The Construction of a
trauma
By René Grémaux and
Abe de Vries
Translated by 'Targets,' the
Dutch independent Website and
newspaper (Subscription info at end of
article)
Edited by Jared Israel and
Nebojsa Malic
Originally published in
'De Groene Amsterdammer', 13/3/96.
- "Horrible slaughter and large numbers of missing
people. That is what we think about in the Netherlands when
Srebrenica is mentioned.... But were the Muslims really victims of
the Serbs on such a large scale? And more important: were they so
innocent themselves?"
LIEUTENANT COLONEL Karremans, the man who terribly
irritated Dutch politicians, has been promoted to the rank of
colonel.
- "The Muslims burned 192 villages in
Eastern Bosnia," he declared guilelessly at a poorly prepared
press-conference in Zagreb. "Therefore I am saying that in this
war there are no ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’." (Dutch UN officer
Karremans)
Pure Serb propaganda, was the verdict of the press as
well as The Hague establishment. Karremans’ admiration of the
military genius of Ratko Mladic – the Bosnian-Serb commander
indicted for war crimes – was also objected to, not to mention their
alcoholic encounter, cleverly filmed and broadcast by TV Pale [in
Bosnia].
If we are to believe Secretaries of State Pronk and
Voorhoeve, genocide took place. Supposedly as the Serbs drove into
the city, DUTCHBAT [the Dutch Battalion] couldn’t do much more than
watch impotently...
Thus Srebrenica became the symbol of our national shame.
"Our boys" had given in to Mladic’s cut-throats and thus became
accomplice to the cruelest European bloodbath since the Second World
War.
This is the dominant picture. But it is not the only
view, nor is it complete. This becomes clear when examining
conversations with experts and Serbian refugees, as well as making a
detailed comparison of various reports and newspaper articles. All
claims considered, how many Muslims really are
missing? How reliable are eyewitness reports
of mass executions? What
is true about the rumors that some Muslim factions fought each
other? And did Muslims destroy all those Serb
villages and kill the inhabitants [before Serb troops retook the
city] or did they not?
A Serbian Cameraman Denies
Seeing Any Crime
BELGRADE, A CHILLY evening in January.
Serb cameraman and journalist Zoran Petrovic-Pirocanac is
angry. He is considering legal measures now that his work is
regarded as a piece of evidence concerning mass murder. The German
weekly magazine Stern of 16 November 1995, placed the
following caption under a picture taken from his
videotape:
- "Seconds before the murder: Armed Serbs contain a
group of Muslims near Konjevic Polje. A Serb cameraman shot the
scene until the first rounds were fired."
But Petrovic says he spent plenty of time at the scene,
before as well as after he filmed. And – he did not notice any
crime.
Besides, he does not recognize the words Frank Westerman
and Harm van den Berg of the Dutch daily 'NRC Handelsblad'
put in his mouth: "In total, our forces have massacred two
thousand Muslims." According to Petrovic, the Muslims were not
massacred, though many did die.
IN THE AREA of Konjevic Polje, a long column of Muslims
(soldiers, militia, armed and unarmed civilians) tried to break out
to [the city of] Tuzla and on July 12 and 13, 1995 attempted to
cross the strategically important road that connects Pale to
Belgrade, via Zvornik. Despite being ambushed by the Serbs, the
operation was a big success, as General Rasim Delic, supreme
commander of the Bosnian [Islamist] Army later told the Parliament
in Sarajevo. What happened to the unfortunate few that did not make
it, however, remains a mystery. Even the number of people involved
is not known. Some died, some were taken prisoner and possibly
executed on the spot, and others are supposed to have been moved to
Bratunac.
Mevlkudin Oric - a credible
witness?
A small number of witnesses say that this group was taken
by lorry and bus to one or two execution spots on July 14, in the
vicinity of the village of Karakaj, close to Zvornik. They talk
about mass murders with two thousand or more victims.
How credible is their charge? One of them is 25-year-old
soldier Mevludin Oric, born in a town not far from Srebrenica.
Though asked by The Hague tribunal to refrain from public
appearances, he gave an exclusive interview last October to the
Croatian magazine 'Nedjeljna Dalmacija'...
