Handke and Serbia

It seems to me that the Serbs will praise just about any fool that has a positive opinion about them. And I don’t find anything moving in the fact that he redirected his prize money to Serbian enclaves in KiM, because, let’s face it, if anyone is to blame for the horrible position those people are in, it’s mr Handke’s departed hero – Slobodan Milošević.

That kind of hypocrisy and intelectual snobism just turns my stomach upside down.

And, belive it or not, it’s his Archenemy that serves as a far better example to the Outside World that Serbia has much more to offer than just “war criminals & genocidal persons”.

Nemanja, I agree that Serbs often will praise any old fool who doesn’t hate them. Handke is not one of those. I don’t see any evidence that Milosevic is Handke’s “hero”, and even if he were (which I doubt), that doesn’t take away from the fact he’s giving 50,000 euros to charity, to people who have been under extreme pressure for years, who live in ghettoes under constant threat. What have the sons and daughters of communism in Belgrade done for those unfortunate people? Except slap them in the face of course? Why can’t you just accept his extraordinary genrosity for what it is?

I think what really annoys people like Srbljanovic about Handke is that he’s a “European”, an “intellectual” etc (everything they aspire to, think they are, but are insecure about), but he REJECTS them (and who wouldn’t, with their self-hating inferiority complexes?) and EMBRACES a lot of things in Serbia which they are running away from (yet against which they define themselves. Just look at what they call themselves – DRUGA Srbija).

“Не бојим се од вражјега кота, нека га је ка на гори листа, но се бојим од зла домаћега” – Његош

Handke plays the dissident in europe but I think the grenade attack on Dejan Anastasijevic today should remind you what being a dissident really involves. And the risks. Handke is more of a publicity seeking contrarian and risks nothing except perhaps his reputation.

That said, at least some of the attacks on him in europe have been unfair. There was a campaign against him being awarded a literary prize if I remember rightly. His foolish political opinions shouldn’t be relevant to that.

If this “The Serbs are nation not better nor worse than any other nation” was what he really thought then I would not disagree with him. But he seems to have convinced himself that Serbia, quite unlike other nations, never commits crimes or deludes itself.

“When I walked through Kalemegdan, I haven’t noticed any of the older people playing chess, or the young couples having a walk, to be war criminals or genocidical persons”

I’m sure you could say the same if you walked around London or New York but it tells you precisely nothing about the crime taking place in Iraq at this very moment.

Nemanja and Ian, I suggest you actually try reading his book Journey to the Rivers.

Re: the prize – they awarded it to him, but before they gave him the money his connection with “the Serbs” was discovered. So for political reasons the prize committee took back the award (pretty fucked up, eh? BUT HE SUPPORTED THE SERBSNAZIMILOSEVIC!!1!!11!!!) But a bunch of other artists/intellectuals with principles and a brain raised the money he would have got as a sort of alternative prize – the 50,000 euros which he donated to Velika Hoca in Kosmet.

Ian, people denying global warming etc. are not dissidents, but fools. But you have to consider that they’re denying what is obvious, not as the recent Balkan Wars whose truth is still vague and as a proof of this you can also consider the judgement of the ICJ which brought a new notion in the perception of the wars. For me Handke is a dissident since he observed the non-mainstream side (the Serbs) and brought a judgement which was non-mainstream, and most important, not politicaly motivated.

As for the article you quoted: what is wrong in it? Yes, unfortunatelly Milosevic was elected (at least legally in the very first elections), and when a country’s territorial integrity is endagered (case of Kosovo-Metohija), every country would do its best to defend it, as we have seen the UK regarding N.Ireland. Now, Milosevic was a fool for provoking such a situation in Kosovo-Metohija and in his fight he used the wrong instruments were in his fight against a terrorist group (KLA) he turned against him a whole ethnic group.

I haven’t heard that any of the domestic “intellectuals” has done anything to help in a practical way any Serbian refugee family, but they go to them and pursuade them that it’s their own fault. Natasa Kandic even used force.

PS – Levy did that.

If you attend someone’s funeral and hold a speech at it, i presume that you have some sort of respect for the deceased.

Any person having respect for Milosevic can’t have my support or respect – that’s all i have to say regarding Handke. Maybe I’m seeing things black and white, but at least i’m not seeing them all white like Handke does.

There are catholic Serbs too, you know.

