Srebrenica massacre: Difference between revisions
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On October 4, [[2005]], the Special Bosnian Serb Government Working Group said that 25,083 people were involved in the massacre including 19,473 members of various Bosnian Serb armed forces that actively gave orders or directly took part in the massacre. They have identified 17,074 by name.[http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?id=13046] |
On October 4, [[2005]], the Special Bosnian Serb Government Working Group said that 25,083 people were involved in the massacre including 19,473 members of various Bosnian Serb armed forces that actively gave orders or directly took part in the massacre. They have identified 17,074 by name.[http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?id=13046] |
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Srebrenica |
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And the Politics of |
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War Crimes |
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http://www.srebrenica-report.com/index.htm |
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Findings of the Srebrenica Research Group |
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into the allegations of events and the background leading up to them, in Srebrenica, Bosnia & Herzegovina, in 1995. |
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Conclusions |
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of Srebrenica Research Group |
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Following three years of research as a group and many more as individuals, the Srebrenica Research Group reports the following conclusions: |
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1. |
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Both the scale of the casualties at Srebrenica and the context of events have been misrepresented in official reports from governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as news organizations. Senior UN military and civilian officials, NATO intelligence officers and independent intelligence analysts dispute the official portrayal of the capture of Srebrenica by the International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia, (ICTY) as a unique atrocity in the Bosnian conflict. The contention that as many as 8,000 Muslims were killed has no basis in available evidence and is essentially a political construct. |
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2. |
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The 8,000 figure was first provided by the Red Cross, based on their crude estimate that the Bosnian Serb Army (BSA) had captured 3,000 men and that 5,000 were reported "missing." It is well established that thousands of those "missing" had reached Tuzla or were killed in the fighting, but in an amazing transformation displaying the eagerness to find the Bosnian Serbs evil and the Muslims victims, the "reaching safety/killed-in-action" basis of being missing was ignored and the missing were taken as executed! This misleading conclusion was helped along by the Red Cross's reference to the 5,000 as having "simply disappeared," and its failure to correct this politically biased usage despite its own recognition that "several thousand" refugees had reached Central Bosnia. It was also helped along by the Bosnian Muslim leadership's refusal to disclose the names and numbers of those reaching safety, but there was a remarkable readiness in Western governments not only to ignore those reaching safety, but also to disregard deaths in fighting and to take dead bodies as proving executions. The will to believe here was limitless: reporter David Rohde saw a bone sticking up in a grave site near Srebrenica, which he just knew by instinct was a remnant of an execution and serious evidence of a "massacre." It was standard media practice to move from an asserted and unproven claim of thousands missing, or a report of the uncovering of bodies in a grave site, to the conclusion that the claim of 8,000 executed was thereby demonstrated. |
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3. |
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With 8,000 executed and thousands killed in the fighting, there should have been huge grave sites and satellite evidence of both executions, burials, and any body removals. But the body searches in the Srebrenica vicinity were painfully disappointing, with only some two thousand bodies found in searches through 2001, including bodies killed in action and possibly Serb bodies, some pre-dating July 1995. The sparseness of these findings led to claims of body removal and reburial, but this was unconvincing as the Bosnian Serbs were under intense military pressure after July 1995. This was the period when NATO was bombing Serb positions and Croat/Muslim armies were driving towards Banja Luka. The BSA was on the defensive and was extremely short of equipment and resources, including gasoline. To have mounted an operation of the magnitude required to exhume, transport and rebury thousands of corpses would have been far beyond the BSA's capacity at that time. Furthermore, in carrying out such a program they could hardly hope to escape observation from OSCE personnel, local civilians, and satellite observations. |
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4. |
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On August 10, 1995, Madeleine Albright showed some satellite photos at a closed session of the Security Council, as part of a denunciation of the Bosnian Serbs, including one photo showing people--allegedly Bosnian Muslims near Srebrenica--assembled in a stadium, and one allegedly taken shortly thereafter showing a nearby field with "disturbed" soil. These photos have never been publicly released, but even if they are genuine they don't prove either executions or burials. Furthermore, although the ICTY speaks of "an organized and comprehensive effort" to hide bodies, and David Rohde claimed a "huge Serb effort to hide bodies," neither Albright nor anyone else has ever shown a satellite photo of people actually being executed, buried, or dug up for reburial, or of trucks conveying thousands of bodies elsewhere. This failure to provide evidence occurred despite Albright's warning the Serbs that "We will be watching," and with satellites at that time, making at least eight passes per day and geostationary drones able to hover and take finely detailed pictures in position over Bosnia during the summer of 1995. The mainstream media have found this failure to confirm of no interest. |
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5. |
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There have been a great many bodies gathered at Tuzla, some 7,500 or more, from all across Bosnia, many in poor condition or parts only, their collection and handling incompatible with professional forensic standards, their provenance unclear and link to the July 1995 events in Srebrenica unproven and often unlikely, and the manner of their death usually uncertain. Interestingly, although the Serbs were regularly accused of trying to hide bodies, there has never been any suggestion that the Bosnian Muslims, long in charge of the body search, might shift bodies around and otherwise manipulate evidence, despite their substantial record of dissembling. A systematic attempt to use DNA to trace connections to Srebrenica is underway, but entails many problems, apart from that of the integrity of the material studied and process of investigation, and will not resolve the question of differentiating executions from deaths in combat. There are also lists of missing, but these lists are badly flawed, with duplications, individuals listed who had died before July 1995, who fled to avoid Bosnian Muslim Army service, or who registered to vote in 1997, and they include individuals who died in battle or reached safety or were captured and assumed a new existence elsewhere. |
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6. |
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The 8,000 figure is also incompatible with the basic arithmetic of Srebrenica numbers before and after July 1995. Displaced persons from Srebrenica--that is, massacre survivors-- registered with the World Health Organization and Bosnian government in early August 1995, totalled 35,632. Muslim men who reached Muslim lines "without their families being informed" totaled at least 3,000, and some 2,000 were killed in the fighting. That gives us 37,632 survivors plus the 2,000 combat deaths, which would require the prewar population of Srebrenica to have been 48,000 if 8,000 were executed, whereas the population before July was more like 37-40,000 (Tribunal judge Patricia Wald gave 37,000 as her estimate). The numbers don't add up. |
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7. |
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There were witnesses to killings at Srebrenica, or those who claimed to be witnesses. There were not many of these, and some had a political axe to grind or were otherwise not credible, but several were believable and were very likely describing real and ugly events. But the available evidence indicates hundreds of executions, not 8,000 or anything close to it. The only direct participant witness claim that ran to a thousand was that of Drazen Erdemovic, an ethnic Croat associated with a mercenary group of killers whose members were paid 12 kilos of gold for their Bosnian service (according to Erdemovic himself) and ended up working in the Congo on behalf of French intelligence. His testimony was accepted despite its vagueness and inconsistencies, lack of corroboration, and his suffering from mental problems sufficient to disqualify him from trial--but not from testifying before the Tribunal, free of cross-examination. within two weeks of this disqualification from trial. This and other witness evidence suffered from serious abuse of the plea-bargaining process whereby witnesses could receive mitigating sentences if they cooperated sufficiently with the prosecution. |
