David,

I recall right after NATO's gang rape of Yugoslavia how HRW insisted (and continues to insist) that ONLY 500 civilians died during NATO's bombing raids (this, even though the Serbs have provided names, d.o.b.s and other particulars for over 2,500).  HRW went out of its way to excuse EVERY war crime NATO committed in Yugoslavia.

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Friends:

For a very fine analysis of what the author calls the "prowar left," but for which we need a different label, as virtually all of them are antagonistic toward authentic Left goals, see: 

"In the name of decency: The contortions of the prowar left," Richard Seymour, International Socialism, Issue 113 

By the way: Notice how many of the intellectuals canvassed by Seymour cut their ties with the Left over the former Yugoslavia.  Seymour's "prowar left" reads like a Who's - Who of the Decade of the Nineties' Humanitarian Brigades. 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Dimitri:

Thank you for the reproduction from Gabriele Zamparini's superb blog, "Watching Human Rights Watch" (The Cat's Dream, Dec. 7, 2005). I distinctly recall the incident in which HRW military analyst Marc Garlasco dismissed the findings of the first survey of mortality rates inside Iraq published by The Lancet.  "These numbers seem to be inflated," Garlasco told the Washington Post ("100,000 Civilian Deaths Estimated in Iraq," Rob Stein, Oct. 29, 2004). 

Don't forget that this is the same organization whose monitors had staked out Kosovo by early 1998, and fed daily reports about Serb perfidy back to HQ.  So it only makes perfect sense that HRW would go on to employ a fellow whose biography informs us served on the "Operation Desert Fox (Iraq) Battle Damage Assessment team in 1998, [and] led a Pentagon Battle Damage Assessment team to Kosovo in 1999, and recommended thousands of aimpoints on hundreds of targets during operations in Iraq and Serbia." 

In a non-Orwellian world, where all human rights organizations were devoted to advancing the cause of human rights, rather than some of them selectively employing the rhetoric of human rights at times to advance the cause of the most powerful state, do you suppose that Marc Garlasco would be employed by a prestigious NGO to downplay evidence showing that his former employer, the U.S. military, was guilty of human rights abuses more grave by many, many times over?

Anyway.  Every good turn deserves another.  Here I'll reproduce an incredible exchange that took place on the pages of the New York Times between two principals of Human Rights Watch (nee Helsinki Watch) and the University of Pittsburgh's Robert Hayden (later the author of Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts(University of Michigan Press, 1999) -- easily one of the most important studies of the breakup of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and what the contests over its fate and the fate of the various peoples caught up within these contests were really all about.  It is an outstanding example of how this prestigious non-governmental organization advocated the bloody dismemberment of a unitary state (the SFRY) and was called out over it at the time. --

Notice the date of the published material: Late 1990.  How prescient Robert Hayden's reply was.  And how criminally malfeasant the position advocated by Helsinki Watch.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

The New York Times
November 10, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 1; Page 23; Column 5; Editorial Desk
HEADLINE: Why Keep Yugoslavia One Country?
BYLINE: By Jeri Laber and Kenneth Anderson; Jeri Laber is executive director of Helsinki Watch; Kenneth Anderson, a lawyer, is a member.

Polat, a remote village in Yugoslavia's troubled Kosovo province, is too small to appear on our map. Until the ghastly events of Sept. 13, its name was virtually unknown. We went to Polat in early October to investigate reports of violence by the nationalist Serbian government against ethnic Albanians. We returned with serious doubts about whether the U.S. Government should continue to bolster the national unity of Yugoslavia.

A brilliant autumn sun lit the dry, brown cornfields and tree-covered hills of Polat, but the village was in mourning. Its residents -- several hundred ethnic Albanians living at subsistence level -- described how, in the predawn hours of Sept. 13, they had awakened to the barking of their dogs, looked out and saw Serbian government tanks in their small courtyards.

Without warning, soldiers and police began firing automatic weapons, shattering windows and stuccoed walls. Besim Latifi, a 22-year-old law student who had come home to help with the harvest, opened his door and was met with a volley of bullets that killed him on the spot.

