We are happy to publish this analysis by Prof. Sotirović, which originally appeared in Global Research on January 28, 2023.
The current Serbophobic propaganda to abolish Republika Srpska (RS) and to create a unitary Bosnia-Herzegovina (a neo-Ottoman Muslim Bosnian province) is coming from the ranks of the Bosnian Muslim Party of Democratic Action (Stranka Demokratske Akcije – SDA) and its Western sponsors.
The propaganda, however, coincides with the final phase of The Hague war crimes trials, following the “arrests”[i] and prompt deportation to the Netherlands by the pro-Western Serbian Government of former wartime commander of the Army of the Republika Srpska (Vojska Republike Srpske – VRS), General Ratko Mladic, and the first President of the Republika Srpska (RS), Dr. Radovan Karadzic, to stand trial for alleged war crimes (committed in the 1990s).[ii]
This anti-Serbian propaganda orchestrated in Sarajevo, Zagreb, Washington, Berlin, and Brussels has four basic aims:
- To stick the label of Nazi genocide to Serbs through the Hague verdicts.
- To abolish the Republika Srpska and thus modify the 1995 Dayton Agreement.
- To minimize the genocide against Serbs in the 20th century committed by Croats, Bosniaks, and Albanians.
- To finally legalize the abduction of Kosovo from Serbia and to finalize the creation of Greater Albania, which the leading political structures in Prishtina and Tirana are openly advocating.
It is indicative that the reactivation of the “Ratko Mladic case” followed immediately upon the failed negotiations on the constitutional re-organization of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which would effectively annul the Dayton Agreement of November 21st, 1995, which was formally signed in Paris in December of that year. These negotiations, sponsored by the EU, revealed the essential goals of the Muslim political leadership toward Serbs west of the Drina River: to abolish, at all costs, the Republika Srpska as the basic guarantor of national identity and political and cultural autonomy of Serbs in this area.
As in the previous years, after Dayton the main argument of the Muslim political establishment in Sarajevo, and above all the hard-line SDA hawk – Haris Silajdzic, is that the Republika Srpska is a “genocidal creation” and as such must be abolished. As before, the propagandistically and politically exploited case of Srebrenica, recalling events of July 1995, is taken as a moral argument for the abolition of the Serbian political entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Beyond that it serves also as a formal excuse for taking Kosovo away from Serbia, in accordance with Hashim Thachi’s formula: “Kosovo was lost to the Serbs in Srebrenica”. [iii]
We have witnessed the “Srebrenica issue” being manipulated for more than two decades, accomplished mainly by launching a media campaign accusing the Serbian side of the murder of nearly 10,000 Muslim civilians from Srebrenica after the VRS captured it in July 1995. The “trump card” is still the data allegedly obtained by American spy satellites, which forwarded photographs made from the air showing evidence of dug soil, which caused many to declare that these were allegedly the graves of executed Srebrenica Muslims. [iv] Although no graves or corpses were ever found in the vicinity later, the American propaganda campaign nevertheless achieved two major political goals:
- It eliminated criticism of the NATO pact, which violated the principle of neutrality in the Bosnia-Herzegovina conflict in the 1990s by bombing Serb military positions and civilian facilities.
- It turned the attention of the international public away from the tragic fate of about 250.000 Serbs expelled from the territory of the Republic of Serbian Krayina by the official Croatian security authorities (police and army) in early August 1995.
During the summer and fall of 1995, neither Washington nor Brussels took into account the views and explanations of Yasushi Akashi (the official representative and head of the United Nations mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina) who attributed responsibility for the events in Srebrenica to the Muslim side. Public criticism of Yasushi Akashi for his report on Srebrenica had, however, the desired effect: it showed the alleged impotence of the United Nations, and at the same time propagated the effectiveness of the new international “peacemaker” – NATO led by the United States.
As the final consequence of such a propaganda game being played with Srebrenica victims should be the abolition of the Republika Srpska, that is also the context of “European Parliament’s” decision to commemorate July 11th 1995 as the day of remembrance of “Srebrenica victims”. Of course, these are exclusively Muslim victims, not Serbs from Srebrenica and its surroundings.
