Srebrenica 'Massacre': Is The Hague
Hyping a Hoax? Part
1 by George Pumphrey
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The "massacre of Srebrenica", where 8,000 Muslim males of
military age are reported to have been summarily executed by Bosnian
Serbian troops in the aftermath of the takeover of the town, has been
termed the worst war crime in Europe since World War II. Most
significantly, it has been deemed not merely a crime of war, but evidence
of a campaign of genocide, the worst war crime imaginable.
The case of Srebrenica, and the subsequent genocide
indictment, can be seen to have brought about a major change in the
political and social rules of conduct in international relations, and not
only for this region of Europe. A new set of factors has been introduced
into world politics. Some of the most important changes are:
- The discrediting of the United Nations for supposedly
having stood idly by, allowing a "genocide" to take place on territory
under its authority, which was a prerequisite for:
- Promoting NATO as the world's new "peace keeping"
force, allowing the US-led military alliance to strike and eventually
occupy sovereign states or to take sides in civil wars outside the
constraints of the democratic and peace-oriented principles of the
United Nations Charter;
- The relativisation and resulting trivializing of Nazi
barbarism, a prerequisite for releasing Germany from its obligations to
seek reconciliation with its World War II victims and allowing it once
again to exercise military force anywhere in the world;
- Creating public acceptance of inquisitorial methods of
journalism and judicial inquiry, denying the accused not only the
presumption of innocence and the benefit of the doubt, but of
long-established democratic rights to proper legal defense;
- Undermining journalistic standards of fairness in favor
of propaganda in a media industry organically linked to dominant
economic and military powers;
- The imposition of a discriminatory "moral" double
standard of "human rights", selectively applied in favor of particular
national, social, cultural or "ethnic" groups, leaving others without
"rights" worthy of respect by Euro-American powers, and therefore:
- Growing acceptance of treating a whole nation or people
as inherently criminal and therefore unworthy of basic rights of equity
before the law.
In short, with Srebrenica important mainstays in the
international political order of the post-war period were ushered out the
door. This has all been made possible through a massive propaganda
campaign spreading the story of a yet-to-be-proven massacre, which has
become the key piece of evidence for an also yet-to-be-proven campaign of
genocide. Momentous political decisions have been based upon and justified
by the supposition that a huge massacre took place in Srebrenica,
decisions determining the welfare of the peoples of this region and
beyond.
Three years later, in 1998, the effort to find evidence
was still underway, as yet more areas in the vicinity of Srebrenica were
being dug up in search of the "mass graves" presumed to contain the
remains of the victims of the "Srebrenica massacre." As with previous
years' excavations, representatives of the UN Security Council's ad hoc
International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia held their press conference
at the beginning of the dig.
A revealing press
conference
Information from this press conference, as reported in the
New York Times, provokes questions about the basis of the juridical work
of this ad hoc Tribunal. Mike O'Connor, reporting on the beginning of a
dig in the village of Kamenica, in the spring of 1998, writes
that:
"Exhumations in 1996 [the first year of digging]
recovered 460 bodies, (...) 7,500 others were still missing from the
town of Srebrenica. Finding the others has been the goal of war-crimes
investigators for more than two years."1
Anonymous investigators (investigators for the Tribunal
spoke to the reporter "on condition of anonymity") said that what they
hoped to find "will bolster the cases against [the] 2 Bosnian Serb
leaders" Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Radko Mladic, indicted for genocide by
the Tribunal.1
Two months later, the NY Times reported that the total
number missing was 7,300, that 1,000 bodies had been found, but that "only
about 15 bodies have been identified.2 Other reports
have given similar, though slightly inconsistent, figures.3 This
inconsistency is based on the different sources of the figures. Whereas
O'Connor sticks to the quasi-official (because least partisan) figures
given by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the author of the
second Times article, David Rohde, relies on figures from the
"survivors" of Srebrenica, meaning Muslim (usually Muslim government)
sources. That the Muslim authorities have every reason to exaggerate the
number of victims on their side of the conflict is without question and
therefore their figures are to be taken with more than a grain of salt.
Already throughout the course of the war their estimations of the numbers
of dead - widely reported in the press without verification - have had to
be revised downward.4 Thus, for
this paper, the Red Cross figures will be used.