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It is also noteworthy how many relatively impartial observers in or near Srebrenica in July 1995 didn't see any evidence of massacres, including the members of the Dutch forces present in the "safe area" and people like Hubert Wieland, the chief UN investigator of human rights abuses, who could find no eyewitnesses to atrocities after five days of interviewing among the 20,000 Srebrenica survivors gathered at the Tuzla airport refugee camp. Carlos Martins Branco, former UN Deputy Director of UNMO (UN Monitors) in Bosnia, who debriefed UN monitors assigned to Srebrenica, writes that casualty estimates of 8,000 have been “used and manipulated for propaganda purposes…there is little doubt that at least 2,000 Bosnian Muslims died in fighting the better trained and better commanded BSA “ 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 of these deaths occurred before the fall of Srebrenica, according to Branco. |
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8. |
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The events of Srebrenica and claims of a major massacre were extremely helpful to the Clinton administration, the Bosnian Muslim leadership, and Croatian authorities. Clinton was under political pressure in 1995 both from the media and from Bob Dole to take more forceful action in favor of the Bosnian Muslims, and his administration was eager to find a justification for more aggressive policies. Clinton officials rushed to the Srebrenica scene to confirm and publicize the claims of a massacre, just as William Walker did later at Racak in January 1999. By inflating the casualties following the capture of Srebrenica, US officials also diverted attention from larger-scale, US-supported Croatian attacks on Serb populated UN Protected Areas (UNPAs) in Western Slavonia (“Operation Flash”) and the Krajina region (“Operation Storm”) in May and August of 1995. Having undermined a UN-European Community agreement that would have prevented the outbreak of war (the March 1992 Lisbon agreement) and two other negotiated settlements (the Vance-Owen and the Owen-Stoltenberg agreements) which would have ended the fighting in 1993, US State Department hardliners were committed to imposing a military solution, that prolonged the war till 1995. |
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By facilitating the illegal transfer of weapons to Bosnian Muslim forces and turning a blind eye toward the entry of foreign Mujahadeen fighters, the US turned supposed safe zones for civilians into staging areas for conflict and a tripwire for NATO intervention. Dr. Cees Wiebes who authored the chapter on military intelligence in the Dutch government report on Srebrenica, notes that the US Defense Intelligence Agency facilitated the transfer of illegal arms from Muslim countries to the Tuzla airport using black Hercules C-130 transport planes and arranged for gaps in air surveillance by AWACs which were supposed to guard against such illegal arms traffic. Along with these weapons came Mujahadeen fighters from both Iranian Shiite training camps and al-Qaeda, including two of the hijackers involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Khaled Sheik Mohammed who helped plan the attack. Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Ladin, himself, was issued a Bosnian passport by the Embassy of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Vienna in 1993, according to the Bosnian Muslim publication Dani. Bin-Ladin was observed on two occasions at the office of Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic. |
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9. |
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Both US and US-appointed ICTY officials acknowledged political considerations in issuing genocide indictments, which were announced prior to an investigation of events surrounding the capture of Srebrenica. On July 24, 1995 the UN’s chief investigator (for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) Henry Wieland, who had spoken to scores of Muslims at the main refugee camp at Tuzla airfield told the London Daily Telegraph “we have not found anyone who saw with their own eyes an atrocity taking place.” Three days, later, however, the ICTY issued indictments charging Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. In news accounts reports of July 27, ICTY Chief Judge Antonio Cassesse praised the indictments as “a good political result” and added that the indictment means that “these gentlemen [Mladic and Karadzic] will not be able to take part in peace negotiations.” The Boston Globe reported the same day: “The Clinton Administration has not obtained independent confirmation of atrocities [at Srebrenica],” but does not doubt that these occurred “I realized that the War Crimes Tribunal was a very valuable tool,” Richard Holbrooke told the BBC. “We used it to keep the two most wanted war criminals in Europe out of the Dayton process and we used it to justify everything that followed.” |
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10. |
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Bosnian Muslim leaders had been struggling for several years to persuade the NATO powers to intervene more forcibly on their behalf, and there is strong evidence that they were prepared not only to lie but also to sacrifice their own citizens and soldiers to serve the end of inducing intervention. Bosnian Muslim officials have claimed that their leader, Alija Izetbegovic, told them that Clinton had advised him that U.S. intervention would only occur if the Serbs killed at least 5,000 at Srebrenica. The abandonment of Srebrenica by a military force much larger than that of the attackers, and a retreat that made that larger force vulnerable and caused it to suffer heavy casualties in fighting and vengeance executions, helped produce numbers that would meet the Clinton criterion, by hook or by crook. There is other evidence that the retreat from Srebrenica was not based on any military necessity but was strategic, with the personnel losses incurred considered a necessary sacrifice for a larger purpose. On July 9, 1995, two days before Bosnian Serbs had captured the nearly empty town of Srebrenica and before any serious fighting had taken place, President Izetbegovic was already calling President Clinton and other world leaders urging them to take action against “terrorism” and “genocide” by Bosnian Serb Forces. This was part of an ongoing pattern in which charges of mass rape, death camps, staged atrocities were used to manipulate public opinion in favor of military intervention. |
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Military sources confirm that the 5,500 strong Muslim military force in Srebrenica made no effort to defend Srebrenica against 200 Serbian troops supported by five tanks. Tim Ripley, a military analyst for Janes’ Defense publications notes that Muslim forces fled from Srebrenica to the surrounding hills before Serbs captured the nearly empty town. He writes that Dutch troops “saw Bosnian troops escaping from Srebrenica move past their observation points carrying brand new anti-tank weapons, still in their plastic wrappings. This, and other similar reports, made many UN officers and international journalists suspicious.” Former Deputy Director of UNMO (UN Monitors) Carlos Martins Branco who debriefed the UN monitors who served in Srebrenica, writes: “Muslim forces did not even try to take advantage of their heavy artillery, under control of the United Nations (UN) forces at a time in which they had every reason to do so … Military resistance would jeopardize the image of ‘victim’, which had been so carefully constructed, and which the Muslims considered vital to maintain.” Lt Col British Lt.-Col. Jim Baxter, assistant to UN Commander Rupert Smith, told Tim Ripley “They [the Bosnian government] knew what was happening in Srebrenica. I am certain they decided it was worth the sacrifice.” |
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Muslim leaders from Srebrenica claim that the town was deliberately “sacrificed” by the Presidency of the Bosnia and the Military High Command in order to encourage NATO intervention. In their testimony before the Hague Tribunal, Bosnian Muslim Generals Halilovic and Hadzihasanovic testified that General Staff of the Bosnian Army abruptly removed 18 top officers of the 28th division in Srebrenica. This was done even as the high command was ordering sabotage operations against Bosnian Serbs. One of these was a militarily meaningless attack on a strategically unimportant nearby Serb village of Visnica. The final operation was an attack on Bosnian Serb Army units on the road south of Srebrenica, just days before the Serbs captured the nearly undefended town. |
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Ibran Mustafic, the head of the Muslim SDA party in Srebrenica, who had clashed with local Bosnian Muslim military commander Naser Oric, and was badly wounded in two assassination attempts, told Slobodna Bosna: “The scenario for the betrayal of Srebrenica was consciously prepared. Unfortunately the Bosnian presidency and the Army command were involved in this business … Had I received orders to attack the Serb army from the demilitarized zone, I would have rejected to carry out that order without thinking and would have asked the person who had issued that order to bring his family to Srebrenica so that I can give him a gun let him stage attacks from the demilitarized zone. I knew that such shameful, calculated moves were leading my people to catastrophe. The order came from Sarajevo” |
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In his book Warriors for Peace, Bernard Kouchner, former head of Doctors Without Borders, states that on his death bed, Bosnia’s wartime president, Alija Izetbegovic, acknowledged to both Kouchner and former UN envoy Richard Holbrooke that he had exaggerated claims of atrocities by Serbian forces to encourage NATO intervention against the Serbs. Specifically he mentions wartime POW camps that all three factions in the Bosnian civil war utilized, but which his government claimed in 1992 were really "death camps," a charge which was widely publicized by reporters such as Newsday's Roy Gutman (who shared a Pulitzer prize for this story) and ABC anchor Peter Jennings. Izetbegovic admitted to Kouchner and Holbrooke that "There were no extermination camps, whatever the horror of those places. I thought my revelations [sic] would precipitate bombing [against Serbs]." |
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11. |
