Crimes of War

A seminar for editors sponsored by The Crimes of War Project and The Freedom Forum

Special Guest Lecture: “War Crimes and Accountability: Main Areas of Concern”

Madeleine K. Albright, U.S. Secretary of State

CHRIS WELLS: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Chris Wells, senior vice president of international programs for the Freedom Forum. And it's my great honor and privilege on behalf of the founder of the Freedom Forum, Al Neuharth, our chairman, Charles Overbey, and our president, Peter Pritchard, to welcome to the Freedom Forum the United States Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright.

It's our great pleasure, and we're very gratified, for two particular reasons. First, this is the first time that the Secretary has graced the halls of the Freedom Forum with her presence. And secondly, because the work of the Secretary in many ways on many issues is somewhat similar to the work of the international division of the Freedom Forum, and we admire and we applaud her commitment and all of the things that she's been able to accomplish.

So again, we say welcome, and now I will give the podium back to Roy for the official introduction. Thank you.

MR. GUTMAN: Thanks very much, Chris. It is a deep honor, a great honor for us to welcome Secretary Albright here today. She is intimately, dare I say, umbilically tied to two of the themes that will and have already started coming up at our seminar. One is the drive in many parts of the world to bring accountability for crimes in conflict. Richard Goldstone, former Hague prosecutor, has called her the mother of the international tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

The second theme that we've discussed at least and touched on is humanitarian intervention. The use of force to halt or avert massive and systematic crimes in conflict, and Kosovo is obviously an example. There is no doubt that Madeleine Albright was the architect, the organizer, the driving force in the diplomacy as well as the outspoken champion of the Kosovo intervention.

Of course, there will be grounds for criticism of how policies are implemented. I'm a specialist in finding them and there are quite a few others in this room. But every once in a while policies work or have a chance of working and we should recognize it when they do.

The latest issue of strategic survey- it's just out really today- of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London does just that. It minces no words in criticizing other areas of U.S. policy, but it singles out these two as areas of progress. I'll just give you a quote.

"The work of the international courts and the intervention in Kosovo together"- it says - "point to a quickening evolution of international humanitarian law." Quote: "this law is certain to have a growing impact on the conduct of nations, for it is creating a body of precedents which indicate when the United Nations and nations generally can intervene in another state's affairs to prevent violations of Secretary Albright, basic humanitarian norms.

"It has further clarified the proposition that no one, not even a former head of state, is immune from prosecution by the international community for actions taken while they were in charge."

As for the Balkans, where Secretary Albright has devoted enormous energy and time, I'll give you their assessment. They say there are many remaining problems, but the coming year "is likely to be much better than last year. Stability is genuinely returning to the region." As an example, they say the current Montenegro policy is probably the best that can be devised. Overall, it says, the West has "finally stumbled on a policy that will ensure that whatever crises may arise would be contained. The worst wars of the Yugoslav succession would appear to be over."

From my own travels I can say that their judgment is borne out by the observable facts. I give you Secretary Albright. Madam Secretary, if you don't like the word "stumbled," you can suggest another term. Thank you very much.

SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: Thank you very much. I’m really very pleased to be here today. And I want to thank you, Roy, the president of the Crimes of War project, and John Owen, the director of the Freedom Forum, for affording me the opportunity to address the subject of war crimes, which has occupied much of my energy since my earliest days as representative to the United Nations.

Let me begin with two stories. The first is drawn from the trial of three defendants indicted for the systematic rape of Bosnian Muslim women in Foca, Bosnia and Hercegovina, now under way at the international criminal tribunal for Yugoslavia and The Hague. One female witness recently testified about the killing of her brother by one of the defendants. On cross-examination, the defense counsel asked her, "how do you know that my client is the person who killed your brother?" The witness answered, "because he told me he killed my brother while he was raping me."

In this, the first systematic rape trial in the history of international criminal law, many other women are courageously testifying about the hundreds of rapes and other abuses committed against individual women in 1992 in Foca.

Roy Gutman earned his Pulitzer Prize reporting on the Foca rapes and other atrocities in 1992, and thanks to him we learned the truth in real time.

The second story is unfolding in another courtroom at the Yugoslav tribunal where Bosnian Serb army-general Krstic is being prosecuted for the mass execution of Bosnian Muslim civilians after the fall of Srebrenica in 1995.

