The Guardian 22 March, 2006
Milosevic’s death:
Serbia will not be cowed!
Upwards of 100,000 people attended the funeral of Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade following his death in The Hague prison where he had faced down his accusers for four years. His death at 64 years of age brought to an end his long fight against the campaign of imperialism to dismember the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia.
From the moment he and the Yugoslavian Government under his leadership opposed the plans of imperialism he became a marked man who suffered the unrelenting venom and hatred of all Western leaders and demonisation by the Western media. They demand unquestioning compliance with their policies and Milosevic refused to bend the knee.
Turned on its head
His death brought about yet more outpourings in which the history of the war in the Balkans was turned on its head and the victims — Serbia and Milosevic — are made responsible and those responsible for tearing Yugoslavia apart — NATO — are either exonerated or their crimes are passed over in silence.
That his early death was a direct result of medical neglect by The Hague Tribunal is made clear in the report of Academician Leo Bokeria, head of the Moscow Bakulev Cardiovascular Surgery Centre, who led a group of Russian doctors taking part in the forensic examination of Milosevic’s body. Slobodan Milosevic was "the least difficult" patient with a cardiovascular condition, said Bokeria.
"Had Milosevic been hospitalised in any specialised clinic, especially a clinic like ours, coronarography could have been done there, and two stents could have been put in, and he could have lived for many more years", said Bokeria. "Milosevic died at a time when there exist lots of ways to cure patients like him. The proposal of our country and the high level of our health services were ignored. Finally they got what they wanted."
Russian medics had not found signs of violent death while examining the body of Milosevic said Bokeria.
The Hague Tribunal failed to give Milosevic proper medical treatment over a long period of time and specifically refused in his final weeks, a request that he be transferred to Moscow for proper medical treatment.
History
Yugoslavia was occupied by Nazi armies in WW2 and they found willing traitors in the region to do their bidding. However, partisan armies developed a strong resistance to the Nazi occupation. They were led by the communists of Yugoslavia under the command of Marshall Tito who, in postwar Yugoslavia, became its President until his death in 1980. Following his death a collective presidency was established but in 1987 Slobodan Milosevic was elected President.
The Yugoslavian state was made up of a number of nationalities — Slovenes, Bosnians, Macedonians, Albanians, Serbs and several others.
Following the break-up of the Soviet Union and other East European socialist states in the early 1990s — a break-up engineered by Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and the governments of the Western imperialist states — the US and its European allies saw their opportunity to reassert their political, economic and military dominance over the Balkans. The only country of Eastern Europe in which the socialist system survived was that of Yugoslavia. It had to be removed as it occupied a key strategic position in the Balkans and its very existence was a barrier to imperialism’s long-range plans to move into the oil-rich Caucuses region of the former Soviet Union.
Nationalist and religious conflicts
The open invasion of a country is more difficult now than in former times as the US and its allies are finding out in Iraq. The tactic used to break up Yugoslavia was to stir up nationalist conflicts and direct them against the Serbs who had led the struggle against Nazi occupation and inspired the unity of the people who made up the federation of Yugoslavia. The first to break away were the Slovenes and an "independent" state of Slovenia was established which was readily recognised by the western European powers. The Western powers, especially Germany, then encouraged Croatia to split from the federation.
The next step was to intensify the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina and, in what can only be regarded as an incongruous contradiction in the light of present events, the Western powers backed the Muslim population of Bosnia turning the conflict into a nationalist, religious and anti-Serb war.
The UN Security Council under the urgings of the US and Britain in particular, imposed sanctions against Yugoslavia and did everything they could to encourage the separatist movements that were tearing Yugoslavia apart.
A similar game was played in the Kosovo province of Yugoslavia where Albanians made up a considerable part of the population. Albanian nationalism was stirred to fever pitch and the fascist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was financed, armed and politically supported in every way possible. Kosovo remains under the occupation of NATO troops. The end game is to separate Kosovo from Serbia and attach it to the otherwise tiny state of Albania. This part of the NATO plan is still being played out.
The large crowd attending the funeral of Milosevic confirms that the people of Serbia have not been entirely misled or cowed. A number of the former provinces of Yugoslavia may come to realise that they lived better as an equal part of a Yugoslav federation than as separate and inevitably impoverished state dominated by the larger states of the European Union — Germany, France, Britain — and the more distant but omnipresent United States. Sooner or later some form of federation may rise again.
The Hague Tribunal which is nothing more than a court set up to mete out imperialist vengeance against all who oppose their diktat must be wound up. This demand has already been made by vote of the Russian Duma.
It is the leaders of the Western powers, those really responsible for the rape of Yugoslavia and wars in the Balkans, who are the real mass murderers and should be brought before the legitimate International Court of Justice.