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Croatian authorities were also delighted with the claims of a Srebrenica massacre, as this deflected attention from their prior devastating ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Western Slavonia (almost entirely ignored by the Western media), and it provided a cover for their already planned removal of several hundred thousand Serbs from the Krajina area in Croatia. In “Operation Flash,” carried out in Western Slavonia in May 1995, the Croatians did not provide safe passage for a huge column of Serb refugees, which included many women and children. “Many Serbs perished in heavy Croatian tank, artillery and aerial bombardments …as they tried to flee southward toward the Sava River bridge into Bosnia,” wrote New York Times reporter Roger Cohen, who noted that “the estimate of 450 Serbian dead, given by Gojko Susak, the Croatian Defense Minister appears to be conservative.” The followup massive ethnic cleansing operation by Croatia in Krajina was carried out with U.S. approval and logistical support within a month of the Srebrenica events, and it may well have involved the killing of more Serb civilians than Bosnian Muslim civilians killed in the Srebrenica area in July: most of the Bosnian Muslim victims were fighters, not civilians, as the Bosnian Serbs bused the Srebrenica women and children to safety; here as in Western Slavonia the Croatians made no such provision and many women, children and old people were slaughtered in Krajina. The ruthlessness of the Croats was impressive: "UN troops watched horrified as Croat soldiers dragged the bodies of dead Serbs along the road outside the UN compound and then pumped them full of rounds from the AK-47s. They then crushed the bullet-ridden bodies under the tracks of a tank." But this was hardly noticed in the wake of the indignation and propaganda generated around Srebrenica, with the aid of the mainstream media, whose co-belligerency role in the Balkan wars was already well-entrenched. |
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12. |
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The International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) and UN also had an important role to play in the consolidation of the standard Srebrenica massacre narrative. From its inception the ICTY served as an arm of the NATO powers, who created it, funded it, served as its police arm and main information source, and expected and got responsive service from the organization. The ICTY focused intensively on Srebrenica and provided important and nominally independent corroboration of the massacre claims along with citable "judicial" claims of planned "genocide." Although the death toll in Operations “Flash” and “Storm” is believed to be in the thousands, in contrast with its treatment of Srebrenica, but in keeping with its role as a political instrument of NATO, no genocide indictments were issued by the ICTY for these ethnic cleansing operations and massacres. |
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13. |
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The UN is less thoroughly integrated into NATO-power demands than the ICTY, but it is highly responsive, and in the Srebrenica case, it came through just as the United States and its main allies desired. Under pressure from the US, the UN employed a double standard for reporting alleged abuses by Serb forces as compared with comparable abuses by Croatian Muslim forces. Between May of 1992 and April of 1993, scarcely a day went by without massacres and scorched earth attacks by Muslim warlord Naser Oric on towns and villages such as Sikirici, Konjevic Polje, Glogova, Zalazje, Fakovici, Kaludra, Loznica, Fakovici, Brezani, Krnica, Zagoni, Orlice, Jezhtica, Bijlaca, Crni Vhr, Milici, Kamenica, Bjelovac, Kravica, Skelani and Zabokvica. "Naser Oric was a warlord who reigned by terror in this area and over the population itself," General Phillippe Morillon testified at the Hague Tribunal. "He could not allow himself to take prisoners. According to my recollection, he didn't even look for an excuse.” Oric’s forces are responsible for 1,200-1,500 deaths in the Srebrenica area. |
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Yet, despite extensive evidence of Oric’s direct participation in such atrocities in a report submitted to the UN by the Yugoslav State Commission on War Crimes, the US State Department, the UN and major news organizations were largely silent on these crimes. UN Security Council resolutions to condemn abuses by Muslim forces or Croatian forces were routinely thwarted by threatened veto from Madeleine Albright. The report on Oric was submitted to the UN Commission of Experts on War Crimes, whose chairman Cherif Bassiouni was appointed by Ambassador Albright, but Oric was not even mentioned in the final report of the Commission. When the ICTY finally got around to indicting Nasir Oric on March 28, 2003, very possibly to create the image of judicial balance, he was charged with killing only seven Serbs who were tortured and beaten to death after capture, and with the "wanton destruction" of nearby villages. Although he bragged to Western reporters of slaughtering Serb civilians, the ICTY reportedly "found no evidence that there were civilian casualties in the attacks on Serb villages in his theater of operations." |
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Former NATO Deputy Commander Charles Boyd, who was in charge of intelligence assessments, wrote in Foreign Affairs that the Croatian attack on the UN Protected Serb-inhabited area of Western Bosnia, which preceded the capture of Srebrenica “appears to differ from Serbian actions around the UN safe areas of Srebrenica and Zepa only in the degree of Western hand-wringing and CNN footage the latter have elicited. Ethnic cleansing evokes condemnation only when it is committed by Serbs, not against them.” |
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14. |
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Another anomaly also showing the sacred, untouchable, and politicized character of the Srebrenica massacre in Western ideology has been the ready designation of the killings as a case of "genocide." The Tribunal played an important role here, with hard-to-match gullibility, unrestrained psychologizing, problematic legal reasoning, and the ready acceptance of trial testimony by prosecution witnesses who committed perjury as part of plea bargains (most notably, Drazen Erdemovic and Momir Nikolic). The term genocide, once reserved for the most horrific crime, the planned extermination of a particular group, was manipulated by the ICTY to justify indictments that preceded any serious investigation of events related to the capture of Srebrenica. |
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On gullibility, one Tribunal judge accepted as fact the witness claim that Serb soldiers had forced an old Muslim man to eat the liver of his grandson; and the judges repeatedly stated as an established fact that 7-8,000 Muslim men had been executed, while simultaneously acknowledging that the evidence only "suggested" that "a majority" of the 7-8,000 missing had not been killed in combat, which yields a number substantially lower than 7-8,000. The Tribunal dealt with the awkward problem of the genocide-intent Serbs bussing Bosnian Muslim women and children to safety by arguing that they did this for public relations reasons, but as Michael Mandel points out, failing to do some criminal act despite your desire is called "not committing a crime." The Tribunal never asked why the genocidal Serbs failed to surround the town before its capture to prevent thousands of males from escaping to safety, or why the Bosnian Muslim soldiers were willing to leave their women and children as well as many wounded comrades to the mercies of the Serbs; and they failed to confront the fact that 10,000 mainly Muslim residents of Zvornik sought refugee from the civil war in Serbia itself, as prosecution witness Borisav Jovic testified. |
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Among the other weaknesses in the Tribunal judges' argument, it was genocide if you killed many males in a group in order to reduce the future population of that group, thereby making it unviable in that area. Of course, you might want to kill them to prevent their killing you in the future, but the court knows Serb psychology better--that couldn't be the sole reason, there must have been a more sinister aim. The Tribunal reasoning holds forth the possibility that with only a little prosecution-friendly judicial psychologizing any case of killing enemy soldiers can be designated genocide. |
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There is also the problem of definition of the group. Were the Serbs trying to eliminate all the Muslims in Bosnia, or Muslims globally? Or just in Srebrenica? The judges suggested that pushing them out of the Srebrenica area was itself genocide, and they essentially equated genocide with ethnic cleansing. It is notable that the ICTY has never called the Croat ethnic cleansing of 250,000 Krajina Serbs "genocide" although in that case, many women and children were killed and the ethnic cleansing applied to a larger area and larger victim population than in Srebrenica. (On August 10, 1995, Madeleine Albright cried out to the Security Council that "as many as 13,000 men, women and children were driven from their homes" in Srebrenica.) Perhaps the ICTY had accepted Richard Holbrooke's designation of the Krajina as a case of "involuntary expulsions." The bias is blatant; the politicization of a purported judicial enterprise is extreme. |
