Srebrenica: The Star Witness Review of Germinal Chivikov's book. Devastating Indictment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia By Prof Edward S. Herman | |
Global Research, January 10, 2011 | |
A review of Germinal Chivikov's book Srebrenica: The Star Witness (orig. Srebrenica: Der Kronzeuge, 2009, transl. by John Laughland) - "a devastating indictment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)." The book shows that the Tribunal “does not behave according to the traditions of the rule of law”--it is a political rather than judicial institution, and has played this political role well. It is not the first work to effectively assail the Tribunal—Laughland’s own book Travesty (Pluto: 2006), and Michael Mandel’s How America Gets Away With Murder (Pluto: 2004) are powerful critiques. But Civikov’s book is unique in its intensive and very effective focus on a single witness, Drazen Erdemovic, and the ICTY’s prosecutors and judges handling of that witness. Erdemovic was the prosecution’s “star witness,” the only one in the trials of various Serb military and political figures to have claimed actual participation in a massacre of Bosnian Muslim prisoners. It is therefore of great interest and importance that Civikov is able to show very convincingly that this key witness was a charlatan, fraud, and mercenary, and that the ICTY’s prosecutors and judges effectively conspired to allow this witness’s extremely dubious and contradictory claims to be accepted without verification or honest challenge. Erdemovic was a member of a Bosnian Serb military unit, the “10th Sabotage Unit,” an eight-man team of which he claimed shot to death 1,200 Bosnian Muslim prisoners at Branjevo Farm north of Srebrenica in Bosnia on July 16, 1995. Erdemovic confessed to having personally killed 70-100 prisoners. He was initially arrested by Yugoslav authorities on March 3, 1996, and quickly indicted, but was turned over to the ICTY at pressing U.S. and ICTY official request on March 30, 1996, supposedly temporarily, but in fact, permanently. He was himself eventually tried, convicted, and served three and a half years in prison for his crimes. This was a rather short term for an acknowledged killer of 70-100 prisoners, but longer than he had anticipated when he agreed to testify for the ICTY—he had expected complete immunity, as he told Le Figaro reporter Renaud Girard (“Bosnia: Confession of a War Criminal, “ Le Figaro, March 8, 1996). He claimed to have an agreement with the ICTY whereby “in return for his evidence he will be allowed to settle in a Western country with his family. He will enter the box as a witness, not as an accused, and will thus escape all punishment.” But his earlier arrest, indictment and publicity in Yugoslavia may have made some prison term necessary for the ICTY’s credibility. He ended up after his prison term in an unknown location as a “protected witness” of the ICTY. But even before his own sentencing he had begun his role as star witness in the ICTY’s (and U.S. and NATO’s) trials of accused Serbs. He appeared in five such trials, and from beginning to end was taken as a truth-teller by prosecutors, judges, and the mainstream media. One of the most remarkable and revealing features of the Erdemovic case is that although he named seven individuals who did the killing with him, and two superiors in the chain of command who ordered or failed to stop the crime, not one of these was ever brought into an ICTY court either as an accused killer or to confirm any of Erdemovic’s claims. These co-killers have lived quietly, within easy reach of ICTY jurisdiction, but untroubled by that institution and any demands seemingly imposed by a rule of law. The commander of his unit, Milorad Pelemis, who Erdemovic claimed had given the order to kill, made it clear in an interview published in a Belgrade newspaper in November 2005, that the Hague investigators have never questioned him. He had never gone into hiding, but has lived undisturbed with his wife and children in Belgrade. Nor have ICTY investigators bothered with Brano Gojkovic, a private in the killer team who Erdemovic claimed was somehow in immediate command of the unit (a point never explained by him or prosecutors or judges). Civikov points out that only once did the judges in any of the five trials in which the star witness testified ask the prosecutors whether they were investigating these other killers. The prosecutors assured the judges in 1996 that the others were being investigated, but 14 years later the Office of the Prosecutor had not questioned one of them. And from 1996 onward the judges never came back to the subject. As these seven were killers of many hundreds in Erdemovic’s version, and the prosecutors and judges took Erdemovic’s version as true, why were these killers left untouched? One thing immediately clear is that the ICTY was not in the business of serving impartial justice even to the point of arresting and trying wholesale killers of Bosnian Muslims in a case the ICTY itself called “genocide.” But ignoring the co-perpetrators in this case strongly suggests that the prosecutors and judges were engaged in a political project—protecting a witness who would say what the ICTY wanted said, and refusing to allow any contesting evidence or cross-examination that would discredit the star witness. Civikov points out that the only time Erdemovic was subject