Consequences of the bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia with depleted uranium in 1999

First International Symposium in Niš, Southern Serbia, June 2018*

by Dr phil. Barbara Hug and Dr phil. Niels Peter Ammitzboell

The University of Niš was the prominent venue of a conference devoted to the issue of international legal responsibility and civil liability for damage resulting from the bombing of Yugoslavia with depleted uranium ammunition. A comprehensive reader containing the lectures held in Niš/South Serbia in June 2018 is submitted.

The long-planned war to fragmentise Yugoslavia, prepared with the highest military and intelligence precision, lasted from March to June 1999. 19 NATO member states stooped for a dirty, sanguinary operation. It was supposed to be a war that had to be waged for “moral” reasons, according to the fabrications of the merciless Western alliance. In the spring of 1999, no birds sang and the leaves fell brown from the trees. The pictures of the children, who soon after fell ill with leukemia, speak the language of death, these children also wanted to live, but in the name of a perverted “morality” they have to suffer and die.
The significance of the war against Yugoslavia has so far been insufficiently highlighted, although there are a number of courageous and sensible authors who have published both on the strategic preparations for the war and on the motives for the war.¹ Erich Schmidt-Eenboom says, for example, that for future times the prospect of a pan-European peace area has been seriously damaged by the Kosovo war, not only materially, but above all in the minds of the people and political elites in Russia.
International legal responsibility – who bears it? NATO as an international organisation, the member states of NATO or both jointly? To whom are claims for compensation to be addressed, who is liable under civil law? The review of the facts and the outline of the numerous consequences of the war also reveal the cancer incidence rates, the increase of which is alarming.
The serious damage to the international community, to the outlawing of war, to peacekeeping and to the legal agreements between states is reflected in the remarks made by the Russian speakers. Russian law professors presented to the audience their concentrated knowledge of the international crimes of the NATO alliance without embellishment. The Serbian lecturers were in no way behind them. Very enlightening for the numerous listeners!
Thus Marija Zekic, a lawyer from Belgrade, mentioned the cover-up manoeuvres to which UNEP stooped to at the instigation of its Director General, Klaus Töpfer. Bakary Kante from Senegal, then director of a UNEP division department, had unequivocally pointed out in his report that the next generations living on the bombarded land will suffer from carcinogenic diseases, leukemia, and the number of spontaneous miscarriages and deformities of the newborns will be increased. NATO bombing occurred at the time of planting agricultural crops of vital importance for the population – corn, sunflower, soybean, sugar, sugar beet and vegetables. This report was supposed to be kept hidden.
Slobodan Petkovic, former general of the Yugoslav army, active in ABC defence, referred to the manual of KFOR: “KFOR, International Brigade, West, Depleted Uranium, Information and Instructions”. Here the soldiers are warned of the radioactive hazards, emanating from the uranium ammunition. “The inhalation of insoluble particles of uranium dust is associated with long-term health consequences, including cancer and malformations in newborns.
Professor Radomir Kovačević, chairman of the Institute of Occupational Medicine, Belgrade, presented on the serious genetic changes in the population of Southeast Serbia that can be found as a consequence of the NATO aggression in 1999.
Ratomir Antonovic describes the bombing as a lagging genocide of the people living on the territory of Yugoslavia as well as in neighbouring states. 2019 will be a year of the “epidemic” of cancer. NATO’s plan to drastically reduce the Serbs as an ethnic group would come to fruition. Antonovic is in charge of security management issues at the law faculty of Constantine of the Great University in Niš.
The overwhelming number of acts of war that have been committed against international law by NATO has led to the question of who is liable for the wide-ranging damage caused by the war, in particular the massive increase in the number of cancer cases, and how adequate compensation for the victims and their families can be achieved.
In a kind of pilot study, the lawyer Srdjan Aleksić examines the legal possibilities for compensation payments. This is raising international awareness of this crime, which can never be masked by “moral” considerations. Morality is characterised by the moral attitude not to harm and to act out of this humane conviction.²
Since the plans of the Western War Alliance more often speak of “small regional wars”, which must be expected, the war in Serbia can serve as an outsised warning. It was a locally limited war, waged with a devastating effect: the “sustainably planned” decimation of the population. If one analyses calculates the radioactive-toxic potential of the weapons used, it makes one’s blood run cold.    •

1    Retrospective and foresighted analyses provided: Dieter S. Lutz, Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, Matthias Küntzel, Heinz Loquai, Cathrin Schütz, Hannes Hofbauer, Maria Mies, Diana Johnstone, Ramsey Clark, Wolfgang Richter, Mira Beham, Jörg Becker, Norman Paech, Peter Handke, Michel Chossudovsky, Noam Chomsky, Falco Accame, Ralph Hartmann, Gerhard Beestermöller – (the list is not exhaustive).
2    The “foreign policy” of the NATO Alliance was thus directly directed against the peace doctrine of the Catholic Church, as it is formulated in the German Bishops’ Conference’s 1983 “Justice Creates Peace”. For the Catholic theologian Gerhard Beestermöller the German Bundestag resolution of 16.10.1998 could bring Catholic soldiers into moral distress. Were they allowed to take part in a war contrary to international law?
Organisation of the conference and editor of the book: Srdjan Aleksic, lawyer in Niš, and Sreto Nogo, Faculty of Law, Belgrade; 1st edition 2018 in Serbian and Russian language, 2nd edition 2019 in English (100 copies for foreign participants of the conference ); ISBN of the Serbian edition 978-86-7746-723-4; electronic version, English, on request at Law Office “Aleksić” Niš, <link>advokati.aleksic@gmail.com
Venue of the conference: Niš University Hall

(Translation Current Concerns)

“During the 1999 war, Serbia was bombed by Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.”

