Ethnic cleansing is a crime

Mr. Branimir Salevic is for once perfectly right in saying unprovoked aggression (e.g. Hitler's invasion of Poland, which triggered World War II) is a crime (The Jakarta Post, April 23, On NATO aggression). What he appears not to understand is that ethnic cleansing is a crime in the eyes of the civilized world (which clearly does not include the Serbs). That is a perfectly good reason for NATO to intervene in order to stop Serbian barbarity in Kosovo. Mr. Salevic has a typically Serbian mentality -- it's all right for Serbs to attack a weaker neighbor, but when they are given a dose of their own medicine they start (to use that expensive Australian combination of whine and cringe) to whinge.

Of course, it is regrettable that there have been, and will be more, civilian casualties in Yugoslavia, yet they pale in significance when compared to the hundreds of thousands of Kosovars who have died as a result of the unspeakable atrocities committed by the Serbs in Kosovo.

I should be interested to know if Mr. Salevic regards Britain's intervention on behalf of Poland in 1939 as an act of "unprovoked aggression". Poland had done nothing to provoke the Nazi invasion, any more than the Kosovars had done (or rather, not done) to provoke Serbian "ethnic cleansing" -- and that had been going on long before civilized nations said "Enough!" and took steps to stop it. For him to say there was no provocation is simply laughable. His very language is the language of somebody who knows he is in the wrong and tries to wriggle out of it by blaming somebody else. Think about it Mr. Salevic.

JAMES RICHARDS

Jakarta