 |  | | June 2, 1999 Ambassador David Scheffer
Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues
Department of State
Washington, D.C. 20520
Re: Milosevic and Ecevit Dear Mr. Scheffer: Whatever the merits of the indictment of President Milosevic and four senior Yugoslav officials by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), this decision creates an important precedent of indicting an incumbent Head of Government. The obvious analogy is Turkey's Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit. With regard to Cyprus and the Kurds, his actions and those of his military and political associates echo many of the charges detailed in the ICTY indictment of Milosevic and the other Yugoslav officials: Cyprus - Deportations: Ecevit initiated the illegal 1974 Turkish invasion of Greek Cyprus with the illegal use of U.S.-supplied arms during which some 200,000 Greek Cypriots were forced from their homes by the Turkish armed forces;
- Murder: in the Turkish invasion over 4,000 Greek Cypriots were murdered, including 5 Americans who had been kidnapped by the Turkish forces;
- Persecutions: Ecevit now presides over the continuing Turkish occupation of 37.3% of Cyprus. In the course of this occupation, the few Greek Cypriots who were not ethnically cleansed from the areas under illegal Turkish occupation have been subject to persistent persecution on political, racial and religious grounds. Greek Cypriot religious and cultural sites have been devastated.
The government of Cyprus filed three applications to the European Commission on Human Rights regarding Turkey's violations of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Commission issued its report on the charges made in the first two applications on July 10, 1976. In it the Commission found Turkey guilty of violating the following articles of the European Convention on Human Rights: - Article 2: by killings of innocent civilians on a substantial scale;
- Article 3: by rapes of women of all ages from 12 to 71;
- Article 3: by inhuman treatment of prisoners and persons detained;
- Article 5: by deprivation of liberty with regard to detainees and missing persons. This is a continuing violation. There are some 1,600 missing Greek Cypriots out of a then total of 510,000 Greek Cypriots.
- Article 8: by displacement of persons, creating more than 170,000 Greek Cypriot refugees, and by refusing to allow the refugees to return to their homes. This is a continuing violation;
- Article 1 of the First Protocol to the Convention: by deprivation of possessions, looting and robbery on an extensive scale.
The London Sunday Times published excerpts of the report and stated: "It amounts to a massive indictment of the Ankara government for the murder, rape and looting by its army in Cyprus during and after the Turkish invasion of summer 1974." (London Sunday Times, Jan. 23, 1977). In a second report dated 1983 regarding a third complaint, which was released on April 3, 1992 after nine years of delaying tactics by Turkey, the European Commission on Human Rights again found Turkey guilty of continuing violations of Articles 5 and 8 and Article 1 of Protocol No.1 of the European Convention. The Kurds - Deportations: during Turkey's 15-year war against the Kurds over 2.5 million Kurds have been forced from their homes and 2,600-3,000 villages have been torched or razed in the Turkish military's scorched earth policy.
- Murder: during this same period some 30,000 innocent Kurds have been killed by the Turkish army;
- Persecutions: during Turkey's war against the Kurds, extrajudicial killings, torture, and deprivation of elementary civil and human rights have been routine. (Turkey's actions on all these headings are documented in the State Department's own 1998 Human Rights Country Report on Turkey and other reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch).
The "command responsibility" case against Ecevit is overwhelming. Other senior military and political officials are also culpable--the various chiefs of the Turkish General Staff, the commander of the Turkish forces at the time of the Cyprus invasion, and all command officials with responsibility for Turkey's ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Kurds. I trust that the United States will exploit the precedent provided by the ICTY to institute proceedings to indict Ecevit and other Turkish officials in the International Criminal Court. I am copying this letter to President Clinton and the other officials named below. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMSincerely, MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMEugene T. Rossides - cc: President Bill Clinton, Vice-President Albert Gore, Jr.
- Members of the Congress, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
- Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott
- Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Pickering
- Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs Marc Grossman
- Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Harold Koh
- Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Samuel Berger
- Director of Policy Planning, State Department Morton Halperin
- Mrs. Louise Arbour, Chief Prosecutor, International Criminal Court for the Former Yugoslavia
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