- "Oric, who said 'My father has disappeared, my four
brothers-in-law and many of my cousins have been murdered,' has
turned out to be a relative of Naser Oric, Commander of [Islamist
forces in] Srebrenica and accused by Serbs of war crimes ('the
Beast of Bosnia') and against whom the tribunal is preparing an
indictment.
- "Mevludin Oric left as a volunteer to Croatia in
January 1992, getting military training there. He...ended up as a
member of the infamous Croatian volunteer brigade 'King Tomislav'
in Herzegovina, where he helped with the occupation of the
barracks at Capljina (which later became a POW camp for Serbs).
After a short holiday in Croatia, Oric crossed the Sava River,
together with other volunteers, to fight the 'Chetniks' [name used
for Serb soldiers by the Muslims and Croats, meant to be
derogatory] in the town of Orasje. It is in this area, the
Posavina, that the first mass murder took place – and the war
hadn’t even started. Its victims were not Croats or Muslims, but
Serbs." (Sijekovac, March 27, 1992).
Volunteers like Oric formed the core of the military
police of the HVO [the paramilitary Croatian Council of Defence]and
took care of "supplies" for the elaborate system of Muslim-Croat
prison camps that was created in this area.
When Oric learned about the fighting around Srebrenica,
he decided to return to his native soil. In the interview, he claims
to have served as a "commander of a sabotage unit." He knew the area
around the town like no one else and the night before the exodus of
the Muslims he already knew that "no more than half of us would make
it."
Oric left in the rearguard of the column that stretched
for miles. He was captured near Kravica and claims the Serbs took
him via Bratunac to a school gymnasium in the town of Glumina, west
of Zvornik. From there, the men were supposedly transported in
lorries to the site of execution. And yet Oric can still talk about
it, just like 55-year-old Hurem Suljic, 63-year-old Smail Hodzic and
a seventeen-year-old boy named Nedzad Avdic.
Oric’s personal history is reason enough for doubt, but
the inconsistencies in the accounts of Smail Hodzic and Hurem Suljic
are obvious as well.
Smail Hodzic: A
basketball stadium becomes a soccer stadium becomes a
school
Hodzic
Story 1: Hodzic first said he witnessed
ambushes by the Serbs on the road to Zvornik. He was captured and
then moved to a "basketball stadium near Bratunac" and subsequently
taken to the execution spot, "a large field not far from a forest,"
he declared to Alexandra Stiglmayer in Die Woche of July
28.
Hodzic
Story 2: Soon thereafter, Hodzic told Roy
Gutman (in Die Tageszeitung of August 11), that he was held
at the "soccer stadium in Nova Kasaba," from where he and others
were moved to be killed, "probably in a town called
Grbavce."
Hodzic
Story 3: In the third version, told on October
4 to Aida Cerkez of Associated Press, Hodzic went through the
same experience as Oric, Suljic and Avdic. Now he was taken to "a
school in Krizevci" and the executions now took place not far from
Karakaj.
Hurem Suljic: Murder in a
school becomes beatings in a department store
Murders were committed at this school according to Suljic
as well. On February 16 of that year, he spoke on BBC
Newsnight. Footage of a not specified "school near Karakaj"
indeed showed bullet holes, one in the ceiling and one at the
toilet. But in the elaborate coverage of Suljic in 'The
Washington Post' of 6 November 1995, there isn't a word about
executions in a school; there is mention of beatings in a
department store near Bratunac, a location where Suljic supposedly
was kept prisoner.
Serbian woman: A school becomes
a sports complex
Woman's Story# 1: Bratunac is
the location of another school where massacres supposedly took
place, according to Robert Block in The Independent, July,
1995 . A woman is quoted. She is supposedly an inhabitant of Serbia
who recently visited her brother-in-law, a soldier in the Bosnian
Serb Army: "He and his friends are quite open-hearted about what
happened over there," she said. "They are killing Muslim soldiers.
They said that only yesterday (note: Monday, July 17) they killed
one thousand six hundred, and they estimate to have killed about
four thousand in total. They said to be in great hurry, and
therefore shot most of them."
