International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic (ICDSM)
URL for this article is
http://www.icdsm.org/more/gorazde.htm
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A Rare Glimpse at the Reality of the Bosnian War
-- Associated Press Article
-- Comments by Jared Israel
[Posted 18 December 2002]
==================================================
During the trial of ex-Bosnian Serb official Biljana
Plavsic, Madeleine Albright and Elie Wiesel made
speeches about the supposedly monstrous Bosnian Serbs.
They portrayed Bosnian Muslims as analogous to Jews and
Bosnian Serbs as analogous to Nazis. As I shall
demonstrate in an upcoming article on that trial, what
Albright and Wiesel said amounts to Holocaust denial.
In addition, I will demonstrate that in his so-called
testimony, Mr. Wiesel lied.
Anyway, while researching Elie Wiesel's earlier
statements about Yugoslavia, I happened to read a most
revealing 1992 Associated Press (AP) dispatch. It is
posted below.
The AP dispatch is notable for three reasons:
1) It describes an all-out attack on the Serbian
civilian population in and around the Bosnian town of
Gorazde.
Prior to the attack, there had been sustained fighting
between Bosnian Serb troops and Muslim military forces
who controlled the town of Gorazde which had a mixed
Muslim/Serb population. The Serbian troops withdrew as
a peace gesture. After that, on August 26th, a column
of cars and buses including:
"3,000 Serbs, mostly women and children, was ambushed
by Muslims at Gnjila canyon, 11 miles north of
Gorazde."
The attackers were merciless:
"People were trapped in their burning cars. Others
crawled looking for their relatives, or jumped down the
cliff in panic," she said, standing frozen next to the
grave of her 11-year-old son, Dragan, who was killed in
the ambush."
The AP dispatch was published on September 12th, that
is, 17 days after the attack. Yet up until then,
"No one has dared to remove the remaining corpses,
fearing another attack from nearby forests."
The attack was not limited to the one gruesome ambush:
"After the Serb forces left their positions on the
hills above Gorazde, Muslim residents, 70 percent of
the town's prewar population of 40,000, looted and
torched the houses of fleeing Serbs, witnesses said."
This AP dispatch is unusual in that it actually
*mentions* the attack on these Serbs. Mostly the media
was silent when Serbs were attacked. As we shall show
in a soon-to-be-published article by Prof. Francisco
Gil-White, in fact it was the Serbs and also their
moderate Muslim allies who were the main victims of
anti-civilian terror in Bosnia. This was not because
the Serbs were saints. It was because the people whom
they and their Muslim allies were fighting were
fanatical Islamic Fundamentalists, misportrayed in the
Western media as peace loving, moderate democrats. But
all that is discussed in Prof. Gil-White's forthcoming
article. (When posted, it will be at
http://www.icdsm/more/bsn.htm
The point here is: this AP dispatch stands out because
it at least reports the anti-Serb atrocities.
2) But even this article reveals anti-Serb media bias.
From the start the article refers to anti-Serb violence
as "revenge." Revenge for what? What does the AP claim
happened to provoke such "revenge"? The article gives
no details, saying only that the town had been under
siege.
By using the terms, "siege" and "revenge," the writer
creates the impression that monstrous crimes must have
been committed *by the Serbs* because how else could
what the Muslims did constitute "revenge"?
Let us consider this a bit more.
The article says the Muslims outnumbered the Serbs in
the Gorazde area, 70% to 30%. A 30% minority is
probably not in a position to terrorize a 70% majority.
Moreover, this particular majority included people who
were armed and prepared to carry out the sort of
atrocities described in the AP dispatch.
Supporting this point, the AP uses the term, "siege."
If Gorazde was under siege *from Serbian forces* then
it must have been controlled *by Muslim forces.* So:
the town had a mainly Muslim population; it was
militarily controlled by Muslims; some of them were
quite capable of carrying out massacres. This hardly
sounds like a situation in which the Serbian forces
would feel safe in provoking the Muslims, even if they
wanted to.
Moreover, as the article states, the Serbs withdrew
their forces as a peace gesture. Would they have done
so without first rescuing the Serb civilian inhabitants
of Gorazde if, having committed outrages, they had
every reason to expect anti-Serb "revenge?"
