Srebrenica Remembered

[Nono]

Quote by: PH I don't trust any foreign war that the US finds itself fighting to be as stated. The hidden agenda of disinformation is worth looking into.

Fair enough. But the fact that this power had a hidden agenda or that warring party had also done bad things does not add up to prove that the Serbs didn't massacre 8,000 people in cold blood. (I say again: Look at what they did to the residents of Sarajevo -- yeah, those poor Serbs were goaded into it ). Srebrenica was merely the biggy that shamed Europe and the US into finally lowering the boom, which they'd sat on their hands and pretended they didn't need to do for the previous five years "because the Serbs are born, unbeatable warriors").

To say that the Bosnian Serbs committed a huge massacre at Srebrenica (and many other massacres elsewhere), that they ran horrific concentration camps and committed all manner of other hair-raising deeds doesn't mean that the Croats and Muslims didn't themselves commit crimes. So what?

Try talking to some Bosnian Serbs sometime. In my experience (here's just one example: five years ago I shared a room with one for two weeks) you'll probably get a non-stop paranoid harangue about the Turks and the Middle Ages.* Seems to me these people have a serious surfeit of mythology.

* In the book he wrote about Bosnia, the Canadian General Lewis Mackenzie (mentioned by ZNet) calls such lectures "industrial-strength propaganda sessions". As a matter of fact I suggest you read his book. He doesn't take any guff from any of the parties. But I defy you to finish reading it with the impression intact that the Bosnian Serbs are the victims of one of those much-loved-and-much-cited-by-them conspiracies to make them look bad.

[Gorgo]

You've talked to a Serb! Well, I'm convinced.

[Nono]

Very funny, Gorgo, I said it was an example. Another Bosnian Serb crime that slipped my mind but has been amply documented is mass, systematic rape, which served all sorts of purposes, genetic and psychological.
They really are a bunch of decent Joes, but endlessly misunderstood and conspired against by the Worldwide Turkish Plot.

[Gorgo]

Quote by: Nono Another Bosnian Serb crime that slipped my mind but has been amply documented is mass, systematic rape,

Actually, no it hasn't. I mean, no more than what usually happens.

[Nono]

Flat-earth stuff, Gorg. You just don't want to see it is all.

The Foca municipality was the site of some of the most brutal crimes committed during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Hercegovina.(1) Bosnian Serb civilian, police, and military officials, in collaboration with paramilitary troops and former Yugoslav Army reservists called in from Serbia and Montenegro, took over Foca in April 1992. They established a wartime government called the "Crisis Committee," much like those established in many towns in Bosnian Serb-controlled territory, to plan and carry out the expulsion of the non-Serb population. Using a thorough propaganda campaign to convince the local Bosnian Serb population that they were under threat of a Muslim fundamentalist coup, the Crisis Committee established a network of detention centers, where non-Serb civilians were detained, tortured, raped, and either expelled, killed, or "disappeared," leaving the town as it is today, almost completely ethnically Serb. Businesses and properties of non-Serbs were expropriated or destroyed.

The persons alleged by many sources to be responsible for the crimes committed in Foca during the war continue to wield power in the town. In many cases, they are in governmental or police positions. In other cases, they hold even higher-ranking positions in the Republika Srpska or Bosnian government. (...)

The rest is available from Human Rights Watch and similar stuff from a host of other sites (Amnesty International, UN, etc. etc. etc.)

Or are all these organizations part of the International Anti-Serb Conspiracy?

It's you, Gorgo, who don't have a leg to stand on.

[Gorgo]

NONO, this is a thread about Srebrenica. You have stated that 8,000 people were "massacred" in Srebrenica. What we have seen, is that there was a war in Srebrenica. What we have seen, is that there are a couple of thousand bodies found. What we have seen, is that the number 8,000 is probably a fabricated number, and that most of the 2,000 were probably combatants, Serb and non-Serb alike.

If you wish to discuss the hostilities in Yugoslavia in general, and how someone got a black eye in some bar there, there are other threads for that.

[Nono]

Fair enough. Let's confine it to Srebrenica. You have produced a great deal of stuff about ulterior motives by this or that nation and dastardlinesss by this or that non-Serb group, but nothing to convince me that many thousands of non-combatant men were not massacred in Srebrenica by a Bosnian Serb army notorious for its atrocities.* All sides were known to exaggerate for publicity purposes during the conflict, and given the enormous forensic task of tabulating the squishy remains of the victims, nobody could swear it was bang on 8,000 (but I wouldn't be in the least surprised).

