Latest news with #SlobodanMilosevic
Irish Examiner
11-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Examiner
Suzanne Harrington: 'We are all witnesses to genocide in Gaza — it's livestreaming in our pockets'
What's the difference between Slobodan Milosevic, the Butcher of the Balkans, and Benjamin Netanyahu? So far, only a body count, although Netanyahu is fast catching up. Look, I don't want to be writing this, and you probably don't want to be reading it. Didn't we think we'd left genocide behind in the last century? Evolved a bit? Can't we just focus on the Eurovision instead of Gaza? Welcome to the prevailing mood in the UK. All last week here, there were commemorations of the 80th anniversary of 1945, celebrating the bravery of now-ancient service people, and the liberation of the death camps. The commemorations dominated the radio news every hour. Poppies and fly-overs and pomp, the prevailing message 'never again.' Never again? It was Slobodan Milosevic who popularised the term ethnic cleansing as a nicer way of saying genocide – there's something almost reassuring about it, implying a bit of a spring zhuzh, of getting into the grimy corners and making a place clean and shiny again. Getting rid of an infestation. An Israeli screenwriter, an individual called Gil Kopatz, likened sending food to starving Gazans as 'feeding sharks', adding that what the state of Israel is doing 'is not genocide, it's pesticide, and it's essential to do it'. Meanwhile, images of children being deliberately starved to death are popping up on our feeds. We see footage of a ship carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza – basic food - being bombed by drones. Images of children being deliberately starved to death are popping up on our feeds. Picture: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images In the UK, the media spin has moved from Orwell's Ministry of Truth into actual Lewis Carroll territory: 'Palestinians Are Facing Starvation' as though the unfortunate victims of a natural disaster. They've had 100,000 tons of bombs dropped on them – five times the power of what annihilated Hiroshima and Nagasaki 80 years ago. The UK media persists in calling this a 'war', as though civilians starving amid the rubble of their former homes are equal to the IDF war machine. Never again? With this genocide, unlike the one 80 years ago, we cannot pretend we don't know about it. It is livestreaming in our pockets. The UK is arming Israel, while barely pretending to condemn it, amid an omerta of deafening silence and sickening media spin. Gideon Sa'ar, the Israeli foreign minister – the one who called Simon Harris anti-Semitic 'based on the delegitimisation and dehumanisation of Israel' – had a 'private' visit to London last month where he 'privately' met the UK foreign secretary. What did they 'privately' talk about? 20,000 murdered children? We are all witnesses. We are all seeing this happening in real time. The feeling of helplessness is overwhelming — seeing it in full colour and being unable to do anything. Starving people crying out with empty food pots, small children running behind water trucks, all those white-wrapped bodies. Never again? Yes, we can do tiny things — go on marches, donate to emergency funds for Palestine, wear a keffiyeh, share Michael Rosen's poem Don't Mention The Children. At least in Ireland, our government and media are not gaslighting us, unlike in the UK, whose leaders would like us to sit down and shut up, to watch the Eurovision and forget about Palestine. To think of Palestinians as not quite human. Here we are, bang in the middle of never again.
Arab News
19-04-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
1998
DUBAI: By the standards of many recent conflicts, the Kosovo war in 1998 and 1999 was brief. It began with an armed uprising by the Kosovo Liberation Army against Serbian rule over the Kosovo region of rump Yugoslavia. President Slobodan Milosevic's regime in Belgrade responded with overbearing force, spawning a massive refugee crisis and raising the specter of a Bosnia-like slaughter of Kosovar Muslims. NATO intervened with a prolonged campaign of bombing, leading to a peace accord and an end to the fighting. In February 2008, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia amid unprecedented scenes of joy and jubilation. The US and several EU member countries recognized Kosovo as an independent state, but Serbia, backed by Russia, did not. Since then Kosovo, a parliamentary democracy with a lower-middle-income economy, has been in a kind of limbo. As someone who grew up a child of the Bosnian war in Sarajevo in the 1990s, the events in nearby Kosovo are etched forever in my mind. I am all too aware of the ancient hatreds that lay beneath the events there. Historically, Kosovo lay at the heart of the Serbian empire, having been the site of the coronations of a number of Serbian kings during the Middle Ages. Arab News' front page covered escalating Serbian assaults on Albanian villages in Kosovo. Despite gaining a measure of autonomy under the former Yugoslavia in 1974, the mainly Muslim ethnic Albanian population of the province chafed at the continued dominance of ethnic Serbs. In the late 1980s, the leader of the Kosovars, Ibrahim Rugova, initiated a policy of non-violent resistance to the abrogation of the province's constitutional autonomy by Milosevic. The president and members of Kosovo's Serbian minority had long fretted about the fact that ethnic Albanians were in demographic and political control of a region that held deep significance to Orthodox Christian Serbs. During the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, and even after the break-up of Yugoslavia, Kosovars began to be viewed with growing suspicion by Serb nationalists. Popular support, meanwhile, swung in favor of ethnic Albanian radicals who were convinced their demands for autonomy could not be secured through Rugova's peaceful methods. In 1996, the Kosovo Liberation Army emerged, carrying out sporadic attacks against Serbian police and politicians in a campaign that grew in intensity over the following two years. The heavy-handed response of the Serbian police, paramilitary groups and army triggered a massive refugee crisis that drew the attention of the international media and community. An informal coalition made up of the US, the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Russia, known as the Contact Group, demanded an immediate ceasefire, among other things. Kosovo conflict begins with armed uprising by the Kosovo Liberation Army. NATO launches campaign of airstrikes against Serbia. NATO airstrikes end 11 weeks after they began. Yugoslavia ceases to exist, renamed State Union of Serbia and Montenegro. Montenegro declares independence on May 21, 2006. First direct talks since 1999 between ethnic Serbian and Kosovar leaders on future status of UN-run Kosovo take place in Vienna. Kosovo unilaterally declares independence from Serbia, a move still contested by some to