to serious cross-examination was when he was questioned by Milosevic himself during the marathon Milosevic trial. And Civikov shows well that the ICTY presiding judge in that case, Richard May, went to great pains to stop Milosevic whenever his questions penetrated too deeply into the area of Erdemovic’s connections or credibility. In April 2004, a Bosnian Croat, Marko Boskic, was arrested in Peabody, Massachusetts, for having caused a hit-and-run car crash while drunk. It was soon discovered that Boskic was one of the members of Erdemovic’s killer team at Branjevo Farm But journalists at the ICTY soon discovered that the Tribunal did not intend to ask for the extradition of this accused and confessed murderer. A spokesman for the Office of the Prosecutor stated on August 2004 that the prosecutor was not applying for the extradition of Boskic because it was obligated to concentrate on “the big fish.” So killing hundreds, and being part of a “joint criminal enterprise” murdering 1,200, does not yield big enough fish for the ICTY. In fact, this is a major lie as dozens of cases have been brought against Serbs for small-scale killings or even just beatings, and the ICTY has thrived on little fish for many years. In fact, the first case ever brought by the ICTY was against one Dusko Tadic in 1996, who was charged with a dozen killings, all dismissed for lack of evidence, leaving him guilty of no killings whatsoever, but only of persecution and beatings, for which he was given a 20 year sentence. A number of other Serbs were given prison sentences, not for killing people, but for beatings or passivity in not exercising authority to constrain underlings (e.g., Dragolic Prcac, 5 years; Milojica Kos, 6 years, Mlado Radic, 20 years, among others). The dossier of ICTY prosecution of little (Serb) fish is large. Thus, the Boskic case does not fall into any little-fish-disinterest category. Rather, it is perfectly consistent with the failure to bring to court Pelermis or any of the seven known co-perpetrators of the massacre. Civikov’s very plausible hypothesis is that this is another manifestation of star witness protection—the ICTY does not want his convenient testimony to be challenged. Little fish like Boskic might gum up a political project. Civikov contrasts the extremely alert and aggressive actions of the ICTY and U.S. authorities in getting Erdemovic transferred to the Hague in March 1996 with this remarkable reluctance to even question Erdemovic’s fellow killers. He was seen quickly as a man who might make proper connections to enemy targets, so no holds were barred then, or later.. Another remarkable feature of the handling of Erdemovic is his use as a star witness immediately after he had been declared mentally impaired and before his own sentencing. Following his first confession of guilt on May 31, 1996, on June 27, 1996 Erdemovic was declared by his trial judges to be unfit for questioning in his own sentencing hearing because psychiatrists found him to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, the doctors urging a pre-hearing review of his mental condition in six to nine months time. But on July 5th, little more than a week after this medical report, Erdemovic was put forward as the star witness in a pre-trial hearing to publicize the current allegations against Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. This was a remarkable spectacle. The two accused had not been apprehended, so they were not present to defend themselves, nor were their attorneys. It was only the prosecutors and ICTY judges in action. The same judges who had just declared him mentally unfit for questioning in his own hearing now pushed him forward without any further medical examination. The presiding judge Claude Jorda explained that Erdemovic’s own trial and sentencing were postponed “because we have asked for some further medical information,” which suppresses the fact that the judgment of the doctors was that Erdemovic was “unfit to be questioned,” presumably not just in his own trial. But Jorda’s service to the political project runs deeper—he not only allows the Prosecutor to put on the stand a just-declared medically unfit person, and does this before this self-admitted murderer is sentenced, he even assures Erdemovic that his evidence as a witness for the prosecution “might be taken into consideration.” It was mainly on the basis of unverified and unchallenged (and unchallengeable) testimony of this sick man and mass killer still facing his own trial and sentencing, that arrest warrants were issued for Karadzic and Mladic. What Erdemovic was prepared to do in service to the ICTY program was to help build the case that there was a line of command between himself and his co-murderers at Branjevo Farm and the Bosnian Serb high command, i.e., Karadzic and Mladic, and hopefully eventually Milosevic. He did this poorly, never showing those leaders’ involvement in or knowledge of this killing expedition, but mainly just asserting that its local commanders were under the authority of central Bosnian Serb headquarters. He claimed that immediate authority over the killing operation was held by Brano Gojkovic, a private in a team that also included a Lieutenant, and he mentions a mysterious and unnamed Lieutenant Colonel who took the unit to the killing site and then left. Erdemovic is not consistent on whether Pelermis ordered the killing