Hundreds protest peace prize for Del Ponte
By John Catalinotto
Hundreds of people marched from the central station through downtown Muenster, Germany, on June 8 to protest the awarding of the Westphalien Peace Prize to Carla del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the pro-NATO tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.
The court in The Hague, known as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, is currently in the midst of putting former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic on trial. Del Ponte doubles as chief prosecutor, as well as chief propagandist for the anti-Milosevic forces in Europe.
Progressive activists in Germany see the trial as an attempt by German, U.S. and NATO imperialism to blame its wars in the Balkans on the Yugoslav leader, and through him on all Serbs, or at least on all Serbs who refuse to submit to their colonial rule.
Klaus Hartmann, president of the World Union of Free Thinkers and spokesperson for the German section of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic, pointed out the close relations between the tribunal and NATO representatives like former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and NATO spokesperson Jamie Shea.
The role of the tribunal, said Hartmann, was to legitimize a war of aggression against Yugoslavia and achieve a final propaganda victory against the Yugoslav people.
At a meeting and discussion the night before the demonstration, peace activist and editor of the magazine Konkret, Juergen Elsaesser, made the point that the tribunal was failing in this role and that this had created a problem for Del Ponte.
Milosevic has made such a careful and fact-filled defense that he has turned the tables on the prosecution. Nowhere could anyone find that Milosevic had ordered actions against civilians in Kosovo. Even in secret documents, Yugoslav leaders ordered that civilian casualties were to be avoided on pain of punishment to the troops and officers involved.
This and other problems in the trial made the situation so bad for Del Ponte that she had to worry that the prosecution would fail to convince anyone of Milosevic's guilt. Thus a peace prize in Muenster was supposed to help her reestablish some credibility.
But Muenster residents paid more attention to the protest than they did to the prize ceremony for Del Ponte.
From an article in the German daily, Junge Welt, by Cathrin Schuetz and Peter Betscher, writing from Muenster.
- END - http://www.workers.org/ww/2002/delponte0620.php
Reprinted from the June 20, 2002, issue of Workers World newspaper
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