Woman's Story# 2: A few days
later, Block’s colleague Louise Branson of The Sunday Times
brought the Serbian woman into the spotlight. Her {supposed!-
our note, ed.} husband, also fighting in the Bosnian Serb Army,
mentioned mass shootings with more than three thousand dead. But not
in a school in Bratunac. In a sports complex.
Up to this moment, human rights groups such as Human
Rights Watch have not been able to trace survivors of this crime.
"There has to be a more detailed investigation, in order to
establish the scale of violation of human rights that have taken
place in the area of Bratunac," says their respective
report.
[Emperor's Clothes note:
The authors say Human Rights Watch has not
been "able to trace survivors of this crime." Thus they assume
there was indeed a crime. Likewise, Human Rights Watch, whom many
accuse of being a humanitarian arm of US covert services, speaks
of establishing the "scale of violation" which again assumes there
have been violations. Since the first question is "Did a massacre
actually take place" and since so far the authors have
demonstrated only that a) the Dutch UN military officers who were
present don't believe it and b) the eye witnesses are ridiculously
mutually-and-self-contradictory (if they offered such testimony in
a legitimate court they would be arrested for perjury!) - given
all that, why make this assumption of guilt? Could it be that the
authors are themselves affected by the climate of anti-Serb
propaganda even while honorably reporting evidence that
contradicts their preconceptions? - Jared
Israel]
Dutch military officer: "I
don't believe it."
IT IS NOTICEABLE, however, that there has been little
attention to the account of Captain Schouten, although this Dutchman
was the only UN military officer in Bratunac, where he stayed for
several days, at the time the alleged bloodbath took place.
Schouten, quoted in Het Parool of July 27, 1995:
- "Everybody is parroting everybody, but
nobody shows hard evidence. I notice that in the Netherlands
people want to prove at all costs that genocide has been
committed. (...) If executions have taken place, the Serbs have
been hiding it damn well. Thus, I don’t believe any of it. The day
after the collapse of Srebrenica, July 13, I arrived in Bratunac
and stayed there for eight days. I was able to go wherever I
wanted to. I was granted all possible assistance; nowhere was I
stopped."
Milivoje Ivanisevic, a Serbian publicist who has
described the events in and around Srebrenica since 1992 in minute
detail, confirms Schouten’s story. From
6th until
16th of July, he was on
the spot.
"No mass executions have taken place between Srebrenica
and Bratunac," he said during a meeting with one of us in January in
Belgrade. "During the liberation of Srebrenica, five hundred Muslims
were killed in the direct vicinity. I don’t know what happened
elsewhere. I wasn’t there and therefore couldn’t see what was going
on." Ivanisevic calls it highly unlikely that large numbers of
Muslim soldiers were deliberately killed after surrender or being
captured. Maybe excesses took place, due to the large size of the
groups that were taken prisoner and the sometimes small number of
Serb guards, but according to him the intention was to keep as many
men alive as possible, so they could be exchanged for Serbs that
were held somewhere else.
In his view the Muslims were even lucky to be treated the
way they were. "You should have seen the women, with all those
children on their laps, that we have provided transport for. They
would have treated us very differently." He shows pictures of an
Orthodox church that was turned into a goat pen, of destroyed Serb
tombstones and of "granny Iva" (Ivanka Mirkovic), the only Serb who
remained in Srebrenica, who was found on July 12 with her throat
cut.
NO MATTER IF a few hundred were killed, as is whispered
in some places in Serbia, or seven thousand, as is feared elsewhere.
If people were executed without a trial, it is a war crime for which
the guilty must be punished.
On the other hand, the enormous distinction between the
search for mass graves of Muslims by the Western media, human rights
organizations and government officials and the lack of interest in
the over one thousand deaths of Serbs – mainly civilians – in and
around Srebrenica since the war started is appalling. In order to
understand how this could happen, we must take a look at the social
and geographic factors and the recent regional history.
The
background
In 1991 the municipality of Srebrenica had 37,211
inhabitants, of which 27,118 were Muslims (72.8 percent) and 9,381
Serbs (25.2 percent). Bratunac had 33,575 inhabitants: 21,564
Muslims (64.2 percent) and 11,479 Serbs (34.2 percent). As farmers,
the Serbs on average owned more land than Muslims. "Ethnic mixing"
only existed in the eyes of a superficial observer; most villages
and townships had distinct ethnic-religious majorities, being either
Serb or Muslim. This became a problem just prior to the war, when
tension rose and both groups started to feel
vulnerable.
