Srebrenica Documentary Controversy and NIOD Report

Dear colleagues,

If you have not received this material already from some other source, I urge you to read it and to give it your careful consideration. It is a letter to the President of the Hague Tribunal, Theodore Meron, in reaction to a disturbing letter sent out on ICTY stationery by their spokesperson Nerma Jelacic to Eva Hamilton, director of Swedish State Television. The letter was in reaction to the Norwegian documentary “Srebrenica: A Town Betrayed” and its thrust was to prevent future broadcasting of any programs, in particular dealing with Srebrenica, which do not take ICTY verdicts as their point of departure and which “contradict” the conclusions they contain. For a copy of the Jelacic letter sent out on behalf of the Tribunal, please go to http://nspm.rs/files/LetterTownBetrayed.pdf

This scandalous attempt by a judicial institution to influence the media, and in the process to extort respect for its verdicts, has provoked widespread disapproval. David Peterson, who co-authored a number of books with Edward Herman, has composed a protest letter to President Meron and he is asking that all who agree with the position taken in the letter sign on. You can do that by sending a brief note to David at davidepet@... and expressing your agreement for your name and country where you reside to be added to the list of signers. As soon as a substantial number of signatures is gathered, the letter will be forwarded to ICTY President Theodore Meron.

It goes without saying that you are encouraged to send this note and David’s letter to all your friends and acquaintances who might also be inclined to join.

If you have not seen the Norwegian documentary, you may access it here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUuhSGnLvv8&feature=player_embedded 

Many thanks for your kind attention.

Stephen Karganovic

Open Letter to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

To Whom It May Concern: 

On November 24, Ms. Nerma Jelacic, acting in her official capacity as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia’s Head of Outreach, addressed a letter to Ms. Eva Hamilton, the Chief Executive and Editor-in-chief of Sveriges Television (Swedish Public Television, or SVT).   

Ms. Jelacic reprimanded SVT for having broadcast in August of this year the documentary film Staden som offrades (“Srebrenica: A Town Betrayed”), by the Norwegian filmmakersOla Flyum and David Hebditch.[1]   

 “[M]uch of the [film’s] content runs counter to rulings made by the ICTY,” Ms. Jelacic noted.  She also asked that, “should [SVT] decide to broadcast any further material which contradicts facts irrefutably established by the ICTY including those related to the Srebrenica genocide, that the ICTY be given the opportunity to present its findings.”[2]

Clearly, Ms. Jelacic’s request is designed to intimidate SVT, and to warn other media not to follow SVT’s example and broadcast Srebrenica: A Town Betrayed.   Space and time should not be provided to any other person whose work challenges the ICTY’s alleged facts.  It is unacceptable to discuss Srebrenica outside of what Ms. Jelacic called the ICTY's “definitive judgements.”

But Srebrenica: A Town Betrayed does an impressive job of portraying much of the largely ignored but important political background and context to the Srebrenica tragedy—material that receives little or no weight in the ICTY’s judgments.  Furthermore, many of the ICTY’s accepted facts are highly contestable.[3]  We fully support Swedish Public Television’sdecision to broadcast this documentary, and consider Jelacic’s effort to obtain equal time for the ICTY’s publicists an illicit form of pressure on SVT, wholly incompatible with Western principles of freedom of speech and of the press.

As the fate of the population in the Srebrenica “safe area” after July 11, 1995 is currently an issue before the ICTY in the trial of Radovan Karadzic, and will also be an issue in the trial of Ratko Mladic, Ms. Jelacic’s intervention at SVT also amounts to a denial of the fundamental rights of the accused to be presumed innocent.  It betrays the fact that at the ICTY, there never has been any real purpose to the Srebrenica-related trials, other than mechanisms of official guilt-assignment and propaganda.[4]  It is this truth that Ms. Jelacic appears intent on shielding from criticism.  

Nerma Jelacic has long displayed animosity towards ethnic Serbs, as well as towards the wartime political structures and figures of the Republic of Serbia and the Srpska Republika within Bosnia and Herzegovina (where her hometown is located[5]).  Her current attempt as the ICTY’s Head of Outreach to intimidate Swedish Public Television adds greater weight to the contention that the central task of the ICTY is not to render unbiased justice, but to impose the official NATO interpretation of the Yugoslav tragedy. 