It should be recalled that before the war in the 1990s Serbs constituted 25% of the population of Srebrenica, but that by the end of the war none were left, and that in the area around Srebrenica about 2.300 Serb civilians were killed by Muslims. In the wider area of Srebrenica 3.267 Serbs were killed and massacred in the period from April 1992 to June 1995, while almost 6.500 Serb civilians were brutally killed by Bosniak Muslims and Roman Catholic Croats in the same area during World War II. [v]
Thus, after the decision of the European Parliament (January 2009) to declare July 11th as “Srebrenica Day”, Bosnian Srebrenica de facto became part of “Europe”. Given that it is the “European Parliament”, which is, in fact, the Parliament of the European Union (not of Iceland, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Norway … which are not member states of the EU, but are certainly part of Europe), that made such a decision, we can conclude that Srebrenica has practically been inducted into the European Union, but without an official application for admission. Brussels explained its decision concerning “Srebrenica Day” basing it on Alija Izetbegović’s claims about Srebrenica as “the greatest human tragedy in Europe after the Second World War” when after the entry of the Army of the Republika Srpska” allegedly “7.000−8.000 people disappeared” [vi].
The fact remains that so far [editor’s note – as of the time of writing] 2.000 Srebrenica victims have been buried in the Memorial Center in Potochari. The remainder, up to Alija Izetbegovic’s figure of 7.000−8.000, have not been found to this day, although practically the whole of Bosnia-Herzegovina has been “dug up” using satellite images, etc. Based on the testimony at the Hague Tribunal of the participants in the “Srebrenica events” of July 1995, [vii] as well as other information, it can be concluded that no more than 2.300 males from Srebrenica aged 16−66 (i.e., military personnel) were “shot”. In other words, about the same number as the Muslim forces from Srebrenica killed Serbs in the surrounding Srebrenica villages before the VRS entered this East Bosnian locality. Whether the figures of 2.300 or 7.000−8.000 are enough for the European Parliament to declare a Pan-European day of mourning/remembrance is not the issue, but the fact remains that Muslim forces had managed in Srebrenica and the surrounding areas to carry out systematic ethnic cleansing of the Serbian civilian population. Consequently, in the Srebrenica and Bratunac municipalities alone, out of 93 Serb settlements, 82 were destroyed.
War crimes in Yugoslavia and the ICTY
Formally, the US administration of Bill Clinton established the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, the Netherlands, by a May 1993 resolution of the UN Security Council as a step toward fostering the principle of individual responsibility for war crimes. (However, for some reason Bill Clinton personally never was charged by the same tribunal for war crimes in ex-Yugoslavia). Acting from a very moral viewpoint, the ICTY is intended to deal with war atrocities committed in ex-Yugoslavia after 1991. Supposedly, it was the first genuinely international tribunal of its kind, and the first to hold such trials since the tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo.
However, the essence of the ICTY is that it was proclaimed to be the first to invoke the Genocide Convention, primarily taking into consideration the Srebrenica matter from July 1995. The ICTY was mandated to prosecute war crimes against humanity, violations of the laws of war, and genocide committed on the territory of ex-Yugoslavia. The court itself consists of 16 permanent judges selected by the UN General Assembly and as a formally “independent” prosecutor. However, the majority of those 16 judges and the prosecutor him/herself are coming from countries which have quite close political, economic, financial, etc., relations with the USA and the West.
Among those indicted by the ICTY, surely the most prominent personality was Slobodan Milosevic who was President of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, composed of Serbia and Montenegro (FRY). He was charged with crimes committed in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Serbian Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metochia (in English, Kosovo). However, his indictment also included ethnic cleansing and genocide charges. Concerning the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slobodan Milosevic was charged with four indictments:
- Two counts of genocide and complicity in genocide.
- Ten counts of crimes against humanity involving persecution, extermination, murder, imprisonment, torture, deportation, and inhumane acts, i.e., forcible transfers.
- Eight counts of grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions involving wilful killing, unlawful confinement, torture, wilfully causing great suffering, unlawful deportation or transfer, and extensive destruction and appropriation of property. The third indictment was mainly focused on “Srebrenica”.
- Nine counts of violations of the laws and customs of war involving attacks on civilians, unlawful destruction, plunder of property and cruel treatment.
However, ICTY proceedings came to an end as Slobodan Milosevic was left intentionally to die in the custody the Tribunal for the very reason that the court could not prove the accusations against him. The focal point of the court, nevertheless, was that individuals, including heads of state, must assume responsibility for acts committed by them and their subordinates that violate international law. Unfortunately, this point is asymmetrically valid across the world as, for instance, it was never applied to the cases of any US President or top NATO commanders.