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Media treatment of the Srebrenica and Krajina cases followed the same pattern and illustrates well how the media make some victims worthy and others unworthy in accord with a political agenda. With the Serbs their government's target, and their government actively aiding the massive Croat ethnic cleansing program in Krajina, the media gave huge and indignant treatment to the first, with invidious language, calls for action, and little context. With Krajina, attention was slight and passing, indignation was absent, detailed reporting on the condition of the victims was minimal, descriptive language was neutral, and there was context offered that made the events understandable. The contrast is dramatic: the attack on Srebrenica "chilling," "murderous," "savagery," "cold-blooded killing," "genocidal," "aggression," and of course "ethnic cleansing." With Krajina, the media used no such strong language--even ethnic cleansing was too much for them. The Croat assault was merely a big "upheaval" that is "softening up the enemy," "a lightning offensive," explained away as a "response to Srebrenica" and a result of Serb leaders "overplaying their hand." The Washington Post even cited U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith saying the "the Serb exodus was not 'ethnic cleansing'." The paper does not allow a challenge to that judgment. In fact, however, the Croat operations in Krajina left Croatia as the most ethnically purified of all the former components of the former Yugoslavia, although the NATO occupation of Kosovo has allowed an Albanian ethnic cleansing that is rivalling that of Croatia in ethnic purification. |
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Many journalists covering Srebrenica and the Bosnian war consistently accepted Bosnian and US government pronouncements as fact instead of independently verifying evidence. U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel John Sray, on the scene in Bosnia, wrote in October 1995 on “Selling the Bosnian Myth: Buyer Beware,” that while “many journalists, who undeniably labor under dangerous and miserable conditions… have permitted themselves to become pawns of the propaganda structure….These correspondents frequently limit their time in Bosnia to short stays and fail to gain an appreciation for the true nuances at play in this war. Watching and reading their reports too often conveys the impression that they feel the pressure of competition for a voyeuristic audience against their pampered tabloid-like peers (such as those who covered the O.J. Simpson trial) and try to react accordingly. This segment of the media views its job security as dependent upon obtaining thirty seconds of good video footage accompanied with appropriate sound bites from Muslim officials or their populace. The result, obviously, becomes tawdry reporting that panders to the Bosniac point of view and results in misleading news reports.” |
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Obviously, this characterization does not describe all the coverage of the conflict or events around Srebrenica, but it describes the long-standing mainstream perspective and serves to remind us that ten years later, a highly skewed version of what happened at Srebrenica dominates public perceptions, and may influence decisions now being made about the fate of Kosovo and Bosnia. |
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An understanding of the events surrounding Srebrenica may also determine if the Serbs will continue to bear the brunt of the blame for the tragic conflict that occurred when the major powers -- the EU, the United States and the UN -- encouraged the breakup of Yugoslavia through diplomatic recognition of armed separatist states, despite the warning of UN Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar. Compounding this error, the US, the most important member state of the UN, then helped prolong the conflict by taking sides, instead of permitting the UN to act as an honest broker, its traditional role, which was repeatedly undermined during its mission in the former Yugoslavia. |
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===US resolution 199=== |
===US resolution 199=== |
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Revision as of 22:43, 1 February 2006
The Srebrenica massacre was the July 1995 killing of an estimated 7,800 to 8,000 Bosniak males, ranging in age from teenagers to the elderly, in the region of Srebrenica by a Serb Army of Republika Srpska under general Ratko Mladić including Serbian state special forces "Scorpions". The same special forces commited war crimes in Kosovo in 1999. The Srebrenica massacre is considered one of the largest mass murders in Europe since World War II and one of the most horrific and controversial events in recent European history.
Mladić and other Serb army officers have since been indicted for various war crimes, including genocide, at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The ICTY's final ruling was that the massacre was indeed an act of genocide.[1]
Background
The conflict in Eastern Bosnia
- See also History of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia began its journey to independence with a parliamentary declaration of sovereignty on October 15 1991. The Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was recognised by the European Community on April 6 1992 and by the United States the following day. International recognition did not end the matter, however, and a fierce struggle for territorial control ensued among the three major groups in Bosnia: Bosniak, Serb and Croat. The international community made various attempts to establish peace, but their success was very limited. In the Eastern part of Bosnia, close to Serbia, the conflict was particularly fierce between the Serbs and the Bosniaks.
Serbs intended to preserve Bosnia and Herzegovina as a component part of the former state. That was indeed their fundamental, long-term, and political objective in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They wanted to live in the same state with other Serbs, and the only state that could guarantee that was the former Yugoslavia. Serbs believed that the area of Central Podrinje (Srebrenica region) had a primary strategic importance for them. They thought that without the area of Central Podrinje, there would be no Republika Srpska, as there would be no territorial integrity of Serb ethnic territories. The Serbs would have to accept the Bosnian enclave within their ethnic territories. The territory would be split in two, the whole area would be disintegrated, and it would be separated from Serbia proper and from areas which are inhabited almost 100% by Serb population.
In spite of Srebrenica’s predominantly Bosniak population, Serb paramilitaries from the area and neighbouring parts of eastern Bosnia gained control of the town for several weeks early in 1992. In May 1992, however, a group of Bosnian fighters under the leadership of Naser Orić managed to recapture Srebrenica. Over the next several months, Orić and his men pressed outward in a series of raids. By September 1992, Bosnian forces from Srebrenica had linked up with those in Žepa, a Bosniak-held town to the south of Srebrenica. By January 1993, the enclave had been further expanded to include the Bosnian-held enclave of Cerska located to the west of Srebrenica. At this time the Srebrenica enclave reached its peak size of 900 square kilometres, although it was never linked to the main area of Bosnian-held land in the west and remained a vulnerable island amid Serb-controlled territory .
In January 1993, Bosnian forces attacked the Serb village of Kravica. Over the next few months, the Bosnian Serbs responded with a counter-offensive, eventually capturing the villages of Konjević Polje and Cerska, severing the link between Srebrenica and Žepa and reducing the size of the Srebrenica enclave to 150 square kilometres. Bosniak residents of the outlying areas converged on Srebrenica town and its population swelled to between 50,000 and 60,000 people. During this military activity in the months following January 1993, there were reports of terror inflicted by Bosniaks on Serb civilians and by Serbs on Bosniak civilians.
General Philippe Morillon of France, the Commander of the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) visited Srebrenica in March 1993. By then the town was overcrowded and siege conditions prevailed. There was almost no running water as the advancing Serb forces had destroyed the town’s water supplies. People relied on makeshift generators for electricity. Food, medicine and other essentials were extremely scarce. Before leaving, General Morillon told the panicked residents of Srebrenica at a public gathering that the town was under the protection of the UN and that he would never abandon them.
Between March and April 1993, approximately 8,000 to 9,000 Bosniaks were evacuated from Srebrenica under the auspices of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The evacuations were opposed by the Bosnian government in Sarajevo as contributing to the ethnic cleansing of the territory.
The Bosnian Serb authorities remained intent on capturing the enclave, which, because of its proximity to the Serbian border and because it was entirely surrounded by Serb-held territory, was both strategically important and vulnerable to capture. On April 13 1993, the Bosnian Serbs told the UNHCR representatives that they would attack the town within two days unless the Bosniaks surrendered and agreed to be evacuated.
April 1993: The Security Council Declares Srebrenica a “Safe Area”
On April 16 1993, the United Nations Security Council responded by passing resolution 819, declaring that "all parties and others concerned treat Srebrenica and its surroundings as a safe area which should be free from any armed attack or any other hostile act"[2]. The Security Council created two other UN protected enclaves at the same time: Žepa and Goražde. On April 18 1993, the first group of UNPROFOR troops arrived in Srebrenica.
Generally, the Bosnian Serb forces surrounding the enclave were considered well disciplined and well armed. The Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) was organised on a geographic basis and Srebrenica fell within the domain of the Drina Corps. Between 1,000 and 2,000 soldiers from three Drina Corps Brigades were deployed around the enclave. These Bosnian Serb forces were equipped with tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery and mortars. The unit of the Army of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) that remained in the enclave – the 28th Division - was neither well organised nor equipped. A firm command structure and communications system was lacking, some ARBiH soldiers carried old hunting rifles or no weapons at all and few had proper uniforms. However, the ICTY Trial Chamber also heard evidence that the 28th Division was not as weak as they have been portrayed in some quarters. Certainly the number of men in the 28th Division outnumbered those in the Drina Corps and reconnaissance and sabotage activities were carried out on a regular basis against the VRS forces in the area.
