"Let me be clear, this is still an extremely high figure but there is a big difference now that people cannot irresponsibly use inflated numbers for their political goals," said Mirsad Tokaca, who heads the Sarajevo-based Investigation and Documentation Center (IDC).<br /><br />...<br /><br />"We are at 93,000 now and that should rise to 100,000, give or take," said the ethnic Muslim (Bosniak) who has headed the 450,000-euro project funded by the Norwegian government since early 2004.<br /><br />...<br /><br />The ethnic breakdown of the victims of the war, for which the term "ethnic cleansing" was coined to describe large-scale killings and expulsions of members of other ethnic groups, remained unchanged from Tokaca's estimate a year ago.<br /><br />"It is about 70 percent Bosniaks, slightly under 25 percent Serbs, slightly under five percent Croats and about one percent of the others," he said.<br /><br />...<br /><br />"I can only say now that it will produce some stunning conclusions but it is too early for me to go into details," said Tokaca, who has investigated war crimes for 13 years and cooperated closely with U.N. investigators.<br /><br />Tokaca has said the project is of invaluable importance for the Balkan country's reconciliation process.
... Religiously speaking, the majority of Bosniaks are Sunni Muslims.<br /><br />...<br /><br />In the West, Bosniaks are commonly, but incorrectly, referred to as "Bosnian Muslims". Today the term is considered antiquated and, in certain situations, even mildly offensive.
There is no doubt, nor should there be, that the Bosnian War was ugly. A death toll of 100,000 is still substantial for a country of only 4.5 million (according to the 1991 census). Why should the exact numbers matter, then? Because the "numbers game" has been at the very heart of how the war was perceived from the very beginning.
Almost from the start, the self-proclaimed Bosnian government in Sarajevo (run by Muslims) has claimed that the conflict was a war of Serbian aggression intent on genocide. The purpose of these claims was to secure a foreign military intervention on behalf of the Sarajevo regime, similar to what the U.S.-led coalition did for the Kuwaiti monarchy in 1991. The same PR agencies involved in manufacturing atrocity stories in Kuwait had already been involved with the "government" of Bosnia, as well as Slovenia, Croatia, and the Kosovo Albanians. Coached by their hired propaganda gurus, the authorities in Zagreb and Sarajevo flooded the faxes of wires, newspapers, and TV networks with stories of rape, murder, concentration camps, and genocide.
The "Death Camp" Hoax
First in the chain of deception was the "concentration camps" story from August 1992, product of a UK television crew (ITN) filming a refugee camp in Bosnian Serb territory from inside a barbed wire-enclosed tool shed; heavily edited video and doctored stills created the impression of a Nazi-era death camp. British papers carried the photo accompanied with headlines such as "Belsen '92." When a small Marxist magazine exposed this fraud, ITN took them to court. The court's verdict was that even though ITN's footage wasn't entirely accurate, it was libelous to suggest this had been a result of deliberate malice. In other words, deliberately staged photographs and video aren't lies if the reporters' hearts are in the right place � the cause of humanitarian intervention.
The "concentration camp" hoax was used to "sell" the Bosnia story to American Jewish organizations, which paved the way to comparisons of Serbs with Nazis and descriptions of the Bosnian war as "genocidal." The figure of "250,000" was then concocted to make the claim of genocide sound credible.
Even by cursory examination, the number is absurd. It was initially used to describe only the Bosnian Muslim dead (regrettably, most media have used "Muslim" and "Bosnian" interchangeably, and continue to do so today). It remained constant since 1993, even though the following two years saw heavy fighting. It has absolutely no factual basis in documents or statistics. It is, in other words, entirely arbitrary and fictitious. Yet it has continued to be invoked almost to the present day. Only since last year have the media begun to use 200,000 � and even that is a 100 percent inflation of the actual numbers, as demonstrated by Tabeau and Bijak and grudgingly confirmed by Tokaca.
The Srebrenica Trump Card
At this point, supporters of the "Bosnians" and Imperial intervention in the region reach for the Srebrenica card. After stories of camps, mass rapes, and genocide had worn thin even for the receptive audiences in the West, the media latched on to Srebrenica as proof positive of "genocide" in action.
