It is an indisputable fact that, ten years ago, Serb forces under the command of Ratko Mladic massacred almost 8000 Bosnians in the enclave of Srebrenica. This atrocity has been documented through thousands of testimonials by witnesses and relatives, through the discovery of numerous mass graves, and even through last year's admission by the government of the Republika Srpska that Serb forces conducted the killings. More recently, the appearance of the now famous videotape should remove the doubts from the mind of any reasonable person about the scope and brutality of this massacre.
Unfortunately, a sense of denial has prevailed among large segments of the population about war crimes committed by Serbs. In public remarks I made on May 12, I noted that polls showed that just over one-third of Serbs believed that war crimes were committed at Srebrenica, despite the acknowledgement of the RS Government itself that these crimes occurred.
I noted that less than one-third of Serbs believed that the bodies of over 800 Kosovar Albanians, most of them brutally executed, were located in mass graves in Serbia -- despite the fact that your own government acknowledges this fact. Indeed, these graves contained the bodies of three young American citizens -- the Bytyqi brothers -- who were summarily executed after being illegally detained at the Petrovo Selo MUP facility.
The massacre of 8000 Bosnian Muslims in the enclave of Srebrenica never happened.