this day. The UN Security Council condemned what it described as an excessive use of force by Serbia and imposed an arms embargo but this failed to halt the violence. On March 24, 1999, NATO began a campaign of airstrikes targeting Serbian military targets. In response, Serbian forces drove hundreds of thousands of Kosovars into Albania, Macedonia (now North Macedonia) and Montenegro. Though the wartime suffering of the Kosovars elicited sympathy and support from the Islamic world, some leaders criticized NATO for sidestepping the UN and labeled its military campaign a 'humanitarian war.' The legitimacy of organization's unilateral decision to launch airstrikes was questionable under international law. However, the UN secretary-general at the time, Kofi Annan, supported the intervention on principle, saying: 'There are times when the use of force may be legitimate in the pursuit of peace.' Arab countries such as Libya and Iraq, which had close relations with Yugoslavia, predictably insisted on a political solution. The Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia, maintained a focus on the provision of humanitarian assistance and efforts to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Saudi Arabia was the first country to respond with aid, dispatching two relief flights that delivered more than 120 tonnes of aid, including tents, dates, blankets and carpets, according to official statements at the time. A Saudi C-130 Hercules relief plane carrying aid flew daily from Jeddah or Riyadh to Albania's capital, Tirana, where Saudi Embassy and air force personnel handled the cargo. Hundreds of displaced Kosovars queue up at Cegrane refugee camp in Macedonia to get supplies after their arrival. AFP The Kingdom also provided a field hospital in Tirana, which opened on May 24, 1999, and 10 other health centers across Albania and Macedonia. A Saudi telethon appeal on April 16 raised almost $19 million. The Islamic Relief Organization in Jeddah, which helped organize it, said it sent $12 million in humanitarian aid. A separate Kuwaiti TV fundraising initiative raised $7 million in one day, with the emir, Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, personally donating $1 million. Organizations from the UAE set up one of the largest relief camps in Kukes, near the Albanian border, which provided about 10,000 Kosovar refugees with food and access to basic amenities, including a fully equipped field hospital. The Red Crescent set up refugee camps in Macedonia and Albania. The NATO bombing campaign lasted 11 weeks and eventually expanded to Belgrade, causing heavy damage to the city's infrastructure and the inadvertent deaths of many civilians. In June 1999, the Yugoslav government accepted a peace proposal mediated by Russia and Finland. NATO and Yugoslavia signed a peace accord outlining plans for the withdrawal of troops and the return of nearly 1 million refugees and 500,000 internally displaced Kosovars. Most ethnic Serbs left the region. NATO's humanitarian military intervention saved the lives of thousands of innocent Kosovars.
South China Morning Post
12-03-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
Duterte is set to enter ICC detention. Here's what awaits the Philippine ex-president
Former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte is expected to arrive in the Netherlands on Wednesday to face a crime against humanity charge stemming from his crackdown on drugs. Advertisement After landing, he will be taken to the International Criminal Court 's detention unit, where he will be readied for an initial appearance before the court's judges. Here's what he can expect: Located in The Hague's seaside suburb of Scheveningen, the ICC's detention unit forms part of a Dutch prison and currently holds five other ICC prisoners being tried before the court. Former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte (centre) is seen in custody at Villamor Air Base in Manila on Tuesday in this photo released by his political party. Photo: Partido/TNS It is also the prison that used to detain those wanted by the nearby International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) including the likes of Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.
Yahoo
27-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Will AI pit the oligarchs against the people?
Simon Steyne argues that modern democracy is rooted in the working-class militancy which was made possible by the Industrial Revolution, and that in replacing human labour, artificial intelligence (AI) could undermine democracy (Letters, 19 January). Although such labour militancy was certainly important in this respect in Europe, it hardly accounts for the revolutions in the US in the 18th century, France in 1830 or the largely peasant‑based movements in countries such India. Neither does it explain the success of movements such as that of the Suffragettes. As it is, democratic revolutions are invariably rooted in coalitions of different classes coming together in a common cause, as has been seen in numerous successful non‑violent protests – for example, the Otpor movement against Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia in 2000 or the pro‑democracy movements in Ukraine in 2004 and 2014. A would-be autocracy of billionaires championing AI is likely to be countered by a coalition of dissenters ranging across classes whose livelihood is thus imperilled. And, we may note, time and again even the most oppressive autocrats have fallen to such coalitions engaging in non‑violent HardimanEmeritus professor, University of Warwick
The Guardian
27-01-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Will AI pit the oligarchs against the people?
Simon Steyne argues that modern democracy is rooted in the working-class militancy which was made possible by the Industrial Revolution, and that in replacing human labour, artificial intelligence (AI) could undermine democracy (Letters, 19 January). Although such labour militancy was certainly important in this respect in Europe, it hardly accounts for the revolutions in the US in the 18th century, France in 1830 or the largely peasant‑based movements in countries such India. Neither does it explain the success of movements such as that of the Suffragettes. As it is, democratic revolutions are invariably rooted in coalitions of different classes coming together in a common cause, as has been seen in numerous successful non‑violent protests – for example, the Otpor movement against Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia in 2000 or the pro‑democracy movements in Ukraine in 2004 and 2014. A would-be autocracy of billionaires championing AI is likely to be countered by a coalition of dissenters ranging across classes whose livelihood is thus imperilled. And, we may note, time and again even the most oppressive autocrats have fallen to such coalitions engaging in non‑violent HardimanEmeritus professor, University of Warwick Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
