Date: 5/8/99 11:48:42 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From: nicadlw at earthlink.net (David L. Wilson)
Sender: owner-jhurd_newparty at indiana.edu
To: jhurd_newparty at indiana.edu
IMPORTANT INTERNAL DOCUMENTS FROM GERMANY'S FOREIGN OFFICE
REGARDING PRE-BOMBARDMENT GENOCIDE IN KOSOVO
Collected by
International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms
1: Opinion of the Upper Administrative Court at Mnster, March 11,
1999 (Az: 13A 3894/94.A):
"Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have neither been nor are now exposed
to regional or countrywide group persecution in the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia." (Thesis 1)
2: Opinion of the Bavarian Administrative Court, October 29, 1998
(Az: 22 BA 94.34252):
"The Foreign Office's status reports of May 6, June 8 and July 13,
1998, given to the plaintiffs in the summons to a verbal
deliberation, do not allow the conclusion that there is group
persecution of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo. Not even regional
group persecution, applied to all ethnic Albanians from a specific
part of Kosovo, can be observed with sufficient certainty. The
violent actions of the Yugoslav military and police since February
1998 were aimed at separatist activities and are no proof of a
persecution of the whole Albanian ethnic group in Kosovo or in a
part of it. What was involved in the Yugoslav violent actions and
excesses since February 1998 was a selective forcible action
against the military underground movement (especially the KLA) and
people in immediate contact with it in its areas of operation. ...A
state program or persecution aimed at the whole ethnic group of
Albanians exists neither now nor earlier."
3: Intelligence report from the Foreign Office, January 12, 1999 to
the Administrative Court of Trier (Az: 514-516.80/32 426):
"Even in Kosovo an explicit political persecution linked to
Albanian ethnicity is not verifiable. The East of Kosovo is still
not involved in armed conflict. Public life in cities like
Pristina, Urosevac, Gnjilan, etc. has, in the entire conflict
period, continued on a relatively normal basis." The "actions of
the security forces (were) not directed against the
Kosovo-Albanians as an ethnically defined group, but against the
military opponent and its actual or alleged supporters."
4: Intelligence report from the Foreign Office January 6, 1999 to
the Bavarian Administrative Court, Ansbach:
"At this time, an increasing tendency is observable inside the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia of refugees returning to their
dwellings. ... Regardless of the desolate economic situation in
the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (according to official
information of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia 700,000 refugees
from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzogovina have found lodging since
1991), no cases of chronic malnutrition or insufficient medical
treatment among the refugees are known and significant
homelessness has not been observed. ... According to the Foreign
Office's assessment, individual Kosovo-Albanians (and their
immediate families) still have limited possibilities of settling
in those parts of Yugoslavia in which their countrymen or friends
already live and who are ready to take them in and support them."
5. Report of the Foreign Office March 15, 1999 (Az:
514-516,80/33841) to the Administrative Court, Mainz:
"As laid out in the status report of November 18, 1998, the KLA has
resumed its positions after the partial withdrawal of the (Serbian)
security forces in October 1998, so it once again controls broad
areas in the zone of conflict. Before the beginning of spring 1999
there were still clashes between the KLA and security forces,
although these have not until now reached the intensity of the
battles of spring and summer 1998."
6. Opinion of the Administrative Court of Baden-Wrttemberg,
February 4, 1999 (Az: A 14 S 22276/98):
"The various reports presented to the senate all agree that the
often feared humanitarian catastrophe threatening the Albanian
civil population has been averted. ... This appears to be the case
since the winding down of combat in connection with an agreement
made with the Serbian leadership at the end of 1998 (Status Report
of the Foreign Office, November 18, 1998). Since that time both the
security situation and the conditions of life of the
Albanian-derived population have noticeably improved. ...
Specifically in the larger cities public life has since returned to
relative normality (cf. on this Foreign Office, January 12, 1999 to
the Administrative Court of Trier; December 28, 1998 to the Upper
Administrative Court of Lneberg and December 23, 1998 to the
Administrative Court at Kassel), even though tensions between the
population groups have meanwhile increased due to individual acts
of violence... Single instances of excessive acts of violence
against the civil population, e.g. in Racak, have, in world
opinion, been laid at the feet of the Serbian side and have aroused
great indignation. But the number and frequency of such excesses do
not warrant the conclusion that every Albanian living in Kosovo is
exposed to extreme danger to life and limb nor is everyone who
returns there threatened with death and severe injury."
7: Opinion of the Upper Administrative Court at Mnster, February
24, 1999 (Az: 14 A 3840/94,A):
"There is no sufficient actual proof of a secret program, or an
unspoken consensus on the Serbian side, to liquidate the Albanian
people, to drive it out or otherwise to persecute it in the extreme
manner presently described. ... If Serbian state power carries out
its laws and in so doing necessarily puts pressure on an Albanian
ethnic group which turns its back on the state and is for
supporting a boycott, then the objective direction of these
measures is not that of a programmatic persecution of this
population group ...Even if the Serbian state were benevolently to
accept or even to intend that a part of the citizenry which sees
itself in a hopeless situation or opposes compulsory measures,
should emigrate, this still does not represent a program of
persecution aimed at the whole of the Albanian majority (in
Kosovo)."
"If moreover the (Yugoslav) state reacts to separatist strivings
with consistent and harsh execution of its laws and with
anti-separatist measures, and if some of those involved decide to
go abroad as a result, this is still not a deliberate policy of the
(Yugoslav) state aiming at ostracizing and expelling the minority;
on the contrary it is directed toward keeping this people within
the state federation."
"Events since February and March 1998 do not evidence a persecution
program based on Albanian ethnicity. The measures taken by the
armed Serbian forces are in the first instance directed toward
combatting the KLA and its supposed adherents and supporters."
------ Translators Notes ------
As in the case of the Clinton Administration, the present regime in
Germany, specifically Joschka Fischer's Foreign Office, has
justified its intervention in Kosovo by pointing to a "humanitarian
catastrophe," "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" occurring there,
especially in the months immediately preceding the NATO attack. The
following internal documents from Fischer's ministry and from
various regional Administrative Courts in Germany spanning the year
before the start of NATO's air attacks, attest that criteria of
ethnic cleansing and genocide were not met. The Foreign Office
documents were responses to the courts' needs in deciding the status
of Kosovo-Albanian refugees in Germany. Although one might in these
cases suppose a bias in favor of downplaying a humanitarian
catastrophe in order to limit refugees, it nevertheless remains
highly significant that the Foreign Office, in contrast to its
public assertion of ethnic cleansing and genocide in justifying NATO
intervention, privately continued to deny their existence as
Yugoslav policy in this crucial period. And this continued to be
their assessment even in March of this year. Thus these documents
tend to show that stopping genocide was not the reason the German
government, and by implication NATO, intervened in Kosovo, and that
genocide (as understood in German and international law) in Kosovo
did not precede NATO bombardment, at least not from early 1998
through March, 1999, but is a product of it.
Excerpts from the these official documents were obtained by IALANA
(International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms) which
sent them to various media. The texts used here were published in
the German daily junge welt on April 24, 1999. (See
http://www.jungewelt.de/1999/04-24/011.shtml as well as the
commentary at http://www.jungewelt.de/1999/04-24/001.shtml).
According to my sources, this is as complete a reproduction of the
documents as exists in the German media at the time of this writing.
What follows is my translation of these published excerpts.
- Eric Canepa Brecht Forum, New York April 28, 1999
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David L. Wilson * 212-674-9499 * <nicadlw at earthlink.net>
The main enemy is at home. -- Karl Liebknecht, 1914
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