But if finding the other 7,000 has been the goal of war
crimes investigators for more than two years, the question should be
raised: on what did the Tribunal base its charges of "genocide" if they
did not even have the proof that the massacre for which the two Serb
leaders are charged ever occurred? If they now - three years later - are
still trying to scrape together enough bodies to make their indictment
plausible, on what was their indictment based?
O'Connor writes that the Tribunal now has to try to
"prov[e] that the soil around the bodies came from the original mass
graves."5 Does this
mean that what they had considered to be "the original mass graves" were
either empty or sheltered too few bodies to justify their charges?
Under such circumstances, it appears that the Tribunal
charged Karadzic and Mladic according to the principle: "Indict now. Look
for evidence of a crime later". And even when the evidence is not found,
there is no suggestion that perhaps the proper course would be to revise
the indictment or drop the charges.
Diana Johnstone, who has been closely following the
developments in the Balkans, noted in The Nation:
- "When, in the early months of the war which raged
across Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992, the Muslim-led government in
Sarajevo, seconded by Croatian agencies in Zagreb, presented Western
media with reports indicating that the Serbs were pursuing a deliberate
policy of genocide, a basic principle of caution, essential to justice
was rapidly abandoned. That is the principle that the more serious the
accusation, the greater the need for proof, since otherwise accusations
will become an instrument of the lynch mob."6
In the media, each succeeding generation of speculation -
even falsification - is built upon preceding generations of unproven
reports, many of which were set in motion as deliberate disinformation by
secret services and public relations agencies. Once they have been
repeated over and over as certainty, anyone who would dare to venture
upstream to the source and demand substantiating evidence runs the risk of
being verbally lynched for having denied something as obvious as that the
earth's surface is flat.
Given the fact that the number of persons alleged to have
been summarily executed could make the difference between a charge of
"genocide" and a charge of "war crime", and faced with the difference
between the 8,000 alleged to have been killed and the 460 dead bodies
actually found, the first step in beginning to sort out fact from fiction
would be to clear up this discrepancy in numbers.
Playing the
numbers
The International Committee of the Red Cross published a
press statement on September 13, 1995, which stated:
- "The ICRC's head of operations for Western Europe,
Angelo Gnaedinger, visited Pale and Belgrade from 2 to 7 September to
obtain information from the Bosnian Serb authorities about the 3,000
persons from Srebrenica whom witnesses say were arrested by Bosnian Serb
forces. The ICRC has asked for access as soon as possible to all those
arrested (so far it has been able to visit only about 200 detainees),
and for details of any deaths. The ICRC has also approached the
Bosnia-Herzegovina authorities seeking information on some 5,000
individuals who fled Srebrenica, some of whom reached central
Bosnia."7
The September 15, 1995, New York Times gives another
accounting:
- About 8,000 Muslims are missing from Srebrenica, the
first of two United Nations-designated 'safe areas' overrun by Bosnian
Serb troops in July, the Red Cross said today. (...) Among the missing
were 3,000, mostly men, who were seen being arrested by Serbs. After the
collapse of Srebrenica, the Red Cross collected 10,000 names of missing
people, said Jessica Barry, a spokeswoman. In addition to those
arrested, about 5,000 'have simply disappeared,' she said.8
Aside from simply adding the 3,000 Muslim men in
Srebrenica upon arrival of the Bosnian Serb military (who the Serbs then
took as prisoners of war) and the 5,000 Muslim men, reported to have left
Srebrenica before the arrival of Bosnian Serb forces, to inflate the
figures - and therefore the gravity of the accusation - this report makes
no mention of the fact that by mid-September 1995 a sizable portion of the
group of 5,000 had already reached Muslim territory and safety.
And the fact that the Red Cross was asking the
Bosnia-Herzegovina [Muslim] authorities for information about the 5,000
(the original figure) - "some of whom [had already] reached central
Bosnia" - has completely disappeared from the news. The entire 5,000 of
the one group and the 3,000 of the other are still today - 3 years later -
being counted as "missing" and therefore presumed dead.
Even the Red Cross played
loose with the numbers
The Red Cross report was itself lacking the objectivity
that one would have hoped for from a non-partisan organization. Its very
off-hand "some of whom reached central Bosnia" gives the impression that
only a handful could be accounted for by mid-September. But again the
press gave another picture. Within a week of the takeover of Srebrenica
(July 18, 1995) one learns that:
- "Some 3,000 to 4,000 Bosnian Muslims who were
considered by UN officials to be missing after the fall of Srebrenica
have made their way through enemy lines to Bosnian government territory.
