Posted on 09/21/2003 8:34:13 AM PDT by joan
BALKAN & EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN POLICY COUNCIL
PO Box 20407, Alexandria, Virginia 22320, USA
Telephone (703) 548-1070.
Facsimile (703) 684-7476.
Website: www.StrategicStudies.org.
Contact: Gregory Copley, 703-548-1070
Srebrenica Casualty Numbers Challenged by Experts as Politicized and Ethnically Divisive
WASHINGTON, DC, September 18, 2003: On the eve of the dedication of a monument to Muslims killed at Srebrenica, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1995, a group which includes a former UN official, intelligence experts, and journalists, released a statement challenging the alleged casualty number of 7,000 victims as "vastly inflated and unsupported by evidence".
They asserted that one-sided interventionist policies permitted al-Qaida forces and radical Islamists backed by the Iranian clerical government to take root during the Bosnian war, clouding the future of the region. As well, they agreed that the "memorialization" of false numbers in the monument actually appeared to be intended to perpetuate regional ethnic hatred and distrust and to deliberately punish one of the victim groups in the Bosnian civil war. Former US President Bill Clinton is expected to attend and legitimize the dedication of the monument at Srebrenica, which was constructed using one million dollars of US Embassy funds at the request of High Representative Paddy Ashdown. But former BBC journalist Jonathan Rooper, who has researched the events in Srebrenica since 1995, says that the region was a graveyard for Serbs as well as Muslims and that a monument to inflated casualties on one side "serves neither truth nor the goal of reconciliation".
Phillip Corwin, former UN Civilian Affairs Coordinator in Bosnia during the 1990s, said: "What happened in Srebrenica was not a single large massacre of Muslims by Serbs, but rather a series of very bloody attacks and counterattacks over a three year period which reached a crescendo in July of 1995." Mr. Corwin is author of Dubious Mandate, an account of his experiences during the conflict. He points out that Srebrenica, which was designated a safe zone, was never demilitarized as it was claimed to be, and that Muslim paramilitary leader Nasir Oric, who controlled Srebrenica, launched repeated attacks on surrounding Serb villages. He noted: "I was the United Nations" chief political officer in Bosnia the day that Srebrenica fell. Coincidentally, it was the same day that the Bosnian Government tried to assassinate me as I drove over Mount Igman on the way to Sarajevo."
Intelligence expert and strategist Gregory Copley, President of the International Strategic Studies Association and the ISSA's Balkan & Eastern Mediterranean Policy Council, accused US Ambassador Donald Hays, who serves as Deputy High Representative of Bosnia-Herzegovina, of using the power of the Office of the High Representative (OHR) governing Bosnia "to force Bosnian Serb elected officials to sign a fraudulent document accepting the official version of events in Srebrenica. The leaders of Republica Srpska [the predominantly Serbian province of Bosnia-Herzegovina] invited the office of the High Representative to join their investigation of the events in Srebrenica. Instead they were told they were told to sign a statement drafted by OHR endorsing casualty figures they publicly disagreed with." Copley added: "It is significant in that the former US Clinton Administration fought this war unquestioningly supporting only the Croat and Muslim factions and disregarding the historic alliance of the Serbian peoples with the US. Then, after the war, the Clinton Administration failed to follow US tradition in helping to heal the wounds of war, but, rather, perpetuated ethnic divisions and hatreds. This differs from the US role in all other wars."
"Unfortunately, all of the policies and officials put in place in the region by the Clinton Administration remain. The current Bush Administration has neglected the Balkans and has, instead, allowed the Clinton policies to continue, which has meant that divisive politics continue. This, then, requires the ongoing commitment of US peacekeeping forces in both Bosnia and in the Kosovo province of Serbia."
