[english / italiano] TEXT and VIDEO of the speech held by Jugocoord secretary Andrea Martocchia at the Belgrade Conference, 23.3.2024.

 

 

Andrea Martocchia

(secretary, Italian Coordination for Yugoslavia)

 

A Focus on the Destruction of the International Right by NATO Countries

 

Presentation to the International Conference: “NOT TO FORGET! NATO AGGRESSION AGAINST SERBIA (FRY), 25 YEARS ON”

First Panel: Global Security vs Global Aggression

Belgrade, Serbia March 23, 2024

 

 

 

ABSTRACT: Among the activities of the Italian Coordination for Yugoslavia (Jugocoord) some deal with the destruction of the International Right performed by NATO countries along with the destruction of Yugoslavia itself by means of joined diplomatic, political, mediatic and military actions. In particular, Jugocoord organized two editions of the “Giuseppe Torre” contest, whose awards were assigned to scientific articles devoted to the critical analysis of the Hague-based "ad hoc Tribunal" for former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The winning essays are all published, together with other excellent essays submitted, and are therefore available for reading as well as a base for further research. Authors are T. Dickson, S. Karganovic, J. Milojevich, G. Szamuely, G.A. Wilcoxson, and the BCRT collective.

 

Mr. Rade Drobac,

dear friends of the Belgrade Forum,

Admirals and Officers, excellencies,

 

Thank you very much for giving us this chance to intervene, once again after the previous successful XX Anniversary Conference in 2019.

First of all I wish to express the deepest condolences to all Russian representatives and friends for the bloody massacre which was performed by NATO thugs in Moscow yesterday night.

At the previous, 2019 Conference, I said something about the accountability of my country, Italy, for contributing to the dismantling the former Socialist Federation up to the 1999 aggression and beyond to the Montenegro and Kosovo declarations of independence, in spite of the already shameful history of Italy with respect to anti-Yugoslav policies during the XX century.

I will now provide you with some information on specific activities carried out by the association I am representing here, the Italian Coordination for Yugoslavia (shorten: Jugocoord) aimed to investigate and denounce the destruction of the International Right by Western countries.

One of the engines of such destruction has been the Hague-based "ad hoc Tribunal" for former Yugoslavia (acronym: ICTY) and its heir institution whose Orwellian name is “The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals”.

We banished a dedicated contest, whose prizes would be assigned to critical analyses of the ICTY activity. This contest was named after Giuseppe Torre, our fan and outstanding anti-war activist who died prematurely in 2014. He left a legacy to our association, to be used to “unveil the crimes committed against the Serbs”. From this bequest, Jugocoord Board launched the “Giuseppe Torre Award”.

 

The first edition took place in 2018. The jury, composed by late International Right academic Aldo Bernardini, prof. Chiara Vitucci and well-known expert Jean Toschi Marazzani Visconti, awarded ex aequo Stephan Karganovic and Jovan Milojevich.

The ICTY and Srebrenica by S. Karganovic is a case study that examines the Branjevo/Pilica Execution Site.

When Justice Falls: Re-raising the Question of Ethnic Bias at the ICTY, by Jovan Milojevich, is a statistical analysis of The Hague Tribunal's convictions.

The jury also gave a special mention to Tiphaine Dickson’s essay On the Poverty, Rise, and Demise of International Criminal Law.

Karganovic, Milojevich and Dickson attended the award ceremony, which took place in Milano on December 1st, 2018.

The two winners, plus two further essays by Christopher Black and Višeslav Simić, together with the foreword of Canadian ambassador James Bisset and afterwords by Peter Brock and Jean Toschi, were published in 2019 by the Unwritten History house from Chicago. In the same year, Tiphaine Dickson’s essay was published in Belgrade by Albatros publishing house.

 

The second edition of the Giuseppe Torre Award took place in 2020-2021. This time, the jury was composed by prof. Ugo Villani, attorney Ugo Giannangeli and Jean Toschi again as a coordinator. They unanimously awarded the first prize to George Szamuely for an essay entitled Securing Desired Outcomes: The Political Mission of the ICTY, and the second prize ex aequo to George Andrew Wilcoxson for A critical look at the ICTY – The Tribunal’s Origins and Behavior, and to Jonathan Rooper on behalf of the BCRT collective (The Balkan Conflicts Research Team) for Truth and Justice – the American Way. How the ICTY distorted history and perverted justice.