The group, which included wounded refugees, sneaked past Serb lines
under fire and crossed some 30 miles through forests to
safety."9
Similar reports appeared in other journals at the time. On
August 2, 1995, The Times of London published the following:
- "Thousands of the "missing" Bosnian Muslim soldiers
from Srebrenica who have been at the centre of reports of possible mass
executions by the Serbs, are believed to be safe to the northeast of
Tuzla. Monitoring the safe escape of Muslim soldiers and civilians from
(...) Srebrenica and Zepa has proved a nightmare for the United Nations
and the International Committee of the Red Cross. For the first time
yesterday, however, the Red Cross in Geneva said it had heard from
sources in Bosnia that up to 2,000 Bosnian Government troops were in an
area north of Tuzla. They had made their way there from Srebrenica
"without their families being informed," a spokesman said, adding that
it had not been possible to verify the reports because the Bosnian
Government refused to allow the Red Cross into the area.10
The Washington Post explains: "The men set off at dawn on
Tuesday, July 11, in two columns that stretched back seven or eight
miles."11
Double
counting?
Two weeks before the Red Cross representatives Angelo
Gnaedinger and Jessica Barry gave their numbers to the press, another
spokesperson for the International Red Cross in Geneva, Pierre Gaultier,
provided an important detail. In an interview given to the German journal
Junge Welt, he explained:
- "All together we arrived at the number of approximately
10,000 [missing from Srebrenica]. But there may be some double
counting... Before we have finished [weeding out the double counting] we
cannot give any exact information. Our work is made even more
complicated by the fact that the Bosnian government has informed us that
several thousand refugees have broken through enemy lines and have been
reintegrated into the Bosnian Muslim army. These persons are therefore
not missing, but they cannot be removed from the lists of the missing
(...) because we have not received their names."12
Since the number of "missing" (and therefore assumed dead)
has remained at roughly 8,000 throughout the past 3 years, it can be
reasonably assumed that the Muslim government has never furnished the Red
Cross with the names of those who reached Muslim lines.
3,016 massacre victims
vote...
Also to be noted is that when Prof. Milivoje Ivanisevic at
the University of Belgrade took a close look at the Red Cross list, he
discovered it contained the names of 500 people who were already deceased
before Bosnian-Serb troops entered Srebrenica.
Even more interesting, when comparing the Red Cross' list
with the electoral list for the 1996 fall elections, he also found that
3,016 people listed by the Red Cross as "missing" were on the electoral
lists the following year.13 This leads
to one of two possibilities: either the Muslims were having their dead
vote, meaning that the voters were bogus, and the election a fraud; or the
voters were in fact alive, in which case, here is an additional piece of
evidence that the massacre is a fraud.
Early in the war, journalists from Time magazine saw
through the game being played on the press and international
organizations. They wrote: "Bosnian Muslims, fighting at the raw level of
their rivals, are likewise guilty of barbarism--and of inflating horror
stories about the Serbs to win sympathy and support."14 It appears
that they were not without success.
Poor performance by Red Cross
and media
With deliberately inflated figures clearly being used to
fuel a major propaganda campaign to make "Srebrenica" a symbol of Serbian
"genocide", some Red Cross spokespersons in effect became a party to the
conflict by failing to bring important information to public attention. It
is difficult to understand how correspondents such as Mike O'Connor and
their editors could be unaware of the extremely misleading and inaccurate
content of the reports they published.
Both Red Cross and UN officials knew that thousands were
safe. Yet neither corrected the communiqué given in September. And both
failed to report that Ms. Barry's 5,000 who "simply disappeared," had in
fact simply disappeared back into the ranks of the Bosnian army. The
propaganda put into circulation by representatives of the Bosnian
government was allowed to stand uncontested even by organizations
otherwise seen as non-partisan.
