SHOW TRIAL AT THE HAGUE
With the opening of the trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague, the international community has at last brought to bear its combined legal authority against the so-called 'Butcher of Belgrade'. The result is proceedings with all the majesty and gravitas of a social security appeal tribunal. The trial is taking place in something resembling a school classroom. It is presided over by a British provincial trial judge. Second-rate prosecutors have been hamming it up shamelessly for the cameras, recounting second-hand atrocity propaganda culled from the Western press, secret services and the Bosnian Government's advertising agency. But then at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia such stories will be evidence.
The procedure and rules of evidence at the Hague are more than one-sided, they are a parody of justice. The defendant Milosevic was not allowed a defence lawyer of his own choice - but fearful that he would simply refuse to put up a defence at all, the court appointed a 'friend of the court' to make his defence for him. Backstage, Judge and prosecutor share the same office, but defence lawyers are barred. The Hague court allows secret witnesses, and hearsay and double hearsay evidence that would be shot down in flames in any real courtroom. In other words, unidentified witnesses may make allegations not only about events that they did not witness but were only told about by someone else, but even about events that the person who told them did not witness but only heard about from yet another person. If evidence linking Milosevic to genocide cannot be found, then rumours of genocide will just have to do. And if the judge should still somehow fail to convict, then the prosecution can always appeal.
The court procedures appear to based upon Peter Cook's skit for Amnesty International, the Secret Policeman's Ball, where the judge announces that he will hear the evidence before pronouncing the defendant guilty, or a farce by Dario Fo. These crankier features of the Hague Tribunal, though, are not incidental. Rather they flow from its underlying character. Though it is performed as if it were a court of justice, the show-trial is in fact a political act, masquerading as a legal process. The aim of the performance is to justify the Western powers' breaking up the old Yugoslav federation by making Milosevic the scapegoat for all the slaughter there. In fact the West wilfully provoked the war, promoting separatist ethnic movements in Bosnia and Kosovo.
To the palpable irritation of Western commentators and the judge, the trial format means that Milosevic is allowed put his side of the story, at least in opening statements - though even here, he was interrupted and badgered. Pointedly, even an East European nationalist like Milosevic managed to look convincing next to the shabby court proceedings. The Serb leader's strategy is to address the underlying political case against Yugoslavia, by turning the tables on the Western powers that started the war. Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte will argue that these are not the issues being tried, and have his evidence ruled inadmissible.
Procedurally, the lawyers have Milosevic where they want him. But in the end the great goal of the West in the Yugoslav conflict - the trial of Milosevic - is proving to be a failure. His unwillingness to kow-tow makes the prosecution look like what it is, a political argument dressed up as justice. More importantly, the trial will not satisfy the need of those Western intellectuals who clamoured for it in the first place. No imitation court proceedings could make the Yugoslav conflict into a just war, any more than they could make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. The world's media instinctively sense the unsatisfactory character of the trial, pushing it down the front pages to make way for the Enron hearings, the revelations in the Naomi Campbell case, and even the skeletons in Jacques Chirac's closet. -- James Heartfield Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age is available at GBP19.99, plus GBP5.01 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'. www.audacity.org