• Prof Ilija Zindovic, PhD, Legal Basis for Civil Liability for the Consequences of NATO Bombing
• Academician Juri Golik, NATO Aggression against FRY Must Be Punished
• Prof Manfred Mohr, ICBUW, Uranium Weapons I: A Case of Environmental Destruction through War Political and Legal Framework
• Aicha Kheinette, ICBUW, Uranium Weapons II:NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia – Facts and Consequences
• Academician Sergey Baburin, Peace Keeping Issues and the Problem of the Responsibility of the Aggressor
• Prof Aleksandr Korobeev, PhD, Jurisdiction of UN International Court of Justice on the Cases Submitted in Relation to the Countries – NATO Members and Their Use of Force: Analyses of Judicial Practice
• Dr Mirosav Baljak, Jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights
• Dr Konjahin Vladimir, PhD, About the Question on Establishing the Liability of NATO Countries for the Aggression against Yugoslavia – Reality and Perspectives
• Dr Pilikina Ekaterina Georgievna, PhD, Criminal Legal Command Responsibility on the Example of NATO Operations against Yugoslavia
• Radomir Kovacevic, Contamination with Depleted Uranium and Genetic Changes in Population of Southeast Serbia as a Consequence of NATO Aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999
• Dr Margit Savovic, The Crime that Must Not Be Forgiven
• Dr Yuri Duk, PhD,  NATO Justice and Democracy, Yugoslav Version
• Prof Tatjana Minazeva, PhD, State Sovereignty as the Power of Law in “Risky Society”
• Prof Luydmila Inogamova-Hegaj, Problems of National Jurisdiction for Aggression
• Marija Zekic, Dishonor of the “Civilised Nations”
• Prof Kozukharik Dmitriy Nikolayevich, PhD, About the Responsibility for Genocide and Aggression against the Yugoslav People
• Prof Hatidza Berisa, PhD, The Consequences of NATO Aggression of 1999 on the Environment and the Health of People
• Ratomir Antonovic, MA, The United Criminal Enterprise of NATO Countries against FRY
• Viktor Nuzdic, The Consequences of NATO Bombing of the Republic of Serbia
• Jovan Nikolic, MD, Urologist Methods of Rhetoric and Demagogy in Concealing the Harmful Effects of the Radioactive Ammunition Use
• Prof Slavko Milojkovic, PhD, Prof. Srdjan Aleksic, PhD NATO Aggression against FRY in 1999 and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
• Prof Milenko Kreca, PhD, Principle of Sovereignty and International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda
• Slobodan Petkovic, Retired General, Depleted Uranium, Protection of Environment and Population is Our Lasting Concern and Obligation
• Zhao Xiaolin, PhD, NATO Legal Responsibility for Bombing of Yugoslavia
• Prof Andon G. Kostadinovic, PhD, The Consequences of NATO Aggression on the Employees’ Social and Material Position and Increased Number of Malignant Patients in Our Country Population
• Danilo Kostic, Civil and Legal Responsibility of NATO Member States for Aggression against FR Yugoslavia in 1999
• General Prof Spasoje Mucibabic, PhD, Preparation and Implementation of the Project “Lawsuit against NATO States that Participated in the Aggression against Serbia in 1999”
• Prof Srdjan Aleksić, PhD, Misa Petkovic, Lawyer, Civil Liability of the International Organisation and Member States, with a Reference to NATO Responsibility for the Bombing of FRY in 1999

bha/na. In Serbia there is an evident increase in the diseases, the occurrence of which can be associated to a cause-and-effect relationship with the consequences of the bombing, especially with the use of ammunition with the DU. PhD, Dr Slobodan Čikarić, our renowned retired radiologist, one of the most famous therapists in the treatment of malignant diseases, now president of the Serbian  Anti-cancer Society  and editor-in-chief of the journal “Cancer – Prevent, Discover, Cure”, analyzed the state of the increase in malignant diseases in Serbia. He states that by the monitoring of the progression of malignant tumors in central Serbia in the period from 2001 to 2009, he has come the following conclusions: “We have identified 17 malignant tumors whose raw incidence rate was greater than 10 newly registered malignant tumors annually per 100,000 inhabitants and followed the growth trend of both rates in the mentioned period. In particular, we have identified systemic neoplasms (leukemia/lymphoma) and observed the trend of raw incidence and mortality rates in the population of both sexes and all ages in central Serbia in the period 2001-2009 … growth trends of both rates slightly differs in all 17 tumors in the time period 2001-2005 (latent period) … He states that “… the trend in the number of patients suffering from all tumors was on average 1% and the number of deaths was 1.4% per year, and in the case of leukemia and neoplasms 2.5% per year. But already in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009, the raw incidence and mortality rate of malignant tumors of all localities in both sexes increased in comparison with the previous four-year period,  in the number of patients by 6.6%, and the increase in the number of deaths by 7.8% on average per year. In systemic neoplasms (leukemia/lymphoma), this growth is more drastic and the number of patients affected is 74% and the number of deaths is 139%.”
Analysing the situation in 2014 he concludes that the number of newly registered malignant tumors in Serbia is 2.8 times higher than in the world, which he calls “the Serbian catastrophe”.