Copley added that, according to intelligence obtained from Islamist sources, that the monument was intended to become a shrine for radical Islamists in Europe and site for annual pilgrimages. He added: "Deputy High Representative Donald Hays forced the Republica Srpska Government to issue a statement which accepted the radical Islamists" version of the Srebrenica affair, despite the fact that the Office of High Representative does not have any investigative capability of its own to make a valid assumption on the matter. As well, the International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague " no friend of the Serbs " has itself not completed its investigation of Srebrenica, and nor has the office of the Government of Republica Srpska which has been working with the ICTY."
Amb.. Hays and OHR chief Paddy Ashdown forced the Republica Srpska statement merely to ensure that the opening of the "shrine" " to be attended by Clinton " would vindicate Clinton Administration policies of support for the radical Islamists." Yossef Bodansky, who has written several books on the war in Yugoslavia and also serves as Research Director of ISSA, calls the 7,000 figure "disinformation" and notes that "all independent forensic evidence points to Muslim casualties in the hundreds, possibly the low hundreds. Continued emphasis on such allegedly high numbers of Muslim deaths at Srebrenica also obfuscates the Muslim murders in that city, earlier, of Serb civilians." Bodansky also wrote extensively on the link between Osama bin Laden and the Bosnian Islamists in numerous articles and special reports and three books, including Offensive in the Balkans: the Potential for a Wider War as a Result of Foreign Intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1995), Some Call it Peace: Waiting for War in the Balkans (1996), and Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America (1999).
Rooper says that at least 1,000 Serbs, mostly civilians, were killed by forces led by Oric who did not bother to hide his crimes, even showing videotapes of slaughtered Serbs to Western journalists. Meanwhile a group of academic experts and journalists from the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Serbia, and the United Kingdom has been organized by Professor Edward S. Herman of the University of Pennsylvania to examine the evidence regarding events at Srebrenica in July 1995 and earlier, how the media reported these events, and the political role of claims about Srebrenica. It is expected that a report from this group will be available in June 2004. Rooper points out that the 40,000 inhabitants the UN used in July of 1995 before the capture of Srebrenica roughly matches the number of former residents accounted for in the aftermath. A commander of the Muslim-dominated Army of BiH (Bosnia-Herzegovina) later confirmed to parliament in Sarajevo that 5,000 BiH troops escaped largely intact to Tuzla while the UN registered some 35,632 civilian survivors.
While the capture of Srebrenica was reported in July 1995, as it unfolded, an international outcry only took place a month later, after Madeleine Albright, then US representative to the UN, held up a photo which she said provided evidence that thousands of Muslim victims had been buried at field near Nova Kasaba, 19 kilometers from Srebrenica. Excavations which took place following the war, however, yielded 33 bodies at Nova Kasaba. Two years after the event, a total of 400 bodies had been found at 20 sites near Srebrenica, an area which had seen bloody fighting over a three year period. Instead of acknowledging that there was no support for the original figures, Rooper says a various means were used to prop up the official story.
"Spokesmen for the Clinton Administration suggested that Serbs might have moved the bodies to other locations. Rooper points out that excavating, transporting and reburying 7,000 bodies was "not only beyond the capabilities of the thinly stretched, petrol-starved Bosnian Serb Army, but would have been easily detected under intense surveillance from satellites and geostationary drones.
By 1998, thousands of bodies excavated from all across Bosnia were stored at the Tuzla airport. Despite state of the art DNA testing, only 200 bodies have been linked to Srebrenica. Around 3,000 names on a list of Srebrenica victims compiled by the Red Cross matched voters in the Bosnian election in 1996. "I pointed out to the OSCE that there had either been massive election fraud or almost half the people on the ICRC missing list were still alive," says Rooper. "The OSCE finally responded that the voting lists had been locked away in warehouses and it would not be possible for them to investigate."
The inflated Srebrenica statistics are part of a larger picture that intelligence experts such as Bodansky and Copley find troubling. They say US policymakers have been slow to recognize that Bosnia is viewed as a strategic base for operations in Europe by al-Qaida and the HizbAllah. In 1993, when the Clinton Administration was strongly backing the Muslim President of Bosnia, Alija Izetbegovic, Osama Bin Ladin was regular visitor to his office, according to Renate Flottau of the German weekly, Der Spiegel. The Bosnian daily, Dani, reported that the Vienna Embassy of BiH issued a passport to Bin Ladin in 1993.