The withdrawal of Serbian troops, the coordinated
assault on the Serbian neighborhoods, the desperate
flight of columns of cars and buses without troops to
protect them, the ambush and the extreme violence all
suggest that a) the Serbs naively misestimated their
foes' capacity for terror and b) after the troops
withdrew, the Serbian civilians were caught unaware by
the anti-Serb attack and fled in disarray.
The comments of a Serbian man supports this view:
"'The decision to give up Gorazde is a treason.
Karadzic should be ashamed,' said 68-year-old Marko
Ratkovic, who *managed* to flee to Mladenovac, 75 miles
northeast of Rogatica, in neighboring Serbia." (My
emphasis. Note the word, "managed." That suggests he
was caught unaware. That suggests he had no reason to
expect "revenge.")
And a Serbian military official says: "'Muslims have
abused our peace gesture by launching attacks on
innocent civilians.'"
Based on all of the above, I would suggest this
hypothesis: the presence of Serb military forces near
Gorazde *prevented* atrocities against Serbian
civilians. When the Serbian military withdrew, the
extremists among Muslims launched a pogrom: ambushes,
horrific murder, torching and looting of houses,
slaughter of livestock.
3) Speaking of livestock, note that the article
describes the attackers as having slaughtered pigs in
the Serbs' yards. The Bosnian Serbs were/are mostly
peasant farmers, many of whom do indeed breed pigs.
This is an important detail. Let me explain why.
The AP dispatch states that, "The Serb forces hold
about two-thirds of Bosnia's territory." It was common
for the Western media to make such statements,
suggesting that the Serbs had *seized* most of Bosnia,
i.e., they were aggressors.
A small point that the media neglected to mention was:
the Serbs *owned and occupied* roughly 2/3 of Bosnia.
Before the fighting broke out in Bosnia, the Slavic
*Muslim* population was comprised mainly of city
dwellers. The Slavic *Orthodox* population was
overwhelmingly farmers.
Because farming is land-intensive, in 1991 the Serbian
population owned about 2/3 of the land in Bosnia - that
is, they owned the land they lived on and farmed.
Bosnian Serb farmers were important food producers for
Yugoslavia and other European countries.
(We'll soon post an ethnic map of Bosnia that
demonstrates this.)
During the Bosnian conflict, many media reports
included sentences like the following, taken from a
different Associated Press dispatch:
"During the first two years of the war, Serb forces
took about two-thirds of Bosnia-Herzegovina, with the
Muslim-led government controlling the remainder." (AP,
October 27, 1994,
In fact, by limiting their military presence to the 2/3
of Bosnia where Serbs and their Muslim allies were
concentrated, the Bosnian Serb army was demonstrating a
defensive strategy. As Prof. Gil-White's article will
show, the Bosnian "Government" army was Islamic
Fundamentalist. One 6000-man division was named after
the World War II Waffen SS Division, Handzar, which
means "scimitar." These Fundamentalist troops, often
trained and led by fanatical veterans of the Afghan war
of the 1980s, preyed on Serbian peasants.
One such detachment controlled the town of Srebrenica.
Its leader was Nasir Oric, a Yugoslav Islamist. Here is
a Toronto Star reporter's account of an evening spent
listening to Oric boast about slaughtering Serb
farmers:
[Start Toronto Star Quote]
...I sat in his living room watching a shocking video
version of what might have been called Nasir Oric's
Greatest Hits.
There were burning houses, dead bodies, severed heads,
and people fleeing.
Oric grinned throughout, admiring his handiwork.
"We ambushed them," he said when a number of dead Serbs
appeared on the screen.
The next sequence of dead bodies had been done in by
explosives: "We launched those guys to the moon," he
boasted.
When footage of a bullet-marked ghost town appeared
without any visible bodies, Oric hastened to announce:
"We killed 114 Serbs there."
Later there were celebrations, with singers with wobbly
voices chanting his praises.
These video reminiscences, apparently, were from what
Muslims regard as Oric's glory days. That was before
most of eastern Bosnia fell and Srebrenica became a
"safe zone" with U.N. peacekeepers inside - and Serbs
on the outside.
[End Toronto Star Quote]
Note the sentence: "These video reminiscences,
apparently, were from what Muslims regard as Oric's
glory days." Oric's glory days! When he could raid
Serbian villages with impunity, cutting off heads and
launching people to the moon. His *glory* days! And the
Fundamentalist monsters who committed these crimes were
portrayed as moderate democrats by the Western media.
