....or a necessary part of NATO’s mission to protect civilians?
On 30 July NATO aircraft bombed Libyan state TV satellite transmitters in Tripoli because, according to an alliance spokesperson, they were being used to incite violence and threaten civilians. "Striking specifically these critical satellite dishes will reduce the regime's ability to oppress civilians while (preserving) television broadcast infrastructure that will be needed after the conflict," NATO elaborated in its statement. The Libyan Broadcasting Corporation issued a statement saying that three employees were killed and 15 wounded in the strike, although this has not yet been independently verified. Libyan state TV appeared to be broadcasting as normal the following day.
The unsuccessful attempt to silence Gaddafi’s TV broadcasts carries an uncanny echo from an earlier bombing campaign in April 1999 when NATO attacked a TV and radio station in Belgrade. At the time, NATO said the station was a legitimate target because it was a “propaganda mouthpiece” for the regime of Slobodan Milosevic. Sixteen employees of Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) died when a single NATO rocket hit the building. However, the Serbian TV station was back on air within 24 hours from a secret location.
NATO’s bombing campaign against the former Yugoslavia, including the specific attack on the Serbian TV station, was subsequently reviewed by an ad-hoc committee established by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The committee report in May 2000 recommended that no investigation be commenced against NATO because “either the law is not sufficiently clear or investigations are unlikely to result in the acquisition of sufficient evidence”. The committee’s approach was criticised by some international lawyers as having a “poor grasp of legal concepts” and deviating from well-established ICTY case law.
As to whether the media constitutes a legitimate target group, the ICTY committee commented that it “is a debateable issue. If media is used to incite crimes, as in Rwanda, then it is a legitimate target. If it is merely disseminating propaganda to generate support for the war effort, it is not a legitimate target”. In a lengthy discussion of the bombing of the Serbian TV station, the committee uncritically accepted the arguments put forward by NATO in press conferences at the time, that “the bombing of the TV studios was part of a planned attack aimed at disrupting and degrading the C3 (Command, Control and Communications) network”.
The current attack on Libyan TV facilities has been censured by two international journalists’ groups. Reporters Without Borders (RWB) condemned the attack as a war crime, and a serious violation of the Geneva Conventions. RWB secretary-general Jean-François Julliard said: “We remind NATO that news media are civilian installations and cannot be regarded as military objectives. Even if Al-Jamahiriya is clearly used by the Gaddafi regime as a propaganda outlet, it does not in any way legitimize these attacks. Other means, such as support for independent media, must be used to minimize the regime’s propaganda and threats".
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said the bombing was in contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 1738 passed in December 2006 that explicitly condemned such attacks against journalists and media. “We utterly condemn this action, which targeted journalists and threatened their lives in violation of international law,” Brussels-based IFJ secretary-general Beth Costa said, adding, "our concern is that when one side decides to take out a media organisation because they regard its message as propaganda, then all media are at risk”.
When asked to justify the attack on the TV transmitters during a press briefing on 2 August, NATO spokeswoman Carmen Romero said “all NATO strikes are against legitimate targets, in full respect of the UN Security Council mandate and this one as well, and that we also consider that incitement of violence is a threat to the population. So NATO needed to act in this case”. Who to believe?
NATO Watch Verdict: The legal issues related to ‘target selection’ are undoubtedly complex, especially in relation to dual-use objects, which have some civilian uses and some actual or potential military use (such as communications systems, transportation systems, manufacturing complexes of some types etc). But there are three reasons for concluding that this specific incident requires further investigation as a potential war crime.
First, international law prohibits any military activities that indiscriminately impact on civilians or imperil the economic and social infrastructures of civilian life. The inconsistent ICTY review committee report notwithstanding, this also precludes attacks on media equipment and installations, as subsequently set out in UNSCR 1738. The resolution does carry the caveat “unless they are military objectives”, but it is difficult to see how the broadcasting of propaganda activities were sufficient to make the TV satellite dishes a legitimate military target.
Second, the attack is inconsistent with the principle of proportionality. While the attack appears to have been more proportionate than the one on Serbian TV in 1999 (i.e. targeting television transmitters rather than the TV station itself and with fewer casualties), it should have been obvious to NATO that the airstrike would only interrupt broadcasting for a brief period (as was the case in the 1999 missile strike).
Third, NATO is operating under a UN mandate premised as a mission to protect civilians. The deliberate targeting of civilian installations is inconsistent with that mandate and is further evidence of having wilfully overstepped the mark. Once the combined airpower stopped the likely slaughter in Benghazi that is where NATO should have stopped the airstrikes. The UN authority was never a mandate for regime change or for attacking civilian media outlets. NATO should conduct an investigation into the attack on the Libyan TV facilities, publish the results and refrain from further attacks on media.