The quality of all essays was excellent, therefore the organizers of the Award decided to publish them all with an additional fourth one by Jovan Milojevich. A new book was thus born, entitled The Strange Case of the Hague Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which is now available in an Italian edition, too. The book has been presented already in four different events in Italy, and we are organizing more debates inspired by it.

 

Apart from the Giuseppe Torre contest, we developed more activities on this and other Yugoslav issues. In 2021 we prompted the publishing of a second, revised and very much extended Italian edition of Slobodan Milošević’ self-defense at the ICTY. The book – entitled In difesa della Jugoslavia, that is “In Defence of Yugoslavia” – contains essays by many authors, dealing with Milošević’ political activity, “process” and assassination in The Hague. A Chapter is about the activities and writings by Nobel prize Peter Handke on the Yugoslav issue.

 

Besides the infringement and abuse of the International Law, the direct aggression of Spring 1999 was of course the most blatant crime that the North Atlantic Alliance committed against peace in the Balkans. By causing several innocent victims and huge destructions, it was aimed to make inter-ethnic relations worsen more rapidly and to bring to further dismembering of that wonderful manifold country which was Yugoslavia. NATO and the EU achieved their aim, that is the official disappearing of Yugoslavia from the world maps, in 2003. The loss of Yugoslavia is a reversal of the outcomes of WW2. It is against the interests of all nationalities living in it, but has been a major damage especially for the Serbs, being Yugoslavia the unitary State in which all Serb people could find themselves together.

The Yugoslav crisis was provoked and fueled through a complex of diplomatic, political, mediatic and military actions by NATO countries, which culminated in the 1999 bombings. Such actions were a paradigm for the modern imperialistic way of interfering, but they opened a Pandora box. After experiencing all sorts of pressures and provocations, including the Ukrainian coup and civil war, the Russian Federation decided in 2022 to tip the table and give a stop to Western arrogance.

Serbs and Yugoslavs have suffered a lot in the past decades, but NATO is finally paying the price. Actually, the Alliance is in a phase of dismantling right now. In fact, it existed for too long.

 

I thank all of you for the attention.

 

An essential Bibliography:

Bernardini Aldo: La Jugoslavia assassinata. Napoli: Università degli Studi di Teramo / Ed. Editoriale Scientifica srl, 2005

Catone Andrea, Martocchia Andrea (a cura di): Bombe su Belgrado vent’anni dopo. All’origine delle guerre umanitarie. Bari: MarxVentuno Edizioni, 2019

Dickson Tiphaine: Furies: Essays On the Poverty, Rise, and Demise of International Criminal Law. Belgrade: Albatros, 2019

Dickson Tiphaine, Aleksandar Jokić: Targets of international justice: Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Belgrade: Albatros, 2019

Jelisić Goran: Uomini e non uomini. La guerra in Bosnia Erzegovina nella testimonianza di un ufficiale jugoslavo. Frankfurt: Zambon 2013 (a cura di Jean Toschi Marazzani Visconti, prefazione di Aldo Bernardini, postfazione di Ugo Giannangeli)

Karganovic Stephen, Black Christopher, Simić Viseslav, Milojevich Jovan: The Hague Tribunal, Srebrenica, and the Miscarriage of Justice [Il Tribunale dell’Aja, Srebrenica, e la bancarotta della giustizia]. Chicago: Unwritten History Inc, 2019

Milošević Slobodan: In difesa della Jugoslavia. La tragica vicenda di Slobodan Milošević da capro espiatorio ad accusatore dei distruttori del suo paese. Frankfurt: Zambon 2021 (II edizione italiana, rivista ed ampliata a cura di Jugocoord Onlus: collana orientamenti n.4)

Szamuely George: Bombs for Peace. NATO’s Humanitarian War on Yugoslavia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014 

Szamuely George, Wilcoxson Andy, Milojevich Jovan, The Balkan Conflict Research Team: The Strange Case of the Hague Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Essays Submitted to the 2nd Edition of the International "Giuseppe Torre" Award. Coordinamento Nazionale Jugoslavia Onlus 2022 (Editors: Ivana Kerečki, Andrea Martocchia, Jean Toschi Marazzani Visconti, Federica Turner. orientamenti series no.7. Also available in Italian: Lo strano caso del Tribunale dell'Aia per la ex Jugoslavia, Coordinamento Nazionale Jugoslavia Onlus ETS 2023, orientamenti series no.10)