Currently, on trial are some other Serbian leaders from the region accused of same or similar war crimes as in the case of Slobodan Milosevic. Regarding the 1995 “Srebrenica case”, two of them are of particular importance. First, the former political leader (President of the Republika Srpska) of Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Dr. Radovan Karadzic, and second, General Ratko Mladic – the supreme military commander of the Army of the Republika Srpska, who is accused of directing the killing of 8.000+ Bosnian men and boys in the UN “safe area” of Srebrenica in July 1995. Western Serbophobic propaganda is continuously stressing that it was the largest massacre in Europe since the end of WWII. General Ratko Mladic was “arrested” in 2010 and extradited to The Hague.
The fundamental question arises what really happened and why in and around Srebrenica in July 1995 and before?
What really happened and why in and around Srebrenica?
In Srebrenica before the armed conflict started in the spring of 1992, there lived no more than 10.000 inhabitants. The city received international attention when up to 70.000 Muslim refugees (according to the United Nations) from the vicinity of Srebrenica allegedly fled to the town due to war operations between the Serbian Army of Republika Srpska (Vojska Republike Srpske – VRS) and the Muslim Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is an indisputable fact that a difficult humanitarian situation prevailed in the town of Srebrenica due to the lack of basic foodstuffs, housing, but also the terror of Muslim military and paramilitary formations under the command of Naser Oric. Muslim armed forces committed crimes equally against local Serbs and local Muslims (since September 1993, Bosniaks), regardless of whether they were natives or newly arrived refugees. There are statements, e.g. by two underage Muslim girls (from the villages of Glogova and Pobudje), who managed to escape from Srebrenica across the minefields to the surrounding territory under Serbian control about harassment by Muslim soldiers under the command of Naser Oric. According to their statements, they were subjected to rape and other forms of physical and mental abuse on a daily basis, so that one of them was in the ninth month of pregnancy when she managed to reach the territory under VRS control where she (like her friend) received all necessary care at the refugee center in Bratunac. Both girls gave a lot of information about the victims of rape by the soldiers of Naser Oric (officially members of the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina) in Srebrenica. Their testimonies were recorded on VHS tapes which can be found in the archives of the “Committee for collecting data on crimes” in Belgrade, under number 158/94. Many international observers have been calling the so-called “protected zone” in Srebrenica an “open dungeon” or a “bad refugee camp” without enough doctors, water, and electricity.
War in the Balkans: Was Srebrenica a Hoax?
It is difficult to say exactly how many refugees there were in Srebrenica before its fall (liberation) – the Serbian side claimed that there were about 40.000 of them. The fact is that there could not be 70.000 Muslim refugees in this town, because before 1992, according to the last pre-war census in the entire former Yugoslavia, the Srebrenica municipality numbered about 27.000, and the neighboring municipality of Bratunac about 22.000 Muslims (today Bosniaks). If we take into account the indisputable facts that the surrounding Muslims fled in all directions, not only to Srebrenica, that the area around Srebrenica was mostly Serb populated, that the people of Srebrenica also fled their town, and that the population from other municipalities did not flee to Srebrenica, it is logical to conclude that many refugees in Srebrenica (70.000) were manipulated in order to show the suffering of the people (which was undeniably great) in the foreign media even greater, which was the case, for example, with the visit to Srebrenica by French General Philippe Morillon – UNPROFOR Commander in BiH in 1992 and 1993.
By the way, after visiting Srebrenica, General Morillon himself stated that there were no mass killings by Serbs in the town, denying the reports of the Bosniak and Western media on hunger and violence (recall that Morillon was detained by Muslims for ten days in the town). [viii]
The main drama of the Euro-phenomenon of Srebrenica, begins in the spring of 1993 when, according to Alija Izetbegovic, the wartime President of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the (Muslim) Government of Bosnia-Herzegovina in Sarajevo “at the last minute” managed to achieve the status of “protected zones” for Srebrenica and Zepa, but also immediately “after that the army [of Bosnia-Herzegovina] tried as hard as it could to send weapons there [to Srebrenica].” All in all, based on relevant statements, “a total of eighty helicopters [with weapons] were sent to Srebrenica.” [ix]
So, what impresses every neutral observer is the fact that the so-called “protected zone” of Srebrenica was supposed to be free of military operations. This implies in spatial terms the dual obligations of the warring parties:
- That those in the vicinity of Srebrenica (Army of Republika Srpska) will not use their weapons against those in the “zone”, and that
- Those who are in the “zone” (de facto the soldiers of Naser Oric) will not use their weapons against those who are in the vicinity of the “zone”.