Really? Awww…I’m simply wounded by your remarks. I don’t think I can ever get over them….

Sorry, anonymous comments are off on this blog.

Do you also object to those who came to Tito’s funeral?

I find it very interesting, indeed, that Milosevic was helped to die just as his trial was about to enter the Srebrenica phase.

Well, sure. But all I see here on a regular basis is Viktor’s self-flagellation and his apparent desire to see the Serbs bend over for more paddlings by the West. I would, just for a friggin’ change, like to see where the real MEN (I use that in a non-gender reference and would be just as happy to see a strong woman) have gone from Serbia.

Because the West is NOT fair, at all, toward Serbia, it is incumbent upon Serbs to STAND UP for the truth and stop saying how bad Serbs are, especially when that’s ALL you say. It simply isn’t true! Anybody who looks at what happened to Yugoslavia with even the most minimal objectivity knows that. Talk about viewing things from a black and white perspective — that’s all I see here with regard to Serbian “guilt.” There is so much of that around, it has to be countered.

What a bunch of hogwash… A) arguing on the internet is like winning the special Olympics, even if you win, you’re still a retard. B) Classifying Uncle Slobo as a great guy or a dunce is a really hard one. Because of the terrorism problem resulting from the Kosovo situation, the Serb Government dealt with things just like the Americans dealt with it post 9/11, except without the same scale of propaganda. Sure they made some mistakes, but do the Serbs deserve the blame for all the regional problems? That’s like saying that WW1 started ONLY because of Serbian nationalism.

Shades of the staged “massacre” at Racak, anyone?

This article has relevance to everything because Srebrenica is the whip that the empire likes to crack over the Serbs and they were planning to do so for a few more decades yet. And it shows the level of deceit that has been used against the Serbs. (As if Bosnian Serb soldiers who ushered the Muslim women and children in Srebrenica into buses to get them out of that dangerous area — anticipating as they were a fire fight — were intent on “genocide” or even “massacre.” What genocidal maniacs spare the women and children of a people they wish to obliterate!??)

If it doesn’t go too much against the grain of people running this site to actually read something that points to the Serbs NOT being guilty of something they have been accused of, then I suggest you straighten out your thinking caps and, at the very least, allow for the POTENTIAL possibility that what you have been told (and have so eagerly accepted without question) about Serbs is simply not as it has been depicted in the propaganda.

World Net Daily

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55467

Was ‘Srebrenica genocide’ a hoax?

Posted: May 1, 2007

1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Aleksandar Pavic

For more than 10 years, the term “Srebrenica” has been used to denote the slaughter of “innocent Muslims” at the hands of Christians – more specifically, the Bosnian Serb army, alleged to have slaughtered, according to the version currently accepted by most major media, “between 7,000 and 8,000 Muslims” when it captured that small town in eastern Bosnia in mid-July 1995. As the story goes, the Bosnian Serbs captured this “U.N.-protected zone” and proceeded to take away and execute thousands of men, women and children in the space of several days, subsequently burying them in mass graves that are still being dug up almost 12 years later.

Belgrade-based historian and researcher, Milivoje Ivanisevic, who has been documenting Yugoslavian civil war casualties for more than a decade, has recently challenged the claims in a new booklet, “The Srebrenica Identity Card,” which documents hundreds of bodies buried at the Srebrenica Memorial that were not killed in July 1995, when the alleged genocide took place, including cases of people who died natural deaths a full 13 years before the event took place.

The newest evidence offered by Ivanisevic indicates a number of those buried at the Srebrenica Memorial Complex not only were not killed in July 1995, but actually died much earlier, even in the early 1980s – more than 10 years before the civil war in Yugoslavia even started.

According to Ivanisevic, as of March 2007, more than 12 years after the event, a total of 2,442 bodies have been buried at the Memorial. Among those, a total of 914, or over 37 percent, were on the voting lists for the 1996 elections in Bosnia – over a year after the alleged “genocide.” The voting lists themselves were approved and checked by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which supervised the elections.

A second even more significant find involves the fact that “at least 100 people” buried at the Memorial died of natural causes. Ivanisevic claims that the numbers would be even larger if he’d been allowed access to the death books in Srebrenica and the surrounding towns. Nevertheless, several names with dates of birth, death and place of demise are provided: Fetahija (Nazif) Hasanovic, b. 1955 – d. Dec.15, 1996, Srebrenica; Sukrija (Amil) Smajlovic, b.1946 – d. May 2,1996, Zaluzje; Maho (Suljo) Rizvanovic, b.1953 – d. Jan. 3,1993, Glogova; Mefail (meho) Demirovic, b.1970 – d. May 10, 1992, Krasanovici; Redzic (Ahmet) Asim, b.1949 – d. April 22, 1992, Bratunac.