Within days of the take-over of Srebrenica, Zepa, a second
Moslem enclave (and UN Safe Area), was also captured by Bosnian Serb
forces. Among the defenders of Zepa were hundreds of the "missing"
soldiers from Srebrenica. The New York Times recounts:
- "The wounded troops were left behind, and when the
Bosnian Serbs overran the town on Tuesday, the wounded were taken to
Sarajevo for treatment at Kosevo Hospital. Many of them had begun their
journey in Srebrenica, and fled into the hills when that 'safe area'
fell to the Bosnian Serbs on July 11. These men did not make it to
Tuzla, where most of the refugees ended up, but became the defenders of
Zepa instead. 'Some 350 of us managed to fight our way out of Srebrenica
and make it into Zepa,' said Sadik Ahmetovic, one of 151 people
evacuated to Sarajevo for treatment today. (...) They said they had not
been mistreated by their Serb captors."15
It might seem strange that the Muslim soldiers of Zepa
would abandon their wounded comrades and that 5,000 Srebrenica soldiers
would abandon their women and children to an enemy with a reputation - at
least in the media - of being sadists, and rapists seeking to commit
"genocide". Could it be that these Muslim soldiers knew that they need not
be particularly worried about their women, children and wounded comrades
falling into the hands of their Serbian countrymen? The Serbian forces had
the wounded Muslim soldiers evacuated behind Muslim lines to their Muslim
hospital in Sarajevo. Is this how one goes about committing genocide? Is
this the military force compared to Nazis? What a trivialization of Nazi
barbarism!
The London Times article quoted above mentions that 2,000
Srebrenica soldiers made their way to the north of Tuzla "without their
families being informed". Were their families ever informed? Other than
the very few articles that took notice of their resurrection from the
presumed dead, the public at large was never informed that they were in
fact alive. On the contrary. And the women of Srebrenica continue to
demonstrate demanding information about their loved ones, whom they
believe are still alive.
Supposed
massacre victims are...
secretly sent to other countries!
To maintain the hoax, it is not only necessary to create
the illusion that the proof of a massacre exists, but it is also necessary
to suppress any evidence that it did not happen. Not only must the 5,000
never be accounted for, but not too many of the 3,000 listed by the Red
Cross as prisoners of war must be allowed to return "from the dead."
On January 17, 1996, the British daily "Guardian"
published an article concerning one group of the former Muslim POWs from
Srebrenica and Zepa, who, once liberated from a POW camp, were flown
directly to Dublin:
- "Hundreds of Bosnian Muslim prisoners are still being
held at 2 secret camps within neighboring Serbia, according to a group
of men evacuated by the Red Cross to a Dublin hospital from one camp -
at Sljivovica. (...) A group of 24 men was flown to Ireland just before
Christmas [1995](...). But some 800 others remain incarcerated in
Sljivovica and at another camp near Mitrovo Polje, just three days
before the agreed date for the release of all detainees under the Dayton
peace agreement on Bosnia(...). The Red Cross in Belgrade has been
negotiating for several weeks to have the men released and given
sanctuary in third countries. A spokeswoman said most were bound for the
United States or Australia, with others due to be sent to Italy,
Belgium, Sweden, France and Ireland. (...) Since late August, the Red
Cross has made fortnightly visits from its Belgrade field office. (...)
Teams from the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague have been in Dublin to
question and take evidence from the men."16
Why would prisoners of war, whose normal first wish upon
being freed would be to be reunited with their families and to restart
their interrupted lives in peacetime, be rushed off to Dublin, with
"papers to remain in Ireland"? Why would the Red Cross - usually known for
reuniting families - be seeking to secretly spirit them out of their
homeland, away from their family and friends? Were their families ever
informed?
The ex-prisoners were widely dispersed. For instance, to a
second country...
- [The] US decided to accept 214 Bosniaks who, (...) had
been detained in Serbian camps and give them refugee status.17
Why have neither the Red Cross (which has been visiting
the prisoners since August 1995), nor the Tribunal (in its search for
evidence of a "genocide" in Bosnia, for which Srebrenica is slated to be
the centerpiece), nor the American government made mention since August
1995 of these men being given refugee status?
And to a third country...
In 1996, the pro-government (Muslim) news agency TWRA
reported:
- "[One] Hundred-three Bosnian soldiers who were recently
released from prisons in Serbia, were sent to Australia against their
will", claims their commander, Osmo Zimic. Zimic also criticizes the
UNHCR, whose spokesman claimed these soldiers demanded departure to
Australia and by no means return to Bosnia for they would allegedly face
criminal charges as deserters there. "This is not true", says Zimic.
Australian immigration & ethnic affairs office spokesman says he was
informed [of] Zimic's allegation from the Bosnian embassy in Canberra
and that the investigation was initiated."18
"The Bosnian Embassy in Australia requested the Hague
International Tribunal (ICTY) to start an investigation on the
deportation of Bosniaks (800 persons) from Serbia to Australia and
Europe in which, supposedly, UNHCR assisted, instead [of] involving
Bosniaks in the exchange of prisoners, esp. for they had been in the
camps in Serbia which claimed not to be involved in the war in Bosnia.