Simply put – a bilateral ceasefire. Moreover, General Ratko Mladic (VRS commander)[x] and Sefer Halilovic in the name of the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina signed on April 17th, 1993 an eleven-point agreement that included: 1) A ceasefire and stopping of all combat operations in the Srebrenica region; 2) The deployment of one UNPROFOR’s detachment in the town; 3) The opening of the Tuzla-Srebrenica air-corridor (for evacuation of the wounded and sick persons); and 4) An agreement on demilitarization of the entire “zone” (i.e., all armed formations inside and around the town of Srebrenica). On the same day, the Security Council of the United Nations adopted Resolution 819, which obliged the VRS to cease hostilities and withdraw from the so-called “protected zone” which is now under UNPROFOR control. The Serbian side respected both the agreement with S. Halilovic and the UN Security Council’s Resolution 819. Consequently, the Canadian “blue helmets” soon entered the town of Srebrenica.
After the UN Security Council’s Resolution 819
After the UN Security Council’s Resolution 819, the Bosnian Serb military Supreme Command definitely gave up the idea of entering Srebrenica and of a direct confrontation with Muslim war criminals under the command of Naser Oric. At the same time, it accepted the evacuation of civilians from the town and delivered humanitarian aid to Srebrenica, but in return sought UNPROFOR’s cooperation regarding the evacuation of 15.000 Serbs from the Muslim-controlled city of Tuzla who had been under unbearable torture by local Muslim paramilitary formations, many dying of starvation. As a result of all these talks and negotiations, about 5.000 Bosniaks were taken out of Srebrenica by UN vehicles, but only 80 Serbs left Tuzla. General Ratko Mladic himself later testified that “UNPROFOR did everything to protect the Muslim population and provide them with comprehensive support. But they did nothing to get the Serbs out of Tuzla, as they had pledged.” [xi] In the end, it turned out that the Tuzla Bosniak authorities (both legal and illegal) systematically prevented the exit of Serb citizens from the city of Tuzla, explaining that their evacuation from the city could be misunderstood in the world media as ethnic cleansing.
What happened after the proclamation of Srebrenica as a “protected zone” is known to all those who followed in The Hague the trial of Naser Oric (born on March 3rd, 1967 in Potochari, a former professional member of the Yugoslav People’s Army (Jugoslovenska narodna armija – JNA), a police officer trained in Zemun and Belgrade (both in Serbia), a policeman who served in Kosovo, a member of the personal security of Serbian President Slobodan Miloshevic, and a man who participated in the arrest of Serbia’s opposition leader Vuk Drashkovic after the mass demonstrations in Belgrade on March 9th, 1991 – “Srebrenica Butcher”.) Nonetheless, series of bloody excursions of his soldiers from the “protected zone” of Srebrenica to the surrounding Serbian villages (Kravica, Siljkovici, Bjelovac, Fakovici, and Sikiric) left an indelible mark on the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992‒1995.
It is not far-fetched to imagine that the Dutch “blue helmets”, after innumerable warnings to the soldiers of Naser Oric to cease their attacks on Serbian villages around Srebrenica, finally allowed General Ratko Mladic to enter the town with direct support and tacit approval by NATO. According to the testimony of the then-commander of police forces in Srebrenica, a Muslim Bosniak Hakija Meholjic, that also could have been a part of the Izetbegovic-Clinton strategy (devised in 1993) to kill (in fact, to slaughter) about 5.000 Muslims so that the NATO alliance would have a pretext for direct military interference in the Bosnian-Herzegovinian civil war on the Muslim side.[xii] Anyone who has followed Srebrenica trials in The Hague must be intrigued how it came about that the Dutch peace-keepers simply allowed the Army of the Republika Srpska to enter Srebrenica, in fact withdrawing as it advanced (which would not have happened without the green light of both the UN and NATO).[xiii] It should also be remembered that one Dutch Government has already fallen because of this situation, and that quite a few Dutch members of UNPROFOR testified in The Hague in favor of Ratko Mladic and the VRS.