Thirdly, Ivanisevic charges that several hundred soldiers as well as civilians were transferred to the Srebrenica Memorial from other cemeteries and reburied, with Muslim burial rituals. One of these is the body of Hamed (Hamid) Halilovic (1940-1982), transferred from the nearby cemetery in Kazani, who apparently died a full 13 years before the Srebrenica “genocide.” Other bodies transferred from Kazani to the Srebrenica Memorial include those of Osman (Ibro) Halilovic (1912-1989), Nurija (Smajo) Memisevic (1966-1993), Salih (Saban) Alic (1969-1992), Mujo (Hasim) Hadzic (1954-1993), Ferid (Ramo) Mustafic (1975-1993) and Hajrudin (Ismet) Cvrk (1974-1992).

Fourth, using captured records of the Bosnian Muslim Army, Ivanisevic lists more than a dozen names of soldiers whose families were granted housing and social benefits due to families of soldiers killed in action before Nov. 11, 1993, when the documents were captured by Bosnian Serb army forces.

Fifth, on the basis of similarly captured documents, Ivanisevic provides several dozen names of Bosnian Muslim army fighters killed before March 7, 1994.

Ivanisevic goes on to provide names of Bosnian Muslim soldiers buried at the Srebrenica Memorial who were implicated in numerous massacres of Serbian civilians in the vicinity between 1992-1995, in which a total of over 3,000 Serbs were killed. Interestingly, the commander of the Srebrenica Bosnian army forces, Naser Oric, was given a two-year sentence by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, or ICTY, in June 2006 for his participation in these killings, some of which he captured on video and showed to Washington Post reporter John Pomfret, who visited him inside the “U.N. Safe Zone” in 1994.

During the 1990s, the Clinton administration used the “Srebrenica genocide” claim to enter the Bosnian civil war on the side of the Bosnian Muslims and enforce the subsequent Dayton Peace Agreement for Bosnia-Herzegovina in November 1995, with mutual recognition between Yugoslavia (now Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia). More generally, Clinton’s State Department bureaucracy used the “Srebrenica genocide” – as it has since been referred to as a result of controversial verdicts pronounced by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague – to justify its support for Muslim-dominated political movements not just in Bosnia but in Macedonia and Serbia’s Kosovo region, which is currently seeking independence. And, since most of Clinton’s State Department appointments, headed by Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, have continued running the U.S. Balkan strategy, the policy has remained intact to this day.

Thus, even as the current Kosovo Albanian independence drive is provided heavy U.S., British and German support, the Bosnian Serbs, unhappy at the prospect of being locked inside a Muslim-dominated Bosnia, are being denied independence, with the “Srebrenica genocide” being used as the chief argument – i.e., that wartime gains achieved through “genocide” cannot be sanctioned. Many observers, including a recent G2 Bulletin analysis, link Western support of Balkan Muslims at the expense of Christians as part of a broader policy of appeasing “moderate” Sunni-controlled regimes in the Middle East, as part of an anti-Iranian Shiite coalition.

Among radical Bosnian Muslim elements, the Srebrenica narrative has been used not only to rally support to the general cause of jihad, to arouse Muslim feelings of having been oppressed and persecuted by non-Muslims, but to build what some have called the “first Muslim shrine in Europe,” a gathering place for Muslims from the world over with anti-Western, anti-European and anti-Christian grievances. The Memorial Complex in Srebrenica now serves as a place of pilgrimage, where Muslims can see firsthand the results of what they believe is an unprecedented atrocity against their fellow believers.

The entire Srebrenica narrative has been provided key support by Western mainstream media, headed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and the mainstream British, German and French media, who have laced their Balkan reporting throughout the years with references to the “Srebrenica genocide,” calling it, among other things, the “worst atrocity in Europe since World War II,” a “stain on the conscience of the West,” etc.

From the very beginning, numerous dissenting voices both in the West and in ex-Yugoslavia have contested both the Western mass media claims and the ICTY Srebrenica-connected verdicts, but have received almost no publicity whatsoever.