From the outset, both parties to the conflict violated the “safe area” agreement. The ICTY Trial Chamber heard evidence of a deliberate Serb strategy to limit access by international aid convoys into the enclave. Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Karremans (the Dutch Bat Commander) testified that his personnel were prevented from returning to the enclave by Serb forces and that equipment and ammunition were also prevented from getting in. Essentials, like food, medicine and fuel, became increasingly scarce. Some Bosniaks in Srebrenica complained of attacks by Serb soldiers. Insofar as the ARBiH is concerned, General Halilović testified that, immediately after signing the “safe area” agreement, he ordered members of the ARBiH in Srebrenica to pull all armed personnel and military equipment out of the newly established demilitarised zone. The ICTY Trial Chamber heard credible and largely uncontested evidence of a consistent refusal by the Bosniaks to abide by the agreement to demilitarise the “safe area”. Bosnian helicopters flew in violation of the no-fly zone; the ARBiH opened fire toward Serb lines and moved through the “safe area”; the 28th Division was continuously arming itself; and at least some humanitarian aid coming into the enclave was appropriated by the ARBiH. To the Serbs it appeared that Bosnian forces in Srebrenica were using the “safe area” as a convenient base from which to launch offensives against the VRS and that UNPROFOR was failing to take any action to prevent it. General Halilovic admitted that Bosnian helicopters had flown in violation of the no-fly zone and that he had personally dispatched eight helicopters with ammunition for the 28th Division. In moral terms, he did not see it as a violation of the “safe area” agreement given that the Bosniaks were so poorly armed to begin with.
Early 1995: The Situation in the Srebrenica “Safe Area” Deteriorates
By early 1995, fewer and fewer supply convoys were making it through to the enclave. The Dutch Bat soldiers who had arrived in January 1995 watched the situation deteriorate rapidly in the months after their arrival. The already meagre resources of the civilian population dwindled further and even the UN forces started running dangerously low on food, medicine, fuel and ammunition. Eventually, the peacekeepers had so little fuel that they were forced to start patrolling the enclave on foot. Dutch Bat soldiers who went out of the area on leave were not allowed to return[3] and their number dropped from 600 to 400 men. In March and April, the Dutch soldiers noticed a build-up of Bosnian Serb forces near two of the observation posts, "OP Romeo" and "OP Quebec".
Spring 1995: The Serbs Plan To Attack the Srebrenica “Safe Area”
In March 1995, Radovan Karadžić, President of Republika Srpska (“RS”), in spite of the international community pressure to end the war and the ongoing efforts to negotiate a peace agreement, issued a directive to the VRS concerning the long-term strategy of the VRS forces in the enclave. The directive, known as “Directive 7”, specified that the VRS was to: "Complete the physical separation of Srebrenica from Žepa as soon as possible, preventing even communication between individuals in the two enclaves. By planned and well-thought out combat operations, create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica."
Just as envisaged in this decree, by mid 1995, the humanitarian situation of the Bosniak civilians and military personnel in the enclave was catastrophic. In early July 1995, a series of reports issued by the 28th Division reflected the urgent pleas of the ARBiH forces in the enclave for the humanitarian corridor to be deblocked and, when this failed, the tragedy of civilians dying from starvation.
6-11 July 1995: The Take-Over of Srebrenica
Serbs violated the UN Safe Area in July 1995. By the evening of July 9, 1995, the VRS Drina Corps entered four kilometres deep into the enclave, halting just one kilometre short of Srebrenica town. Late on 9 July 1995, emboldened by this success and the lack of resistance from the Bosniaks as well as the absence of any significant reaction from the international community, President Karadžić issued a new order authorising the VRS Drina Corps to capture the town of Srebrenica.
On the morning of July 10 1995, the situation in Srebrenica town was tense. Residents, some armed, crowded the streets. Lieutenant-Colonel Karremans sent urgent requests for NATO air support to defend the town, but no assistance was forthcoming until around 1430 hours on July 11 1995, when NATO bombed VRS tanks advancing towards the town. NATO planes also attempted to bomb VRS artillery positions overlooking the town, but had to abort the operation due to poor visibility. NATO plans to continue the air strikes were abandoned following VRS threats to kill Dutch troops being held in the custody of the VRS, as well as threats to shell the UN Potočari compound on the outside of the town, and surrounding areas, where 20,000 to 30,000 civilians had fled.
The Massacre
The Crowd at Potočari
The UN forces did nothing to protect the Bosniak civilians in Srebrenica. Faced with the reality that Srebrenica had fallen under the control of Bosnian Serb forces, thousands of Bosniak residents from Srebrenica fled to the nearby hamlet of Potočari seeking protection within the UN compound. By the evening of July 11 1995, approximately 20,000 to 25,000 Bosniak refugees were gathered in Potočari. Several thousand had pressed inside the UN compound itself, while the rest were spread throughout the neighbouring factories and fields. Though the vast majority were women, children, elderly or disabled, 63 witnesses estimated that there were at least 300 men inside the perimeter of the UN compound and between 600 and 900 men in the crowd outside.
The Humanitarian Crisis in Potočari: 11-13 July 1995
Conditions in Potočari were deplorable. There was very little food or water available and the July heat was stifling. One of the Dutch Bat officers described the scene as follows: "They were panicked, they were scared, and they were pressing each other against the soldiers, my soldiers, the UN soldiers that tried to calm them. People that fell were trampled on. It was a chaotic situation."
12-13 July: Crimes Committed in Potočari
On 12 July 1995, as the day wore on, the already miserable physical conditions were compounded by an active campaign of terror, which increased the panic of the residents, making them frantic to leave. The refugees in the compound could see Serb soldiers setting houses and haystacks on fire. Throughout the afternoon of 12 July, Serb soldiers mingled in the crowd. One witness recalled hearing the soldiers cursing the Bosniaks and telling them to leave; that they would be slaughtered; that this was a Serb country. Killings occurred.
In the late morning of 12 July, a witness saw a pile of 20 to 30 bodies heaped up behind the Transport Building in Potočari, alongside a tractor-like machine. Another testified that, at around 12:00 hours on 12 July, he saw a soldier slay a child with a knife in the middle of a crowd of expellees. He also said that he saw Serb soldiers execute more than a hundred Bosniak men in the area behind the Zinc Factory and then load their bodies onto a truck, although the number and methodical nature of the murders attested to by this witness stand in contrast to other evidence on the Trial Record that indicates that the killings in Potočari were sporadic in nature.
As evening fell, the terror deepened. Screams, gunshots and other frightening noises were audible throughout the night and no one could sleep. Soldiers were picking people out of the crowd and taking them away: some returned; others did not. Witness recounted how three brothers – one merely a child and the others in their teens – were taken out in the night. When the boys’ mother went looking for them, she found them with their throats slit.
That night, a Dutch Bat medical orderly came across two Serb soldiers raping a young woman: "We saw two Serb soldiers, one of them was standing guard and the other one was lying on the girl, with his pants off. And we saw a girl lying on the ground, on some kind of mattress. There was blood on the mattress, even she was covered with blood. She had bruises on her legs. There was even blood coming down her legs. She was in total shock. She went totally crazy."
Throughout the night and early the next morning, stories about the rapes and killings spread through the crowd and the terror in the camp escalated.
The Separation of the Bosniak Men in Potočari
From the morning of 12 July, Serb forces began gathering men from the refugee population in Potočari and holding them in separate locations. Further, as the Bosniak refugees began boarding the buses, Serb soldiers systematically separated out men of military age who were trying to clamour aboard. Occasionally, younger and older men were stopped as well. These men were taken to a building in Potočari referred to as the “White House”. As the buses carrying the women, children and elderly headed north towards Bosnian-held territory, they were stopped along the way and again screened for men. As early as the evening of 12 July 1995, Major Franken of the Dutch Bat heard that no men were arriving with the women and children at their destination in Kladanj.