About the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Serb Drina Corps quick advance into Potochari on the morning of July 12th, 1995, which was full of Srebrenica Muslim refugees who tried to take shelter under the protection of Dutch peace-keepers, it was written by a journalist:
“Serb soldiers began arriving in the field at about noon, just five or six at first, then dozens more. They were mostly clean-shaven men, middle-aged or younger. They wore army and police uniforms. Dutch troops formed a cordon around the Muslims, but after Serb soldiers threatened to use force, the gates to the UN base were opened and the Dutch troops allowed the Serbs to take their weapons and roam freely. … Women cried. Soldiers drunk on plum brandy belched out songs with crude lyrics. They fired bullets into the air and began leading the menfolk away”. [xiv]
From the testimony above, it is quite clear that the Dutch soldiers who, in fact, had to protect the Muslim refugees from Srebrenica, actually, worked side by side with the army of General Ratko Mladic. [xv] On their leaving the Potochari UN base, the Dutch peace-keepers received gifts from General Ratko Mladic and parted cordially from their Serbian counterparts, as was video recorded.
Here we came to the crux of the matter. In April 1993, the UN designated Srebrenica as a “safe area,” meaning that its civilian population had ostensibly to be protected by the presence of a contingent of UN troops. In July 1995, a battalion from the Netherlands, known as “Dutchbat”, consisting of only 570 lightly armed soldiers under the flag of UNPROFOR (the UN Protection Force) was on duty. However, the actual guarantee of the inviolability of Srebrenica “safe area” was, in fact, NATO not the Dutch Battalion. The real possibility and menace of Srebrenica being taken over by the VRS were in the air some year before July 1995 and it was clear that 570 lightly armed Dutch soldiers would not to be able to protect the town without direct assistance by NATO, which in fact did not happen as NATO simply did nothing to prevent the Bosnian Serb Army from the taking the town. The inability of UN troops to stand up to the Bosnian Serb military, given the general lack of air support by NATO or serious reinforcement, was manifest on the ground. Several days before July 11th, 1995, it was known by both the UN and NATO what was about to happen soon but neither took any action. In fact, the Dutch troops showed remarkable indifference and lack of courage in the face of the initial incursions of the Drina Corps of the Army of the Republika Srpska. [xvi]
A high court in the Netherlands ruled in September 2013 that the Dutch troops and the Dutch Government were legally responsible for having turned over the Muslim refugees to the Bosnian Serbs and were liable for their deaths.[xvii] Shortly after the fall of Srebrenica, the US ambassador to the UN, Madeline Albright, announced in the Security Council that there had been a mass killing of Srebrenica Muslims when she waved photographs of alleged mass graves taken by US intelligence satellites, calling at the same time for UN intervention against Bosnian Serbs. No doubt, “Srebrenica” served as a turning point in US/NATO’s readiness to intervene in the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, after three years of diplomatic and other preparations, giving at the same time a clear message to the EU that it was incompetent in solving European conflicts. The same was repeated in 1999 during the Kosovo War when the “Rachak case” played the role of Kosovo Srebrenica. However, those who have been lying about Rachak, did the same with Srebrenica also.
Nevertheless, both the ICTY and the ICC ruled that what occurred in Srebrenica was a massacre that should be raised to the level of genocide because allegedly Bosnian Serbs had attempted to eliminate the Muslim population in Srebrenica by driving off and killing a substantial part of it.[xviii] With the military hierarchy of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Serbs directly implicated in the chain of events that led to alleged genocide, and Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic allegedly in the know about the murders, the courts concluded that Srebrenica constituted purposeful killing of a designated group of Bosnian-Herzegovinian Muslims, thus genocide, and not a random massacre.[xix] Nonetheless, according to such definition and understanding of genocide, for instance, most US Presidents since WWII could also be classified as war criminals.
Day of General European Mourning
Finally, we propose to the “European Parliament”, on the basis of relevant archive documents (domestic and foreign) and testimonies of participants in the events, that in addition to July 11th, (1995), October 21st (1941) also be declared a “Day of General European Mourning.” On that date, the European Germans shot in the occupied Serbian town of Kragujevac 2.300 male citizens between 16 and 66 years of age) including 300 underage high school students. There is no apparent distinction between the two crimes that would justify calling one genocide, and the other not.