A special report by Copley, issued Tuesday, September 16. 2003. noted that Bosnia-Herzegovina Ambassador Huso Zivalj, who issued the passport to Bin Ladin, later served as Bosnian Ambassador to the United Nations in September 11. "It is becoming increasingly clear that the movement of Zivalj to the New York post just before (and his departure just after) the September 11,2001 attacks was not coincidental."
"To refer to US Bosnia policy as a success story is to disregard substantial evidence to the contrary. Instead of misplaced symbolism in Srebrenica, US policymakers need to take a hard look at assumptions which have guided US actions in the region," Copley said.
In particular, until the mass media starts to deal with this sort of evidence, I see no option to to view ALL of the charges I've ever seen or read against Serbs as BS and garbage.
What did Lenin say about useful idiots?
The truth is a defence, but it isn't on your side in this matter.
Please make a note of it.
One thing of interest is that birthrates for rural families, whether they be Serb, Croat, or Muslim (to include Albanians) are similar throughout the Balkans.
Bloody Catholics - they think that every time they have sex they have to have a child.
Yes dear, but we have two children and...
That's beside the point.
I have no idea why I find that so damn funny, but there you have it.
One assumes that they were closed down because they REFUSED to backtrack from the statements in question. At least have the decency to keep your BS logical.
Other than that, the story has been carried all over the place and not just on LM
I do not say that they at any time were able to leave and there - you know, there were fences, there were guards, which we have seen here, armed guards. - Thomas Deichmann under cross-examination.
there has never been any question in my opinion or in the article that I published that this camp was anything other than a grim place at which there were beatings, there were killings and there were rapes. There has never been any question of that. We have never argued contrary to that. - Michael Hume under cross-examination.
Welcome to reality, Judy - neither your assumptions nor the frequency at which lies are repeated have any weight here.
I suggest you do some actual research, avoiding leftist websites that masquerade as having either Antiwar or Antiglobalist agendas.
http://www.ttfse.org/default.aspx?p=23&c=85:
Ethnic groups (according year 1991 census): Bosniak 43,5%, Serbs 31,2%, Croats 17,4%, Yugoslavs 5,6%, Montenegrians 0,2%, Macedonians 0,1%, Albanians 0,1%, Others 0,8%, Not declared nationally 0,3%, Unknown 0,8%
And Croats say that their population in Bosnia is now lower. Many of them were settled purposely by Tudjman in Croatian Serb homes and apartments. You might say that the Serbs are in their houses in Bosnia, but most of these Bosnian Croats now in Croatia came from areas in Central Bosnia and left during the Croat-Muslim fighting. (See Croat site: http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/cromusl.html
The current CIA factbook uses 2000 figures and has the Muslims at 48%, the Serbs at 37.1%, and the Croats at 14.3%. I do not know if Krajina Serbs from Croatia, who are now in Bosnia, are included in the numbers. The Bosnian government chose not to take an official census in 2001 or 2002 when other ex-Yu republics - Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, and Macedonia did - so the true percentage may or may not be significantly different than the current figures.
I have to translate this as "not much".
Perhaps you should look into the matter a little more before offering comment.
I do not say that they at any time were able to leave and there - you know, there were fences, there were guards, which we have seen here, armed guards. - Thomas Deichmann under cross-examination.- Michael Hume under cross-examination.
Welcome to reality, Judy - neither your assumptions nor the frequency at which lies are repeated have any weight here.