or this unnamed Lieutenant Colonel. He also asserts that Colonel Petar Salpura, an intelligence officer of the Bosnian Serb army had direct command responsibility for the massacre. He vacillates on Gojkovic’s power, sometimes making him “commander” with great authority, sometimes merely serving as an intermediary. Erdemovic himself was allegedly without authority and coerced into killing, but Civikov makes a very good case that at that time Erdemovic was a sergeant, and that he had joined the team voluntarily. But he and a Lieutenant Franc Kos were supposedly bossed by private Gojkovic in this killing enterprise. This line of command is very messy! Civikov shows that the prosecution and judges strove mightily and successfully to prevent any challenges to Erdemovic’s implausible and contradictory, and partly disprovable, claims about the line of command. This includes, importantly, their refusal to call before the court even one of those “little fish” co-murderers and higher commanders who might have clarified the facts. Instead of calling to the stand his boss, Lieutenant Pelermis, or Pelermis’s boss, Colonel Petar Salpura, the ICTY is happy to stop with “a psychologically disturbed and apparently demoted sergeant,” who makes the ties that this court is pursuing with undue diligence. Erdemovic and a number of his colleagues in the .10th Sabotage Unit were clearly mercenaries, and after the ending of the Balkan wars served the French in Africa. Erdemovic himself had worked for a time with the Bosnian Muslim army, then with the Croatians, and then with the Bosnian Serbs. He was trained as a locksmith, but never managed to work that trade. He found military service, and eventually serving as a star (and protected) witness, more profitable, but he regularly claimed before the Tribunal that he was a good man, hated war, was coerced into participating in the Branjevo Farm mass murder, and confessed to his crimes there because he was a man of conscience. The ICTY judges believed him, never saw him as a mercenary despite his performing military service for all three parties in the Bosnian warfare, and the ICTY took pains to exclude any witnesses from testifying who would put him in a bad light. They could not avoid several awkward witnesses in other trials: Colonel Salpura, a defence witness in the Blagovic and Jokic trials, denied authority over the 10th Sabotage Unit, and gave clear evidence that the killer team was on holiday leave on July 16, 1995; Dragan Todorovic, a witness for the prosecution in the Popovic case and officer of the Drina Corp of the Bosnian Serb army, also testified that the killer unit was on leave, that Lieutenant Kos, not private Gojkovic, signed out for the arms to be used by the unit, and that Erdemovic volunteered to be a member of that unit, and was not coerced into joining it. Except for these awkward witnesses, the prosecutors and judges were able to keep out of the court record the fact that the Erdemovic unit that went to the Branjevo Farm did so during a ten-day vacation leave, not during regular service hours. Erdemovic himself never mentioned this fact. They also successfully buried the fact that, according to an early interview with Erdemovic, he claimed that his colleagues received a large sum of gold, perhaps 12 kilos, for some kind of service rendered. This payment, which suggests mercenary service, and not payment by the Bosnian Serb army, was never explored by prosecutors or judges in any of the trials in which Erdemovic participated, and was only raised by Milosevic, who, as noted, was harshly limited in his questioning by Judge Richard May. The facts that members of the killing group were on leave on July 16, 1995, and later findings of a French secret service connection of Pelemis and several of his colleagues, and the subsequent recruitment of soldiers from the 10th Sabotage Unit for mercenary service in Zaire to fight in the war there on the side of Mobutu, are suggestive. So is the fact that this mass murder of prisoners was extremely unhelpful to the Bosnian Serb cause, but worked out very well for the NATO powers. And it is clear why the ICTY, in service to NATO, would refuse to explore these questions and linkages. The protection of Erdemovic and the notable ICTY-NATO success in getting his problematic testimony accepted as truth in five separate trials of Serbs owes much to the media, which in the United States and Britain raised no questions and swallowed the party line intact (for a case study, see Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, “Marlise Simons on the Yugoslavia Tribunal: A Study in Total Propaganda Service,” ZNet, 2004). This applied not just to the mainstream media but to the supposedly left and dissident media, with only Z Magazine in the United States publishing reviews of serious critical works dealing with the ICTY (notably, Mandel, Laughland and Johnstone). Germinal Civikov points out that killing 1,200 people in five hours, ten at a batch, as claimed by Erdemovic, would allow under three minutes for each batch, including getting them out of the buses, taking them to the shooting zone, shooting them, making sure of their being dead, and disposing of the bodies. There were also claimed interludes of drinking, arguing, and cavorting. Why did the prosecutors, judges and media never address this issue of timing? Why did the prosecutor sometimes speak of only “hundreds” killed at the Branjevo Farm? Could it be related to the fact that fewer than 200 bodies were recovered from the site, and no aerial photos were ever produced that showed body removal or reburial? Civikov says, “So something between 100 and 900? This lack of knowledge, incidentally, will not prevent the judges, several months later, from putting the figure of 1,200 in their judgment after all—mind you without any proof, then or now, apart from the accused’s own claim.” Once again, why did they not call any other perpetrator to discuss numbers? One would love to know what the ICTY prosecutors and judges said behind the scenes in confronting Erdemovic’s numbers, lines of authority, role, lies and contradictions. Perhaps the ICTY insiders did discuss them, but they and the media have played dumb. A Wikileaks was, and still is today, desperately needed to deal with the Erdemovic/ICTY travesty—and in fact, a Wikileaks on the ICTY would wreak havoc in the trial of Karadzic and pursuit of Mladic. So will Civikov’s Srebrenica: The Star Witness if it gets the exposure that it deserves. | |
Livre Srebrenica, ce qui s'est réellement passé
Vendredi 19 novembre 2010 Préface de Peter Priskil Préface Srebrenica est une petite ville dans l’Est de l’ancienne république yougoslave (et aujourd’hui, l’État, fondé lors d’un baptême du feu des œuvres de l’Otan) de Bosnie-herzégovine, une enclave dans la zone serbe d’implantation habitée surtout par des musulmans jusqu’au milieu des années 1990. Mais Srebrenica fut bien davantage : dans la république fédérée qui devait bientôt être occupée par les troupes de l’ONU et de l’Otan et ravagée par la guerre civile, ce fut une « zone sûre » (prétendument démilitarisée), mise en place par les puissances d’occupation, en sus d’autres zones comme Žepa, Goražde, Sarajevo, Tuzla et Bihać. Toutes ces « zones sûres » étaient situées dans des régions principalement habitées par des Serbes mais étaient sous contrôle des Nations unies ou de l’Otan, ce qui revenait au même. Sous la protection des anciennes forces d’occupation, les musulmans, qui étaient tout sauf « démilitarisés » et étaient équipés d’armes modernes (des témoignages de serbes survivants les ont décrits comme des « Ustaša » ou des « Turcs »), lancèrent des attaques contre les villages serbes des alentours, en maltraitèrent de façon bestiale les habitants, puis les torturèrent et les massacrèrent. Ceci se produisit dans la zone entourant Srebrenica depuis 1992 et se prolongea jusqu’à l’été 1995, lorsque les forces serbes prirent la ville sans qu’il y eût de combat (!), et le présent document concerne les crimes commis contre des civils serbes et qui sont demeurés impunis jusqu’à ce jour : Srebrenica, ce qui s’est réellement passé. Mais Srebrenica est encore un peu plus : Lorsque les politiciens occidentaux et leurs médias inféodés contrôlés par les États-Unis mentionnent ce nom, c’est aussi un lieu chargé d’émotions très prenantes, une atroce métaphore sanguinaire dans laquelle le racisme, le fascisme, la folie génocidaire, le chauvinisme, le nationalisme impérial(iste), le ratiboisement ethnique, les viols de masse – bref, toutes les étiquettes essayées et approuvées qu’on peut coller sur les attrape-nigauds du politiquement correct au cours des deux dernières décennies – ne sont pas seulement exprimés, mais aussi gueulés jusqu’à l »’assourdissement de tout un chacun. Et qu’on note bien ceci : c’est toujours le Serbe l’assassin, tout comme lors de la Première Guerre mondiale, ou lors de l’invasion de la Yougoslavie, ou maintenant, pour la troisième et sans doute dernière fois. L’empire américain et ses vassaux ont bouclé la boucle dans une perversion des faits qui « permet » aux Serbes, au lieu d’être, comme ils l’étaient, les victimes d’un génocide perpétré par l’Église catholique et les nazis, d’être dépeints comme un peuple fasciste de criminels en tous genres. Clinton, l’ancien chancelier allemand « socialiste » Schröder et son ancien ministre verdâtre des Affaires étrangères Fischer ne sont rien d’autres que les exécuteurs testamentaires de l’héritage d’Hitler. Dans sa version officielle, « Srebrenica » est un mensonge de propagande qui ne se muera jamais en vérité, bien qu’il soit très fréquemment répété haut et fort. Ce que fut le Sender Gleiwitz pour les nazis, la petite ville de Srebrenica l’est devenue pour l’Otan. Proportionnellement à la dimension du crime même, qui ne fut possible en premier lieu que via ce mensonge, on ne peut que le comparer aux bébés en couveuse prétendument massacrés et aux prétendues armes de destruction massive en Irak. Alors que, dans un même temps en Irak, des dizaines de milliers de personnes tombaient, victimes des sanctions économiques imposées à la Serbie depuis 1992. Au printemps 1999, ce qui restait de la Yougoslavie fut bombardé par l’Otan durant onze semaines et, à l’époque, le cœur historique et religieux de la Serbie, l’Amselfeld (« Kosovo »), fut amputé, occupé et, en violation des importantes stipulations des Nations unies qui garantissaient l’intégrité territoriale du peu qui restait de la Yougoslavie, « libéré afin de recevoir son indépendance ». Aujourd’hui, quinze ans plus tard, ce mensonge est ravivé une fois de plus, parce qu’il est temps aujourd’hui de sortir des jugements à la fois contre la direction politique et militaire des Serbes et contre les combattants ordinaires dans des procès à grand