No one saw what happened to Skender Munolli, 34, whose battered corpse was released to his family a few days later with one bullet in the hip. According to their families, neither young man had had any previous trouble with the police. In addition to the two killings, more than 30 men and women from Polat were beaten and taken off to a jail, where they were tortured for about 24 hours; one young man was forced to lick his own blood from the floor.

Kosovo is a province within Serbia, the largest of Yugoslavia's six fractious republics. Kosovo's population -- more than 90 percent ethnic Albanian -- is united in a predominantly nonviolent struggle to become independent. In July, after the Kosovo Assembly defiantly declared its independence, the Serbian government suspended Kosovo's parliament and government; at least 10 members of the assembly have been arrested or are being sought.

Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian Socialist (formerly Communist) Party's demagogic leader, has said that Serbia will pay any price to maintain control of Kosovo, the birthplace of Serbian culture. He is engaged in a calculated policy of colonization that includes relocating Serbians to Kosovo.

An estimated 30,000 Albanians have been removed from their jobs in Kosovo. Several hundred Albanian doctors and medical workers were fired summarily; some were taken away in handcuffs from the hospital, even out of the operating rooms. The Albanian-language press and radio have been abolished. In schools, Albanians are segregated from Serbs.

Kosovo's capital, Pristina, is an occupied territory, with military checkpoints everywhere. Houses are searched without notice, and people are arrested arbitrarily. In the past year and a half, more than 60 Albanians were killed by police. "We live under glass," an unemployed Albanian professor told us. "I don't know what it is like to laugh. How long can I tell my children to be patient?"

Kosovo is not the only troubled area within Yugoslavia. We visited villages in the Croatian Republic where the tension is equally high; an armed minority composed of Serbs has declared autonomy within Croatia. Franko Tudjman, the nationalist President of Croatia, has said that his government will "invite our entire people to take to arms" if Croatian sovereignty is threatened.

The Slovenian Republic's government, which has also declared its sovereignty, has already taken control of its own defense forces in direct defiance of the central government. Borislav Jovic, head of the Yugoslav government, recently acknowledged that civil war was looming on the horizon.

Yugoslavia was long the darling of the U.S. State Department. A Communist country independent of Moscow, it was our Communist country as distinct from theirs. Seen as a buffer straddling the East-West divide, it has received most-favored-nation status and has been exempted from any serious scrutiny of its many human rights abuses. But the revolution against Communism that swept through Eastern Europe left an ideological vacuum in regions that are now veering away from a center that cannot hold.

The U.S. Government cannot stop that process, even if it leads to inflaming old border disputes between Yugoslavia's nation-states and its larger neighbors. Yet we continue to give economic support to a federal Government in Belgrade that is apparently too weak to speak out or act against those who are committing human rights abuses.

Why not acknowledge the Government's impotence and offer aid to those republics that will protect the rights of all their citizens? We might be able to help them in a peaceful evolution to democracy.

There is no moral law that commits us to honor the national unity of Yugoslavia. But there are laws, both moral and statutory, that commit us to deny aid to governments that oppress.


The New York Times
December 3, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 18; Column 4; Editorial Desk
HEADLINE: Don't Turn Yugoslavia Into Europe's Lebanon

To the Editor:

"Why Keep Yugoslavia One Country?" (Op-Ed, Nov. 10) by Jeri Laber and Kenneth Anderson is remarkable for its lack of comprehension of Yugoslavia and its limited view of human rights. The only political forces in Yugoslavia that favor Helsinki Watch-style human rights are among those that also favor a truly federal Yugoslavia. Those who would break up the country are strong nationalists, not likely to treat minorities within their own borders well.

Just as it took Federal power in the United States to integrate the South in the 1960's, federal authority is the only power likely to protect minorities in the regions of Yugoslavia. Indeed, it appears that the central government acted to forestall armed conflict between Croatian government forces and rebellious Serbs in a Serbian majority region in Croatia the weekend of Aug. 19. Had the clash occurred, Yugoslavia would very likely have headed into civil war.