We advance four reasons for the proposal:
- Both crimes took place in the same century and in the same ethnolinguistic area.
- In both cases, male civilians of “conscription age” were shot.
- The number of executed was similar on both sides.
- Both countries (Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia) aspire to accession to the European Union.
There is, however, one distinctive parameter in comparing the two cases. In 1941, European Germans shot 100 Serb civilians for each German soldier killed by Serbian rebels and 50 for each that was wounded; in 1995, by contrast, “Balkan Serbs” executed roughly one Bosniak for each Serb that was killed, while the number of wounded Serbs was not even taken into account. [xx]
Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is a former university professor in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Endnotes
[i] On the “arrest” of General Mladic in the Vojvodina village of Lazarevo, see the report of Russian television Russia Today. Actually, there was no real arrest, because General Mladic surrendered himself in order to get the necessary medical care. The farce about the arrest was staged by the then ruling pro-Western puppet coalition in Belgrade.
[ii] General Ratko Mladic (born on March 12th, 1942 in East Bosnia) was “arrested” on May 26th, 2011. and sent to The Hague on May 31st, 2011. The trial of the General began on May 16th, 2012. Here, we ask two crucial questions:
Why did the General hide in Serbia, and not in his own homeland, the Republika Srpska, where he fought during the war?
Why did the Belgrade puppet regime not deliver General Mladic to Banja Luka after his arrest, i.e., the Republika Srpska, to be tried for his alleged crimes which, assuming they had been committed, were committed not in the Netherlands but in Republika Srpska?
It is necessary to recall that the United States do not recognize any international court (neither military nor civilian) where their Presidents, soldiers, and/or officers are accused of war crimes anywhere in the world.
[iii] Another illustration of Diana Johnstone’s analysis of what she calls “the uses of Srebrenica.”
[iv] See video: Srebrenica, a Town Betrayed.
[v] The wars of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia were nothing more than a continuation of the previous war of 1941−1945 and this war was, in fact, a continuation of the war from 1914−1918. Dr. Radovan Karadzic made that clear when he stated:
“[The war of the 1990s] … was a continuation of World War II, people remembered what this or that family had done to them and were afraid that it would all happen again, and they said: It is better for us to kill them first, than for them to kill us. People did not forget who killed their fathers, grandfathers and mothers. Everyone was afraid of revenge and started first” [Радован Караджич, Интервју, Московские новости, Москва, No. 36, 05. 09. 1993, page 11А].
By the logic of things and knowledge of South Slavic history, it can be concluded that the next war in this area will be only a continuation of the previous one from the last decade of the 20th century. On the history of Serbs in the last five centuries, see Милорад Екмечић, Дуго кретање између клања и орања. Историја Срба у Новом веку (1492−1992), Београд: Evro Giunti, 2010.
[vi] Alija Izetbegović, Govori, pisma, intervjui ’95, Sarajevo: TKP „Šahinpašić“, 1996, page 107.
[vii] The Hague Tribunal was established by the US to equate Serbs in alleged crimes to Nazi Germany, as evidenced by the enormous ethnic difference in the number and years of prison sentences given to Serbs compared to convicted war criminals of other ethnicities. The tribunal’s shameful acquittals of the Bosniak butcher from Srebrenica, Naser Oric, the mass killer of Kosovo Albanian Ramush Haradinaj, as well as the Ustashi (Nazi Croat) indictees Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markach, speak best of the character of this extremely politicized Serb-hating institution. We have to keep in mind that Serge Brammertz on January 3rd, 2013 publicly stated that the 1300 pages of the indictment against the Croatian generals A. Gotovina and M. Markach there was sufficient evidence of responsibility for genocide.
[viii] See BBC documentary “The Death of Yugoslavia”, in particular the section on protected areas.
[ix] Alija Izetbegović, Govori, pisma, intervjui ’95, Sarajevo: TKP „Šahinpašić“, 1996, pages 86−87.