Witness P, as he has been called, described recently how he and other Bosnian Muslim men in stultifying July heat were rounded up, beaten, and loaded onto trucks by BRS forces.

Witness P testified that over the course of two days, in an operation of considerable logistical complexity involving large numbers of organized BRS, they were taken to various holding locations where they were consistently threatened, insulted, beaten, and shaken down for money. Bursts of gunfire sounded almost continuously.

Eventually, Witness P was loaded onto a truck and taken to a field already littered with corpses of many dead men. He and others stripped off their outer garments and with hands tied behind their backs were ordered to form a new row and to fall to the ground, after which automatic gunfire erupted. BRS forces shot at the backs and heads of the men from a distance of 20 to 30 feet.

Witness P miraculously survived. He observed bodies being mechanically piled onto a tractor, which would drive off and return empty 15 minutes later. Witness P estimated that there were 1500 to 2000 dead bodies on the field when he escaped.

Another survivor of this slaughter testified that "from all I saw I could come to the conclusion that this was extremely well-organized. It was systematic killing. The organizers of that do not deserve to be at liberty and if I had the right and courage, of all those innocents and of all those victims, I would forgive the actual perpetrators of the execution because they were misled."

In early August 1995, I briefed the Security Council on the satellite imagery that helped document what these witnesses of the Srebrenica genocide had undergone. Today, in the Kurchich trial, imagery provided by the U.S. government is being used by the prosecution.

These stories serve as stark reminders of the barbarism of the crimes committed during the Balkans war and why the need for justice is so indispensable to peace and reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia.

The war crimes agenda is more than the pursuit of abstract U.S. goals and interests. It's about real people who are real war criminals or real victims. Journalists and their editors have an indispensable role to play in exposing atrocities and the criminal conduct that unleashes them.

Frankly, media reports of atrocities are in many ways as valuable to us as other sources, and that's why Roy's worthy project is so important. Not only to the general public, but also to policymakers in governments and international organizations. It's also why the book he co-edited, Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know, sits on my desk as a guidebook.

We owe so much to the scores of journalists who have given their lives to report the news, which is so often about the crimes of war. For example, media coverage of the Kosovo conflict last year and the Chechnya conflict of recent months has made us almost instant witnesses to the fate of civilians and civilian property in the face of armies, paramilitaries, and rebels who are challenging the most fundamental precepts of the laws of war.

Consider this remarkable fact. Sixty-one journalists died covering the Balkans war. Five dozen dead to bring the world the truth. Last year, 40 journalists died covering conflicts around the world. Their names and those of other martyrs in search of the truth are rightly honored in the Freedom Forum journalist memorial in Arlington, Virginia.

There's no turning back now from the judicial process evolving in The Hague and in Arusha, home to the international criminal tribunal for Rwanda. I've been called many things, but I'm delighted to be called the "mother of the war crimes tribunal." The trials in The Hague and in Arusha are carving a niche in world history that I confidently believe will have profound impact on the course of human events for years to come.

No matter the crisis of the day, we have to keep our eye on the prize-- justice for the perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in our time. And that's why the United States continues its significant support for both tribunals. It's why the latest capture of an indicted fugitive, Dragan Nicolic, occurred recently in the U.S. sector of Bosnia and Hercegovina.

The last apprehension in the U.S. sector was General Krstic in December 1998. Indictees know, or should know, that no indictee can or does carry on long as a free man in the U.S. sector nor will any indictee avoid the long arm of the Yugoslav tribunal. There is no statute of limitations, and our resolve is firm. We will not rest until indicted fugitives Radovan Karagic, Ratko Mladic, Slobodan Milosevic and their colleagues in terror face the bar of justice in The Hague.

Our rewards program offers up to $5 million to any individual who provides information that leads to the successful arrest or conviction of any indictee of the Yugoslav tribunal. And we strongly support legislation recently introduced by Senator Russell Feingold that would extend the rewards program to the Rwanda tribunal, as had originally been intended.

The arrest record of the Rwanda tribunal has been extremely impressive, and we want to help in every way we can to bring each indicted architect of the 1994 genocide to trial in Arusha. I should also note that last year the United States provided the Yugoslav tribunal with the largest voluntary contribution- $8.5 million- in its history to help cover the unanticipated costs of its Kosovo investigations in 1999, and we are working with Congress to identify additional voluntary funding for this year.