Note also that Oric curtailed his raids *because of the
increased strength of Serbian military forces*!
What the Western media called "laying siege to Muslim
towns," was in fact the heart of Serb military
strategy: to have sufficient military presence to
protect civilians from being slaughtered by the Islamic
Fundamentalist army.
Here's the AP dispatch on Gorazde.
-- Jared Israel
==========================================================
September 12, 1992, Saturday, AM cycle
SECTION: International News
LENGTH: 660 words
HEADLINE: Serb Refugees Face Bloody Muslim Revenge
BYLINE: By DUSAN STOJANOVIC, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: ROGATICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina
BODY:
Charred human skeletons, decomposing corpses and
burned-out cars are the grim remnants of a Muslim
assault on a column of Serb refugees fleeing
war-ravaged Gorazde.
When Serb forces on Aug. 26 eased their four-month
siege of the town in southeastern Bosnia, most of
Gorazde's Serb inhabitants tried to escape. Many feared
retaliation by majority Muslims who had been under
Serbian guns during the siege.
At dawn the next day, one of the columns of cars and
buses carrying 3,000 Serbs, mostly women and children,
was ambushed by Muslims at Gnjila canyon, 11 miles
north of Gorazde. Witnesses said at least 50 people
were killed and many more injured. Others managed to
escape the hail of bullets and grenades by jumping down
the steep rocky ravine or by hiding in bushes and
woods, they said.
"It was like hell. Everyone was screaming as people and
children, some cut in half by volleys of bullets,
stumbled all over the place," said Dragica Gavrilovic,
one of the refugees.
"People were trapped in their burning cars. Others
crawled looking for their relatives, or jumped down the
cliff in panic," she said, standing frozen next to the
grave of her 11-year-old son, Dragan, who was killed in
the ambush.
She said she carried Dragan's body so she could bury
him in Rogatica.
"Many others were not that lucky. They had to leave
their dear ones behind," Gavrilovic said.
Evidence of the massacre was still visible two weeks
after the ambush. No one has dared to remove the
remaining corpses, fearing another attack from nearby
forests.
Skeletons sat in burned-out cars, and decomposing
corpses lay on the side of the dusty road. Stray dogs
were eating the remains.
Many Western governments and international
organizations, including the United Nations and the
European Community, have blamed Serb forces for much of
the violence in the civil war that has killed
thousands. The Serb forces hold about two-thirds of
Bosnia's territory.
But rival Muslims and Croats have also come under
increasing international criticism for crimes and human
rights abuses, including "ethnic cleansing" of
territories under their control.
"Ethnic cleansing" is the term used to describe the
expulsion of people to create ethnically homogeneous
areas.
After the Serb forces left their positions on the hills
above Gorazde, Muslim residents, 70 percent of the
town's prewar population of 40,000, looted and torched
the houses of fleeing Serbs, witnesses said.
Almost every building, including Serb Orthodox
churches, has been torched in the Serb quarter on the
southeastern bank of the Drina River that divides
Gorazde, a trading center about 35 miles southeast of
the Bosnian capital Sarajevo.
Pigs with slashed throats sprawl in yards belonging to
Serbs.
The move to loosen the siege on Gorazde coincided with
an international London peace conference in which all
warring groups participated. The decision by Bosnian
Serb leader Radovan Karadzic angered local Serb
warlords - and those who had to flee.
"Muslims have abused our peace gesture by launching
attacks on innocent civilians. We may have to
counterattack to regain the territory," Dusan Kornjaca,
the commander of Serb forces, said in an interview.
The Serbs still hold sway on the approaches to Gorazde.
In Rogatica, heavy cannon and machine-gun fire could be
heard from the direction of Gorazde as trucks towing
howitzers headed there.
"The decision to give up Gorazde is a treason. Karadzic
should be ashamed," said 68-year-old Marko Ratkovic,
who managed to flee to Mladenovac, 75 miles northeast
of Rogatica, in neighboring Serbia.
"All of us here have lost at least one family member in
this brutal war. It has to stop before we all
exterminate each other," said Ruza Blagojevic, one of
about 200 Gorazde Serbs who settled in the Mladenovac
refugee center after a harrowing journey.
