NEVER FORGET 1999!
On the 20th Anniversary of the 78-day
U.S./NATO criminal bombing of Yugoslavia (Serbia & Montenegro)
NO WAR ON VENEZUELA!
Rally in front of the United Nations
(Ralph Bunche Park, 1st Ave & 43rd Street, NYC)
Sunday, March 24, 2019, 2 to 4 PM
US/NATO out of Serbia! Hands off Venezuela!
Abolish NATO! Kosovo is Serbia! (UN Resolution 1244)
Also, make a trip to Washington, DC, to participate in a national mobilization to oppose NATO, organized by the United National Antiwar Coalition: No to NATO, Washington, DC, Lafayette Park (across from the White House), Saturday, March 30, from 1 PM no2nato2019.org
International Action Center, iacenter.org(212) 633-6646
Dear Cathrin, dear Klaus, dear comrades in Belgrade
We from the International Action Center in New York would like to express our solidarity with the March 21-27 events scheduled in Serbia. We continue to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with the people of the region who went through the criminal 78-day U.S.-NATO bombing campaign 20 years ago and to all those suffering its consequences today.
We are unable to participate in your activity this year in Belgrade. We want you to know, however, that here in New York City we have helped to organize a Sunday, March 24 demonstration at United Nations headquarters. The action will commemorate Yugoslavia’s heroism. It will protest U.S.-NATO aggression and the theft of Kosovo.
We remember how through January, February and March of 1999 the U.S. and Western European propaganda machine indoctrinated their population to support a war of aggression against Yugoslavia. The various NATO powers – and especially German and U.S. imperialism – had been taking every step over the prior decade to weaken and destroy the Yugoslav multinational socialist federation.
West European and U.S. imperialism competed for dominance in the Balkans. Berlin aided the reactionary forces in each republic where reactionary elements aimed to separate from Yugoslavia. This gave rise to wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina along with the separation of Slovenia and Macedonia. Using the phony incident at Račak on Jan. 15, 1999, as a pretext, Washington then stepped up the drive toward war. Finally NATO began bombing of Serbia/Montenegro on March 24. The Pentagon’s overwhelming destructive military force vaulted U.S. imperialism into the leadership of the NATO aggressors.
NATO justified its first international aggression with the pretext of “humanitarian” intervention. What was a sovereign Yugoslavia became six weakened semi-colonies of the West and the tiny U.S. military outpost called Kosovo. Since this criminal war against Yugoslavia, NATO has expanded its intervention against Libya in Africa, and Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan in Asia. It current target is Venezuela in South America – using another “humanitarian” pretext.
To add to the imperialist powers’ crimes, they blamed the victims of this aggressive war. The leader of the resistance to the assault, Slobodan Milosevic, was kidnapped and put on trial in The Hague. Milosevic turned the tables and put imperialism on trial, an effort in which we all assisted. Unable to prove any crimes against him, they ended the case only by Milosevic’s death in 2006.
We look forward to the weakening of the imperialist powers – we hope this will come from the action of their own working class and oppressed populations – and the revival of the worldwide struggle for national liberation and socialism. We are confident that the people of Serbia and of the former Yugoslavia will make a contribution to this world-wide struggle, just as they did against the Nazi occupation and in facing 78 days of bombs in 1999.
John Catalinotto, Sara Flounders, Teresa Gutierrez
Milos Raickovich (coordinator of the March 24 action)
International Action Center, New York, USA
March 1, 2019