spectacle organisés par les vainqueurs et d’enterrer vivantes toutes ces personnes dans des prisons – à moins, bien entendu, qu’ils ne soient déjà morts dans des circonstances douteuses. Et le monde ne découvrira rien de bine important, et surtout pas sur Internet, en dehors des quelques minutes de braillements des incontournables émissions de haine. Cela en devient spectral : Radovan Karadžić ou Vojislav Šešelji, dont les partisans sont des millions, se muent en monstres médiatiques et en stéréotypes de la terreur. La classe dirigeante a sans aucun doute tiré ses leçons depuis la débâcle nazie, lors du procès de Georgi Dimitrov et des autres, après l’incendie du Reichstag : le mensonge progresse dans le sens du temps et la technologie le rend possible à l’échelle mondiale. La propagande autour de « Srebrenica » est le faux Auschwitz de l’Otan. Srebrenica, telle qu’elle fut vraiment : l’une des centaines de zones de conflit de la Bosnie-Herzégovine déchirée par la guerre civile entre les Croates catholiques, les Serbes orthodoxes et les musulmans convertis de force sous la domination turque. Exactement comme les nazis, les impérialistes américains ont soumis le pays en se servant de l’axe islamique-catholique et le mensonge domina dès le départ : les Serbes de Bosnie sont supposés avoir tué plus de 250.000 personnes, alors qu’il est prouvé qu’un total se situant entre 30.000 et 60.000 personnes de tous les camps de la guerre civile ont été tuées : les mauvais et archi-mauvais Serbes sont supposés avoir systématiquement pratiqué des « viols de masse » sur 60.000 femmes, non, 40.000, en fait, puis, non, 20.000 jusqu’au moment où, en fin de compte, il n’est plus resté que 119 cas répertoriés (sans compter les victimes serbes de viols, bien sûr), etc., etc. Jusqu’à un certain point, la « Srebrenica » de la propagande est le terme générique pour désigner cette orgie de mensonges qui pleuvent sur nos têtes depuis des années. Il y a eu des combats aussi, dans la véritable Srebrenica – naturellement, serait-on presque tenté de dire – qui se sont soldés par la mort au combat d’environ 2000 musulmans. Des études sérieuses existent, à ce propos, aucune n’étant plus exemplaire que celle proposée par le coauteur du présent document, Alexander Dorin (« Srebrenica – Die Geschichte eines salonfähigen Rassismus » – Srebrenica. L’histoire d’un racisme présentable –, Berlin 2010), par le Bulgare Germinal Civikov et quelques autres. Soit, leurs voix sont faibles, ce qui est inévitable sous un régime de censure à l’échelle du monde. Mais, avant la « Srebrenica » de la propagande, des crimes réels furent commis dans la même région et on les a occultés, passés sous silence, dissimulés, balayés sous la carpette parce qu’ils avaient été commis contre des Serbes. Et c’est de cela que traite le présent document. Alexander Dorin n’a épargné ni ses efforts, ni son temps ni son argent, durant toutes ses années de douloureuses recherches afin de mettre en lumière tous ces faits qui ont été niés et, sans un coup de chance – sous la forme d’une rencontre avec le coauteur Zoran Jovanović – il n’y serait toujours pas parvenu. Ce qu’ils ont mis en lumière est horrible, mais néanmoins vrai. (Quelque autorité de censure passera-t-elle à l’action, cette fois aussi, agissant au nom de la « protection de la jeunesse », contre la « racisme », la « misogynie » ou que sais-je encore ? Nous verrons…). En tout cas, il est devenu possible, pour l’observateur impartial, d’entendre le fameux « autre camp », dont la voix, sans cela, aurait été réduite au silence à jamais – et c’est une raison suffisante, et urgente, en effet, pour publier le présent document. Fribourg-en-Brisgau, juillet 2010 Traduction: JMF |
| Source : Liste de diffusion Roger Romain |
The Politicization of "Genocide"
It has become an annual ritual each July to commemorate the "Srebrenica massacre," which dates back to July 11-16, 1995. The now institutionalized characterization is that "8,000 [Bosnian Muslim] men and boys" were executed by the Serbs at that time, in "the worst mass killing in Europe since the Second World War." This memorial is attended to each year by marches and "a line of weeping relatives" (in Bosnia), interviews with the families of victims, discussion groups, conferences, and numerous media articles and statements of diplomats and political leaders recounting the story and expressing regrets at alleged UN, Dutch, and Great Power failures to prevent the killings. This year the President of Serbia, Boris Tadic, was in attendance, showing the contrite face of the New (defeated, and supplicant) Serbia. President Obama declared the massacre "a stain on our collective consciousness" in violation of our promise of "never again" after the Nazi atrocities of World War II, and he stated that "there can be no lasting peace without justice."1
