War in the Balkans' symposium, 29 May 1999

Paul Bruce, Green Party

Hi, I am Paul Bruce, standing in on behalf of Keith Locke for the Green Party.

I have been involved in human rights issues for 25 years, specifically in Latin America. I would like to remind you that paramilitaries are defending US companies in Colombia with leaders trained at the School of the Americas, infamous for its connections to atrocities. Over 1 million people have been displaced in that conflict. However, we also do not intend advocating bombing Washington, or Djarkata (with respect to East Timor).

The Green Party is committed to four key principles: Ecological Wisdow, Social Responsibility, Appropriate decision making, and peace and non violence , and one can see that all of these principles have been violated in the the Balkans conflict, both by the local players, but more importantly by NATO.

We will start with PEACE AND NON VIOLENCE

The Green Party has deplored the human rights violations and ethnic cleansing carried out by the Serbian Govt, but also feels compelled to condemn NATO's resort to a bombing campaign in the Balkans to achieve its adjectives.

The Green Party believe that violence is not acceptable as a means of "settling" domestic, institutional, national or international disputes, and everyone, from households to the United Nations, must learn and practice non-violent conflict resolution.

[In February and March at Rambouillet in France, the United States and its European allies invited the Albanian Kosovars and the Milosevic government to sign an agreement that provided for the withdrawal of Serbian security forces from Kosovo, the disarming of the KLA, autonomy for Kosovo, a NATO peacekeeping force, and follow-up final- status negotiations after three years. Milosevic said he was unwilling to accept foreign troops on his territory. NATO said it would bomb him if the Albanians signed and he didn't. (Compare this with U.S. mediation efforts in Northern Ireland where threatening to bomb a recalcitrant party was not part of the equation.) The Albanians reluctantly accepted the Rambouillet agreement and Milosevic refused. Now the primary NATO goal appearred to become maintaining credibility.]

If someone is holding a person hostage and you recklessly charge forward, leading to the death of the hostage, you also bear some responsibility The idea that doing anything necessarily improves a situation is, of course, quite false.

In this case the bombing is not only ill-motivated, its effects are horribly detrimental. It has worsened the plight of the Albanian Kosovars, vastly increasing the flow of refugees and, due to the scale, created a catastrophe of the first order. It has diminished the internal opposition to Milosevic. It has undermined the UN, turned NATO into an offensive, interventionary institution, played havoc with international law, and further projected the U.S. as a country eager and willing to punish any deviations it discerns from its will, with bombs. And then there is the devastation of Yugoslavia itself, the immediate expansion of deaths and casualties, and the wrecking of a country's infrastructure to the tune of $US 30Billion or $NZ56 billion according to a report from EU.

Cluster bombs are being used. These have hundreds of shrapnel-like metal fragments which enter the body and cannot easily be removed, causing unbearable pain. Serb children have picked up unexploded bombs and been mutilated as they exploded. NATO forces are also using bombs with tips hardened with depleted plutonium. These give off toxic fumes on impact, and then leave a legacy of radioactive poison for future generations.

The destruction of basic amneities such as electricity has hit ordinary Serbians, and the loss of running water opens the way for spread of disease. The overall impact on the environment of the destruction of factories and refineries of course is incalculable.

U.S. officials frequently proclaim their adherence to international law, except when they don't want to. So, Washington ignored a ruling by the World Court on Nicaragua, vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on all states to obey international law, and in this case together with other NATO countries has acted illegally. The Charter of the United Nations -- which is a treaty signed by the United States and thus part of the "Supreme law of the land" -- prohibits the use or threat of force against other nations except in self-defense to an armed attack or if authorized by the UN Security Council.

NATO is locked into a miliary solution. A whole new approach is required - New Zealand should stop backing NATO and work with those seeking a negotiated solution.

What is needed is a true peace-keeping force, under the auspices of the General Assembly of the UN, prepared to stand between combatants and, if necessary, to defend itself and those being abused.

We demand

• An immediate end to the bombing.
• An international system, under the auspices of the General Assembly, to adjudicate and make decisions about the use of peace-keeping forces.
• And an insistence that other atrocities, often perpetrated or abetted or ignored by Washington because, they serve U.S. interests, that they receive the same media visibility and humanitarian attention as the atrocities in Kosovo.

The Green Party is also conscious of social conditions and cultural aspects that have fueled the conflict in the Balkans

In Kosovo, economic reforms were conducive to the concurrent impoverishment of both the Albanian and Serbian populations contributing to ethnic tensions. The deliberate manipulation of market forces destroyed economic activity and people's livelihood creasting a situation of social dispair. We need to address economic disparities and look for ways of reducing tensions.

As Cora Weiss, President Hague Appeal for Peace, said to that gathering earlier this month... "If we come away knowing that in every school in the world, starting in the year 2000, every child will learn not only reading, writing, and arithmetic but also reconciliation, or peace education, we will know that we have taken a giant step towards guaranteeing a future safe for our children and our children's children. "

As long as over $780 B a year is spent on the military, while $13 B is spent on basic health and nutrition, as long as 3/5ths of the world's 4.4 billion people in developing countries live without basic sanitation, and 1.3 billion live on less than $1 a day, we will continue to have violence and war. For every war budget that goes up in the name of national security, human security is cruelly threatened.

We need new ways of thinking and new ways of doing for the new century. We have a shared dream. "When we dream alone, it's just a dream, but when we dream together, it becomes reality", said Archbishop Dom Helder Camera.

Milosovic has committed atrocities. Therefore it is okay for us to commit atrocities. He is terrorizing the Albanians in Kosovo. Therefore we can terrorize the population of cities and villages in Yugoslavia?

A professorof linguistics and semantics at the University of Nis: "The little town of Aleksinac, 20 miles away from my home town, was hit last night will full force. The local hospital was hit and a whole street was simply wiped off. What I know for certain is 6 dead civilians and more than 50 badly hurt. There was no military target around whatsoever."

Secretary-General Kofi Annan also spoke to the "Appeal for Peace Conference" at The Hague on 15 May:

"If we consider the millions of casualties of all the wars started by national leaders these past fifty years as "tacitly" supported by their populations, some righteous God who made the mistake of reading Friedman might well annihilate the human race."

"Yes, we must insist on ending the culture of impunity. We must give our full support to the International Criminal Tribunal which has a legal obligation to prosecute all those responsible for crimes against humanity.

"But, perhaps most important of all, it requires a deep change in civil society -- the development of a culture in which statesmen and diplomats alike know what is expected of them. They have to know that, in the eyes of their fellow citizens, the ultimate crime is not to give away some real or imaginary national interest.

And Kofi Annan concluded:

"The ultimate crime is to miss the chance for peace, and so condemn your people to the unutterable misery of war."

Thankyou, Paul Bruce

The Hague Appeal agenda demanded ten fundamental principles for a just world order:

1. Every Parliament should adopt a resolution prohibiting their government from going to war, like the Japanese article number nine.
2. All States should - unconditionally- accept compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice.
3. Every Government should ratify the ICC and implement the Landmines Treaty.
4. All states should integrate the New Diplomacy, which is the partnership of governments international organizations and civil society.
5. The world cannot be by standers to humanitarian crises; every creative diplomatic means possible must be exhausted before resorting to force, then under United Nations authority.
6. Negotiations for a Convention Eliminating Nuclear Weapons should begin immediately.
7. The trade in small arms should be severely restricted.
8. Economic Rights must be taken as seriously as civil rights.
9. Peace education should be compulsory in every school in the world.
10. The plan for the Global Action to Prevent War should become the basis for a peaceful world order.

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