BALKAN WITNESS
Articles on the Bosnia Conflict
Last modified February 27, 2008

Serbian denial of Serb war crimes in Bosnia continues, even after the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre. This denial is endorsed and abetted by various Western commentators, even including some supposedly in the progressive community.

Here we examine some common misrepresentations of Serbian war crimes in Bosnia.

“The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past”.                          --William Faulkner

Bosnian war killed 97,000 people -- study Bosnia's 1992-1995 war claimed some 97,000 lives. The non-governmental Research and Documentation Centre presented the results of the four-year study. Using hundreds of different sources, the organization created a huge database containing names and other information on each victim, including photographs of more than 55,000 of them. "The purpose of this research was to reduce space for manipulation with figures on war victims," said a representative, regarding the project financed mainly by the Norwegian foreign ministry. June 21, 2007

What do the figures for the Bosnian war-dead tell us? Analysis of the above study. By Marko Hoare, January 4, 2008

Below:
     Trnopolje  
     Srebrenica
         Controversy over the interview with Chomsky in the Guardian (UK), October 31, 2005
         Srebrenica Documentary Background
         Articles on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre

International Court of Justice Decision in the case of Bosnia v. Serbia The Court finds that Serbia has violated its obligation under the Genocide Convention to prevent genocide in Srebrenica and that it has also violated its obligations under the Convention by having failed fully to co-operate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Press Release Summary of the Judgment of 26 February 2007 Judgment of 26 February 2007 Opinion of the Court's Vice President - Dissent from the Court's decision not to find Serbia guilty of genocide. Commentary: Peter Lippman    Marko Hoare    Martin Shaw  (And interview with Shaw)    Anthony Dworkin    Martin Shaw's reply to Anthony Dworkin NEW How Belgrade Escaped Genocide Charge Belgrade has more than once invoked national security to stop the Hague tribunal from sharing with the International Court of Justice documents related to the trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. It is widely believed that the transcripts, which record the meetings of top Serbian officials, contain evidence of Belgrade’s direct involvement in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s. Among the documents were files of the Bosnian Serb generals, including top fugitive General Ratko Mladic, who were on the Yugoslav army’s payroll during the war. By Slobodan Kostic, IWPR, February 15, 2008 Call for Serbia to Release Confidential Documents Academics say they want disclosure so that Serbia’s role in the Bosnian war can be assessed objectively. By Merdijana Sadovic, IWPR, November 23, 2007 New Light Shed on Belgrade Role in Bosnian War The International Court of Justice decided Serbia was not to blame for the genocide in Bosnia, but documents quietly published in Montenegro hint it may have been wrong. At the time, it seemed bizarre that the ICJ declined to demand minutes of Serbia’s Supreme Defence Council as evidence in the case, and a few glimpses of the transcripts in a new book make it look even more so. By Edina Becirevic, IWPR  November 16, 2007 Bosnia vs Serbia: The evidence scandal Redacted documents confirm that Bosnian Serb political and army structures were under direct control by the Serbian government, who also gave them financial and logistical support. Evidence would have made Serbia liable for the Srebrenica genocide, and whenever the agenda turned to discussion of the financing of the Bosnian Serb army and personnel matters, as well as to Croatian Serb activities, the documents were blacked out in places. During the war in Bosnia, up to 4,000 officers on the Yugoslav Army payroll were serving in the Bosnian Serb Army. ISN Security Watch, International Relations and Security Network, April 24, 2007 Srebrenica Massacre Verdicts Spark Outrage Among Survivors The Advocacy Project, April 12, 2007 Genocide Court Ruled for Serbia Without Seeing Full War Archive This article comes at a particularly awkward moment for Belgrade, as it tries to invoke international legality as the reason why it should be allowed to hang on to Kosovo, at least de jure if not de facto. By Marlise Simons, New York Times, April 9, 2007

 