The regular annual focus of attention on this particular tragedy and violence calls for an explanation. After all, there is no such annual memorial in the West as regards the Sabra-Shatila killings of several thousand Palestinians on September 16-18, 1982, although these were killings of civilians, whereas the Bosnian Muslims killed at Srebrenica were almost exclusively military-aged men, mostly soldiers. Also, just one month after the Srebrenica massacre the Croatian military invaded the Krajina area, killing several thousand, including several hundred women and children, and turned some 250,000 Serbs into refugees, the largest case of ethnic cleansing in the Balkan wars. Interestingly, this episode is not only not the subject of any annual memorial, it has been celebrated as a "Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day" in Croatia, but EU officials and President Obama do not express their sympathy with the Serb victims or regret at the insensitivity of the Croatians celebrating their ethnic cleansing success. Madeleine Albright did condemn the Krajina expulsions in the Security Council on August 10, 1995, but she was more indignant over "13,000 men, women and children [who] were driven from their homes" at Srebrenica.2 A European Parliament resolution of January 15, 2009, which institutionalized an annual "day of commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide," mentions the "deportations of thousands of women, children and elderly people" from Srebrenica, but nowhere does it officially condemn or call for the memorialization of the deportation of 250,000 Serbs from the Krajina.3
This selectivity is hugely political. The Sabra-Shatila killings and Croatian ethnic cleansing were carried out by U.S. allies, the latter with overt U.S. support (though Albright "categorically" denied this before the Security Council4), which rules out any official mention, memorialization by the Western establishment, or any demand for justice. The Srebrenica massacre, by contrast, was carried out by a U.S.-NATO target, occurred at a very convenient moment, and has been serviceable ever since. It helped justify intensified military intervention by the United States and NATO, including eventually NATO's Kosovo-Serbia bombing war of March-June 1999, the follow-up NATO occupation of Kosovo, and the final breakup of Yugoslavia. Srebrenica's role in demonization helped exclude the Bosnian Serb leadership from participation in the 1995 Dayton peace negotiations, and, eventually, using the NATO-country-sponsored International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia (ICTY), made it possible to charge, try, and finish off Milosevic.5 It has also rationalized the further humiliation and subjugation of Serbia, an act of vengeance for its resistance to the post-Soviet Western power projection into the Balkans, just as Vietnam was subjected to an 18-year boycott for its resistance to a U.S. invasion and attempt to impose a satellite regime on that distant land. For brain-washed Western audiences, however, Srebrenica shows that Western military intervention can be good -- if there was a failure to stop genocide at least the West brought a belated justice to the villains. A continuous reminder of this humanitarian role in Western military intervention is provided by the annual Srebrenica memorial.
Admittedly, 8,000 is a large number. But 250,000 Serb refugees is a larger number. Recall also Albright's notorious statement in 1996 that the death of 500,000 Iraqi children resulting from the U.S.-sponsored "sanctions of mass destruction" was "worth it," based on U.S. political aims. There is also the internal State Department memo of September 1994, cited in The Politics of Genocide,6indicating that 10,000 Hutu civilians were being slaughtered per month by the U.S. ally Kagame's forces in Rwanda. This very large number didn't affect U.S. support of Kagame, it has never been cited in the mainstream media or by the humanitarian interventionists; and Kagame is excluded from the long list of black African leaders (14 so far) indicted by the International Criminal Court. And of course there are no memorials or Western demands for justice for these unworthy victims.
Apart from its selectivity, there is also a question of the accuracy of that large number, 8,000. There has been a steady stream of inflated, sometimes ludicrously inflated, claims of target-inflicted deaths in the Yugoslav wars. From 1993 onward the implausible and unverified Bosnian Muslim claim of 200-300,000 victims was uncritically accepted and institutionalized in the Western mainstream media. It was undermined in 2003-2007 by a pair of studies sponsored by the ICTY itself and the Norwegian government, both of which found total deaths on all sides, including soldiers, to be on the order of 100,000.7 This deflation has only slowly crept into the mainstream media, which have never explained or apologized for their gullibility. In the case of the Kosovo bombing war of March-June 1999, U.S. official claims of Serb killings reached up to 500,000, and Western officials and media pundits were hysterical in their denunciations and indignation. Eventually the official claims fell to 11,000, but the total number of bodies uncovered and missing persons together, including soldiers and non-Kosovo Muslim civilians, was little more than half that official claim (some 6,000).8 But the mainstream media used the word "genocide" 323 times in describing what happened to the Kosovo Muslims, versus 80 times for the Iraq sanctions, which involved 200 times as many civilian deaths, and they used it only 17 times for deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which involved over a thousand times more deaths than in Kosovo.9 Inflated counts and "genocide" for the worthy victims (of U.S. targets); low key treatment and avoidance of invidious words like "genocide" for the unworthy victims (of the United States itself or one of its clients).
