Rebuttal to Nathan

[Seth Ackerman]

Nathan Newman wrote:

> But the crucial difference is that many of the human rights groups who
> documented the brutality of US-backed contras are the ones who documented
> the abuses by Milosevic.  And it was not the US military that raised
> inital
> concerns about "missing" refugees, but progressive human rights groups who
> interviewed refugees fleeing Kosovo.  Yes, we can have another round
> declaring Human Rights Watch and all the other human rights groups fronts
> for imperialism, but I don't buy it and neither do a host of other folks,
> even many who opposed the intervention.
> 
> In fact, a number of anti-interventionists highlighted the possible death
> counts as much as supporters of intervenion, arguing at the time that it
> showed the folly of the NATO intervention.  But the source of the
> information speculating on large numbers of deaths were from credible
> human
> rights groups.
> 
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Human Rights Watch

Serb Gang-Rapes Exposed

(New York, March 21, 2000) -- Commanding officers bear criminal 
responsibility for a pattern of gang-rapes by Serbian and Yugoslav 
forces in Kosovo during the NATO bombing campaign, Human Rights Watch 
said in a report released today.

Human Rights Watch documented 96 cases of rape by Serbian and Yugoslav 
forces against Kosovar Albanian women immediately before and during the 
1999 bombing campaign, and believes that many more incidents of rape 
have gone unreported.

[...]

Human Rights Watch said its research did not confirm the allegations 
that Serbian and Yugoslav forces had set up "rape camps" in Pec or 
Djakovica. The organization criticized NATO, the U.S. government, and 
the British government for spreading unconfirmed information about rape 
while the NATO bombing campaign was underway.