ERINA Update
(Eritrean News Agency,
Tel: ++291-1-117627, Fax: 127385)
Tuesday, March 23,1999

1. A senior TPLF Politburo member, Sebhat Nega, has attributed the border conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia to the "supreme race mentality" of Eritreans. Speaking in an interview on Al Jazeera TV last week, Sebhat said of Eritreans "they call themselves the 'Jews of Africa' and the 'Black Israelis' and they say they have the characteristics of these Black Jews. They say Tigrayans are inferior and that they are a super race ... that is the cause of this conflict. They say they are a super race and they believe it. Our enemy is this attitude of the Eritrean people." Sebhat went on to say that "the Jewish community in the United States has been lobbying the US government for Eritrea and in Eritrea's interests."

A government spokesperson in Asmara said of the interview, "This inflammatory language is designed to stir ethnic hated between Eritreans, and Tigrayans and Ethiopians. Where do they bring these allegations from? What purpose, other then to serve as a dangerous backdrop for their larger aims? The notion of us touting ourselves as 'black Jews' or a 'super race' is laughable but it is also deeply saddening and extremely ominous. It is the kind of 'genocidaire' talk that led to horrific human tragedy in Rwanda. They are.. stoking the kind of fires history does not easily forget."

Sebhat Nega is a high-ranking member of the TPLF central decision making body and one of their declared ideologues. He was a founder and Secretary General of the TPLF in its formative years.

Genocide: The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial political, or ethnic group. Example: WWII - Germans exterminate millions of Jewish & other people. WWII - Croatians allied with the Germans, exterminate nearly 1 million Serbs, Jews & Gypsies. North American settlers exterminate untold numbers of Native American people.

Exodus: A departure of a large number of people.
example: Word used in August,1995, by the world media to describe the eviction/ expulsion of several hundred thousand Serbians from Croatia in 2 day's time .

Ethnic cleansing: Phrase coined by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic during the Bosnian fiasco to describe the expulsion of almost 900,000 Serbian people from their homelands in what is now called Croatia and Bosnia. There are now almost 900,000 Serbian refugees who were ethnically cleansed. 300,000 fled to Republika Srpska and 600,000 fled to Serbia. This is more than any other ethnic group. Croatia conducted the largest single ethnic cleansing of the Bosnian war with noncovert American military support.
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Now that we have some working definitions, (and we ALL know how much Clinton likes to get his definitions straight), we can more accurately assess what is now happening to the people in Kosovo.

You can debate whether or not the NATO bombs are scaring people out of the region, or Serbian militia is expelling people from the region. Either way, what you have are LIVE refugees. (As you did in 1995 when the Serbs were expelled from Croatia.) You do not have genocide. If genocide was the goal these people would have been killed instead of being able to exit the region. You DO have murders being committed, as wars usually have, on both sides of the war. War crimes NEED to be proven and prosecuted by world courts. These war crimes include the bombing / killing of innocent Serbians, Albanians, Hungarians, Gypsies, Croatians, and other ethnic peoples now living within the sovereign national borders of the country of Yugoslavia. (Yes, there is human blood at the other end of those bombs.)
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To call what is happening in Kosovo genocide is an affront to those who have been victims of genocide. What is happening in Kosovo now is nothing like the Holocaust of the Jews in Germany and Eastern Europe or the genocide of the Native peoples of North America by the U.S. military in the 1800s. Oh yes, and it was the Serbian people who were exterminated in WWII by the Croatian Ustasha (who ware aligned with Germany). One million Serbs, Jews and Gypsies experienced acts of genocide then. Don't you think THEY know the difference?? No one would try these lies with Jewish people (and rightly so). So why don't the Christian Serbians ever get to remember THEIR history??

We hear it said that the Serbians have already committed genocide in previous conflicts. So where or when did all the Genocide propaganda gain credence??? It is a product of the propaganda left over from the Bosnian War. Never has genocide been proven. Ever. The whole Bosnian territory is STILL under UN control, and yet not any evidence has surfaced. Nor, has any retraction been made public of these rampant lies.

General Satish Nambiar, the first UNPROFOR commander from 1992 to 1994 during the Bosnian fiasco said, his deputy General Lewis McKenzie and 28,000 men under their command witnessed no genocide. They checked with the UNHCR and the International Red Cross, and they did not witness any genocide either.

The stories being propagated by the White House, the Pentagon and NATO are intended to justify their military aggression.

This is a war against Yugoslavia, and in a war the first thing to question is the daily barrage of propaganda from the officials of the attacking countries.

Here are a few facts that any human should know right now.

Then we should ask ourselves if we are ready for the anarchy which will follow as one by one, the world's political agreements are disregarded. Pass it on. . .

On the NATO Attack on Serbia / Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
The US is violating a number of international laws in attacking Serbia over Kosovo which is part of a sovereign independent state.

(1 ) It is a violation of Article 2 of the UN Charter that prohibits the use of force against a sovereign state where it has not committed aggression on other states. Serbia did not attack any neighboring states outside its sovereign borders. The Security Council did not sanction the use of force here. If the issue had been submitted to the Security Council, it would certainly have been vetoed by Russia and China. NATO knows it and therefore by passed it.

(2 ) It is a violation of NATO's own charter which claims it is a defensive organizations and is only committed to force if one of its members is attacked. No member of NATO was attacked.

(3) The so-called Rambouillet "Agreement" (there was no "agreement" by Serbia ) is a violation of the 1980 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties which forbids coercion and force to compel any state to sign a treaty or agreement. Serbia is being asked to sign this "Agreement" through NATO bombs and missiles.

(4) It is a violation of the Helsinki Accords Final Act of 1975 which guarantees the territorial frontiers of the states of Europe. What this so-called peace plan offers is (a) the severance of Kosovo through NATO bombing with immediate effect; or (b) the severance of Kosovo through NATO occupation three years later.

(5) If the sequel to the bombing is recognition of Kosovo as an independent state, this will violate international law that prohibits recognition of provinces that unilaterally declare independence against the wishes of the federal authorities.

In Kosovo, the strategy of the separatist Albanian insurgents, as with such movements all over the world, is to provoke overwhelming state retaliation in order to trigger NATO intervention. The Genocide Convention does not authorize such attacks. Only the Security Council can do so which was deliberately bypassed by NATO because it knew that Russia and China would veto such an attack. Furthermore, there was and is no evidence of genocide, just hearsay and an UNBELIEVABLE AMOUNT OF LIES WITHOUT PROOF. We ask that any evidence of such crimes be given us NOW. Proof first. Punishment second.

These unlawful actions will set precedents that will undermine stability elsewhere in the world. Which sovereign nation gets NATO's bombs next ???

George C. Thomas 2231 W. Appletree Road, Glendale, WI 53209-3309
Tel: (414) 351-3699; 351-0629
Email: gcthomas@ameritech.net <mailto:gcthomas@amentech.net>
Department of Political Science, Marquette University,
P.O. Box 1881, Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881
Tel: (414) 288-6840; Fax: (414) 288-3360
Email: thomasg@marquette.edu <mailto:thomasg@marquette.edu>
This flyer distributed by:
Milena P. Kentera
kentera@macconnect.com