Techniques used by Ruder Finn
A major news story about Serbia, not covered in the American press, was published in Covert Action Quarterly (CAQ) last Fall. The story detailed how a famous photo from 1992 in Omarska, Bosnia showing an alleged Serbian death camp was in fact a phony. The original photo, taken by Independent Television (ITN) from Great Britain, showed an emaciated Muslim man with his shirt off behind barbwire with his imprisoned comrades behind him. This photo ran worldwide and was just used again June 14th by Time magazine. It was the first significant emotional presentation of the Serbian military as nazi-like thugs. Presidential candidate, Bill Clinton, making reference to the photo promised military action against the Serbs if elected.
According to CAQ this photo was a gross misrepresentation of the situation. The men in the picture were not behind barbwire, but rather were standing outside of a small fenced enclosure next to a farm house in an open field that had been serving as a refugee transit site. The photographers shot the photo from within the fenced enclosure looking out on a open field. The Hague Tribunal confirmed in 1994 that there was no barbwire surrounding the camp at Omarska in 1992.
So how has a phony photo of alleged Serbian death camp continued to be used to portray the Serbian government as an holocaust perpetrator in Kosovo?
One part of the answer is that the American public relations firm Ruder Finn was originally hired by the Croatian sessionists, Bosnian Muslins and the Kosovo Liberation Army( KLA) to foster negative images of the Serbs as nazi demons. Ruder Finn targeted American women and Jews with the promotion of often unconfirmed news stories of Serbian rape/death camps, and various human atrocities. News stories showing attacks and ethnic cleansing of Serbs were often repressed or undercovered.
The result was that the American public has been lead to believe that the Serbs are the vicious aggressors in the Balkans and the other parties innocent victims. Nothing could be further from the truth. The KLA alone was listed by the U.S. State department as a terrorist organization until just last year. They had been conducting bombings, assassinations, ambushes, (financed by heroin sales) on both Albanians moderates and Serbs in Kosovo for several years, increasing their attacks 1000% in 1998. Serbian police responses were often brutal especially in the villages from which the KLA was known to operate. Yet, last year only 2,000 deaths occurred on both sides in all of Kosovo. 2,000 deaths was not an ethnic cleansing campaign by Serbs to kill Albanians but rather part of a measured response to ongoing terrorist activities by a legitimate government.
American media has been so accepting of demonized-the-Serb stories that there was no questioning of the news story last January of the alleged Serbian massacre at Racak where some 40 Kosovo Albanians were said to have be gunned down by Serb police. Found by the "neutral" former Oliver North aide, William Walker, the bodies were a perfect photo opportunity to justify increased NATO demands for direct intervention and the bombings.
Yet, there was a complete failure of the American press to cover the European Union's forensic team's report in March 17th stating that they were unable to confirm that a massacre had occurred, and that it was possible that the bodies had been moved to that location after death. For extra info read "Racak Massacre"
The Rest of the Sordid Story...
Total credibility of NATO and Clintonista spin in the Balkans: zero.
Yet here you are posting yet another article that refers to it as if it had some sort of relevance outside of serving as a form low IQ indicator for those who still put any stock in it.
The Living Marxism story is disinformation, plain and simple. Please be so kind as to avoid any reference to it in future posts in your writings or in passages from other sources.
The torture allegation was made by Rade Markovic, and was centered upon an offer of consideration made to him by the authorities in Serbia.
As to Racak, Serb forces executed unarmed civilians, just like they had in Croatia and Bosnia before, and the same idiots who tried to exonerate Milosevic's murderers got quickly to work to lie and deceive with enough volume and repetition to try and drown out the truth of the matter, and you and your opinions are a result of that effort - congratulations on your gullibility.
So there we have it - you'll believe discredited Marxist propaganda, put faith in Serbia's former Secret Police Chief, who is currently being charged with the murder and attempted murder of Milosevic's rivals, when he makes spurious claims of torture being used against him, and buy lock stock and barrel into what has become one of the largest disinformation campaigns, i.e., Racak, on the web.
Forget about your opinions of anybody else's credibility - you need to spend more time considering your own and what this crap you're regurgitating has done to it.
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