Trnopolje "Living Marxism": Poison in the well of history By Ed Vulliamy, The Guardian, March 15, 2000. Living Marxism magazine (LM), in denying reports on a Serbian-run concentration camp, accused a British TV station of distorting the truth about Bosnia. Mr. Vulliamy, who filed the first reports on the horrors of the Trnopolje camp, explains why these Serb apologists had to be defeated in court. For an index of coverage by The Guardian (U.K.), click here. See also: Living Marxism - Festering Fascism? by George Monbiot, Prospect Magazine, November 1998. Dubious Sources, by David Walls, New Politics, summer 2002. (See the section "Weaving a Fabric of Deceit.") Atrocity, memory, photography Imaging the concentration camps of Bosnia - the case of ITN versus Living Marxism. The article painstakingly demolishes LM's argument and reveals it to be a thin tissue of fabrications, distortions, and lies. Part 1 details the controversy surrounding the 1992 television image of Fikret Alic and others imprisoned at Trnopolje camp in Bosnia, demonstrating how doubts about its veracity were unsustainable. Part 2 explores the historical, political and visual context in which the particulars of the controversy are located. It explores what is involved in the concept of a 'concentration camp', as well as the nature of the Nazis' concentration camp system and the implications of this for the memory of the Holocaust and our understanding of contemporary atrocity. By David Campbell, Journal of Human Rights, March & June 2002. Revisionism Will Cripple Bosnia's Future. By Nerma Jelacic, IWPR, October 1, 2004 Living Marxism (LM): a profile by LobbyWatch. LM's lies about Bosnia have been picked up and redistributed by numerous supposedly reputable commentators, including Edward Herman. Peter Brock: This advocate for Serbian nationalism is a favored source of Edward Herman and other war-crimes deniers. Brock's Foreign Policy article misrepresenting the Trnopolje camp and other Serbian atrocities is refuted in an article by Charles Lane and another by Michael Sells. Empty Villages and Crowded Grave Yards Preserving Memory in “Ethnically Cleansed” Prijedor. By Patrick McCarthy, July 2007 Interview with Ed Vulliamy, the British reporter who reported on Serbian concentration camps in Northwest Bosnia. Radio KWMU, St. Louis, November 20, 2007 (audio)   Srebrenica Edward Herman: The Politics of the Srebrenica Massacre On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, Herman insults the survivors with denial of Serbian atrocities and apologetics for Serbian aggression. Several readers responded. July 2005 More on Edward Herman here. Antiwar.com: While the perpetrators of the Bosnian Serb massacre of over 7,000 Muslims at Srebrenica are starting to confess (see Bosnian Serbs finally admit truth of Srebrenica deaths), Serb nationalist apologists are still denying that the massacre happened. Antiwar.com is among the prominent deniers. For a good antidote, see The Independent, November 5, 2003. The article notes, "The Bosnian Serb government has admitted for the first time that Bosnian Serb forces were responsible for the mass slaughter of Muslims in Srebrenica in July, 1995, Europe's worst atrocity since the end of the Second World War." See also Remains of dozens found in Bosnia's largest grave. (The Independent, July 29, 2003) Noam Chomsky: Srebrenica and Honesty The writer criticizes Chomsky for soft-peddling the Serbian massacre of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica. "I cannot believe you are ignorant of the facts about Srebrenica and the Yugoslavian wars. You've devoted your life to uncovering hypocrisy and dispelling ignorance. So how am I to understand your bias in this matter?"  By Julie Wornan, member of Americans Against the War, France, January 4, 2005 Chomsky bamboozles on the Balkans II In an interview with Radio-TV Serbia, Chomsky endorses the lies of LM  Magazine (see above). Oliver Kamm rebuts and rebukes Chomsky. June 2006 General Lewis MacKenzie: Paid Serbian Lobbyist and Srebrenica Genocide Denier   Controversy over the interview with Chomsky in the Guardian (UK), October 31, 2005 Though flawed, the Guardian article had some interesting observations on Chomsky's attitude toward the Srebrenica massacre. The interview has been pulled from the Guardian's website but is available elsewhere. In an earlier interview, Chomsky stated, Srebrenica was an enclave, lightly protected by UN forces, which was being used as a base for attacking nearby Serb villages. It was known that there’s going to be retaliation. When there was a retaliation, it was vicious. They trucked out all the women and children, they kept the men inside, and apparently slaughtered them. The estimates are thousands of people slaughtered. The key words here are "retaliation," "apparently," and "estimates"; the slaughter "apparently" took place; the thousands killed were mere "estimates"; they were, in any case, simply "retaliation" for earlier Muslim crimes. While Chomsky raises doubts about the fact and scale of the killings, he is absolutely categorical that they were retribution for earlier Muslim crimes - the slaughter apparently took place, but if it did, then it was definitely retaliation. See Marko Attila Hoare's discussion of the Guardian interview and Chomsky's position on Srebrenica, Chomsky’s Srebrenica Shame - and The Guardian’s... , November 21, 2005 Protest to the Guardian Over “Correction” to Noam Chomsky Interview By a group of Bosnian genocide survivors, academics, journalists, and others with a specialization on the subject of the Bosnian war. December 8, 2005 The Guardian, Noam Chomsky and the Milosevic Lobby The Guardian interview exposed Chomsky's position on  the Srebrenica massacre, which Chomsky described as "probably overstated" and which he has minimized at various times and in various ways. The interview also cited him as saying that reports of Serb concentration-camps were "probably not true," and that claims that these camps had been deliberately invented by the Western media to demonize the Serbs were "probably correct." By Marko Attila Hoare, February 4, 2006 An overview of the whole affair