The principal witness for the prosecution is Osmo Zimic, a Bosnian Army
Officer, one who had been deported to Australia against his
will."19
It seems as though the Red Cross, the UNHCR, and a host of
"western" governments around the world were engaged in hiding the fact
that these men were not massacred.
Who stood to gain?
As a result of the Srebrenica hoax, a new order of the
world is beginning to take shape, where the UNHCR assists in creating
refugees, where the Red Cross helps separate families and where Tribunals
indict first and look for crimes later.
Before discovery of conclusive evidence that the alleged
crime has even been committed, the indictment alone is made to serve as
punishment. This reverses the principle of "innocent until proven guilty"
and amounts to inquisitorial justice. For three years the Tribunal has
been searching for evidence of an alleged genocide which has already
largely served its political purpose. Now the search is on for a
retrospective judicial fig leaf.
End of Part I.
Footnotes and Further
Reading
Emperor's Clothes has published other
articles challenging the Srebrenica massacre story. For a list, with brief
summaries, go to "Was There a Massacre in Srebrenica?" at
http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/list-s.htm
Footnotes for Part I:
1) O'Connor, Mike; Mass Graves in Bosnia
Bolster War-Crimes Cases; IHT (NYT-Services), 14.5.98
2) Rohde, David; "In Bosnian Town Where
Thousands Died, Ethnic Hate Overwhelms Small Kindnesses" New York Times,
July 25, 1998.
3) As noted below, early reports used the
figures 10,000 and then 8,000. The Washington Post gives 12,000 as the
original number of missing.
4) "News organizations and specialists,
after three years of war, talk of 200,000-250,000. The Bosnian government
in April 1995 lowered its previous estimate to just over 145,000, about 3
percent of the pre-war population."(my emphasis, gp) David Owen,
Balkan Odyssey, Harcourt Brace, 1995, pg. 80;
5) ibid
6) Johnstone, Diana, Selective Justice in
The Hague: The War Crimes Tribunal on Former Yugoslavia is a Mockery of
Evidentiary Rule; The Nation, 22.9.97
7) Former Yugoslavia: Srebrenica: help for
families still awaiting news; ICRC News 37
8) AP; Conflict in the Balkans; 8,000
Muslims Missing; New York Times; Sep 15, 1995; p. 8.
9) Chris Hedges; Conflict in the Balkans: In
Bosnia; Muslim Refugees Slip Across Serb Lines; New York Times; July 18,
1995, p. 7.
10) Evans, Michael and Kallenbach, Michael;
Missing' enclave troops found; The Times; 02 August 1995 p. 9.
11) Dobbs, Michael/ Spolar, Christine;
12,000 Muslims Massacred In July Srebrenica Exodus; Washington Post,
October 27, 1995.
12) Pierre Gaultier (interview), Wo sind
die Vermißten aus Srebrenica? Junge Welt, 30.8.95
13) Faux électeurs... ou faux cadavres;
Balkans Infos, Paris; Oct. 1996 (No. 6); See also Ivanisevic, Milivoje;
"Un Dossier qui pose bien des Questions"; Balkans Infos, Paris; Dec. 1996
(No.8).
14) McAllister, J.F.O. et al; Specters of
barbarism in Bosnia compel the US and Europe to ponder: Is it time to
intervene?; Time Magazine Aug. 17, 1992.
15) Hedges, Chris; Bosnia Troops Cite
Gassings At Zepa; New York Times, Jul 27, 1995
16) Vulliamy, Ed; Bosnia: The secret War -
Serbs 'run secret camps': Men freed from clandestine detention tell Ed
Vulliamy of random beatings and 'mobile torture machines'; Guardian,
17.1.96
17) S.K., Another Two Mass Graves
Discovered, Press TWRA, Jan 19,1996
18) A.S.; Bosnian Soldiers in Australia
Against Their Will; Press TWRA, Feb 6, 1996
19) A.S.; Investigation on
Deportation of Bosniaks Requested; Press TWRA, March 9, 1996
19a) See UN
War Crimes Tribunal Delivers a Travesty of Justice by Prof. Robert M. Hayden at http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/unwar.htm
19b) See Still More Evidence - Was the Srebrenica Massacre a
Hoax? by René Grémaux and Abe de
Vries at http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/falsely.htm