By K. Subrahmanyam
Times of India
One of the most heinous assaults on freedom of information was carried out by the NATO on the pretext of defending humanitarian values. The Yugoslav TV station was deliberately targeted and destroyed on the night of April 22. Among the staff who had been working at their posts day and night 10 were killed and many injured. The NATO claimed that since the Yugoslav TV was an integral part of President Milosevic's war machine it was a justifiable military target. The Yugoslavs were back on air after an interval of six hours. The Pentagon spokesman has advised the world to stay tuned when asked whether the new facility too would be attacked.
Oddly enough international media in their questions to Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Vuk Draskovic, himself a former journalist and a bitter opponent of Milosevic, put forward the view in consonance with official NATO line that the TV station was a legitimate military target. Draskovic then countered whether the BBC and CNN also could be considered legitimate military targets for Yugoslav atacks. The question did not elicit a reply.
The attack on the TV station appears to be an act of desperation by those who initially thought a few bombs would bring the Yugoslavs down on their knees and today feel frustrated that 9000 aerial sorties have not brought them nearer their objective. The Yugoslav TV staff were at their posts even after the NATO proclaimed its intention to destroy the facility. When asked why they continued to stay on, one Yugoslav staffer replied they thought the target would be the transmission tower and not the staff.
The NATO argument is a logical continuation of the allies' World War II thesis which enabled deliberate targeting of German and Japaneses cities on the facile ground that the civilian population centributed to war production. On the basis of this logic, NATO can go ahead and kill Yugoslav children without much compuction since they give joy to their fathers who are soldiers in Milosevic's war machine. Water supply plants can be attacked since Milosevic's soldiers drink the water. And oil refineries, oil storages and chemical plants can be blasted and air over Yugoslavia polluted since soldiers of Milosevic breathe that air. Yet, NATO and the west claim the war is against Milosevic and not Yugoslav people. This is not black propaganda but honest truth, according to not only NATO military planners but many western media persons.
Most of the western TV broadcast time these days is dominated by Kosovo refugees and their life of suffering. We also see on western TV channels the aerial strikes and massive flames engulfing the targets in Yugoslavia. Behind those flames must be children, women and men. The poisonous fumes released by attacks on refinaries, oil storages and chemical plants must be people choking and suffering physical agony. But western TV channels flash no pictures of their suffering. The majority of western media men do not consider this as black propaganda of the West to justify an aggressive bombing of the Yugoslav people. Ironically, the Belgrade TV station was hit even as it was broadcasting an interview of Milosevic by an American academic. Presumably, NATO felt it was dangerous to let their people hear what Milosevic had to say.
Being sophisticated practioners of information warfare, the western media attempt to bolster their credibility by getting video clips from their correspondents in Belgrade and airing brief conversations with Yugoslav ministers. The correspondents' despatches are caveated with the announcement that they are subject to Yugoslav censorship but no alteration had been
made. It is also added that the western correspondents are not allowed to move about freely in Yugoslavia --as if Yugoslav, Russian and nonaligned correspondents are allowed to move about freely in NATO bases from where attacks on Yugoslavia are being launched.
When an independent commentator (an American) raised the question as to why NATO was not doing anything to protect the human rights of Kurds who for much longer period faced the kind of oppression the Kosovars were said to be facing, the western TV channel chat show host brought the conversation to an end. No western media commentator, let alone NATO officials and leaders, seem to remember millions of Palestinians still in refugee camps and displaced from their land. This is not to suggest that NATO bomb Israel. But there must be a common standard. Millions of Germans were ethnically cleansed from East Prussia and eastern German provinces in 1945-46, from the heartland of Germany. That happened after Hitler was defeated. Leaders of the countries which benefited from the ethnic cleansing of Germans are sanctimoniously talking about not allowing it in Kosovo.
Yugoslavia's ``black propaganda'' is not seen around the world; the propaganda of NATO countries is flashed across the globe, including Yugoslavia. Why then is the NATO, despite its enormously vast resources for propaganda, so afraid of the Yugoslav TV. Freedom is killed when a source of dissenting views, however disagreeable they may be, is silenced by violence. NATO struck a blow to freedom it claims to uphold when it destroyed the Belgrade TV station. It is utterly perverse and Orwellian to justify that act in the name of upholding humanitarian values.