She said when a charity organization offered them
clothes, all the women chose black - for mourning.
(c) AP 1992 - Posted for educational and fair use only
=======================================
'JUDGMENT!' - The Video Shown As Evidence at The Hague
Tribunal!
{It can now be shipped gift wrapped...Order details
after text}
=======================================
September 26 was the first day of the Bosnian part of
the Hague trial against Slobodan Milosevic. That day
Mr. Milosevic showed excerpts from a video which
demonstrates how the British TV station, ITN,
fabricated evidence of Serbian death camps in Bosnia.
The video, co-produced by the Emperor's Clothes website
and reporters from Serbian Television (RTS), is called
'JUDGMENT!' It demonstrates that the famous Bosnian
pictures, especially the tall, seemingly starved man
behind barbed wire in a death camp, were a hoax. It was
not a death camp. The Muslim men were not behind barbed
wire. This is eminently clear from video footage shot
that day and reproduced in 'JUDGMENT!' The movie shows
step-by-step how the phony pictures were created.
The Bosnian pictures had a huge impact in 1992. Twenty
minutes after they were shown on TV on August 6th,
George Bush Sr. held a press conference to proclaim a
whole new get-tough policy against the Bosnian Serbs.
This was followed by a worldwide media campaign - all
based on the Bosnian pictures.
If we are right that these pictures were a fraud, then
the implications are staggering: the pictures were
staged to justify a coordinated US/European policy of
demonizing the Serbian people to justify war. The press
conference was planned to coincide with the release of
the pictures. The worldwide press campaign against the
Bosnian Serbs was planned in advance.
You can view the same video Mr. Milosevic showed at The
Hague. If you conclude that we are not telling the
truth, send the video back and we'll refund the
purchase price in full. You don't risk a penny.
You can purchase a copy of 'JUDGMENT!' for $25 in the
US, $26 outside the US. (If you want gift-wrapping
please indicate whether you'd like 'Christmas' or
'all-purpose' gift paper and add $2 to the price)
Here's how you can order:
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Gift wrapping $2.00, please indicate 'Christmas' or
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URL for this article is
http://www.icdsm.org/more/gorazde.htm
Subscribe to our email list at
http://emperor.vwh.net/icdsm/maillist.htm
*Receive articles from the ICDSM Website*
Please send the link to this text to a friend. Or if
you're receiving this article via e-mail, please
forward it to your friends!
==================================================
A Rare Glimpse at the Reality of the Bosnian War
-- Associated Press Article
-- Comments by Jared Israel
[Posted 18 December 2002]
==================================================
During the trial of ex-Bosnian Serb official Biljana
Plavsic, Madeleine Albright and Elie Wiesel made
speeches about the supposedly monstrous Bosnian Serbs.
They portrayed Bosnian Muslims as analogous to Jews and
Bosnian Serbs as analogous to Nazis. As I shall
demonstrate in an upcoming article on that trial, what
Albright and Wiesel said amounts to Holocaust denial.
In addition, I will demonstrate that in his so-called
testimony, Mr. Wiesel lied.
Anyway, while researching Elie Wiesel's earlier
statements about Yugoslavia, I happened to read a most
revealing 1992 Associated Press (AP) dispatch. It is
posted below.
The AP dispatch is notable for three reasons:
1) It describes an all-out attack on the Serbian
civilian population in and around the Bosnian town of
Gorazde.
Prior to the attack, there had been sustained fighting
between Bosnian Serb troops and Muslim military forces
who controlled the town of Gorazde which had a mixed
Muslim/Serb population. The Serbian troops withdrew as
a peace gesture. After that, on August 26th, a column
of cars and buses including:
"3,000 Serbs, mostly women and children, was ambushed
by Muslims at Gnjila canyon, 11 miles north of
Gorazde."
The attackers were merciless:
"People were trapped in their burning cars. Others
crawled looking for their relatives, or jumped down the
cliff in panic," she said, standing frozen next to the
grave of her 11-year-old son, Dragan, who was killed in
the ambush."
The AP dispatch was published on September 12th, that
is, 17 days after the attack. Yet up until then,
"No one has dared to remove the remaining corpses,
fearing another attack from nearby forests."