As part of your ongoing campaign to whitewash the Serbs, you claim that it was "only" about 2,000 "combatants". This is wishful thinking and blindness to evidence produced by entities whose objectivity you'd better not challenge unless you have something pretty persuasive to cite.

This axe you keep grinding -- I really would be interested to know where you got it.

* I ask again: One group who would have every interest in contesting the idea that the Serbs massacred innocents is the pathetic Dutch UN contingent, since this would let them off the hook of dishonour they are skewered on for the rest of their lives.
Gorgo, can you explain why they aren't feverishly denying the Serb-massacre version of events? No? Well ain't that curious! They were right there, weren't they?

[Gorgo]

Quote by: Nono you claim that it was "only" about 2,000 "combatants".

I say that it was probably that. I have no idea. The point is, that you seem to have no reasonable evidence to say that 8,000 people were massacred. It is clear that 2,000 bodies were found. It is clear that almost all are male. It is clear that some were Serbs. I'm not sure how you can claim that 8,000 were massacred. Please show reasonable evidence.

[Gorgo]

These are the people that you're relying on here:

"Wild allegations of Auschwitz-like conditions in Serb "concentration camps" were spread by "journalists of attachment" who lapped up propaganda handouts by Muslim and Croat officials and PR hirlings. Roy Gutman, who won a Pulitzer prize jointly with John Burns for Bosnia reporting in 1993, depended heavily on Croat and Muslim officials and witnesses with suspect credentials and implausible claims, and he was a major source of inflated, one-sided, and false "concentration camp" propaganda. [15] John Burns' Pulitzer award was based on an extended interview with Boris Herak, a captured Bosnian Serb supplied to him and a Soros-funded film-maker by the Bosnian Muslims. Several years later Herak admitted that his extremely implausible confession had been coerced and that he had been forced to memorize many pages of lies. Two of his alleged victims also turned up alive in later years. In reporting on Herak, John Burns and the New York Times (and the Soros-funded film) suppressed the credibility-damaging fact that Herak had also accused former UNPROFOR commandant, Canadian General Lewis Mackenzie, of having raped young Muslim women at a Serb-run bordello. [16] These scandalous awards are symptomatic of the media bias that was already overwhelming in 1992 and 1993.

In a recent development of interest, on a visit to the dying Alija Izetbegovic, Bernard Kouchner asked him about the Bosnian Serb concentration camps, whereupon Izetbegovic, surprisingly, admitted that these claims had been inflated with the aim of getting NATO to bomb the Serbs. [17] This important confession has not been mentioned in the U.S. or British mainstream media."

[Nono]

Now it's you who's ranging far away from Srebrenica. Thought you believed such ranging was off-topic.

Quote by: Gorgo These are the people that you're relying on here: … Roy Gutman … John Burns …

No I'm not. (Nice paste-job though. That passage was already in the link of your previous post.) I have other sources:

Human Rights Watch : "Serb forces killed between 7,000 and 8,000 Bosnian men and boys in the week after the fall of the town. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has ruled the crimes in Srebrenica to be genocide."

Amnesty International : "As the tenth anniversary approaches of the massacre of around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, Amnesty International members around the world are calling for the perpetrators to be brought to justice."

HRW, the ICTY, AI – all dupes? Is that it Gorgo?

You're the equivalent of the Auschwitz-quibblers, people who have some sort of emotional stake in holocaust denial. Otherwise I can't grasp your dogged whitewash of all things Serb.

[Gorgo]

Where is the evidence of 8,000 massacred? The HR report has no evidence at all, it's just spreading the same rumors. The AI report says that 7,414 are "missing." Where is the evidence of 8,000 massacred?

[Gorgo]

Another interesting article for what it's worth. I have not researched it further, so can't tell how good the source is, but it fits in with what I know about it.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRA403A.html

[Nono]

Quote by: Carlos Martins Branco The comparison Srebrenica vs. Krajina, as well as the related media reaction by the "free press" in the West, is also rather instructive.

Here we agree, Gorgo: the Krajina Serbs and the Srebrenica Muslims received media attention skewed by a double standard.

As for this guy's text, it was written eight years ago and is full of interesting speculative anectdote. But it does nothing to change the generally agreed fact of Muslim non-combatants being massacred en masse by Bosnian Serbs, something all the leading human rights organizations agree on despite the musings in this eight-year-old text.

[Gorgo]

Quote by: Nono something all the leading human rights organizations agree on despite the musings in this eight-year-old text.

No one is arguing that all sides didn't do nasty things. The enemies of the Serbs "ethnically cleansed" and massacred far more Serbs than the Serbs massacred, and the Serbs certainly did some executing.

The problem is, you still have no reasonable evidence that 8,000 people were massacred at Srebrenica.