On 13 July 1995, the Dutch Bat troops witnessed definite signs that the Serbs were executing some of the Bosniak men who had been separated. For example, Corporal Vaasen saw two soldiers take a man behind the "White House". He then heard a shot and the two soldiers reappeared alone. Another Dutch Bat officer, saw Serb soldiers execute an unarmed man with a single gunshot to the head. He also heard gunshots 20-40 times an hour throughout the afternoon. When the Dutch Bat soldiers told Colonel Joseph Kingori, a United Nations Military Observer (UNMO) in the Srebrenica area, that men were being taken behind the "White House" and not coming back, Colonel Kingori went to investigate. He heard gunshots as he approached, but was stopped by Serb soldiers before he could find out what was going on.
The Column of Bosniak Men
As the situation in Potočari escalated towards crisis on the evening of 11 July 1995, word spread through the Bosniak community that the able-bodied men should take to the woods, form a column together with members of the 28th Division of the Army of Republic of Bosnian and Herzegovina and attempt a breakthrough towards Bosnian-held territory in the north. At around 2200 hours on the evening of 11 July 1995, the “division command”, together with the Bosniak municipal authorities of Srebrenica, made the decision to form the column. The young men were afraid they would be killed if they fell into Serb hands in Potočari and believed that they stood a better chance of surviving by trying to escape through the woods to Tuzla. The column gathered near the villages of Jaglici and Šušnjari and began to trek north. Witnesses estimated that there were between 10,000 and 15,000 men in the retreating column. Around one third of the men in the column were Bosnian soldiers from the 28th Division, although not all of the soldiers were armed.
At around midnight on 11 July 1995, the column started moving along the axis between Konjević Polje and Bratunac. On 12 July 1995, Serb forces launched an artillery fire on the column that was crossing an asphalt road between the area of Konjević Polje and Nova Kasaba on route to Tuzla. Only about one third of the men successfully made it across the asphalt road and the column was split in two parts. Heavy shooting and shelling continued against the remainder of the column throughout the day and during the night. Men from the rear of the column who survived this ordeal described it as a "man hunt".
The Bosniak men who had been separated from the women, children and elderly in Potočari numbering approximately 1,000, were transported to Bratunac and subsequently joined by Bosniak men captured from the column. Almost to a man, the thousands of Bosniak prisoners captured, following the take-over of Srebrenica, were executed. Some were killed individually or in small groups by the soldiers who captured them and some were killed in the places where they were temporarily detained. Most, however, were slaughtered in carefully orchestrated mass executions, commencing on 13 July 1995, in the region just north of Srebrenica.
The mass executions followed a well-established pattern. The men were first taken to empty schools or warehouses. After being detained there for some hours, they were loaded onto buses or trucks and taken to another site for execution. Usually, the execution fields were in isolated locations. The prisoners were unarmed and, in many cases, steps had been taken to minimise resistance, such as blindfolding them, binding their wrists behind their backs with ligatures or removing their shoes. Once at the killing fields, the men were taken off the trucks in small groups, lined up and shot. Those who survived the initial round of gunfire were individually shot with an extra round, though sometimes only after they had been left to suffer for a time.
A Plan to Execute the Bosniak of Srebrenica
A concerted effort was made to capture all Bosniak men of military age. In fact, those captured included many boys well below that age and elderly men several years above that age that remained in the enclave following the take-over of Srebrenica. These men and boys were targeted regardless of whether they chose to flee to Potočari or to join the Bosniak column.
Although Serbs have long been blamed for the massacre, it was not until June 2004 - following the Srebrenica commission's preliminary report - that Serb officials acknowledged that their security forces carried out the slaughter. A Serb commission's final report on the 1995 Srebrenica massacre acknowledged that the mass murder of more than 7,800 Bosniak men and boys was planned. The commission found that more than 7,800 were killed after it compiled 34 lists of victims.
The Mass Executions
The vast amount of planning and high-level coordination that had to be invested in killing thousands of men in a few days is apparent from even the briefest description of the scale and the methodical nature in which the executions were carried out.
The Morning of 13 July 1995: Jadar River Executions
A small-scale execution took place at Jadar River on 13 July 1995. The execution at Jadar River took place prior to midday, on 13 July 1995. 17 men were transported a short distance to a spot on the banks of the Jadar River. The men were then lined up and shot. One man, after being hit in the hip by a bullet, jumped into the river and managed to escape.
The Afternoon of 13 July 1995: Cerska Valley Executions
The first of the large-scale executions happened on the afternoon of 13 July 1995. Between 1,000 and 1,500 Bosniak men from the column fleeing through the woods, who had been captured and detained in Sandici Meadow, were bussed or marched to the Kravica Warehouse on the afternoon of 13 July 1995. At around 18.00 hours, when the warehouse was full, the soldiers started throwing grenades and shooting directly into the midst of the men packed inside. One survivor recalled: all of a sudden there was a lot of shooting in the warehouse, and we didn’t know where it was coming from. There were rifles, grenades, bursts of gunfire and it was – it got so dark in the warehouse that we couldn’t see anything. People started to scream, to shout, crying for help. And then there would be a lull, and then all of a sudden it would start again. And they kept shooting like that until nightfall in the warehouse. Guards surrounding the building killed prisoners who tried to escape through the windows. By the time the shooting stopped, the warehouse was filled with corpses.
Analyses of hair, blood and explosives residue, collected at the Kravica Warehouse, provide strong evidence of the killings. Experts determined the presence of bullet strikes, explosives residue, bullets and shell cases, as well as human blood, bones and tissue adhering to the walls and floors of the building. Forensic evidence presented by the ICTY Prosecutor suggests a link between the Krivaca Warehouse, the primary mass grave known as Glogova 2, and the secondary grave known as Zeleni Jadar 5.
13-14 July 1995: Tišca
As the buses crowded with Bosniak women, children and elderly made their way from Potočari to Kladanj, they were stopped at Tišca, searched, and the Bosniak men found on board were removed from the bus. The evidence reveals a well-organised operation in Tišca.
From the checkpoint, a witness was taken to a nearby school, where a number of other prisoners were being held. An officer directed the soldier escorting the witness towards a nearby school where many other prisoners were being held. At the school, a soldier on a field telephone appeared to be transmitting and receiving orders. Sometime around midnight, the witness was loaded onto a truck with 22 other men with their hands tied behind their backs. At one point the truck stopped and a soldier on the scene said : "Not here. Take them up there, where they took people before." The truck reached another stopping point and the soldiers came around to the back of the truck and started shooting the prisoners.
14 July 1995: Grbavci School Detention Site and Orahovac Execution site
A large group of the prisoners who had been held overnight in Bratunac were bussed in a convoy of 30 vehicles to the Grbavci school in Orahovac early in the morning of 14 July 1995. When they got there, the school gym was already half-filled with prisoners who had been arriving since the early morning hours and, within a few hours, the building was completely full. Survivors estimated that there were 2,000 to 2,500 men there, some of them very young and some quite elderly, although the ICTY Prosecution suggested this may have been an over-estimation and that the number of prisoners at this site was probably closer to 1,000. Some prisoners were taken outside and killed. At some point, a witness recalled, General Mladić arrived and told the men: "Well, your government does not want you, and I have to take care of you."
After being held in the gym for several hours, the men were led out in small groups to the execution fields that afternoon. Each prisoner was blindfolded and given a drink of water as he left the gym. The prisoners were then taken in trucks to the execution fields less than one kilometre away. The men were lined up and shot in the back; those who survived the initial gunfire were killed with an extra shot. Two adjacent meadows were used; once one was full of bodies, the executioners moved to the other. While the executions were in progress, the survivors said, earth-moving equipment was digging the graves. A witness who survived the shootings by pretending to be dead, reported that General Mladić drove up in a red car and watched some of the executions.