The attack was not limited to the one gruesome ambush:
"After the Serb forces left their positions on the
hills above Gorazde, Muslim residents, 70 percent of
the town's prewar population of 40,000, looted and
torched the houses of fleeing Serbs, witnesses said."
This AP dispatch is unusual in that it actually
*mentions* the attack on these Serbs. Mostly the media
was silent when Serbs were attacked. As we shall show
in a soon-to-be-published article by Prof. Francisco
Gil-White, in fact it was the Serbs and also their
moderate Muslim allies who were the main victims of
anti-civilian terror in Bosnia. This was not because
the Serbs were saints. It was because the people whom
they and their Muslim allies were fighting were
fanatical Islamic Fundamentalists, misportrayed in the
Western media as peace loving, moderate democrats. But
all that is discussed in Prof. Gil-White's forthcoming
article. (When posted, it will be at
http://www.icdsm/more/bsn.htm
The point here is: this AP dispatch stands out because
it at least reports the anti-Serb atrocities.
2) But even this article reveals anti-Serb media bias.
From the start the article refers to anti-Serb violence
as "revenge." Revenge for what? What does the AP claim
happened to provoke such "revenge"? The article gives
no details, saying only that the town had been under
siege.
By using the terms, "siege" and "revenge," the writer
creates the impression that monstrous crimes must have
been committed *by the Serbs* because how else could
what the Muslims did constitute "revenge"?
Let us consider this a bit more.
The article says the Muslims outnumbered the Serbs in
the Gorazde area, 70% to 30%. A 30% minority is
probably not in a position to terrorize a 70% majority.
Moreover, this particular majority included people who
were armed and prepared to carry out the sort of
atrocities described in the AP dispatch.
Supporting this point, the AP uses the term, "siege."
If Gorazde was under siege *from Serbian forces* then
it must have been controlled *by Muslim forces.* So:
the town had a mainly Muslim population; it was
militarily controlled by Muslims; some of them were
quite capable of carrying out massacres. This hardly
sounds like a situation in which the Serbian forces
would feel safe in provoking the Muslims, even if they
wanted to.
Moreover, as the article states, the Serbs withdrew
their forces as a peace gesture. Would they have done
so without first rescuing the Serb civilian inhabitants
of Gorazde if, having committed outrages, they had
every reason to expect anti-Serb "revenge?"
The withdrawal of Serbian troops, the coordinated
assault on the Serbian neighborhoods, the desperate
flight of columns of cars and buses without troops to
protect them, the ambush and the extreme violence all
suggest that a) the Serbs naively misestimated their
foes' capacity for terror and b) after the troops
withdrew, the Serbian civilians were caught unaware by
the anti-Serb attack and fled in disarray.
The comments of a Serbian man supports this view:
"'The decision to give up Gorazde is a treason.
Karadzic should be ashamed,' said 68-year-old Marko
Ratkovic, who *managed* to flee to Mladenovac, 75 miles
northeast of Rogatica, in neighboring Serbia." (My
emphasis. Note the word, "managed." That suggests he
was caught unaware. That suggests he had no reason to
expect "revenge.")
And a Serbian military official says: "'Muslims have
abused our peace gesture by launching attacks on
innocent civilians.'"
Based on all of the above, I would suggest this
hypothesis: the presence of Serb military forces near
Gorazde *prevented* atrocities against Serbian
civilians. When the Serbian military withdrew, the
extremists among Muslims launched a pogrom: ambushes,
horrific murder, torching and looting of houses,
slaughter of livestock.
3) Speaking of livestock, note that the article
describes the attackers as having slaughtered pigs in
the Serbs' yards. The Bosnian Serbs were/are mostly
peasant farmers, many of whom do indeed breed pigs.
This is an important detail. Let me explain why.
The AP dispatch states that, "The Serb forces hold
about two-thirds of Bosnia's territory." It was common
for the Western media to make such statements,
suggesting that the Serbs had *seized* most of Bosnia,
i.e., they were aggressors.
A small point that the media neglected to mention was:
the Serbs *owned and occupied* roughly 2/3 of Bosnia.
Before the fighting broke out in Bosnia, the Slavic
*Muslim* population was comprised mainly of city
dwellers. The Slavic *Orthodox* population was
overwhelmingly farmers.
