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Charles Jaco has written opinion and commentary pieces for dozens of magazines and newspapers. Each week, read and comment on a fresh on-line version. The discussion page enables you to share your view points world wide. If you would like to make a comment go to the " Join the discussion" link below. If you would like to view past editorials visit the Editorial Archive. Editorial 06/29/01 note: for links to information resources, go to NewsBoom MASS MURDER ON TRIAL Life, Dorothy Parker once observed, is not one damn thing after another. It's the same damn thing over and over again. Take June 28. On June 28, 1389, the Serbs lost the battle of Kosovo to the invading Muslim Turks, burning the date into the memory of Serb nationalists. On June 28, 1914, a 19 year old Serb nationalist named Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, setting off World War I and leading to the deaths of several million people. On June 28, 1989, a Serbian Communist Party hack named Slobodan Milosevic addressed a million Serbs in Kosovo, telling them in a fiery speech that he would defend Serb interests through war if necessary. And on June 28, 2001, Milosevic was turned over to an international war crimes tribunal in the Hague, where he will stand trial for crimes against humanity. Despite the merry-go-round circularity of June 28, there is something genuinely new at work here. For the first time in history, a government has turned over a former head of state to stand trial for war crimes. And for the first time, a war crimes and genocide tribunal is dealing with those responsible for mass slaughter around the world. Last month, for the first time, a jury of 12 civilians sat in judgement on genocide charges, and found several Rwandans guilty of complicity in the ethnic slaughter in Rwanda that took 800,000 lives. The dozen Belgians, sitting in the Hague, found that two Rwandan nuns had not only betrayed several thousand refugees who had come to them for help, but actively helped herd them into buildings where they were burned to death. This time, 14 judges appointed by the U.N. will sit in judgement of the man who started four Balkan wars and set the wheels in motion for the slaughter of thousands of men, women, and children in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Better late than never might be the motto of these courts, since it was the timidity of the Europeans and the Clinton administration and the rabid nationalism of the isolationist right wing in the U.S. and Europe that led to the West sitting by while the bodies in East Africa and the Balkans piled up like firewood. The system still has plenty of kinks in it. The bloodthirsty Idi Amin still sits in splendid isolation in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Pol Pot died a broken man in Cambodia without ever having to account for his crimes. Minor warlords around the world still rape and pillage in the name of ethnic purity. But a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single trial. The biggest loser in all this is the knuckle-dragging fringe worldwide that unites around nationalist throwbacks like Joerg Haider in Austria or Pat Buchanan in the U.S. They hoot and screech against the U.N., waving whatever racist flag they're marching under at the time. It's not just a caucasian disease, either. Third World racist oligarchs like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe are preaching isolation, nationalism, and racial purity while raving against "international interference". After several millenia of ethnic, racial, and religious slaughter in the name of us against them, we finally have a creaky, tentative way of bringing political murderers to justice. In the evolution of humankind, this may rank up there with the first amphibians sniffing oxygen and deciding to give dry land a try. Join the Discussion |
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