The Srebrenica massacre of "8,000 men and boys" dates back to a Red Cross claim about missing people in July-August 1995, when no real data were available,10 yet that same number is cited today, in a small miracle of coincidence and persistence. In fact, the 8,000 is now taken as possibly an underestimate -- the EU resolution of January 15, 2009 speaks of "more than 8,000" and this is commonplace. It will be recalled that the initial 9-11 estimate of deaths from the New York City Trade Center attack -- 6,886 -- fell subsequently to 2,749, a decline of 60 percent. The figure for Muslim dead in Bosnia fell from some 250,000 in 1992-3 to fewer than 100,000 today, a fall of well over 60 percent. The number allegedly massacred by the Serbs in Kosovo during the 1999 bombing war fell from U.S. official claims of 100,00, 250,000, and as high as 500,000, to an official (and still inflated) figure of 11,000 today, a drop of 90 percent or more. But Srebrenica's number stays the same -- not because it is based on evidence, but because it is so central and useful a political construct, and is repeated by members of the establishment with the assurance of true believers.
The 8,000 is sustained in part because the follow-up list of missing persons eventually assembled was done by means of an appeal to the Bosnian Muslim population to come forward with names of the missing. Again, by the continuing miracle, this list still approximates 8,000. But it was not collected on any kind of scientific basis, and it has been found that some of the names are of men who died before July 1995, quite a few seem to have voted in the 1996 election, and the number has never been sustained by forensic evidence. As late as 2001 the ICTY had only located some 2,100 bodies in the Srebrenica area, not many identified or shown to have been July 1995 Srebrenica victims.11 Later grave finds have been similarly problematic. A basic problem throughout has been the fact that there was severe fighting between the thousands of Bosnian Muslim 25th regiment soldiers, who left Srebrenica for Bosnian Muslim lines on or shortly before July 11, 1995, and Bosnian Serb forces. Both Bosnian Muslim and Serb officials have estimated that 2,000 or more Muslim soldiers were killed in this retreat; the Bosnian Muslim Chief of the Supreme Command Staff General Enver Hadzihasanovic testified in the trial of Radislav Krstic that he could "claim for certainty that 2,628 members, both soldiers and commanding officers, members of the 28th Division, were killed" during this retreat.12 According to an analysis of the autopsy reports compiled by the Office of the Prosecutor at the ICTY from 1995 to 2002 by the Serb forensic expert Ljubisa Simic, in roughly 77 percent of the bodies associated with these reports it was either impossible to determine the manner of death (i.e., execution or combat) or the manner of death strongly suggested that it was in combat.13 This uncertainty was very convenient, because, with a compliant ICTY, Bosnian Muslim investigative authority, and media, they could all be quietly assumed to have been executed.
There is no doubt that there were at least several hundred executions in the Srebrenica area in July 1995, as 443 ligatures and "at least" 448 blindfolds were found in the mass graves,14 but there is no serious evidence that more Bosnian Muslims were executed there than the number of civilians killed by Croatian forces in Operation Storm in the following month. The Bosnian Serbs were in a vengeful mood as the "safe area" of Srebrenica had long been the military base from which Bosnian Muslim forces went out to attack nearby Serb towns. Many scores of these towns were assaulted and several thousand Serbs were killed in these actions in the several years before July 1995.15 Naser Oric, the Bosnian Muslim military commander in those years, actually bragged about his killings to Western journalists, showing them videos of beheadings, and acknowledging an action which had left 114 Serb dead.16 What a field day the ICTY would have had if such admissions, and videos, had been attributable to Karadzic, or Mladic, or Milosevic! But given their attribution to an alleged defender of a victim population, Oric could get away with murder. General Philippe Morillon, who had been in charge of UN forces in the Srebrenica area, told the ICTY that Serb brutality at Srebrenica could be explained in good part by this prior Oric-Bosnian Muslim violence, but this context was never mentioned in the EU resolution of January 2009 nor in the speeches about and analyses of Srebrenica at the July 2010 memorials.
