Yugoslavia by Noam Chomsky

Author:Noam Chomsky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PM Press
Published: 2018-04-26T16:00:00+00:00

Based on a Noam Chomsky interview with Erik Siljak and The A-Infos Radio Project, April 19, 1999.

Notes

1Chomsky refers here to the assassination of Óscar Romero, archbishop of San Salvador, in 1980, and the assassinations of Jesuit priests, Ignacio Ellacuría, Ignacio Martín Baró, Segundo Montes, Joaquín López y López, Amando López, and Juan Ramón Moreno, as well as their housekeeper Julia Elba Ramos and her daughter, Celina Maricet Ramos, in 1989.

The Truth about Kosovo

Patrick Cain: Let’s define some of the language we are hearing around this war. Can you comment on the use of the terms “humanitarian crisis,” “genocide,” and “ethnic cleansing” as they are being applied to Kosovo?

Noam Chomsky: Well, for starters, the concept called “humanitarian crisis” has a technical meaning, which does not have much to do with what might reasonably be assumed to be the defining criteria of the term. The technical meaning of humanitarian crisis is a problem somewhere that threatens the interests of rich and powerful people. That is the essence of what makes it a crisis. Now, any disturbance in the Balkans does threaten the interests of rich and powerful people, namely, the elites of Europe and the U.S. So when there are humanitarian issues in the Balkans, they become a “humanitarian crisis.” On the other hand, if people slaughter each other in Sierra Leone or the Congo, it’s not a humanitarian crisis. As a matter of fact, Clinton just refused to provide the relatively puny sum of $100,000 for a peace-making force in the Republic of the Congo, which might well have averted a huge massacre. But those deaths do not constitute a humanitarian crisis. Neither do the many other deaths and tragedies to which the U.S. directly contributes: the massacres in Colombia, for example, or the slaughters and expulsions of people in southeastern Turkey, which are being carried out with crucial support from Clinton. Those aren’t humanitarian crises. But Kosovo is a crisis because it is in the Balkans.

Now the term “genocide,” as applied to Kosovo, is an insult to the victims of Hitler. In fact, it’s revisionist to an extreme. If this is genocide, then there is genocide going on all over the world—and Bill Clinton is decisively implementing a lot of it. If this is genocide, then what do you call what is happening in the southeast of Turkey? The number of refugees there is huge; it’s already reached about half the level of Palestinians expelled from Palestine.

If it increases further, it may reach the number of refugees in Colombia, where the number of people killed every year by the army and paramilitary groups armed and trained by the U.S. is approximately the same as the number of people killed in Kosovo last year.

“Ethnic cleansing,” on the other hand, is real. Unfortunately, it’s something that goes on and has been going on for a long time. It’s no big innovation. How come I’m living where I am, instead of the original people who lived here? Did they happily walk away?

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