The forensic evidence supports crucial aspects of the survivors’ testimony. Aerial photos show that the ground in Orahovac was disturbed between 5 and 27 July 1995 and again between 7 and 27 September 1995. Two primary mass graves were uncovered in the area, and were named "Lazete-1" and "Lazete-2" by investigators. The "Lazete-1" gravesite was exhumed by the ICTY Prosecution between 13 July and 3 August 2000. All of the 130 individuals uncovered, for whom sex could be determined, were male. One hundred and thirty eight blindfolds were uncovered in the grave. Identification material for twenty-three individuals, listed as missing following the fall of Srebrenica, was located during the exhumations at this site. The gravesite "Lazete-2" was partly exhumed by a joint team from the OTP and Physicians for Human Rights between 19 August and 9 September 1996 and completed in 2000. All of the 243 victims associated with "Lazete-2" were male and the experts determined that the vast majority died of gunshot injuries. In addition, 147 blindfolds were located. One victim also had his legs bound with a cloth sack.
Forensic analysis of soil/pollen samples, blindfolds, ligatures, shell cases and aerial images of creation/disturbance dates, further revealed that bodies from the "Lazete-1" and "Lazete-2" graves were removed and reburied at secondary graves named Hodžići Road 3, 4 and 5. Aerial images show that these secondary gravesites were created between 7 September and 2 October 1995, and all of them were exhumed in 1998.
14 - 16 July 1995: Pilica School Detention Site and Branjevo Military Farm Execution Site
On 14 July 1995, more prisoners from Bratunac were bussed northward to a school in the village of Pilica, north of Zvornik. As at other detention facilities, there was no food or water and several men died in the school gym from heat and dehydration. The men were held at the Pilica School for two nights. On 16 July 1995, following a now familiar pattern, the men were called out of the school and loaded onto buses with their hands tied behind their backs. They were then driven to the Branjevo Military Farm, where groups of 10 were lined up and shot.
Mr. Dražen Erdemović was a member of the VRS 10th Sabotage Detachment (a Main Staff subordinate unit) and participated in the mass execution. Mr. Erdemović appeared as a Prosecution witness and testified: "The men in front of us were ordered to turn their backs. When those men turned their backs to us, we shot at them. We were given orders to shoot."
Mr. Erdemović said that all but one of the victims wore civilian clothes and that, except for one person who tried to escape, they offered no resistance before being shot. Sometimes the executioners were particularly cruel. When some of the soldiers recognised acquaintances from Srebrenica, they beat and humiliated them before killing them. Mr. Erdemovic had to persuade his fellow soldiers to stop using a machine gun for the killings; while it mortally wounded the prisoners it did not cause death immediately and prolonged their suffering.
Mr. Erdemović testified that, at around 15:00 hours on 16 July 1995, after he and his fellow soldiers from the 10th Sabotage Detachment had finished executing the prisoners at the Branjevo Military Farm, they were told that there was a group of 500 Bosniak prisoners from Srebrenica trying to break out of a nearby club. Mr. Erdemović and the other members of his unit refused to carry out any more killings. They were then told to attend a meeting with the Lieutenant Colonel at a café in Pilica. Mr. Erdemović and his fellow-soldiers travelled to the café as requested and, as they waited, they could hear shots and grenades being detonated. The sounds lasted for approximately 15-20 minutes after which a soldier from Bratunac entered the café to inform those present that "everything was over".
Between 1,000 and 1,200 men were killed in the course of that day at this execution site.
Aerial photographs, taken on 17 July 1995, of an area around the Branjevo Military Farm , show a large number of bodies lying in the field near the farm, as well as traces of the excavator that collected the bodies from the field.
The progress of finding victim bodies in the Srebrenica region, often in mass graves, exhuming them and finally identifying them was relatively slow. By 2002, 5,000 bodies were exhumed but only 200 were identified. However, since then the exhumed body count has risen to 6,000 and the identification has been completed for over 2,000, as of 2005.
The Reburials
The forensic evidence presented to the Trial Chamber of ICTY suggests that, commencing in the early autumn of 1995, the Serbs engaged in a concerted effort to conceal the mass killings by relocating the primary graves to remote secondary gravesites. All of the primary and secondary mass gravesites associated with the take-over of Srebrenica located by the OTP were within the Drina Corps area of responsibility.
Most significantly, the forensic evidence also demonstrates that, during a period of several weeks in September and early October 1995, Serb forces dug up many of the primary mass gravesites and reburied the bodies in still more remote locations. Forensic tests have linked certain primary gravesites and certain secondary gravesites, namely: Branjevo Military Farm and Cancari Road 12; Petkovći Dam and Liplje 2; Orahovac (Lazete 2) and Hodžići Road 5; Orahovac (Lazete 1) and Hodžići Road 3 and 4; Glogova and Zeleni Jadar 5; and Kozluk and Cancari Road 3. The reburial evidence demonstrates a concerted campaign to conceal the bodies of the men in these primary gravesites, which was undoubtedly prompted by increasing international scrutiny of the events following the take-over of Srebrenica. Such extreme measures would not have been necessary had the majority of the bodies in these primary graves been combat victims.
Recent developments
Ratko Mladić and the political leader of Bosnian Serbs Radovan Karadžić have both been indicted for genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. In 2001, Radislav Krstić, a Serb commander who had led the assault on Srebrenica alongside Mladić, was convicted by the tribunal on genocide charges and received 46 years to life in prison.
After a long-running discussion about the event in the Netherlands, the Dutch second cabinet of Wim Kok chose to resign in April 2002 after the official inquiry and report by the Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie.
The Enclave, a three-part series based on the Srebrenica incident, was released in 1995 by the Dutch Public Broadcasting station. It has since been condensed into one movie and is regularly shown on US free satellite channel LinkTV.
In 2004, the international community's High Representative Paddy Ashdown had the Government of Republika Srpska form a committee to investigate the events. The committee released a report in October 2004 with 8,731 confirmed names of missing and dead persons from Srebrenica: 7,793 between 10th and 19th of July 1995 and further 938 people afterwards.
Findings of the committee remain generally disputed by the Serb nationalists, as they claim it was heavily pressured by the high representative. Nevertheless, Dragan Čavić, the president of Republika Srpska, acknowledged in a televised address that Serb forces killed several thousand civilians in violation of the international law, and asserted that Srebrenica was a dark chapter in Serb history[4]. In his statement he used the word 'massacre' instead of 'genocide'.
On November 10 2004, the government of Republika Srpska issued an official apology. The statement came after government review of the Srebrenica committee's report. "The report makes it clear that enormous crimes were committed in the area of Srebrenica in July 1995," the Bosnian Serb government said [5].
As of 2004, the mass graves are still being dug up and the victims honorably laid to rest, providing a sense of closure for many families who lost their loved ones.
On January 18, 2005 two former Bosnian Serb officers, Vidoje Blagojević and Dragan Jokić, were convicted and imprisoned for their complicity in the Srebrenica massacre.
On June 2, 2005 video evidence emerged. It was introduced at the Milošević trial to testify the involvement of members of police units from Serbia in Srebrenica Massacre [6] The video footage starts about 2hr 35 min. into the proceedings. The footage shows an orthodox priest blessing several soldiers. Later these soldiers are shown with tied up captives, dressed in civilian clothing and visibly physically abused. They were later identified as four minors as young as 16 and two men in their early twenties. The footage then shows the execution of four of the civilians and shows them lying dead in the field. At this point the cameraman expresses disappointment that the camera's battery is almost out. The soldiers then ordered the two remaining captives to take the four dead bodies into a nearby barn, where they were also killed upon completing this task.