Another bit of context-stripping has been the assailing of the UN-provided Dutch peacekeeper contingent at Srebrenica for its failure to stop the massacre. There has even been a lawsuit initiated against them in the Netherlands for their alleged complicity.17 This line of memorial apologetics rests on multiple misrepresentations and lies. The EU resolution of January 2009 mentions twice that Srebrenica was "a protected zone" by virtue of a UN Security Council ruling, and that "Muslim men and boys . . . had sought safety in this area under the protection" of UN protection forces, so that the massacre "stands as a symbol of the impotence of the international community." But the Resolution fails to mention that the protected zone was supposed to have been demilitarized, but wasn't. Naser Oric and his fighting cadres had not been disarmed, and many attacks on Serb villages had been launched from the "protected area." Furthermore, in July 1995 there were several thousand well-armed Bosnian Muslim soldiers of the 25th regiment located in the town. So the Resolution deceives, first by omission of the actual role of the "protected zone" (protecting a fully operational Bosnian Muslim military base). It deceives (and lies) secondly in saying men and boys had "sought safety" in Srebrenica, implying that these were civilians, not the 25th regiment. It contains other lies: one is that there was "rape of a large number of women," a charge for which there has never been any evidence whatsoever. So rather than the "impotence of the international community" what we see here was really the "international community's" complicity with Naser Oric and the Bosnian Muslims in their military strategies, local ethnic cleansing, and provocations of the Bosnian Serb armed forces, and the parallel refusal of the Western leadership to try to settle these struggles, manifested in their sabotaging of the early 1992 Lisbon agreement and its successor peace plans.18
The fact that a well-armed Bosnian Muslim regiment of several thousand men was located in Srebrenica, and retreated without putting up any defense against a Serb attack force of 200, shows that the charges against the lightly armed Dutch peacekeeping contingent of 69 men are ridiculous and misdirected. Why not sue the Bosnian Muslims responsible for the retreat for any deaths that followed in the Srebrenica area? But in the spirit of the memorial, and the narrative and ideology on which it rests,19 the Bosnian Muslims can only be victims, and the UN and tiny Dutch protection force must bear the burden of responsibility (along with the Serbs).
Another Srebrenica memorial myth is that the memorial and political actions associated with it are necessary for real peace. In the words of the EU resolution, "there cannot be real peace without justice," which means getting Mladic into court, and this is essential for "reconciliation" so that "civilians of all ethnicities may overcome the tensions of the past." But how about justice for the thousands of Serbs killed from the UN-protected Srebrenica base between 1992 and July 1995, the 250,000 driven out of Krajina in Operation Storm, and the thousands of Serbs and Roma driven out of Kosovo since the NATO takeover and installation of the KLA in power? NATO's bombing war against Yugoslavia in March-June 1999 was in violation of the UN Charter, killed many hundreds of civilians, and involved the use of illegal weapons (cluster bombs, depleted uranium). Don't we need criminal prosecutions in these cases for justice and reconciliation? Furthermore, doesn't huge attention to a one-sided remembrance and memorial create resentments and assure long-term ethnic hostilities? Can't it be used by the preferred side to keep the pot boiling, rub salt in the wounds of their enemies, and obtain financial and political advantages from their powerful Western supporters?
The memorials and EU Resolution are not designed for peace and reconciliation; they are a continuation of the war of pacification and vengeance against Serbia and a means of showing that the ongoing U.S.-NATO militarization and permanent global "war of terror" is a fight against evil.
Endnotes
1 "World Leaders Mark 15th Anniversary of Srebrenica Massacre," CNN Wire July 12, 2010; "Statement by the President on the 15th Anniversary of the Genocide at Srebrenica," White House Office of the Press Secretary, July 11, 2010.
2 For Madeleine Albright's respective comments, see "The situation in Croatia" (S/PV.3563), UN Security Council, August 10, 1995, p. 20; and "The situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina" (S/PV.3564), UN Security Council, August 10, 1995, pp. 6-7.
3 European Parliament resolution of 15 January 2009 on Srebrenica (P6_TA(2009)0028), Official Journal of the European Union, para. 2, para. D, pp. C 46 E/111 - C 46 E/113.
4 "The situation in Croatia" (S/PV.3563), UN Security Council, August 10, 1995, p. 20. "[L]et me categorically deny the allegation that I was told had been made by Mr. Djokic," Albright said before the Security Council, "that the United States gave tactical advice or logistical support to the Government of Croatia's military operation. This baseless charge can only make it harder for my Government to see the day when Serbia and Montenegro can rejoin the community of nations." Of course, she was lying.
5 Slobodan Milosevic died in prison in March 2006, two weeks after the ICTY judges voted against allowing his temporary transfer to Moscow for treatment of his heart condition. See Edward S. Herman and David Peterson,