Democracy is not a Diktat to the Judicial System of an Independent State

Hrvatsko Slovo, Zagreb, Croatia, March 8 1996

We list the reasons because of which the Hague Tribunal does not have the right to try Croatian soldiers and officers:

1. No one has punished those criminals against all humanitarian values who committed crimes against defeated peoples and civilians in World War II.
2. No one has punished those statesmen and other criminals who committed crimes against Croats and prevented independent decision of Croats about their state freedom and independence.
3. United Nations were practically founded in 1941 as an organization whose goal was to maintain the status quo, that is imperialism.
4. United Nations and other international factors hindered Croatia and Croatians in Herceg-Bosna in their self-defense against Serb aggression. With that they broke the international war-time law, which emphatically speaks against the initiator of the expansionist war as the first and worst culprit. From that position, they do not have the right to and cannot pass unbiased judgment.
5. International war-time and humanitarian law does not prescribe punishment nor the degree of seriousness of certain crimes.
6. None of the existing international conventions prescribes where and when the punishments will be carried out. This is not an abstract matter. Some countries have capital punishment, others do not. Some countries cut off hands of criminals and flog them. Others send them to mental institutions. The British do all of this to their enemies, but forgive everything to their [friends, compatriots]. How and which law should be applied?
7. The Hague Tribunal does not have means to conduct its own investigations and, what is most important in an investigation, to collect evidence. Who is supposed to conduct an investigation? CIA maybe? CIA is a state agency of the United States, financed by and responsible to the U.S.A. government. It will continue to fabricate and destroy evidence, but not according to the orders coming from an unbiased Court, not even the UN, but according to the orders of the U.S.A. government.

   The Tribunal was founded ad hoc. Therefore, it is not a permanent body of permanent organizations with permanent laws. This automatically reduces its independence and makes it into a tool of politics and interests of great world powers. If it is not a permanent Court, and it is obvious that it isn't, then, as a political court, it can only conduct political trials. It is obvious that this is the case from the fact that both judges and politicians admit this! Prosecutor Goldstone himself says that there will be pressures; the Americans also confirm that. Therefore, politics will be the force behind the Court and the Court will blackmail for politics! True justice!

8. All judges and officials are paid by the U.N. United Nations failed to protect Croatia and thus helped the aggressors. Therefore, the function of this Court is to exonerate U.N. That means that such a Court must find such evidence and interpret available evidence in such a way to paint the victims as at least as guilty as the aggressors in order to justify U.N.'s inaction.
9. Who is paying the Hague Tribunal? This Court's "fuel" are dollars. Money equals results! Therefore, if the Court wastes time and effort on matters which are not important to its financiers, it will automatically loose funding and will have to disband!
10. British soldiers and officers passively watched, as well as others from the U.N. protection force, massacres against Croats and muslims in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Therefore they are the accomplices in those war crimes. But they are not on trial.
11. U.N. and its men disarmed the defenders of Srebrenica before the massacre. They did not defend them, despite the obligation and guarantees; thus they handed them over to the butchers! How can that organization try anyone, when it directly helped with slaughter?
12. According to the Geneva Convention, from August 12 1949, as well as that about the civilians in a war, it is clear that the signatories of the convention have a duty to follow the Convention only if facing another signatory or if the other side follows the Convention as well.

In conclusion, we condemn every war crime. The closer it is to us, the more dangerous it is. Happiness cannot be built on suffering, justice cannot be built on crime.

The crime has been committed for more than a century against the Croatian people. This planned trial in the Hague is a part of propaganda and the continuation, i.e. justification, of that crime. There is no state independence without judicial independence. In the same way as they, until recently, didn't allow us to use Kuna, now they want to prevent our judicial independence.

In Zagreb, March 4 1996

Translated on 7/11/96