[x] Mladic was born in 1942 (or in 1943) in the village of Bozhanovici, near Kalinovik in East Herzegovina. His father was killed in Josip Broz Tito’s Partisans during the attack on the native village of Croatian Ustashi leader Ante Pavelic, which was defended by the Croat-Bosniak Ustashi. Mladic lost his father before he turned two. Like many other Serbs who survived massacres by Ustashi Croats and Bosniaks and joined Communist-led Partisans to save their lives, Mladic’s father was sent to attack well-entrenched positions of Ustashi detachments simply to be killed there. General Dragoljub Drazha Mihailovic was correct when he said that during the war Titoist Communists in Serbia acted in alliance with the Germans (for example, 400 communist criminals were released from German prisons and sent to Serbia in 1941), in Montenegro with Montenegrin separatists, in Pavelic’s Independent State of Croatia in alliance with the Ustashi, and that the Communists will give Kosovo-Metochia to the Albanians in order to attract them to their side against the Serbs and Serbia, which is what eventually happened [Архив Југославије, Београд, 103-61; Војни Архив, Београд, „Четничка архива“, 56-3/30)].
[xi] Јањић Ј., Српски генерал Ратко Младић, Нови Сад: Матица српска, 1996, page 111.
[xii] Wikipedia, „Masakr u Srebrenici“; Norwegian documentary movie Town Betrayed, Чедомир Антић, Српска историја, Fourth Edition, Београд: Vukotić Media, 2019, page 315. In addition, see British documentary (BBC Four), A Cry from the Grave. In this film, General Ratko Mladic asked the mayor of Srebrenica at a meeting conducted in the presence of Dutch “blue helmets” for only one thing – to disarm Srebrenica and hand over weapons to the VRS, in which case all inhabitants of Srebrenica would be allowed to leave unmolested. The largest number of the so-called “Srebrenica victims” were, in fact, Naser Oric’s soldiers who were killed in combat as they tried to break out from Srebrenica toward Tuzla, at any cost and with their weapons.
[xiii] At the beginning of the VRS offensive on Srebrenica, the Dutch „Blue Helmets“ formally demanded that the NATO alliance bomb the VRS in order to prevent the offensive and the entry of the Serbian troops into Srebrenica. However, a message arrived from the NATO base in Aviano (Italy) that their planes could not intervene due to bad weather conditions, which was a notorious falsehood, because July 11th, 1995 was a typical summer day with a crystal clear sky. On the politicization of the “Srebrenica massacre”, see Edward S. Herman (ed.), The Srebrenica Massacre: Evidence, Context, Politics.
[xiv] Chunk Sudetic, Blood and Vengeance: One Family‘s Story of a War in Bosnia, New York: W. W. Norton, 1998, pages 292‒293.
[xv] „Dutch Peacekeepers are Found Responsible for Deaths“, The New York Times, September 6th, 2013.
[xvi] Norman M. Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001, pages 164‒165.
[xvii] „Dutch Peacekeepers are Found Responsible for Deaths“, The New York Times, September 6th, 2013.
[xviii] Norman M. Naimark, „Srebrenica in the History of Genocide: A Prologue“, Nanci Adler, Selma Leydesdorff, et al. (eds.), Memories of Mass Repression: Narrating Life Stories in the Aftermath of Atrocity, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2009, pages 13‒14.
[xix] Norman M. Naimark, Genocide: A World History, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017, pages 130‒131. The Bosniak and Croat politicians from Bosnia-Herzegovina filed a lawsuit to the International Court in The Hague against Serbia for Serbia’s alleged aggression on Bosnia-Herzegovina, based primarily on the case of Srebrenica in 1995. However, they lost this court-case as the Court decided in 2007 that Serbia did not commit aggression on Bosnia-Herzegovina and that Serbia was not responsible for what occurred in Srebrenica case [Чедомир Антић, Српска историја, Fourth Edition, Београд: Vukotić Media, 2019, pages 314−315].
[xx] Serbian historian Chedomir Antic claims that the VRS in July 1995 caused the death of 6.900 Srebrenica Muslims, including male civilians and soldiers. The latter were killed in combat operations [Чедомир Антић, Српска историја, Fourth Edition, Београд: Vukotić Media, 2019, page 314]. If that number is correct, Bosnian Serbs in July 1995 were responsible for a similar number of Muslim casualties in Srebrenica as the number of Serbian civilians around Srebrenica who had been massacred by Muslims and Croats in the same area during WWII and during the conflict in 1992−1995.
[xxi] Serb civilians of all ages and both sexes from the region of Srebrenica did not receive such consideration from Naser Oric in 1992−1995.
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