Because farming is land-intensive, in 1991 the Serbian
population owned about 2/3 of the land in Bosnia - that
is, they owned the land they lived on and farmed.
Bosnian Serb farmers were important food producers for
Yugoslavia and other European countries.
(We'll soon post an ethnic map of Bosnia that
demonstrates this.)
During the Bosnian conflict, many media reports
included sentences like the following, taken from a
different Associated Press dispatch:
"During the first two years of the war, Serb forces
took about two-thirds of Bosnia-Herzegovina, with the
Muslim-led government controlling the remainder." (AP,
October 27, 1994,
In fact, by limiting their military presence to the 2/3
of Bosnia where Serbs and their Muslim allies were
concentrated, the Bosnian Serb army was demonstrating a
defensive strategy. As Prof. Gil-White's article will
show, the Bosnian "Government" army was Islamic
Fundamentalist. One 6000-man division was named after
the World War II Waffen SS Division, Handzar, which
means "scimitar." These Fundamentalist troops, often
trained and led by fanatical veterans of the Afghan war
of the 1980s, preyed on Serbian peasants.
One such detachment controlled the town of Srebrenica.
Its leader was Nasir Oric, a Yugoslav Islamist. Here is
a Toronto Star reporter's account of an evening spent
listening to Oric boast about slaughtering Serb
farmers:
[Start Toronto Star Quote]
...I sat in his living room watching a shocking video
version of what might have been called Nasir Oric's
Greatest Hits.
There were burning houses, dead bodies, severed heads,
and people fleeing.
Oric grinned throughout, admiring his handiwork.
"We ambushed them," he said when a number of dead Serbs
appeared on the screen.
The next sequence of dead bodies had been done in by
explosives: "We launched those guys to the moon," he
boasted.
When footage of a bullet-marked ghost town appeared
without any visible bodies, Oric hastened to announce:
"We killed 114 Serbs there."
Later there were celebrations, with singers with wobbly
voices chanting his praises.
These video reminiscences, apparently, were from what
Muslims regard as Oric's glory days. That was before
most of eastern Bosnia fell and Srebrenica became a
"safe zone" with U.N. peacekeepers inside - and Serbs
on the outside.
[End Toronto Star Quote]
Note the sentence: "These video reminiscences,
apparently, were from what Muslims regard as Oric's
glory days." Oric's glory days! When he could raid
Serbian villages with impunity, cutting off heads and
launching people to the moon. His *glory* days! And the
Fundamentalist monsters who committed these crimes were
portrayed as moderate democrats by the Western media.
Note also that Oric curtailed his raids *because of the
increased strength of Serbian military forces*!
What the Western media called "laying siege to Muslim
towns," was in fact the heart of Serb military
strategy: to have sufficient military presence to
protect civilians from being slaughtered by the Islamic
Fundamentalist army.
Here's the AP dispatch on Gorazde.
-- Jared Israel
==========================================================
September 12, 1992, Saturday, AM cycle
SECTION: International News
LENGTH: 660 words
HEADLINE: Serb Refugees Face Bloody Muslim Revenge
BYLINE: By DUSAN STOJANOVIC, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: ROGATICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina
BODY:
Charred human skeletons, decomposing corpses and
burned-out cars are the grim remnants of a Muslim
assault on a column of Serb refugees fleeing
war-ravaged Gorazde.
When Serb forces on Aug. 26 eased their four-month
siege of the town in southeastern Bosnia, most of
Gorazde's Serb inhabitants tried to escape. Many feared
retaliation by majority Muslims who had been under
Serbian guns during the siege.
At dawn the next day, one of the columns of cars and
buses carrying 3,000 Serbs, mostly women and children,
was ambushed by Muslims at Gnjila canyon, 11 miles
north of Gorazde. Witnesses said at least 50 people
were killed and many more injured. Others managed to
escape the hail of bullets and grenades by jumping down
the steep rocky ravine or by hiding in bushes and
woods, they said.
"It was like hell. Everyone was screaming as people and
children, some cut in half by volleys of bullets,
stumbled all over the place," said Dragica Gavrilovic,
one of the refugees.
"People were trapped in their burning cars. Others
crawled looking for their relatives, or jumped down the
cliff in panic," she said, standing frozen next to the
grave of her 11-year-old son, Dragan, who was killed in
the ambush.