Yet again, the number of Srebrenica dead (commonly around 7,000) has the same arbitrary quality as the 250,000 total. An instance where one of the warring parties did not take prisoners, or summarily executed those it did take, while deplorable and undoubtedly illegal under the Geneva Conventions, does not constitute a crime against humanity, much less genocide. Yet anyone who points out that important distinction is pilloried as a "holocaust denier."
True Numbers Speak
The true significance of the Tabeau-Bijak report is not that it cut the spurious "estimate" of war deaths down to size, but that its existence challenges the elaborate fiction built on the propaganda numbers. For example, while Tokaca maintains that Muslim victims number 70 percent of the war's total, the actual figures prove him wrong. Muslim and Croat civilian deaths taken together reach 69.5 percent � but these were a product of three conflicts: that of Muslims and Croats against the Serbs, Muslims and Croats against each other, and Muslims against other Muslims in northwestern Bosnia. Even without that consideration, when compared to the results of the 1991 census, it becomes obvious that civilian deaths in the war were roughly proportional across the ethnic divide.
On the military side, Muslim casualties are disproportionately heavier (28,000, 56 percent of the total) � but again, this can be explained by the fact that the Sarajevo regime fought everybody, and often sacrificed its troops in futile assaults on fortified defenses.
What emerges from these facts is a picture of the Bosnian War as an internal conflict, bloody and brutal, but hardly one of external aggression or genocide.
A Legacy of Lies
The doctored "death camp" photos, the stories about rape camps, the "genocide" of Srebrenica, and the fictitious death toll of 250,000 have all been in service of propaganda designed to incite Western military intervention in Bosnia. This propaganda was jointly undertaken by the regime in Sarajevo, PR firms and special-interest groups in the West, and the Imperialist policymakers in Washington and elsewhere, who saw an opportunity in Bosnia to reassert American influence in Europe in the wake of the Cold War.
A tri-factional civil war over the type of government in Bosnia offered no "moral high ground" or easily digestible emotional sound bites for the "benevolent hegemon" and its media audience. Their involvement demanded a tragedy, a victim, and a villain, a Manichaean scenario in which they could play a knight in shining armor. For that purpose, the story of "genocide in Bosnia" (and later in Kosovo) was manufactured from scraps of fact that had only the most tenuous relationship with the truth.
How completely the Western public has swallowed those lies is evident from the fact that even today the Washington Post can invoke a number its editors know is false, and no one seems to care. For Bosnia is supposed to be a success story in the nation-building endeavor, a way to whitewash the abject failure of the Iraq occupation and provide a cover story for "staying the course." This sort of propaganda is getting people killed every day in the sands of Mesopotamia. And while the American dead and wounded are carefully counted, the tens of thousands of Iraqis "liberated" from this world by the Empire do not merit mention. This they have to thank to those phantom Bosnians, who helped make the early 21st century the era of "humanitarian intervention."
Posts: 6749 | Location: here again | Registered: 12 November 2004
In 1993, there was a second war in Bosnia� between Croatian militia and the largely Muslim forces of the Bosnian Army. This conflict also saw horrific massacres and wholesale destruction of towns and villages. Both sides were accused of committing war crimes, but the UN tribunal held the Bosnian Croats largely responsible and prosecuted more than 15 people, including senior military and political leaders.
Also there was a war between Muslims. Fikrit Abdic Uprising (Autumn of 1993- 1995) --In addition to fighting the Serbs and Croats, the Bosnian (mostly Muslim) government also had to deal with an uprising by a Bosnian Muslim businessman named Fikrit Abdic. He allied himself with local Serb forces against the [Muslim with nazi/fascist past?] government. In July, 1995, Bosnian government forces captured Abdic's stronghold in the Bihac region. [Fikrit Abdic who believed that the three ethnic groups could/should and indeed were living in harmony in his area, sided with the Serbs, interestingly enough]
here's a link to the Croat-Muslim War during the Bosnian war (1992 - 1995).
Croation nationalism has a history of Nazi like atrocities (Jasenovac concentration camp) with the Usta�e far right party that pursued nazi/fascist policies.
And the president of Croatia during the Bosnian war Franjo Tuđman was called an antisemite and holocaust denier for his works on the number of Serbs and Jews killed by the Usta�e and the Nazis.
