As NATO aggression in the former Yugoslavia fully unmasked the alliance as a tool of Western imperialism, newly-released documents reveal controversial former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was warned of the possible legal consequences of the bombing of a state-owned broadcaster in Belgrade.
“Twenty five years ago, NATO bombed the main studio of Yugoslavia’s state-owned broadcasting company, Radio-Television Serbia (RTS),” writes the independent outlet Declassified UK. “The attack at 2am on 23 April 1999 came amid Bill Clinton and Tony Blair’s ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Kosovo.”
“16 media workers were killed and 19 injured in the strike on RTS, which remains the single most controversial event in NATO’s 78-day military campaign,” notes journalist John McEvoy.
The UK and allied NATO forces claimed to be acting in the interest of protecting ethnic Albanians as ethnic violence broke out on all sides during the breakup of the former socialist Yugoslav republic. But President Slobodan Milošević remained a conspicuous holdout as newly-independent states deregulated their economies in line with neoliberal economic policy advocated by Western governments.
The United States would back numerous “color revolutions” after the fall of the Eastern Bloc, with wealthy donors like George Soros encouraging and standing to benefit from economic liberalization enforced by Western-led institutions like the International Monetary Fund.
The case of Milošević demonstrates a scenario during which the United States was willing to employ substantial military force to seek regime change, paving the way for NATO aggression in countries like Libya and Afghanistan.
Blair claimed the destruction of the RTS headquarters and other civilian targets was justified in the name of dismantling the “dictatorship” of Milošević. Sixteen media workers were killed during the bombing, which Amnesty International labeled a “war crime.”
“Killing journalists does not stop censorship, it only brings more repression,” claimed the International Federation of Journalists in a statement.
“We do not see how the suppression of news sources can serve any useful purpose,” said European Broadcasting Union president Albert Scharf. “Over and beyond the deaths involved, the EBU is concerned about any attempts to limit the rights of audiences to full news services.”
Declassified files now reveal that UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was warned against the depraved attack at the time by British attorney general John Morris, who questioned how the destruction of the broadcast headquarters was related to NATO’s purported cause in ensuring “relief of humanitarian need in Kosovo.”
The UK and the United States launched the illegal act of aggression in Belgrade without a required UN Security Council resolution, demonstrating the lengths NATO was willing to go to to ensure Western hegemony after the end of the Cold War.
“We are moving towards a situation where our aim will become removing Milosevic,” admitted Blair in a note at the time, revealing that regime change was the ultimate motive of the assault. “Plainly Milosevic will threaten the stability of the region as long as he remains.”
NATO forces would go on to strike a number of other civilian targets including Belgrade’s Hotel Jugoslavija and Montenegro’s main airport, with little apparent concern for the climbing death toll. Thousands were killed or wounded by the end of the campaign while elevated rates of cancer and birth defects are still observed due to NATO’s highly controversial use of depleted uranium.
The UK would become the first of multiple Western countries to recognize the disputed breakaway territory of Kosovo in 2008. Future leader of the territory Hashim Thaci, who played a key role during the NATO aggression via his leadership of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, is currently on trial on war crimes charges at The Hague.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, under intense pressure from the United States, would controversially decide against investigating the bombing of the RTS as a war crime.