She said she carried Dragan's body so she could bury
him in Rogatica.
"Many others were not that lucky. They had to leave
their dear ones behind," Gavrilovic said.
Evidence of the massacre was still visible two weeks
after the ambush. No one has dared to remove the
remaining corpses, fearing another attack from nearby
forests.
Skeletons sat in burned-out cars, and decomposing
corpses lay on the side of the dusty road. Stray dogs
were eating the remains.
Many Western governments and international
organizations, including the United Nations and the
European Community, have blamed Serb forces for much of
the violence in the civil war that has killed
thousands. The Serb forces hold about two-thirds of
Bosnia's territory.
But rival Muslims and Croats have also come under
increasing international criticism for crimes and human
rights abuses, including "ethnic cleansing" of
territories under their control.
"Ethnic cleansing" is the term used to describe the
expulsion of people to create ethnically homogeneous
areas.
After the Serb forces left their positions on the hills
above Gorazde, Muslim residents, 70 percent of the
town's prewar population of 40,000, looted and torched
the houses of fleeing Serbs, witnesses said.
Almost every building, including Serb Orthodox
churches, has been torched in the Serb quarter on the
southeastern bank of the Drina River that divides
Gorazde, a trading center about 35 miles southeast of
the Bosnian capital Sarajevo.
Pigs with slashed throats sprawl in yards belonging to
Serbs.
The move to loosen the siege on Gorazde coincided with
an international London peace conference in which all
warring groups participated. The decision by Bosnian
Serb leader Radovan Karadzic angered local Serb
warlords - and those who had to flee.
"Muslims have abused our peace gesture by launching
attacks on innocent civilians. We may have to
counterattack to regain the territory," Dusan Kornjaca,
the commander of Serb forces, said in an interview.
The Serbs still hold sway on the approaches to Gorazde.
In Rogatica, heavy cannon and machine-gun fire could be
heard from the direction of Gorazde as trucks towing
howitzers headed there.
"The decision to give up Gorazde is a treason. Karadzic
should be ashamed," said 68-year-old Marko Ratkovic,
who managed to flee to Mladenovac, 75 miles northeast
of Rogatica, in neighboring Serbia.
"All of us here have lost at least one family member in
this brutal war. It has to stop before we all
exterminate each other," said Ruza Blagojevic, one of
about 200 Gorazde Serbs who settled in the Mladenovac
refugee center after a harrowing journey.
She said when a charity organization offered them
clothes, all the women chose black - for mourning.
(c) AP 1992 - Posted for educational and fair use only
=======================================
'JUDGMENT!' - The Video Shown As Evidence at The Hague
Tribunal!
{It can now be shipped gift wrapped...Order details
after text}
=======================================
September 26 was the first day of the Bosnian part of
the Hague trial against Slobodan Milosevic. That day
Mr. Milosevic showed excerpts from a video which
demonstrates how the British TV station, ITN,
fabricated evidence of Serbian death camps in Bosnia.
The video, co-produced by the Emperor's Clothes website
and reporters from Serbian Television (RTS), is called
'JUDGMENT!' It demonstrates that the famous Bosnian
pictures, especially the tall, seemingly starved man
behind barbed wire in a death camp, were a hoax. It was
not a death camp. The Muslim men were not behind barbed
wire. This is eminently clear from video footage shot
that day and reproduced in 'JUDGMENT!' The movie shows
step-by-step how the phony pictures were created.
The Bosnian pictures had a huge impact in 1992. Twenty
minutes after they were shown on TV on August 6th,
George Bush Sr. held a press conference to proclaim a
whole new get-tough policy against the Bosnian Serbs.
This was followed by a worldwide media campaign - all
based on the Bosnian pictures.
If we are right that these pictures were a fraud, then
the implications are staggering: the pictures were
staged to justify a coordinated US/European policy of
demonizing the Serbian people to justify war. The press
conference was planned to coincide with the release of
the pictures. The worldwide press campaign against the
Bosnian Serbs was planned in advance.
You can view the same video Mr. Milosevic showed at The
Hague. If you conclude that we are not telling the
truth, send the video back and we'll refund the
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You can purchase a copy of 'JUDGMENT!' for $25 in the
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