Muslims no longer responded to draft into the JNA, the
Yugoslav Federal Army. Serbs were no longer called for service in
the local Territorial Defence and police reserves. As Serbs relied
on protection by the JNA, Croatian militia trained Muslim groups.
SDA, the Muslim party of [Islamist leader] Alija Izetbegovic,
provided the weapons.
One of the reasons for the mounting Serb suspicion was
the SDA Congress held in December 1991. This party...decided to
implement a radical ethnic policy. The ultimate goal was the
dzamahirija or Islamist State. Muslims had to settle Eastern
Bosnia in large numbers. A cordon sanitaire took shape
between Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs in the north, while in the
south a demographic and territorial connection with Sandzak [north
of Kosovo in Serbia] and Kosovo was desirable. Thousands of Muslims
from Sandzak migrated to Bosnia, and descendants of Bosnian Muslims
who had settled over a period of time in Turkey received an appeal
to return.
IN THE BEGINNING OF 1992, Serbs were shocked again as
invitations were distributed throughout the republic for a mass
meeting of Muslims at Bratunac, to be held at the first day of the
Bajram, the celebratory end of the Ramadan. The initiative
for this event at the "geographic centre of Muslims from entire
Yugoslavia" came from the National Muslim Council which openly
advocated arming people and establishing a Muslim state within the
Bosnian boundaries. Armed Muslim gangs, some of them factions of the
Patriotic League – which was formed in the neighboring Vlascenica –
started to intimidate Serb inhabitants of smaller towns with Muslim
majorities on April 12, 1992. But let there be no misunderstanding,
the Muslims themselves were scared of militia from outside the
region. In this context, Ivanisevic speaks about a "balance of
fear." Mutual deterrence, whereby militia and armed civilians spy on
their neighbors or keep them hostage, quickly led to a
drama.
On 20 April 1992, the day before Serbs took Vlasenica and
drove the Muslims out of the city, five Serbs died in the area of
Srebrenica. They were probably members of the Jovic militia, a group
of non-local Serbs. On May 6 (the Orthodox holiday of Saint George –
Djurdjevdan), Muslims from Potocari and Srebrenica carried
out an attack on the villages of Gniona and Bljeceva. Serbian houses
were looted and burned, and part of the population did not survive
the ordeal. Leading the attack on Gniona was Naser Oric. The
following day, seven Serbs died in an ambush at Osmace.
On May 8, judge Goran Zekic, Member of Parliament and
leader of the Srebrenica SDS (the Serb nationalist party), was lured
into an ambush and killed. Almost all of sixteen hundred Serbs
living in the city decided to leave after this incident. In the
night of May 8, they left in large numbers towards Bratunac, where
they were called "kukavice" (cowards). Cerska, Srebrenica, Zepa and
Gorazde became a refuge for thousands of Muslims who were chased
away by Serb offensives, but Serbs were also victims of ethnic
cleansing.
At first, between May 1992 and April 1993, all towns with
a Serbian majority were attacked. Then towns with a Serbian minority
were surrounded by Muslim towns, and eventually whole areas with a
dense Serb population – Podravanja, Kravica and Skelani – were
targeted. The Bosnian Serb weekly Javnost reported on 23
December 1995, that in the entire Podrinje – the area on Bosnia’s
side of the Drina River between Zvornik in the north and Visegrad in
the south – 192 villages were burned, 2800 Serbs were killed and six
thousand injured. According to Ivanisevic, more than a hundred
towns, villages and hamlets in the area of
Milici-Srebrenica-Bratunac-Skelani alone were affected.
These crimes [against Serbian civilians] are still
waiting for independent investigation, although they have been
confirmed by returning Dutch-UN military personnel.
- "Naser Oric gained control over large
parts of Bosnia through scorched-earth tactics. Because of this,
Karremans is right about it, large massacres of the Serb
population were committed. The Netherlands in return is asking for
proof. It is asking for evidence because, of course, there are no
‘funniest home videotapes’ showing raped women and murdered men.