It seems truly bizarre that "human rights" activists so cavalierly advocate policies that are likely to turn Yugoslavia into the Lebanon of Europe. If the Yugoslav state collapses, the republics are almost certain to fight one another because of the large minority populations that are scattered through the country, each of which will be oppressed by the local majority and seek protection from compatriots in adjoining republics.

At best, we could expect strict repression, perhaps massive expulsions, the sundering of mixed towns and families, followed by permanent hostility and an arms race -- well known from the division of India and Pakistan in 1947. More likely would be such communal violence as to make present human rights abuses in Kosovo seem absolutely civilized. Or perhaps Helsinki Watch views war as not a matter of human rights?

Why keep Yugoslavia one country? As Lincoln said in his first inaugural under similar circumstances: "A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence, and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face; and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible then to make that intercourse more advantageous, or more satisfactory, after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens, than laws can among friends?"

The nations of Yugoslavia, despite their hostilities, are tightly bound to one another. These bonds cannot be broken, at least not without atrocities. "Human rights" advocates should thus consider policies that will lead these nations to put down their arms, rather than policies that will induce fratricide.

ROBERT HAYDEN
Pittsburgh, Nov. 11, 1990
The writer, a lawyer, is a student of Yugoslav law and society.  

Jim Crayne:

All of your points are well-taken.  As, for example, where in your seventh paragraph, you answer your own question about what it means for a human right to exist by explaining that a "human right is essentially a universal human value at a very basic level.  If there is something we all value simply because we are human, then it is a human right. Human needs, basic and otherwise, should be the most obvious candidates: nourishment, exercise, self-expression, autonomy, sustenance, mental stimulation, inclusion….Having a finalized list may be less important than having some renewable processes for uncovering such values, and fine-tuning our social/economic/political apparatus to address them as well as possible." 

For two serious explorations of your thesis -- a thesis with which I am deeply sympathetic -- see: 

Marc D. Hauser, Harvard Department of Psychology (Cognition, Brain, and Behavior), Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2006).  (Also see the Cognitive Evolution Laboratory at Harvard.) 
John Mikhail, Georgetown University School of Law, Rawls' Linguistic Analogy: A Study of the 'Generative Grammar' Model of Moral Theory Described by John Rawls in 'A Theory of Justice' (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)

(And for a philosophically disappointing review of the Hauser, see "Born To Be Good," Richard Rorty, New York Times Book Review, August 27, 2006.) 

As for Paul Treanor's analysis of Human Rights Watch ("Who Is Behind Human Rights Watch?" 2004), my reason for including it in a short criticism of HRW's recent Weighing the Evidence: Lessons from the Slobodan Milosevic Trial was that Treanor discussed some of the financial sources of HRW's increasingly compromised and U.S.-establishment-friendly projects. Specifically, its International Justice Program.

For this reason, I linked the Treanor.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

This is actually in response to one of the articles you linked to. It appears to implicitely argue a philosophical position that there are no such things as universal human rights...

"It is not possible to show that 'human rights' exist, and most moral philosophers would not even try."

The motivations for pointing this out are difficult to discern, but it is possible that the author wishes to undercut the propaganda by tearing apart the fundamental assumption that there is anything like a universal human right. I think that's a mistake.. Good propaganda will appeal to values which are as commonly held as possible. So yes, we can throw away all our values and thereby be unmoved by any sort of propaganda, but only at the cost of becoming nihilistic in the most futile sense of the word.

If Hitler justifies his conquest in terms of liberating women, does that mean we should no longer care about liberating women? Of course not.

If there is ever going to be any thing like social justice it will come about because we do care about something and we were moved to take action.. In fact, I would argue the concept of Social Justice itself implies something akin to universal human rights. (Of course, one could and often does assert something is a right merely for propagaganda purposes. That could be addressed by providing better criteria for determining what are or are not human rights.)