We continue to closely monitor the work of the Rwanda tribunal and like the Yugoslav tribunal, a substantial part of the Rwanda tribunal's budget is paid through U.S. assessments, for a total of $41.3 million for both tribunals in 1999 and a budgeted $44.8 million for 2000.

We have voluntarily funded the Internews network's coverage of the Rwanda tribunal and the preparation of a documentary about its work, to be aired in Rwanda. We financially support the presence of Rwandan journalists in Arusha to cover the tribunal's work, and we also are directing voluntary funding towards court management priorities at the Rwanda tribunal and its tracking of indicted fugitives.

But, as you well know, the existing ad hoc international criminal tribunals are not the whole story about atrocities. The conflicts and ethnic power grabs that have swamped so many societies in the latter part of the 20th Century and into the new millennium pose enormous challenges for accountability, for reconciliation, and for prevention of further atrocities.

In Sierra Leone, this week, the efforts of the international community to bring peace to that country suffered a serious setback. We're appalled by the killing and detention of UN peacekeepers, and efforts to obstruct the disarmament, demobilization, and rehabilitation process. We have condemned these actions in the strongest possible terms and reiterated our support for the strong and courageous performance of the UN forces -- UNAMSEL (phonetic) -- and the resolve of its leaders.

The behavior of the Revolutionary United Front, or RUF, and its leader, Foday Sankoh, is unacceptable. The actions of Sankoh and the RUF need to be reversed immediately.

The Lome accords represented a package of compromises that provided the RUF an opportunity to play a legitimate political role in Sierra Leone. If the accords are broken, the provisions of that agreement are jeopardized.

We join the international community in demanding that the RUF and Sankoh personally discharge their responsibilities to the agreement they signed at Lome. This includes disarmament and demobilization, and that as Sankoh promised on Wednesday, they immediately release all those they are holding and adhere to the cease fire agreement and accords they have signed.

I was in Sierra Leone last year and met Sankoh--not one of my best meetings--and then also went to one of the clinics there, where it was an appalling sight. They had the people who had lost their legs in one group and the people with no hands in the other, and because a person automatically kind of goes up and shakes hands, I put my hand out and the arm that came back had no hand. I held a child in my arms who was about two who had her arm cut off. It's an appalling thing that is happening there, and we have to do everything we can.

In recent months we have been working with the UN commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson, to help set up the truth and reconciliation commission called for by the Lome peace accords. And we're identifying U.S. funds that would be joined with other governments' contributions to help set up the commission, which will be essential for establishing the truth about the atrocities that have plagued Sierra Leone's recent past and for moving towards reconciliation. And we're resolved to
continue that work.

Let me turn now to the situation in Chechnya. For months the President and I and other high-level U.S. officials have made very clear to the Russian government our deep concern about the events in Chechnya and have urged them to pursue a political rather than a military solution.

In Geneva, we co-sponsored the recent UN human rights commission resolution on Chechnya. In that resolution we share the grave concern of other governments about the continued violence in Chechnya. We are concerned in particular about "the reports indicating disproportionate and indiscriminate use of Russian military force, including attacks against civilians, reports of attacks against civilians, and serious crimes and abuses committed by Chechen fighters and reports that gross widespread and flagrant violations of human rights have been committed in the region, notably in the alleged camps of filtration."

We will continue to press the Russian government to do the right thing and fulfill its responsibilities under international law. Reports of rape, summary executions, looting, and other atrocities must be fully investigated. The Geneva resolution calls upon Russia to "establish urgently according to recognized international standards a national, broad-based, and independent commission of inquiry to investigate promptly alleged violations of human rights and breaches of international humanitarian law, to establish the truth and identify those responsible with a view to bringing them to justice and preventing impunity."

When foreign minister Ivanov was just here we had a discussion about this again and made very clear that they are going down a street that leads nowhere and that they need to deal with this issue. And we will continue to press them on this. But to those who would criticize the international community for going easy on Russia I would point out that there is a value in an approach that gives domestic accountability efforts a chance to take hold. And we have been trying very hard to make clear to the Russians that they have an opportunity to deal with this in this way and a limited amount of time to do that.

But as an example of letting domestic accountability take hold, late last year, in a different area, the UN Human Rights Commission convened a special session on the situation in East Timor. In addition to condemning the violence and calling for an international commission of inquiry, the Human Rights Commission called on the government of Indonesia to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the atrocities associated with last year's referendum in East Timor.