Posts: 6749 | Location: here again | Registered: 12 November 2004
The International Court of Justice starts hearings on Monday in a genocide case brought by Bosnia against Serbia-Montenegro, the first state-level genocide case to be heard past the preliminary stages by the UN's highest court.
Bosnia, through its mainly Muslim wartime presidency, filed the case 13 years ago accusing Belgrade of committing genocide against the non-Serb population of Bosnia during the bloody war that was raging there, and demanding compensation.
The Bosnian war, which lasted from 1992 to 1995, claimed up to 200,000 lives and left millions of refugees homeless.
Observers say that Bosnia faces a huge challenge when it starts presenting its case on Monday, as most of the documented horrors of the war were committed by Bosnian Serb troops.
Serbia was not officially involved with the war, although there had been evidence before the UN war crimes court for the former Yugoslavia that Belgrade supported the wartime Bosnian Serb leadership financially and strategically.
Janet Anderson, an international justice expert for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting, asked: "To what extent can Bosnia prove that Serbia was involved and how do you judge the role of another state in a war by proxy?"
Documented evidence
...
So the figure of 200,000 lives on.
Posts: 6749 | Location: here again | Registered: 12 November 2004
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. Winston Churchill
Posts: 623 | Location: lefortovo | Registered: 09 February 2006
Originally posted by Kulak: What ever became of slobidan milosovic?
Oh i think the “Stalinist show-trial” trial is going great, 6 years and counting i think. Maybe if he dies soon they'll transfer Saddam over there. Then it'll be - "What ever became of Saddam?"
Posts: 6749 | Location: here again | Registered: 12 November 2004
Ik zie, mijlen = de stalinist punctuatie en de spelling?
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. Winston Churchill
Posts: 623 | Location: lefortovo | Registered: 09 February 2006
Originally posted by Kulak: What ever became of slobidan milosovic?
Oh i think the “Stalinist show-trial” trial is going great, 6 years and counting i think. Maybe if he dies soon they'll transfer Saddam over there. Then it'll be - "What ever became of Saddam?"
If your right sunrise they should be preparing his old cell for Saddam as we speak.
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. Winston Churchill
Posts: 623 | Location: lefortovo | Registered: 09 February 2006
Rest Easy, Bill Clinton: Milosevic Can't Talk Anymore by Jeremy Scahill
Slobodan Milosevic is characterized in the obituaries as the "Butcher of the Balkans." If that is the story you want to read about, please go to almost any other media outlet and read it again and again. Some are now suggesting that death is Milosevic's final revenge, that he "ended up cheating history" by dying before judgment was passed. But the world has already passed judgment on Milosevic, and what is being cheated by his death is history itself.
What the corporate media overwhelmingly ignores in Milosevic's death is what they ignored in his life as well – his intimate knowledge of U.S. war crimes in Yugoslavia. While Milosevic was undoubtedly a war criminal who deserved to be tried for his crimes, he was also the only man in the unique position of being able to expose and detail the full extent of the U.S. role in the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. In fact, that is precisely what he was fighting to do at his war crimes trial when he died.
Because of the rule of victors' justice in the ad hoc tribunal system (a poor and unfair substitute for a true international court), Milosevic's case would have been the only international trial to potentially expose the details of the illegal, U.S.-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia for 78 days in 1999. While the U.S.-backed court consistently tried to limit Milosevic's right to speak, stripping him of his right to self-representation, Milosevic battled regularly to raise U.S. war crimes. Sadly, with Milosevic will likely die the last hope the victims of these crimes in Yugoslavia had of getting their day (if it could even be called that) in court – a tragic and unjust reality to begin with that speaks volumes about the twisted state of international justice.
Milosevic's cause, regardless of what one thinks of it, was a casualty of 9/11 – an event that relegated him and his trial to the annals of history before it was even over. Most people in the world – with the exception of those in the Balkans, where the proceedings were broadcast live, daily – probably didn't even know Milosevic was still on trial in The Hague. It became an obscure sideshow to the blood and gore unfolding constantly on the international stage.
