The Hague TribunalrnBad Justice, Worse Politicsrnby Srdja TrifkovicrnAleksandr Solzhenitsyn once referred to the Cheka as “thernonly punitive organ in human history that combined inrnone set of hands investigation, arrest, interrogation, prosecution,rntrial, and execution of the verdict.” He was probably mistakenrnabout “human history,” but his anger was just. What hernchronicled was indefinite imprisonment without trial; investigationsrnand indictments politically motivated, initiated, andrncontrolled; arbitrary evidence gathering; trial by media and assumptionrnof guilt.rnPrecisely these techniques, honed by the totalitarian scum ofrnour century, have become the hallmark of the InternationalrnCriminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTFY), basedrnin The Hague. After the decline of higher cynicism in thernname of human progress, we now witness the ascent of higherrncynicism in the name of human rights. It is the New World Order’srnposthumous tribute to Felix Dzerzhinsky.rnICTFY was established by the Security Council of the UnitedrnNations in 1993 on the basis of Chapter VII of the U.N.rnCharter (Resolution 827), with the “jurisdiction” for crimesrncommitted after January 1, 1991. Why only “the former Yugoslavia,”rnand why only the past five years? The strict answer isrnthat the United States did not want to put its generals on trialrnfor killing Vietnamese civilians, and did not want the embarrassmentrnof charging the Croat mass murderers who have beenrnuntouched since 1945.rnBut the U.S. Ambassador at the United Nations, MadeleinernAlbright, supplies a more attractive, less honest answer. Speakingrnat the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on April 12,rn1994, she declared that “there is no more appropriate a place tornSrdja Trifkovic is executive director of The Lord Byron Foundationrnfor Balkan Studies in London.rndiscuss the War Crimes Tribunal for former Yugoslavia.” Inrnother words, the enormity of recent crimes in the Balkans supposedlyrnsets them apart from all other wretched spots on ourrnplanet, and makes them comparable only to the Ultimate Horrorrnof Auschwitz, Babi Yar, and Belsen.rnAccording to Rudolph J. Rummel in the journal of Peace Researchrn(1994), in the five decades since the Nuremberg andrnTokyo trials, there have been well over one hundred million fatalitiesrndue to war, genocide, democide, politicide, and massrnmurder. Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge killed two million of theirrncompatriots—one third of Cambodia’s population—in onlyrnfour years (1975-78). This was but an offshoot of Mao’s lessrnknown, more grandiose attempt at social engineering afterrn1949, which physically destroyed some 35 million men, women,rnand children. The Indonesian Army and its affiliates killedrnhalf a million people in 1965-66. The precise number of victimsrnof India’s partition is unknown, but exceeds one million.rnThis figure was easily exceeded by Pakistan’s brief and savagerndemocide in today’s Bangladesh in 1971. Dictatorships in Afghanistan,rnAngola, Albania, Rumania, Ethiopia, Iraq, NorthrnKorea, and Uganda have contributed their own hecatombs tornthe total. Even that old darling of Western liberals. MarshalrnTito, after being brought to Belgrade by the Red Army in Octoberrn1944, dispatched hundreds of thousands of Yugoslav citizens;rnthe victims were not only the Volksdeutsche of Vojvodinarnwho did not survive deportations in 1945-47, but any real, potential,rnor imagined enemies of the regime.rnWhile democracies murder relatively few of their own citizensrn(which is scant comfort to a child burned at Waco, or tornRandy Weaver), they are less restrained in killing foreign civiliansrnin declared or undeclared wars. Dresden and Hiroshimarnset the scene for indiscriminate bombings of Vietnamese andrnAUGUST 1996/15rnrnrn