The bottom line is that those responsible for orchestrating this bloodbath must be brought to justice. If the Indonesian judicial system is capable of delivering credible justice, so much the better. If that is not ultimately the case, the international community can and should exert its prerogative to see that the perpetrators are brought to justice.

The fact that the international community has given Indonesia the opportunity to fulfill these obligations is paying off and the government-appointed commission of inquiry into violence in East Timor produced a well-documented report which has become the basis of the criminal investigations.

And just this week, the Indonesian attorney general appointed a 64-member team to pursue criminal investigations with the view of issuing indictments. The team wasted no time in bringing in several top generals for questioning. The prospects are promising for a credible and effective domestic accountability process that hard-liners cannot dismiss as a Western- imposed, politically motivated version of a victor's justice.

As an added benefit, Indonesia's judicial capacity and credibility will be enhanced. And meanwhile the international community clearly has a role to play. The UN transitional administration in East Timor is doing its part in documenting what transpired in that orgy of violence and in laying the groundwork for credible accountability. Their work includes the exhumation of mass graves, performing field autopsies, and helping to rebuild the rule of law so that those who are responsible can be brought to justice.

We're very pleased with the cooperation between the UN and the Indonesian government toward this end, and just recently, UNTAD and the government of Indonesia signed a memorandum of understanding that provides a framework for the sharing of information and might even allow for joint investigations. There's certainly enough work to go around to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort and competition for suspects and resources.

The international community also has an important role to play in Cambodia. Considerable progress has been made in talks between the United Nations and prime minister Hun Sen to create a credible process to bring to justice the senior Khmer Rouge leaders of the Pol Pot era, when an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians perished needlessly.

We're grateful for the facilitating role Senator John Kerry has played in these talks and look forward to the day when investigations and trials begin with significant foreign participation.

The indictment of Saddam Hussein and his colleagues for some of the worst war crimes and crimes against humanity of recent decades is long overdue. Saddam's brutality continues against the Iraqi people, whether the Sunni tribes, the Shiite of the south, or the Kurds, Turkmen, and other minorities in the north.

The people of Iraq deserve the best efforts of the international community to collect the evidence against Saddam and then bring him to justice. That's no easy proposition, but we're determined to see it done and for Iraq to be governed by a free and democratic government dedicated to the welfare of its own people.

Finally, the United States long led the effort to create an appropriate permanent international criminal court. We recently introduced a proposal to overcome our longstanding concern about the jurisdictional reach of the proposed international criminal court. Our proposal, which we are actively discussing with other governments, does not seek to amend or otherwise modify the 1998 Rome treaty on the international criminal court. Rather we are seeking a procedural fix that is consistent with the Rome treaty and will enable the United States, at a minimum, to be a good neighbor to the court.

The benefit for the court of this shift in our policy would be significant. Even as a non-party for the foreseeable future, the United States would be able to assist the court in a way similar to our support for the Yugoslav and Rwandan tribunals.

I want to thank you very much for the opportunity to address this group on a subject that unfortunately is a growth area. As I go around the world, in a speech like this, it is very clear to me that there is a great deal to be done and that the international community and you, as journalists, have a key role.

Roy has traveled with me. He always put the most difficult question at every press conference and put these issues on the agenda publicly and privately. And he is an example of the tremendous work and good role that the press plays in helping governments and the international organizations deal with these horrendous examples of brutality.

I think that we have to stay with it. They're not easy subjects. And they raise many questions about how national governments act, and how national governments also act during humanitarian interventions. This is a subject that I think we'll have plenty of time to talk about because we are opening up whole new areas of how governments behave, how we cooperate within regional and international organizations, whether something is an internal issue or not. And what our co-responsibility is as members of the civilized international community for dealing with these kinds of issues when they happen "inside another country" and they consider it their internal issue.

When I was in Moscow I raised the issue of Mr. Babitski (phonetic) and I was told that was an internal issue. I talked about the importance of having press access to Chechnya and they were concerned about that creating more problems. So I believe that we have to stay with it and while we may occasionally disagree- the press and the government- in this, I hope very much that we can be partners.

Thank you very much and, Roy, thank you for everything you've done.

MR. GUTMAN: I want to present you with one of our speakers and moderators this morning. He's just done a book, surprisingly enough, and it's a pretty interesting one, a terrific one, on Kosovo. I think it might be of interest to you. It's dedicated to you from Michael Ignatieff, who's right over here.

SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you all very much.