What does it mean for a human right to exist? I argue that a human right is essentially a universal human value at a very basic level.. If there is something we all value simply because we are human, then it is a human right. Human needs, basic and otherwise, should be the most obvious candidates: nourishment, exercise, self-expression, autonomy, sustenance, mental stimulation, inclusion .... so on and so on. Having a finalized list may be less important than having some renewable processes for uncovering such values, and fine-tuning our social/economic/political apparatus to address them as well as possible.

My main point is, I think this old idea still has much to offer in service to humanity, if only humanitarians can take it deeper and make it their own rather than react against the superficial versions used to advance capitalism and imperialism.

Here's a good piece from Gabriele Zamparini. 

http://www.thecatsdream.com/blog/2005/12/watching-human-rights-watch-open.htm

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

  One barely knows how to respond to HRW's shameful agitprop. One of the most disturbing things and there are SO many is that once again HRW treats Milosevic's death in ICTY custody after being denied medical treatment by the judges (and most likely after being deliberately poisoned) as totally unimportant. Oh, except it "denies the victims closure" or some such swill. I'm sure HRW also never touches on any of the other suspects killed in ICTY custody or during arrest in this report. They never have before so why break precedent. If an enemy of the U.S. ran a court like this HRW would never stand for it. The fact that this trial where the ICTY killed its "indictee" is hailed as an advancement for the human rights movement and Milosevic is condemned for his own death is truly chilling. If this is what we can expect from "international justice" then...

Friend:

"[B]izarre take on the conflict in the former Yugoslavia" (2006-12-17 10:24)?

In terms of the "people who were most closely involved in the legal processes," be sure to give appropriate weight to the following testimony by one of the Tribunal's staunchest advocates, dating all the way back to the days when the idea was first broached:

In creating the Yugoslavia tribunal statute, the U.N. Security Council set three objectives: first, to educate the Serbian people, who were long misled by Milosevic's propaganda, about the acts of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by his regime; second, to facilitate national reconciliation by pinning prime responsibility on Milosevic and other top leaders and disclosing the ways in which the Milosevic regime had induced ordinary Serbs to commit atrocities; and third, to promote political catharsis while enabling Serbia's newly elected leaders to distance themselves from the repressive policies of the past.

-- "Making a Spectacle of Himself," Michael P. Scharf, Washington Post, August 29, 2004 (as posted to the website of the Public International Law and Policy Group)

Clearly, Scharf agrees that the Tribunal ought to shape how future generations view the breakup of Yugoslavia.  And even specifies how it ought to look when viewed correctly.

Like it does in Human Rights Watch's Weighing the Evidence: Lessons from the Slobodan Milosevic Trial. 

 Reply to Comment No.3 (David),
            >> Whatever you think of the ICTY and the trial of Milosevic in particular, it has had important consequences for the development of international law >>
                       Yes,  The same way Napalm ,Agent Orange   are having  important consequences for the  Vietnam Children born even now.

        >>I always assumed that the left should favour the disintegration of national sovereignty, but that is another argument>>
             A section of Left which supported NATO wars in Yugoslavia is adept at using these Leftwing Ideas. So when NATO was blatantly destroying Serbia these sellouts come to it's defense saying NATO should be allowed this act of aggression in order to stop Genocide. It doesn't  matter  to these fools  that the charge of genocide is utterly fake. And now , this guy is claiming Left should favour  disintegration of National Sovereignty. The problem with this is only some nations' 
National Sovereignty is dismantled ( that too the poor and defenseless) but the National Sovereignty of Powerful like US , Israel or EU Block  etc actually increases making them lord over the broken nations like Serbia , Bosnia, Palestine etc doesn't trouble these morons.
        
          >>The trials allowed many people to tell their stories of the war, for example in the trials of commanders at the Omarksa concentration camp, several victims were able talk about their experiences>>
     
               But the trial didn't allow many War Criminals the Opportunity to tell their Story. I have in mind the esteemed Bill Clinton, Wesley Clark, Madelaine Albright , Solana , Blair and other Luminaries. That's bad enough.