In the summer of 2005, on the 10-year anniversary of the event, the “Srebrenica Research Group,” composed of mostly American and British media and academic figures, as well as former U.N. civil officials and military observers with ex-Yugoslavia experience, put up a website in which the entire “Srebrenica massacre” account was reconsidered and demystified. Instead of the 7-8,000 figure, U.N. officials and U.S. Congress experts were quoted giving figures of “700-800,” “the low hundreds,” “about 2,000 Muslims and Serbs total,” etc. Henry Wieland, head of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, who spent days interviewing Srebrenica refugees in July 1995, is quoted as saying that he did not find “anyone who’d seen any atrocity committed with their own eyes.”

The forensic findings were taken to task as well, with claims that the entire process of excavation and identification of bodies was controlled by an organization founded by the late Bosnian Islamist leader, Alija Izetbegovic. And, a Canadian international law professor deconstructed the Srebrenica-connected verdicts at the ICTY, showing, among other things, that Bosnian Serb Gen. Radoslav Krstic, sentenced by the court to a 46-year term, was, in the court’s own verdict, absolved of participation in – or even knowledge of – the alleged massacre, instead being sentenced according to the ICTY’s own construction of “command responsibility.” The prosecution’s star witness, Drazen Erdemovic, a Bosnian Croat who mysteriously appeared in the ranks of the Bosnian Serb army after previously fighting in the Bosnian Muslim army ranks, claimed participation in the execution of 1,200 Srebrenica Muslims, was exempted from cross-examination, deemed by the court itself as “mentally unstable” and, ultimately, given a five-year sentence for his “cooperation.” Yet, the mass media, without exception, have ignored the group’s findings, even those quoting the very same mass media’s own reports from the ground at the time.

The Netherlands Institute for War Documentation issued an extensive report in 2002, “Srebrenica, a ‘Safe’ Area,” detailing, among other things, that Srebrenica, although declared a “U.N. Safe Zone,” was in fact never demilitarized, and that several thousand armed Bosnian Muslim troops were stationed in it between 1992-1995, organizing numerous lethal raids against Serbian villages in the vicinity. This claim was additionally corroborated by the U.N. secretary-general’s report to the U.N. General Assembly of Nov. 15, 1999.

Ivanisevic’s book will soon to be translated into English. It remains to be seen whether the Western corporate mass media will continue ignoring this and other evidence debunking the claim that an anti-Muslim “genocide” took place in Srebrenica in July 1995. Some public figures in the Balkans have called for an international commission on Srebrenica, which would re-examine the evidence and make a new, more balanced and independent assessment of what took place in eastern Bosnia during the last stages of its civil war, in the summer of 1995.

Aleksandar Pavic covers the Balkans for WorldNetDaily.com.

Uh-huh. So the manipulation of numbers and body counts and actual evidence that bodies have been moved to add to, more than ten years later, a mere fraction of supposedly dead people declared to number 8,000 or more is not to be considered, eh? But Naser Oric putting his horrific murderous rampages on video tape and proudly showing them and bragging about them to a Canadian reporter, like a prize to be held high, that’s MORE questionable?

It seems to have made you very angry, just this possibility that Srebrenica is not necessarily as it has been spoon fed to you. What kind of loss is it that you feel at the thought of Serbs maybe not having behaved as they have been depicted? Just what kind of loss is that to you?

The truth is that NOBODY has all the facts about Srebrenica for two reasons: they have not been investigated officially and what might be known has not been exposed – deliberately. Do you never ask yourself why that is? There are more than enough questions about Srebrenica, unaswered questions, to make any decent, logical person stop and say “what gives?” For instance, Serbs putting the Muslim women and children on buses to take them to safety, or the fact that Srebrenica was not demilitarized as we were told, or that a very high number of the supposedly killed Muslim soldiers were on electoral rolls years later, or that the Red Cross announced at that time that 5,000 Muslim men had moved into and through that area, and not least that Izetbegovic was told by Clinton that the U.S. could only continue its involvement in helping the Bosnians Muslims if there would be at least 5,000 Muslims killed by the Serbs. But more than that, there is the fact that Srebrenica has served NATO countries exceedingly well and they pull it out of the bag whenever they think it will make Serbs jump, or better yet — grovel.