The video has caused a public outrage in Serbia. In the days following its showing, the Serbian government quickly arrested some of the former soldiers identified on the video. The event has most extensively been covered by the newspaper Danas and radio and television station B92. As was reported by Bosnian media, at least one mother of a filmed captive saw the execution of her son on television. She claimed she was already aware of her son's death, and said she had been told that his body was burned following the execution. His remains were among those buried in Potočari in 2003.
On October 4, 2005, the Special Bosnian Serb Government Working Group said that 25,083 people were involved in the massacre including 19,473 members of various Bosnian Serb armed forces that actively gave orders or directly took part in the massacre. They have identified 17,074 by name.[7]
US resolution 199
On June 27 2005, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution (H. Res. 199 sponsored by Congressman Christopher Smith and Congressman Benjamin Cardin) commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. The resolution was passed with overwhelming majority of 370 - YES votes, 1 - NO vote, and 62 - ABSENT .
The resolution is a bipartisan measure commemorating July 11, 1995-2005, the tenth anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre in which almost 8,000 men and boys were meticulously and methodically separated from their daughters, mothers, sisters and wives and then killed by Serb forces, buried in mass graves and then re-interred in secondary graves to cover up the crimes. Srebrenica fell to invading Serb forces on July 11, 1995 which at the time had been declared a UN "safe area" under the protection of the international community. The Srebrenica massacre was the worst genocidal atrocity in Europe since World War II.
The resolution states that "the policies of aggression and ethnic cleansing as implemented by Serb forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 and 1995 with the direct support of Serbian regime of Slobodan Milošević and its followers ultimately led to the displacement of more than 2,000,000 people, an estimated 200,000 killed, tens of thousands raped or otherwise tortured and abused, and the innocent civilians of Sarajevo and other urban centers repeatedly subjected to shelling and sniper attacks; meet the terms defining the crime of genocide in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, created in Paris on December 9, 1948, and entered into force on January 12, 1951."
Denial of the massacre, revisionism and scepticism
The Bosnian Serb side has, under the pressure of the authority of Governor Ashdown, officially admitted the number of killed Muslims and expressed regrets for the massacre in 2004 (Comm. Inv. Ev. Srebrenica, 2004). Still the number of killed is presently disputed by some. All nations and international organizations involved consider it to have been a massacre, and most consider it to be a case of genocide. The government of the Republika Srpska entity has officially condemned the atrocity. While Serbia, officially, has condemned the massacre from the very beginning, some Serbs from Serbia had reservations about the number of people killed for some time. In the West, the radicals on both sides of the political spectrum have disputed the original accounts of the massacre for different reasons. Some radical liberals view the Srebrenica massacre as being another case of government propaganda in an unnecessary war. Their conservative counterparts consider the truth to have been manipulated by radical Islamists and their allies. Still, such views are not widely held in NATO countries other than Greece and France to a degree.
Still, many Serb groups espouse denial of massacre, claiming that the intentional mass murder of nearly 8,000 Bosniaks is grossly exaggerated and that Republika Srpska government had no extermination policy. Some others, who don't deny mass killings by the Republika Srpska have engaged in pointing out "immoral equivalencies" (e.g. the killing of Serbs by Naser Orić, the ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Croatia) and/or justifications for the executions (e.g. retaliation or punishment for sabotage, terrorism, or subversion).
Many Serbs distrusted the western explanation of the events due to the long delays in proving that there were mass graves in the area, and that people in them were indeed Bosniaks (it took almost a decade for a notable percentage of bodies to be identified). In their eyes, further doubt was cast at the mainstream story when the UN high representative Paddy Ashdown relieved and replaced the examining commission of Republika Srpska which reported that the initial (?) explanation was correct. This only exacerbated the concern that there was bias among the westerners resulting in focusing on the wartime acts of Serbs and neglecting those of Bosniaks and Croats.
The claims were made that Serb-inhabited villages and hamlets had been attacked by raids from Srebrenica between May 1992 and February 1993. Oric is presently awaiting trial at the ICTY on charges including his torturing of Serb prisoners of war and commanding Bosnian troops which killed Serbian soldiers and civilians in the surrounding villages. Recently two of the six charges by ICTY against Oric have been rejected. It is accepted by all sides that some of these acts happened and that there is a number of Serb people from those villages who are still unaccounted for. The Serbian government submitted a report to the United Nations in May 1994 explaining two dozen incidents of ethnic cleansing in the region of Srebrenica, Bratunac and Skelani, naming 301 Serbian civilians killed by Oric's troops. Recently, a list surfaced of 3,287 names of Serbs (it is unclear whether they were civilians or soldiers), which were allegedly killed in Srebrenica region and also in other regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, the exact number of victims of the raids by Oric's forces is unknown (the Serbian government's list of 301 people is from 1994), and their bodies have not yet been found in mass graves. On the other hand, Bosniak bodies continue to be excavated, identified and buried.
Srebrenica Genocide Denial and Revisionism Explained
Srebrenica Genocide denial, also called Srebrenica Genocide revisionism, is the belief that the Srebrenica genocide did not occur, or, more specifically: that far fewer than around 8,000 Bosniaks were killed by the Bosnian Serb Army (numbers below 5,000, most often around 2,000 are typically cited); that there never was a centrally-planned Bosnian Serb Army's attempt to exterminate the Bosniaks of Srebrenica; and/or that there were not mass killings at the extermination sites. Those who hold this position often further claim that Bosniaks and/or Western media know that the Srebrenica genocide never occurred, yet that they are engaged in a massive conspiracy to maintain the illusion of a Srebrenica genocide to further their political agenda. These views are not accepted as credible by objective historians.
Srebrenica genocide deniers almost always prefer to be called Srebrenica genocide revisionists. Most scholars contend that the latter term is misleading. Historical revisionism is a well-accepted part of the study of history; it is the reexamination of historical facts, with an eye towards updating histories with newly discovered, more accurate, or less biased information. The implication is that history as it has been traditionally told may not be entirely accurate. The term historical revisionism has a second meaning, the illegitimate manipulation of history for political purposes. For example, Srebrenica genocide deniers typically willfully misuse or ignore historical records in order to attempt to prove their conclusions.
Notes
- ^ "By seeking to eliminate a part of the Bosnian Muslims, the Bosnian Serb forces committed genocide. […] The Appeals Chamber states unequivocally that the law condemns, in appropriate terms, the deep and lasting injury inflicted, and calls the massacre at Srebrenica by its proper name: genocide." (ICTY 2004, para. 37)
References
- The Commission for the Investigation of the Events in and around Srebrenica between 10th and 19th July 1995, published 2004. The Events in and around Srebrenica between 10th and 19th July 1995, available from Domovina net.
- ICTY, 2004. Appeals chambers judgement in Prosecuter v. Radislav Krstić, available from ICTY website.
- NIOD, 2002. Srebrenica, een 'veilig' gebied. Boom, Amsterdam. ISBN 9053527168. English translation available at the NIOD Srebrenica website.
- David Rohde. 1997. Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe's Worst massacre Since World War II. WestviewPress. ISBN 0813335337.
- Van Gennep, 1999. Srebrenica: Het Verhaal van de Overlevenden [Srebrenica: The Story of the Survivors]. Van Gennep, Amsterdam. ISBN 90-5515-224-2. (translation of: Samrtno Srebrenicko Ijeto '95, Udruzenje gradana 'Zene Srebrenice', Tuzla, 1998).
- US resolution 199, 2005.
See also
External links
- Initial indictment at the ICTY against Karadžić and Mladić for Srebrenica.
- The Association Women of Srebrenica.
- The uncensored version of the Bosnian execution video Warning: shocking content!
- Preliminary list of 8106 Bosniaks killed in Srebrenica.
- Blog regarding Srebrenica Genocide
- U.S. Resolution 199
- Panel and commemorative event held at Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York by the Academy of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Carnegie Council
- Municipality of Srebrenica - Official Web Site