[1] For one YouTube version of the documentary in question, see Ola Flyum and David Hebditch, Srebrenica—A Town Betrayed (Oslo: Fenris Film, 2010).  
[2] Nerma Jelacic, Head of Outreach, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Letter Addressed to Ms. Eva Hamilton, Chief Executive and Editor-in-Chief, SVT (Swedish Television), November 24, 2011, p. 1; p. 4.  (For a copy of this letter, written on the official ICTY letterhead, see https://www.cnj.it/documentazione/Srebrenica/JelacicLetter_toSwedishTV.pdf .)
[3] For work that powerfully contests the ICTY’s accepted facts, see, e.g., Germinal Civikov, Srebrenica: The Star Witness, Trans. John Laughland (Belgrade: NGO Srebrenica Historical Project, 2010); and Edward S. Herman, Ed., The Srebrenica Massacre: Evidence, Context, Politics (Evergreen Park, IL: Alphabet Soup, 2011).
[4] On the ICTY as a mechanism of official guilt-assignment and a stager of show-trials, see Edward S. Herman and David Peterson,The New York Times on the Yugoslavia Tribunal: A Study in Total Propaganda Service, ColdType, 2004, p. 29. 
[5] See Nerma Jelacic, "'Milosevic shattered my life, caused all the pain',” The Observer, June 24, 2001. Also see Nerma Jelacic,“Even in death, Milosevic wins again,” The Observer, March 12, 2006.

SREBRENICA HISTORICAL PROJECT

NIOD REPORT

Everyone involved in Srebrenica research is aware of the NIOD Report which was published in 2002 by the Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie [Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, http://www.niod.nl/] in 2002. The Report, which focuses on the tragic events in Srebrenica in July of 1995 is universally regarded as a first rate research and documentation tool. It has been relied on by historians, commentators, and legal experts.

The Report came about in a very interesting way. Soon after allegations of Dutch responsibility, and even complicity, in the Srebrenica massacre were made the matter became a controversial political topic in the Netherlands. The Dutch government were facing the prospect of a politically motivated parliamentary inquiry into the role and conduct of Dutch military personnel during their presence in the UN-protected Srebrenica enclave in 1994 and 1995. It is speculated that in order to avoid further politicisation of the issue the Dutch government assigned the task of sorting out what happened in Srebrenica and its background to a respected neutral scholarly institution, the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, also known as NIOD. It should be noted that NIOD’s principal research and documentation focus before it received this task was the World War II occupation of the Netherlands and of the Dutch East Indies. Srebrenica was a somewhat out of character assignment and it was entrusted to a team of scholars headed by the distinguished Dutch historian, Professor Hans Blom.

However one chooses to assess the final product, known as the “NIOD Report on Srebrenica”, its depth and meticulous detail are undeniable. The motives of the Dutch cabinet may have been political in seeking to avoid a parliamentary commission on Srebrenica, but the end result certainly reflects a high level of scholarship and it is refreshingly non-political.

Oddly, it is precisely the objective, non-political character of the NIOD Report which has drawn criticism from those who expected something else from it. A case in point is the following reaction which appeared on the BBC website almost as soon as the Report was published:

Mrs Catic said the protesters would meet again with the NIOD director, Hans Blom, in an attempt to persuade him to revise the findings - especially an assertion that half of those killed had fought in the Bosnian Muslim army.

They also denounced the conclusions that there was no evidence to link former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to the massacre, and that the role of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was unclear.[1]

One is compelled to say that it is to Professor Blom’s credit that on that occasion he refused to modify his scholarly team’s findings to make it acceptable to parties in the Bosnian conflict or to “clarify” the role of targeted defendants, which is a task for judicial organs rather than for historians.

“Srebrenica Historical Project” continues to insist that the complex events in and around Srebrenica in July of 1995 should be studied from an objective and scholarly perspective and without political preconceptions. The NIOD Report is a document of great significance to a better understanding of Srebrenica which we recommend to our readers as a reference in their own research. We therefore take pleasure in making it available to them on our website.

Readers can download the entire NIOD Report from our website at:

http://www.srebrenica-project.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=140:niod-report&catid=12:2009-01-25-02-01-02