But these things did happen!" ( Lieutenant Jasper Verplanke of the
Korps Commandotroepen [the Dutch equivalent of the Green
Berets] writing in the Dutch daily Nieuwsblad van het Noorden
of 17 August 1995)
AFTER THE UN declared Srebrenica a ‘safe haven’ in April
1993, the attacks continued. Speaking about funniest home videos: in
February 1994, Naser Oric proudly showed a videotape of a burned
town and decapitated bodies of Serbs to John Pomfret of The
Washington Post. The fact that first the Canadian, and later the
Dutch UN contingents could not prevent these kind of actions because
they failed to implement the agreed-on disarmament of Muslim forces,
testifies in itself to the failure of the "safe area"
concept.
"The systematic attacks of Muslim fighters against
Bosnian Serb targets around the enclave raised the tension in the
area of Srebrenica and were used by the Serbs as a justification for
their offensive against the enclave," Secretary of State Voorhoeve
reported to the Dutch parliament. The "safe areas" depended too much
on cooperation of the warring factions – something that was widely
recognized after the collapse of Srebrenica but ignored before this
event.
There are various explanations for the attack on the
enclave. Serbian bloodthirstiness and desire for ethnic purity is
among one of them, but not the most probable. The Pentagon
considered it to be an act of revenge for the failed spring
offensive by Muslims around Sarajevo. The Podrinje Brigade of the
[Muslim] Second Corps was ordered to break out to the Han
Pijesak-Vlasenica road and from there march to Srebrenica; the
military over there was attempting to connect itself to Zepa. The
Serbs on their part pointed out the fact that since the coming of
the UN peace force, more than a hundred of their civilians and
soldiers had been killed in raids by Muslim commandos. In May and
June 1995 alone, the Muslims had supposedly organized ten of these
missions, even penetrating the area close to Bratunac.
- "The goal of this action is to eliminate
terrorists and is not focussed on civilians, or UN-troops," Mladic
wrote to the British UN commander, General Rupert Smith, during
the attack on Srebrenica. Serb soldiers, most of them living in
this area, carried lists with hundreds of Muslims suspected to
have committed war crimes. The arrests of Muslim men partly were
of a selective character. "The Serbs knew the men," according to a
Dutch UN driver. "They had complete lists and photos. They pointed
them out amidst a crowd."
The attack was, according to Mladic, not primarily
designed to take the entire enclave. That decision was made after a
large number of Muslim fighters decided to give up the Defence and
to attempt an extremely risky outbreak in the night of July 10 to
Tuzla. "Muslims fled in large numbers the night before the attack,"
said the Dutch Army representative in Washington, Colonel G. van
Oppen, in the Fries Dagblad of 13 October 1995: "The
question of why this happened was never asked in the
Netherlands."
But Michael Evans of The Times already knew this
on July 13 when he reported, referring to "Western intelligence
sources," that Muslim commanders had left the city after a
provocation from their side, the night before the first Serb tanks
entered the scene. "Prior to the Serb advance the Muslims had fired
upon Serb units along the main road to the South. (...) The apparent
decision made by the Muslims to leave the city gave the Serbs an
unexpected opportunity to seize Srebrenica."
THE ORDER OF EVENTS brings to mind the situation of
Gorazde in April 1994. A study made by US Colonel John Sray, former
head of UNPROFOR’s intelligence service in Sarajevo, reveals what
happened:
- "Two British observers were located at an observation
post behind Muslim lines. Various attacks by the Serbs were
effectively stopped and the position could be defended for a long
period. Then the Muslims realized that the British observers were
positioned right behind them. During the next Serb attack the
Muslims retreated unexpectedly and for no reason. Their only
objective was to expose the observers to an attack of the confused
Serbs. Serb bullets killed one British soldier and wounded the
other, but responsibility for this lies in the hands of the
Bosnian Muslims, who hoped to provoke a revenge strike by NATO as
a punishment for the killing of a neutral observer."
(John Sray in Selling the Bosnian Myth to America:
Buyer Beware)
The trap failed in Gorazde, but in Srebrenica no
half-measures were taken.
