"Fools; Crusade" Chapter Two [19]

UNDUE PROCESS [concluded]

Johnstone then goes into a two-page diatribe against the "privitization" of the Tribunal; apparantly it was supposed to pay its own way--perhaps they could have had a bake sale. I can't find any other explanation for her concern about the the financial support given by Western governments to pay for the Tribunals' work. Of course the NATO countries wanted it to be successful. This was no secret. And yes, the wealthy powerful countries of the world can use their pursestrings to control which international institutions get funding and which don't. This fact hardly constitutes a conspiracy against Serbia.

I normally try to be more thorough and meticulous in my analysis, but this extended piece of meandering paranoia isn't worth the time. I'll sum up the six paragraphs here:

1) Western governments set up the ICTY
2) Western governments set up funding for the ICTY
3) Johnstone believes that "both the United Nations and "justice" itself" are being "privitized."

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She concludes this lengthy section by, essentailly, claiming that absolutely nobody but other nationalist Serbs had the right to try nationalist Serbs accused of war crimes. This rather odd claim starts off with an appeal to "the Anglo-Saxon tradition of common law"..."the right to be judged by one's own peers." No, she isn't making the crude an obvious claim that this should be taken literally; she is pointing out (rightly) that this has been interpreted in the modern world to mean

"that an individual is being judged by people who are not prejudiced against him for reasons of social category (race, nationality, religion, etc.) and are socially close enough to be able to evaluate such intangible factors as motivation."

The mention of "motivation"--given the context--is creepy; but her point is true enough if we divorce it from her less honest intentions. She goes on to mention that in the United States, we try to insure that the jurors are not prejudiced against the defendent.

So...what then? Ultimately, the judicial ideal she is describing aspires to as much impartiality and fairness as possible; the idea is to judge a case on its merits, not on ones personal biases, prejudices, and bigotries. Johnstone seems to feel that, for Serb war criminals, this is an impossible standard to meet:

"In comparison to such scruples, what can one say of judging--without any jury whatsoever--citizens of Balkan states by judges from distant continents with no understanding whatsoever of the complicated background of Balkan conflicts beyond what they have gleaned from the media?"

And thus Johnstone point completely falls apart; one does not need an expert's depth of expertise in Yugoslav studies to grasp the charge of genocide. Crimes against humanity are just that; one reason those of us who believe in interntional justice do so is because we believe in affirming not only a shared sense of justice but an unbounded, universal commonality with all humanity. I do not need a PhD in Balkan Studies to know that the massacre at Srebrenica was wrong, or that the use of mass rape to terrorize members of an ethnic group is a violation of accepted behavior.

At the end of this lengthy section, she is back to this tired canard--the situation in Bosnia was complex, rooted in ancient hatreds and convoluted politics; far too esoteric for any "ignorant foreigners" (her term) to grasp.

Human rights are universal concepts; the entire premise of international justice is that we share a common humanity and we CAN understand the suffering of others and acknowledge the shared, basic level of civility we should expect from each other. Her closing call for the Tribunal to cede its authority to "Yugoslav historians" who would then demonstrate to the Tribunal its inadequacy to judge the situation is nauseating and pathetic, but entirely in keeping with her petty, tribalist mentality.