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
 

Two Srebrenica Survivors Lawsuits

1. A group of some 6,000 surviving relatives of the victims of the fall of the enclave of Srebrenica, has formed the group Mothers of Srebrenica. This group holds the State of the Netherlands and the United Nations jointly responsible for the fall of the enclave at Srebrenica and therefore liable for the death of their family members and the consequent loss suffered. The group has commenced legal proceedings in the Netherlands against the State of the Netherlands and the United Nations.

Click here for information on the lawsuit. (Follow links on right sidebar for details of the proceedings.)

2. Hasan Nuhanovic researched and documented the terrible events at Srebrenica in meticulous detail over more than 500 pages before taking his case to law, alongside a similar action brought by the family of the murdered electrician Rizo Mustafic.

A few days after the enclave fell to the Serb forces on 11 July 1995 the Dutch Blue Helmets were ordered by their government to leave Srebrenica, abandoning the defenseless Bosnians entrusted to their protection. The names of 8373 former inhabitants of the UN safe area who were murdered by the triumphant Serb forces and buried in mass graves are known. One of them, Hasan Nuhanovic's father, was recently identified from remains discovered in one of those mass graves. The fate of Hasan's mother and his brother remains unknown. Many of the mass graves were subsequently destroyed by Serb troops using bulldozers to conceal all evidence of the crime. The victims' remains were taken away and reburied elsewhere.

The Tragedy of the Nuhanovic Family:
Hasan Nuhanovic spent the night of 12-13 July 1995 with his parents and brother in an improvised office in the UNPROFOR support base at Potocari, on the outskirts of Srebrenica, taking orders from the Dutch officer Andre de Haan. De Haan, who was in the same room along with a doctor and a nurse, had been a guest of the family on a number of occasions and was fond of his mother's cooking. Even so, when news was received that nine men had been killed outside the UNPROFOR base no-one came forward to help the family about to be separated from one another, Nuhanovic remembers in the account he gives in his book "Under the UN Flag". The next morning, between 5 and 6 a.m., de Haan said to him, "Hasan, tell your mother, your brother and your father that they must leave the base, now."

A decision in the case is expected September 10, 2008.

More information:

Interview with attorney Liesbeth Zegveld discussing the case and in particular the reason the Nuhanovic/Mustafic cases are brought against the Dutch government and not against the UN (the Mothers of Srebrenica case is against both).
The interview with Liesbeth is followed by another with Ramesh Thakur, one of the people at the UN responsible for formulating the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine and discussing the implications of the case for its implementation.

Radio Student Slovenia's audio broadcast (in English) of Hasan's presentation describing the fall of Srebrenica.  This is based on the research in "Under the UN Flag" and formed the basis of the presentation he gave the court. (Click on the center of the yellow diamond.)

Visual reminders of what the cases are all about:
Tarik Samarah's project "Srebrenica - genocide at the heart of Europe", displayed at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC
A poignant photomontage of Potocari

Read Under the UN Flag, by Hasan Nuhanovic - how the Dutch state and the United Nations abandoned the people of Srebrenica to genocide in July 1995.