During his 2002 visit to Belgrade, the Monkey inspected the ruins of the Radio Televsion of Serbia (RTS) Studio, which was bombed by NATO aircraft on 23 April 2003. NATO's attack on the studio killed 16 civilian employees and injured 16 more. The impact of the bomb irreparably damaged major portions of the studio while shrapnel (the ignored result of bombs, whether precision-guided or not) damaged many nearby buildings including a children's theater, two churches, and a number of shops and restaurants. The studio was undefended and posed no threat to NATO pilots. NATO's premeditated killing of the RTS civilian employees is an indictable war crime under numeous articles of the Hague Convention, the Geneva Convention of 1949, and the Nuremberg Principles.

A wide-angle view of the RTS Studio shows the damage sustained by some nearby buildings during NATO's April 23 strike on the civilian facility. In an 8 October 2002 interview conducted by staff from Reporters Without Borders, NATO Assistant Secretary General for Defense Planning and Operations Edgar Buckley attempted to justify the decision to bomb the studio: "The RTS building was chosen solely for military reasons." Buckley then continued, in the type of Orwellian doublespeak for which NATO spokesmen are renowned: "A NATO military target is not necessarily a target of a military nature." While NATO officials may find circular semantics and question-dodging to be satisfactory responses to serious matters, such diversions would not hold up in court. It is also deeply irresponsible considering the loss of civilian life inflicted in just this one example of NATO's many reprehensible acts committed upon the population of the former Yugoslavia.

This memorial at the RTS studio simply asks, "Why?"

The Monkey is in the process of preparing his report on NATO's war crimes committed against the people, infrastructure, and territory of the former Yugoslavia (now Serbia and Montenegro). In so doing, the Monkey's purpose is to provide a counterbalance to the heavily politicized, uneven presentation of the case's facts by NATO member state officials and the NATO states' media outlets. The Monkey does not deny or condemn the ongoing investigation of Yugoslav-perpetrated crimes or the prosecution of alleged Yugoslav war criminals.

While a number of high-ranking Yugoslav officials—including former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic—are presently on trial in the Hague for war crimes, thus far none of the NATO heads of state or military commanders have been indicted for war crimes. The Monkey seeks to remind us that war crimes can be committed by both the winners and losers in war, and winners and losers are equally deserving of punishment for their crimes.

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