If I believed that Srebrenica was as it is propagandized I would agitate for every Serb involved to be rounded up and thrown into prison forever. But that would require a real investigation — any idea why there hasn’t been one? Possibly because then the “story” would no longer serve as well. Better an undisturbed myth, which is so much more useful.

You — a Serb? In name only.

I know non-Serbs who appear more Serbian than you — those who have a sincere interest in finding out the truth. Why don’t you pick a nationality, the one you really want to be, and align yourself openly with it, instead of pompously playing the “innocent” among the “bad” Serbs. I blame you self-annointed “innocents” for Serbia being held back today, for not being able fully to get to the truth, because you hold on so firmly to the crap that has been shoveled onto Yugoslavia. Anytime someone wants to dig out of that pile of shit you’re frantic to shovel it back on.

As for Mladic hiding, everybody knows what the man could expect. His name is mud, he’s been conviceted without ever seeing a court, and innocent or guilty he will get the same unfair treatment. As I have already stated many times, I very much wish he would be found because maybe, just maybe, the facts of Srebrenica could finally come out then if by some miracle the ICTY didn’t silence him. I had been looking forward to hearing the Srebrenica phase of Milosevic’s trial, but what happened? Oh, right, he, um, “died.” Right. Yes, yes, the facts, it seems, wouldn’t serve so well. That was a close call for the West.

“For instance, Serbs putting the Muslim women and children on buses to take them to safety”

Safety from whom Blackbird? The Martians?

Or the army that surrounded them for years, attempted to starve them, then burnt their homes, dynamited their places of worship, and finally killed all the men.

Why couldn’t they just be safe in the place they lived?

It really is a bit much for you to talk like this and then complain about ‘terrorism’.

Blackbird mentions the Srebrenica Research Group – here is a debate I took part in with them.

http://www.medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1578

I’ll leave the reader to judge who has been spoon fed and who took the trouble to look at the evidence.

“Why couldn’t they just be safe in the place they lived?”

Because they had already killed off the Serbs living in the city – one of the first people killed was a Serb judge. He was killed by Naser Oric who described the gruesome killing to another Muslim who wanted to testify against him at the Hague – and even was waiting there at the Hague – but the Hague didn’t allow testimony against Naser Oric’s murders and destruction of Serb villages. The Hague only tried him on what some prison guards did to Serbs.

Because they had burned down scores of Serbian villages all around Srebrenica in the summer of 1992 already after the Yugoslav army pulled out.

Many women and teens/children came in mobs in the wake of their army and looted the Serb homes. Then the livestock were killed and the homes burned.

The Muslims were practicing a scorched earth policy on the Serb villages around Srebrenica and were EXPANDING their reach.

Finally Serb started organizing and pushing back by the spring of 1993 which is why the UN stepped in.

But the HUGE Muslim military in Srebrenica was not disarmed. They had around 8,000 troops which was larger than the Serb forced in the area.

As a matter of fact, if the army had not gotten the orders to leave their defensive positions all around Srebrenica, they would have held several advantages over the MUCH smaller Serb forces.

Their own military leadership and the UN ordered them out BEFORE the Serbs came, and the UN had ordered the women to the Potocari base days before the fall.

THE UN TOLD THE SERBS TO TAKE THE MUSLIM WOMEN AND CHILDREN TO TUZLA.

The CIVILIAN Serb bus drivers just did as the UN told them. The women and children arrived there and there are no reports or photos of injuries.

The military trekked through Serb-held territory until they made it to Tuzla and other Bosnian Muslim held territory. SOME OF THEM WERE PUT ON OTHER BATTLE FRONTS.

The international community and investigators WON’T RELEASE ANY ACTUAL OFFICIAL EVIDENCE of the alleged massacre.

There are no official autopsy reports for the defense or public. There is no request for Muslim army records which could establish more on the soldiers and where they battled and died.

It is known that Muslim soldiers who died back in 1992 and 1993 are put on the Srebrenica victim list. It is known that soldiers killed or missing from Zepa – a city south of Srebrenica which also was used as a Muslim military base – are claimed as Srebrenica victims.

They are obviously cheating to artificially raise their toll – and are using battle deaths to raise the toll too.

“The CIVILIAN Serb bus drivers just did as the UN told them. The women and children arrived there and there are no reports or photos of injuries.” – No?

