The Balkan Conflicts Research Team is continuously producing superb, hard-hitting and intellectually provocative Twitters about Srebrenica and the Hague Tribunal. We highly recommend them to our readers who may follow them by visiting their Twitter account at: Balkan Conflicts Research Team@ResearchTeam
The tweet on ICTY’s 25-year deception is their latest production.
What was remarkable about the 25th Srebrenica anniversary?
Covid 19 restricted attendance and the Memorial Organisation, together with many media outlets, issued a strange lament that criticism of the official narrative had become ‘mainstream’.
What was the point of that?
They seem to think it is unpardonable for anyone to question their story. Those who do are clearly genocide deniers and should be ‘cancelled’ like Peter Handke.
Do they have a point?
No. They have had 25 years and enormous resources to make their case but have produced nothing of substance. It seems they knew they had nothing when they took steps in Bosnia in 1998 and Croatia in 2002 to ensure that no one could ever get hold of the so-called evidence gathered by the ICTY investigating agency, the International Commission for Missing Persons. No court that had a strong case would ever dream of doing that.
Did they ever want to find out the truth?
Absolutely not. The ICTY was an illegal court which operated entirely without principle. Its sole aim was to convict Serbs and cement the very shaky narrative of what was supposed to have happened.
How has the world been so deceived about all this?
The world believed the overwhelming propaganda that characterised Serbs as the unequivocal villains of the Balkan conflicts. Once established, it is very difficult to live down such an infamous reputation. And the media has changed: rational skepticism has been thrown aside in favour of telling people what they want to hear.
What effect has this had?
The ICTY story of Srebrenica has become embedded. As a result, few think to ask basic questions such as how was the ICTY’s investigative agency the ICMP able to identify so many missing people from Srebrenica using a ‘breakthrough technique’ to extract and test DNA taken from bones that had been buried for more than 5 years?
What can be done?
The people who know some or most of the truth must keep on challenging the status quo. It is not a very robust story – for a start, the numbers don’t begin to add up. If the defenders of the fantasy version believe that criticism of their story has become ‘mainstream’ we must be making some progress.