Apart from the flight of the Muslim troops in the night
prior to the attack, there are many more indications that the Muslim
leadership abandoned the enclave on purpose. The Defence was already
weakened because of the fact that best troops had been moved out to
Tuzla, Sarajevo and Mt. Treskavica, long before the month of July,
according to a commander of a Bosnian Serb special unit. Naser Oric
himself, who had sworn never to allow Srebrenica to become Serb as
long as he was in charge, was no longer present. "His whereabouts
during the months prior to the collapse of Srebrenica are quite a
mystery," according to Charles Lane in De Volkskrant of 12
August 1995. But Ivanisevic argues that Oric, together with 2500 of
his best troops, was called on duty in April and May of 1995 to an
area south of Sarajevo in order to take part in the planned Muslim
offensive. Estimates of the number of armed personnel that stayed
behind mention six to ten thousand, comprising 3000-4000 regular
Army recruits. The Serbs were able to counter this with 3,500 men,
all from this region, far better equipped but only accompanied by
four outdated tanks. Besides, not more than a few hundred men took
part in the attack on the city itself. The difference in
capabilities of the two sides seems to underline the opportunistic
nature of the Serb offensive. It is also important to take into
consideration that the Muslims had suffered heavy losses during
supply runs between Srebrenica and Zepa in April, May and June,
which could have cast doubts on chances to defend the city in the
long run. The area hardly has any natural resources, and is
strategically of far less significance than Gorazde, for
example.
Eventually, while the "Dayton" agreement was in
preparation, the Bosnian government [Izetbegovic] accepted the
concept of exchanging territory: Srebrenica, Zepa and Gorazde for
the Serb Sarajevo. Bosnian Minister of foreign affairs Muhammad
Sacirbey had already informed Secretary of State Voorhoeve about
this option during talks held in May (see De Volkskrant of 1
November 1995). The deal came as a blessing for the Americans, so
close to the start of an election campaign. The fiercely criticized
UN peace force very much wanted to abandon the "safe havens" as
well. Srebrenica became the turning point from a military, political
and publicity perspective. Only the retreat of the peacekeepers made
it possible for NATO to start with the air strikes in September. The
wave of horror stories about mass executions overshadowed the
Croatian terror in the Krajina and no word got out about the
Muslim-Croatian crimes in cities like Glamoc, Grahovo and Sanski
Most... "
WHAT REMAINS unanswered is the amount of Muslim men
missing, who possibly died [in action] or were possibly killed.
According to Miroslav Deronjic, official of the new municipality
Srebrenica-Skelani, that number is two thousand; according to
Amnesty International – four thousand; according to the
International Red Cross, between seven and eight thousand; and
Muslim sources state eight to twelve thousand. Each number
represents an enormous tragedy in itself, but the results are also
the product of a hypothetical calculation method. The size of the
population before the fall of Srebrenica cannot be known beyond
reasonable doubt.
Manipulation with numbers was turned into an art during
the Bosnian war, and it is fair to assume that this also happened in
Srebrenica....
On July 14, the ICRC [Red Cross] counted 23,000 refugees
who were taken by bus to Tuzla, more than half of them children.
This group was later joined by thousands of Muslim men who arrived
on foot. In total the World Health Organization and the Bosnian
government have registered 35,632 refugees from Srebrenica up to
this moment. An unknown number of men have not had themselves
registered and have been absorbed, as announced by the Bosnian Army,
in the 28th division.
Others (1,000? 2,000?) have fled to Zepa and Serbia.
MORE THAN TEN THOUSAND persons were registered as
missing. "Conclusions about the number of missing people based on
this figure has to be done with caution," UN inspector Tadeusz
Mazowiecki wrote, "because there may have been double counts in the
missing person notices and because resolved cases are not always
reported to the Red Cross." It is also possible that names have been
forged in an attempt to increase the number of missing people, or in
an attempt to escape prosecution for war crimes. Mazowiecki’s
successor, Elisabeth Rehn, came to the number of 8,000 people whose
fate was unknown: five thousand men of military age who left the
enclave before the fall, and three thousand men who were separated
from their families. Rehn agreed with Mazowiecki, who suspected on
the basis of "strong indications" that the missing Muslims had been
murdered. During her visit of locations near Srebrenica in January
of this year, she seemed to tone down her initial comments a little
bit. She was still looking for evidence.