“It is known that soldiers killed or missing from Zepa – a city south of Srebrenica which also was used as a Muslim military base – are claimed as Srebrenica victims.” – so, that’s the same Muslim military base whose commander’s personal safety was guaranteed by Ratko Mladic is it? Why, fourteen years on, does Mrs Palic have no news and to celebrate the anniversary of the fall the OHR is having to ask Republika Srpska once again where her husband’s body is.

...The systematic slaughter of the Serbian civilian population in the area west of the Drina River apparently did not qualify as a “crime against humanity”.
By contrast, the quick decision to charge Bosnian Serb leaders with “genocide” after the capture of Srebrenica reflected political correctness by the Tribunal, whose staff had been largely appointed by Madeleine Albright, then serving as US Ambassador to the UN. Meanwhile, a soon-to-be-released report by the Srebrenica Research Group, a group of journalists and academic researchers led by University of Pennsylvania Professor Ed Herman, raises serious doubts about the official version of events at Srebrenica, including bias, inflated casualty numbers, and dubious methodology used to justify estimates that were made before investigations had even begun.
Significantly, the portrayal of events at Srebrenica, is also challenged by senior UN and NATO officials on the scene in Bosnia. These include, NATO’s Deputy Commander Charles Boyd, who was NATO’s Director of Intelligence; Lt.-Col. John Sray; UN Civilian Affairs Coordinator Phillip Corwin; and Carlos Martins Branco, UNMO (UN Military Observer) Deputy Chief of Operations of the UNPF (United Nations Population Fund), who debriefed UN military observers posted to Srebrenica. Corwin, the most senior UN civilian official in Bosnia at the time of the capture of Srebrenica, and the author of Dubious Mandate, a personal account of the last year of the war, states that the official version of events at Srebrenica has been a “campaign of disinformation that has all but buried the facts along with the bodies”.
Branco, a Portugese UN military official states that casualty estimates of 7,000 have been “used and manipulated for propaganda purposes.” He wrote in 1998 that “there is little doubt that at least 2,000 Bosnian Muslims died in fighting the better trained and better commanded BSA [Bosnian Serb Army]” in three years of fierce fighting. This is roughly the number of bodies (2,028) which were exhumed by the International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the region by the year 2001. Many, perhaps most, of these deaths occurred before the fall of Srebrenica, according to Branco.

Srebrenica — The History of Salon Racism
“In the West, the popular mythology about 7,000-8,000 Muslim men being executed in Srebrenica in 1995 is still alive and well, but independent research shows some 2,000 Bosnian Muslim fighters were killed in battle for Srebrenica and that is the number of bodies Hague investigators were able to find”, said Swiss researcher Alexander Dorin, who has been investigating Srebrenica events for the past 14 years.

In his latest book titled “Srebrenica — The History of Salon Racism” (Srebrenica — die Geschichte eines salonfahigen Rassismus) published this month in Berlin, Dorin focuses on manipulations with the number of Muslims who lost their lives in Srebrenica.

“Regarding the events in Srebrenica in 1995, the media manipulations still reign in the West, claiming that after the town fell to Serbian hands some 7,000 to 8,000 of Muslim fighters and male civilians were killed. However, the researchers around the world have shown this bears no relation to the truth,” Dorin told Srna News Agency.

According to data he had gathered, Dorin discovered that at least 2,000 Muslim fighters were killed in battle for Srebrenica. He added the facts are showing that neither civilian nor military leadership of Republic of Srpska (Serb Republic in Bosnia-Herzegovina) ever ordered execution of the Muslim fighters and POWs.

“2,000 is approximately the number of bodies Hague investigators were able to find up to this day. To that number the Muslim side added several hundred Muslim fighters, most of whom came from abroad, who were killed in battle few years before the fall of Srebrenica, in Han Pijesak and Konjević Polje,” Dorin said, adding that this is evidenced even by the Muslim documents captured by the Bosnian Serb Army.

Bosnian Serb Army Fought Against Orić’s Cutthroats, Not Against Muslim Civilians
“Prior to the fall of Srebrenica, Naser Orić’s troops withdrew from this small town, leaving 25,000 civilians behind, although a certain number of civilians, some of whom were armed, was withdrawing together with Orić’s fighters,” Dorin said.

He said that Bosnian Serb Army “did not kill a single Muslim civilian of those who remained in Srebrenica or Potocari, while it did engage Orić’s column, which was breaking through to Tuzla in several groups, in fierce fighting.”

