UN Failed to Convict in Srebrenica Genocide
THE HAGUE, Netherlands – The United Nations’ highest court on Monday exonerated Serbia of direct responsibility for the mass slaughter of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica during the 1992-95 Bosnia war, but ruled that it failed to prevent genocide. The International Court of Justice said Serbia also failed to comply with its obligations to punish those who carried out the genocide in July 1995, and ordered the government to hand over suspects for trial by a separate U.N. court.
So the international body founded specifically to prevent genocide has exonerated people who have committed genocide.
Let there be no doubt, Serbia is guilt as sin of the massacre at Srebrenica. The only reason the ICJ failed to convict is because it lacked ironclad evidence.
Key to the court’s findings was its conclusion that no one in Serbia, or any official organ of the state, could be shown to have had the deliberate intention to “destroy in whole or in part” the Bosnian Muslim population — a critical element in the 1948 Genocide Convention.
The judges found that Serbia, though it supported the Bosnian Serbs, fell short of having effective control over the Bosnian army and the paramilitary units that carried out the massacre. It also rejected Bosnia’s argument that the accumulated pattern of atrocities during the war, fueled by Serb nationalism and driven by Serbian weapons and money, was tantamount to responsibility for genocide.
The ICJ is pretty much a useless institution and the sooner we are rid of it, the better. Genocide is not a crime like shoplifting, or even simple first-degree murder. Genocide is not a matter for a protracted criminal trial by an organization that can barely utter the word “genocide” while hundreds of thousands and butchered in Darfur and Somalia and Rwanda and Iraq. The UN has demonstrated quite amply that it can not be trusted with anyone’s protection, much less justice. It is an affront against all of humanity and it demands action. Unfortunately, that is something the UN can not, and can never, deliver.
Do you remember Slobodan Milosevic? He was on trail for genocide when he died in custody. His trial had been going on for four years which is longer than the genocide he actually committed. How about General Radko Mladic? He directly supervised the slaughter at Srebrenica and was indicted for it twelve years ago. He is known to be in Serbia, but the Serbians have contended that they’ve simply been unable to arrest him in all that time. The ICJ is just now getting around to demanding that Serbia find him and remand him to their war crimes tribunal.
From my point of view, the UN could have made a decisive statement that it would no longer tolerate genocide but it didn’t. It looked into the face of evil, blinked, and babbled in bureaucratic impotence.
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Category: No More Tyrants, The World At Large
