reconciliation will come about when all the parties to a conflict are ready to speak the truth to each other. Honoring all the victims is at the heart of this endeavor… Reconciliation is in its essence about the future, about making sure we do not allow yesterday’s tragedies to circumscribe our ability to reach out to each other, and work together for a better, more inclusive tomorrow.”
Not much of an “auto-da-fe”.
of the worst killings in Europe since the end of World War II”, he announced, adding that “it is unlikely much thoughtful discussion will occur.”
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