“There is no way the Serb Army could have captured seven or eight thousand Muslim fighters and male civilians and execute them somewhere, partly because that was technically impossible,” Dorin said. He explained that, among else, there was never enough Serb soldiers who could carry out a crime on such scale.

In his research, Dorin was using various sources, including statements by the Muslim fighters and commanders, as well as testimonies given by Dutch UNPROFOR troops who were stationed in Srebrenica at the time.

He pointed to a very interesting investigation carried out by the Bulgarian reporter and author Germinal Civikov, who wrote a book about the case of Croat Dražen Erdemović, former member of the Bosnian Serb Army, whose testimony represents the key Hague “evidence” of “Srebrenica massacre”, who claimed that his commander Milorad Pelemiš “ordered him and few other soldiers to execute some 1,000-1,200 Muslim POWs”.

But the analysis of that case, said Dorin, proves Erdemović invented most, if not all of that story.

Dorin explained that director of the Belgrade Center for Investigation of War Crimes Milivoje Ivanišević analyzed the lists of alleged Srebrenica victims. Ivanišević discovered that, a year after the fall of Srebrenica, some 3,000 Muslim men who were supposedly killed in 1995, were voting in the Bosnian Muslim elections.

In addition, at least 1,000 of the alleged 1995 “Srebrenica massacre victims” have been dead long before or after Bosnian Serb Army took the town over.

“It is perfectly clear that Muslim organizations listed as Srebrenica victims all the Muslim fighters who were killed in the fights after the fall of Srebrenica,” the Swiss researcher said.

According to Dorin, some Western reporters wrote back in 1995 that part of Srebrenica Muslim population, after the town’s takeover, migrated to other countries. This includes an American journalist who wrote that around 800 Srebrenica Muslims went abroad — from Serbia.

“It was not possible to conduct an in-depth investigation, since no one can search the entire world to pinpoint each and every name [from the lists of alleged Srebrenica victims]. Still, the available evidence already shows there were immense manipulations at play,” Dorin said.

A number of photos of Muslim fighters taken during their breakthrough to Tuzla, which Dorin obtained from the Muslim sources, show Izetbegović’s fighters in uniforms, with many of them wounded.

“On these photos one can see a number of wounded fighters who survived the battle against the Serb Army. Muslim side is now presenting its fighters who did not recover from their wounds as the victims of an execution”, said Dorin.

He pointed out that some Muslims have admitted at least 2,000 of their Srebrenica-based fighters were killed in the battle.

Dorin also reminded of the statements by the Muslim politicians given to media about an “offer” American president Bill Clinton made to Bosnian Muslim war leader Alija Izetbegović back in April 1993, to have “the Chetnik [Serb] forces enter Srebrenica and massacre 5,000 Muslims, which would result in the [US-led NATO] military intervention” against Bosnian Serbs.

At the same time, Dutch UNPROFOR troops testified that Serb Army treated Muslim civilians in an entirely correct manner, while Srebrenica Muslim warlord Naser Orić with his fighters was massacring Serb civilians in the most monstrous fashion for years in Srebrenica municipality, and pillaging and destroying their property all the while.

… For Those who Want to Know the Truth About Srebrenica
Despite all the evidence about what really took place in Srebrenica and the fact there was no ‘massacre’, Dorin doubts the Hague verdicts in regards to Srebrenica events can be contested or overturned, being that this “so-called tribunal has convicted a number of people for the alleged Srebrenica massacre without any evidence whatsoever”.

He cited a case of the Serb Vidoje Blagojević, convicted to a long prison term even though he had no connection to Srebrenica events, while “the mass murderer Naser Orić was acquitted of all responsibility for killing the Serbs”.

“That court routinely discards everything that proves Serbs are not the monsters they have been made out to be. That tribunal has a purely political function. It has no relation to the justice and truth”, Dorin told Srna.

The Swiss researcher does not expect his book about Srebrenica events will be able to break down the stereotypes. He said the book was written for those who wish to learn the truth about the events Western mainstream media sold as “Srebrenica massacre” and even “genocide”, in order to justify their war against the Serbs.

Dorin added that mostly left-oriented Western newspapers and organizations have shown an interest in his latest book and have offered cooperation.

Alexander Dorin’s book about Srebrenica events is expected to be translated both into Serbian and English language.