{Editor's Note: The UN bureaucrat accuses the Serbian
forces of murder despite the denials of UN military officers on the
scene during the fighting. Having made the accusation, the accuser
goes "looking for evidence!}
Miroslav Deronjic also gave his version in a report about
the events:
"According to intelligence of the Army of Republika
Srpska, around six thousand Muslim conscripts have not joined the
convoys for evacuation, but instead continued armed resistance, or
tried to force an outbreak through the Serb lines of Defence in the
direction of Srebrenica – Kravica – Konjevic Polje – Cerska – Crni
Vrh – Tuzla. Skirmishes with this group (...) have continued for the
next twenty days in the district of Konjevic Polje – Cerska –
Udrica. A large number of Muslim fighters were killed during the
attempt to break through the lines of Defence of Bratunac and
Zvornik, or during clashes between their own competing factions.
Part of the fighters surrendered – a small number, two hundred – and
they have been transferred as prisoners of war to the military
prison of Bjeljina. The larger part, around four thousand, reached
the territory of the municipality of Tuzla. It is impossible to give
exact estimates of the number of Muslim soldiers that died, because
the fighting took place over a large area and in different
directions."
That Muslims fought each other, as Deronjic argues,
cannot be found in the reports of Mazowiecki, Rehn and Human Rights
Watch, but is known from statements made by the Dutch UN military
personnel.
{This is another indication of the anti-Serb bias of the
UN bureaucracy and Human Rights Watch, as opposed to the UN
troops!}
At least on two occasions Muslims have clashed with each
other. According to general Couzy, the issue was a dispute about the
question if the enclave should be defended or abandoned. Yugoslav
agency Tanjug already reported in February last year about a
"heavy conflict and fighting" in the vicinity of the town called
Slap, between Muslims who wanted to leave to Macedonia via Serbia
and Oric’s men, who controlled the Drina crossings in the hamlet of
Luka. Later, unconfirmed reports mentioned a rivaling "modest"
military unit under command of Osman Suljic. In July, Muslims from
Srebrenica who wanted to surrender apparently received a harsh
treatment by hard-liners under command of Zulfo Tursun, Ejub Golic
and Nezir Mandzic. Such a fight, according to Deronjic, had taken
place just after the fall of the enclave at Bokcin Potok. A team of
the Dutch NOS-news discovered the corpses of tens of victims on 3
February.
NOW, CAN WE, looking at everything, say anything about
the number of missing people with certainty? The latest number of
7,000, picked by the American State Department, seems to be far too
high for the time being, but that the fate of many Muslims who fled
is uncertain is a fact. Have they been killed on orders given from
the top, or in acts of individual revenge? Are hundreds, maybe
thousands of Muslims being held by the Bosnian Serbs and assigned to
forced labor, as some refugees in Tuzla assume or at least hope? It
is about time that an independent institution investigates suspected
mass graves, and interrogates witnesses who might have been
accomplices to mass murder (like the Bosnian Serb soldier Drazen
Erdemovic, arrested last week). Only then there will be clarity
about the real events and the actual magnitude of the tragedy in
Srebrenica.
[Emperor's Clothes note: even after all the evidence they
have provided, the authors still use language that assumes the
credibility of the charges against the Bosnian Serbs. Thus they
speak of the need to look for "suspected mass graves." In fact, as
George Pumphrey shows in Srebrenica: Three years later and still
waiting , the NATO
forces have been looking for "suspected mass graves" since 1995 with
no result. Perhaps more damning, The US claimed to have satellite
photos of mass graves around Srebrenica, but the photos have never
been shown to the public. - Jared Israel]
René Grémaux is anthropologist; Abe de Vries was at
the time this article was written a history student at the
University of Groningen, Netherlands. He is now a reporter for the
Dutch paper, 'Trouw'.
Translated by 'TARGETS,'
the Independent International Monthly Newspaper. 'Targets,' which
has thought-provoking analysis of Imperial expansion, appears in two
formats. It is a newspaper in the Dutch language, printed on
paper.
For subscription or sample
copy, write to
redactie@targets.org
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is also a Website in Dutch
and English, with news as well as analysis, at http://www.targets.org/.