Milosevic's death means that those who bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days beginning seven years ago this month, killing thousands, will be once and for all protected from any public scrutiny for their crimes. However opportunistic Milosevic may have been, he would have been one of the few people to appear at The Hague who could have – and would have – laid out these crimes in great detail. Now, there is almost certain to be no condemnation of the U.S. bombing of Radio Television Serbia, killing 16 media workers; the cluster bombing of the Nis marketplace, shredding human beings into meat; the use of depleted uranium munitions; and the targeting of petrochemical plants, causing toxic chemical waste to pour into the Danube River. There will be no condemnation of the bombing of Albanian refugees by the U.S., or the deliberate targeting of a civilian passenger train, or the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Milosevic also would have discussed how the U.S. supports a regime in Kosovo that has systematically expelled Serbs, Romas, and other ethnic minorities from their homes and burned down scores of churches. He would have discussed the role of the U.S. in funding and arming the Kosovo Liberation Army, which operates like a death squad, and how the new prime minister of Kosovo, Agim Ceku, is a U.S.-trained war criminal who gained infamy in both the Bosnian war and the 1999 Kosovo conflict. And Milosevic would have talked of the U.S. interference in the Yugoslav elections in 2000 and the ultimate neoliberal takeover that was the aim of Clinton's sanctions and 78 days of bombing. In reality, it would have fallen on deaf ears, but it would have been stated for the record.
It is ironic that Milosevic's last legal battle was an attempt to compel his old friend-turned-nemesis Bill Clinton to testify at his trial. If successful, Milosevic would have grilled the man who was U.S. president through the entire Yugoslav war in what would have been a fiery direct examination. Clinton and Milosevic were once pals who talked collective strategy in the 1990s. Milosevic had many damning stories to tell and, without a doubt, uncomfortable questions to ask Clinton. The judges in Milosevic's case clearly worked to keep those moments from ever happening, and the U.S. government made clear its forceful opposition to such subpoenas of U.S. officials, even considering invading a country that would put a U.S. official on trial. With or without Clinton, Milosevic's defense would have brought to light some serious documentation of U.S. war crimes, but he died, muzzled, before he really got started.
Little attention, therefore, has been paid to Milosevic's long-term efforts – which predated 9/11, the 1999 NATO bombing, and his own trial – to expose the presence of al-Qaeda in the Balkans, from Bosnia to Kosovo. With 9/11, Milosevic's talk of al-Qaeda was easily dismissed as laughable, pathetic opportunism. But those who followed Milosevic's career and more importantly the events of the 1990s in Yugoslavia know it was not. Those allegations were based on events the U.S. does not want discussed in an international court. Following the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, many mujahedin eventually turned their sights on Yugoslavia, where they went to fight alongside the Bosnian Muslims against the Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats. Once again, the U.S. and bin Laden were on the same team. To this day, there are reports of training camps in Bosnia, which remains under occupation. It is also a likely training ground for future blowback.
In his opening statement, Milosevic alluded to some of the information he would introduce during his defense.
"In 1998 when [Clinton envoy Richard] Holbrooke visited us in Belgrade, we told him the information we had at our disposal, that in Northern Albania the KLA is being aided by Osama bin Laden, that he was arming, training, and preparing the members of this terrorist organization in Albania. However, they decided to cooperate with the KLA and indirectly, therefore, with bin Laden, although before that he had bombed the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania [and] had already declared war."
Milosevic concluded that "one day all this will have to come to light, these links."
That, however, is unlikely, and more so now that Milosevic is dead.
To be sure, there will never be indictments of these U.S. war criminals at The Hague: Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Jamie Rubin, William Cohen, Sandy Berger, Richard Holbrooke, and Wesley Clark. For many of Serbia's victims of U.S. war crimes, Milosevic's trial was a "Hail Mary" pass, as awful an historical irony as that is, aimed at someone recognizing their forgotten suffering.
It is a sad testimony to the state of international jurisprudence that after many attempts to find justice, the only hope for U.S. victims in the Yugoslavia wars was the trial defense of a man many of those same victims despised. If there was an independent international court that was recognized and respected by the U.S., those responsible for bombing Yugoslavia would have been alongside Slobodan Milosevic in the docks these past years instead of having their responsibility buried with him.
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