International Action Center national co-coordinator Sara Flounders gave the following talk to open the International Commission of Inquiry on July 31 in New York.
We open this first session of the International Commission of Inquiry to Investigate US/NATO War Crimes Against Yugoslavia.
We welcome all the participants who have traveled so far at great personal expense. We welcome the diplomats and international guests who have joined us today for this first hearing of the International Commission to Investigate U.S./NATO War Crimes.
Today is the beginning of a historical process. This Inquiry is a challenge to power. It is a demand for an accounting from the most powerful military and economic forces in the world. It is the first step in a process that we are confident will resonate throughout the NATO countries and among all the peoples targeted by the New World Order.
Today we will charge the U.S. government, in particular President Clinton, Secretary of State Madeline Albright, Secretary of Defense William Cohen and NATO commanding generals, along with the governments of Britain, Germany and every NATO country who participated in the war with Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity.
This Inquiry will show that they are in explicit violation of the treaties to which they are signatories: the Principals of the Nuremberg Tribunal, the Hague Regulations and the Geneva Conventions. They have violated the United Nations Charter and even their own NATO treaty. The U.S. government in waging this 78-day military assault is also in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Other NATO members have violated the laws of their own countries.
This is lawlessness raised to a new and ominous level.
Will only the victors write the history of this war? Will there be an historical accounting that is independent of the great powers that made war? Will there be an accounting that is willing to hear the voices of the victims? Will there be an accounting that is not written by the Pentagon hacks who masquerade as journalists?
Today is the first step in a process to demand that NATO be held accountable for a war on the civilian population. The Geneva Convention of 1949 prohibits bombing not justified by a clear military necessity. If there is any likelihood that a target has a civilian function than bombing is prohibited. Today's testimony will show that NATO's targets were overwhelmingly civilian targets. This was a conscious calculation. Three tanks were destroyed. Other reports say that seven tanks were hit. Yet over 300 schools and 33 hospitals were bombed. We present the lists of schools and of the hospitals to enter into evidence for the Commission of Inquiry.
The most damning evidence that this was a war on the civilian population is the simple fact that 30% of those killed were children. Some 30% to 40% of the wounded were children! Just to reiterate the Geneva Convention: "If there is any likelihood that a target has a civilian function than bombing is prohibited."
NATO must be held accountable for the use of prohibited weapons like the 35,000 cluster bombs and graphite bombs it used, and for use of depleted uranium weapons that have left hundreds of thousands of pounds of radioactive waste.
We will hear testimony, see videos and photos on the billions of dollars of infrastructure and property damage, and the destruction of the environment, a disaster due to the conscious, calculated bombing of chemical plants.
Todays Hearing of Evidence will be repeated many times in the months ahead. The body of evidence will grow and so will the understanding of the war. There will be a series of public forums to uncover, expose and examine what has been hidden, suppressed and censured.
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