Erdemovic is an ethnic Croat from Tuzla who started fighting with the mainly Muslim side, then the Croat side, then a mercenary unit allegedly for the Serb side. He is a proven liar and perjury who was never cross examined. He was a mercenary and war profiteer.

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3894

Yet as Civikov shows with excruciating attention to detail, Erdemovic’s own statements about the command structure in his little platoon are self-contradictory and untrue. He claims that he was forced to commit this massacre and that the orders came from one of his co-perpetrators, Brano Gojkovic. But as Civikov shows, and as even the Prosecution at one point had to admit, this Gojkovic was an ordinary soldier who could not give orders to anyone. Instead, as Civikov also demonstrates, it turns out that Erdemovic himself was a sergeant (he lied to the contrary in Court, claiming that he had been stripped of his rank) while another of the perpetrators was a lieutenant. It is obviously impossible for a private to give orders to two officers and other soldiers to commit war crimes. But if this evidence is faulty, then how valuable is Erdemovic’s claim that Gojkovic’s orders came from the Bosnian Serb HQ in Pale?

...Civikov wades through years of evidence, spanning a decade, to show that in fact Erdemovic is a pathological liar, as well as a callous murderer. He was not a conscripted soldier who was forced to fight, but instead a mercenary who fought on all three sides in the Bosnian civil war. He was not forced, on pain of death, to commit the massacre, as he claimed in court. On the contrary, Civikov shows that his unit was on leave when the massacre was committed. He was not the victim of a later murder attempt to prevent him from testifying, as he also said in court, but instead a criminal and a thug who quarrelled over money with his fellow murderers and who, by his own admission, is prone to blind fits of violence and anger. During his time in the other Bosnian armies (Croat and Muslim) he had evidently been an unscrupulous war profiteer who extracted money from people in return for their safe passage.

Civikov has convinced me that the following is what really happened. Erdemovic belonged to a mercenary unit which was on leave after the fall of Srebrenica. On 15 July 1995, someone evidently offered him and some other mercenaries on leave a lot of money (gold, in fact) to commit a war crime, in this case a massacre of prisoners. In other words, the Bosnian Serb authorities had nothing to do with it – and hence the ludicrous story about the private giving orders. (Perhaps he was the one with the cash.) The mercenaries then hijacked busses of prisoners which were on their way to be exchanged by the Bosnian Serb authorities – to the horror of the unsuspecting bus drivers, and of course of the prisoners themselves – and murdered them. A few days later, there was a fight in a bar over the money and the former comrades starting shooting at each other: Erdemovic was hit in the stomach and later sentimentalised the scar in Court by lifting up his shirt to claim that they had tried to kill him to prevent him from testifying. Escaping from this situation by fleeing into Yugoslavia, he was unexpectedly arrested by the Yugoslav authorities from whom he managed to escape by securing his transfer to The Hague, where his self-interest in receiving a light sentence, coupled with his ability to spin yarns, made him a perfect Prosecution witness. The Prosecution won out on the deal because it gained “proof” of both genocide and command responsibility – which enabled it to go after the “big fish” like Karadzic and Mladic in headline prosecutions – while Erdemovic won out too because he has not only been let off for mass murder, but has also been given a new life, a house and presumably some sort of income. This, I repeat, is the witness on whose evidence alone the finding of genocide at the ICTY is based.

“Lots of words, that don’t do very much to explain how all those bodies ended up broken apart in mass graves.”

The bodies aren’t found in Srebrenica but in villages which Naser Oric’s 28th brigade raided. Plus, there was much more WWI and WWII slaughters in the area. The Ustashe, which the Srebrenica area Muslims joined, were active in the area.

In addition, the Muslims actually break up parts of a single body and put it into different bags to increase the numbers said to be in the graves. The large numbers generally includes a much smaller number of complete or near complete bodies and the rest of the count is in “parts”.

The bodies fall apart through decay, water seepage and other factors, as well as a violent death – which would/could include people who died fighting or stepping on mines too.

After battles, bodies often are buried quickly for sanitation reasons, anti-disease measure as well. The U.S. buried many 10s thousands of Iraqi soldiers after the 1991 Gulf war invasion. Why isn’t the U.S. accused of “mass graves” in that? Also, in WWII the same was done for the Island they fought the Japanese.

This isn’t to mention the U.S. soldiers admitting, and justifying, burying some Iraqi soldiers ALIVE in their trenches – and saying it was okay since they didn’t surrender.

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