Ramiz Bećirević was an important, but largely neglected, Srebrenica player. He was deputy commander of Sarajevo forces within the enclave and in the Spring of 1995, upon commander Naser Orić’s departure from the encalve shortly before it was overrun, Bećirević assumed command of 28th Division forces within it. In contrast to Orić, he was a…
Redefining “militant” to include 15-year olds: Can standards practiced in Iraq be applied in Srebrenica?
Practically every mainstream reference to Srebrenica is accompanied by the “8,000 executed men and boys” refrain. Although ICTY exhumation statistics reflect a scant presence of underage males among the victims, the inclusion of “boys” is clearly meant to prejudice the issue by framing it in frankly emotional terms. The implication is that males in their…
Definition of UNPROFOR Bosnia mission, 1994
This definition of the scope of the UNPROFOR mission, as defined in a 1994 UN resolution, with regard to civilians is noteworthy because its stated aim is to “protect the civilian populations of the designated safe areas against armed attacks and other hostile acts.” The ethnically neutral reference to “populations,” in the plural, raises the question…
The “patriarchal society” genocide argument
In the Krstić judgment (par. 90 – 94) the Hague Tribunal launched its “patriarchal society” argument in order to explain the embarrassing anomaly that Serbian forces transported an estimated 20,000 residents of the Srebrenica enclave, mostly women, children, and elderly, to Sarajevo-controlled territory instead of executing them, as the court’s “genocidal intent” hypothesis would have required…
Аня Филимонова о событиях в Сребренице (2010)
В условиях серьезного (если не сокрушительного) подрыва Ялтинско-Потсдамской системы международных отношений новая система послевоенной трансформации юга Балкан, сформированная при доминирующем участии внешнего фактора, нуждалась в легитимизации. Тезис о геноциде в Сребренице стала особым участником югославского кризиса, служащим задачам идеологического обоснования и закрепления новых балканских реалий. По утверждению СМИ, события в Сребренице стали самым массовым военным…
George Pumphrey: Srebrenica: Body Counting
For nearly a generation, allegations of a Serb massacre in Srebrenica have dominated the image of the Bosnian Civil War, the Yugoslav Civil Wars and indeed the image of Serbs as a people. Serbs have been stigmatized a priori as THE war criminals per se. A 1998 article entitled “Mass Graves in Bosnia Bolster War-Crimes…
An important but neglected Dutch documentary on Srebrenica
This Dutch documentary about Srebrenica was created in 2002, around the time the NIOD Report came into being, although there are no indications of a link between the two. The documentary is a Dutch television production put together relatively few years after the event and apparently before the rigid official narrative with its intimidating guidelines…
The Srebrenica survivor count
The important issue of how many Srebrenica enclave residents survived the UN-protected zone’s fall to Serbian forces on July 11, 1995, has been left largely unexamined. Yet, that could provide important clues about the possible number of victims by subtracting the number of survivors from a reliably estimated number of total residents. The general consensus…
Jonathan Rooper about Srebrenica
Jonathan Rooper is a former BBC editor who has taken an extraordinary interest in Srebrenica. Some of his writings on the subject, focusing on but not confined to what he aptly calls the “Srebrenica numbers game,” is posted elsewhere on this website. Mr. Rooper has kindly agreed to do a video reflecting his view of…
Katherine Southwick: Critique of the genocide conviction in the Krstić judgment
In August 2001, a trial chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) handed down the tribunal’s first genocide conviction. In this landmark case, Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstić, the trial chamber determined that the 1995 Srebrenica massacres—in which Bosnian Serb forces executed 7,000 to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men—constituted genocide. In this Note…