This BBC newsnight is well worth watching but I've made a transcript as well:
Quotes [though it has to be said these are cherry picked!]: "The Serbs on this occasion taking revenge for butcheries they themselves had suffered at the hands of Muslims." "They were dug up here just last year but the overall problem remains: who is buried where?" http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/375000/video/_376122_sells_movie_vi.ram Transcript of Davis Sells report broadcast on 30th June 1999 by Newsnight BBC2 [mournful Balkan music, people with sacks on their backs trudge past and the word �missing� is superimposed] David Sells: An unforgettable day, not Kosovo, but Bosnia and an enduring mystery, that of Srebrenica: what happened to the refugees? Muslims massed there when Bosnian Serbs overran the town in July 1995. Five or six thousand were given sanctuary in the UN base manned by Dutch soldiers. Twenty thousand were left outside. The Serbs� leader General Mladic offered them all a safe passage. [footage of Gen Mladic addressing crowd of refugees in Serbo-Croat] [Subtitles] Please be very patient. All those who wish to stay may do so. All those who wish to leave may do so. We have provided enough buses. David Sells: The Dutch later ratted on the deal and handed the sanctuary seekers to the Serbs. Hasan Muhanovic: Serbs came from all sides. Mladic, General Mladic, then started to separate women and children from the males. And we heard shots, screams, some of them were killed on the spot some were just taken away somewhere. The Dutch ordered five, six thousand people who were inside the base to leave the camp. You know like �Get out�. So at that moment Serbs were standing at the gate together with the Dutch soldiers and officers. There were German Shepherds you know half a dozen or a dozen of them around. They were able to see� [interviewer interjects] Dogs? Hasan Huranovic: Dogs yes, They were guarding around the base. So because I realised it was going to be a very dangerous, you know, day� David Sells: Hasan Muhanovic got his parents and younger brother into the base where he himself worked but when the moment of truth came the Dutch were adamant. Hasan Huranovic: I was there watching what was happening. I asked the Dutch I was begging the Dutch to save my brother [picture of young boy] by allowing him to stay in the base. Everyone was thrown out of the base. My family, my parents, my brother, I saw them for the last time as they were crossing the gate. Then the Serbs took them away and that was the last moment, the last time I saw them. [haunting music, pictures of wooded valley and empty houses] David Sells: This idyllic valley, despite appearances, is a graveyard. Some of the Muslims who vanished in Srebrenica were massacred and when the Hague war crimes tribunal began nosing about Bosnian Serbs quietly reburied the victims far from the scene. This was one reburial site. Woman with North American accent: This is it right in front of us. You can see the faint outlines� David Sells: Under the logs? Woman: Yes, under the logs. It�s right here. It came more or less right up to the road and you can see where it�s dirt there and then the grass begins growing again. And from this site we exhumed the remains of approximately 160 individuals. [a digger is shown shovelling out earth but not carefully just shovelling] David Sells: They were dug up here just last year but the overall problem remains: who is buried where? In one organised Srebrenica massacre four years ago Muslim men were separated from women and children. Then bussed, not to safety as General Mladic had so disarmingly promised, but out to a state farm and firing squads. The Serbs on this occasion taking revenge for butcheries they themselves had suffered at the hands of Muslims. The Hague tribunal is interested in the crime, one mass grave fully exhumed can be evidence enough to make their point. Woman: This is what we call a secondary mass grave. That means that they were originally buried someplace else and then the perpetrators dug up their remains using heavy equipment and moved them to this location and interred them here. So it�s quite obviously an effort to hide evidence of the crimes that have been committed. [footage of grassy field] David Sells: This is another mass grave. The tribunal has probed it, it knows there are more bodies beneath the weeds but it now has evidence enough. It has no need for another exhumation. We were shown eight more such graves in this silent valley, probed but not exhumed. So there�s a conflict of interest. Hasan Muhanovic�s family could be buried here, but without precise identification he will never know. Hasan took us to visit two of the women of Srebrenica, ladies who, because of the uncertainties about the fate of their families, are condemned to live in hope. Each has searing memories. Old woman in scarf: [via interpreter] God forbid we have to live through that again! I still suffer from stress from what happened then. We have all gone through horrors just as the people of Kosovo are living horrors now. Men were separated, killed, tortured. Women were taken away, raped. Things could not have been worse. They did as they pleased. They killed them at will. My husband was taken away from me. Middle aged woman, no scarf: [via interpreter] My son who stayed in Potocari was seventeen I ran away from him and my husband so that my eldest son would not be forced to rape me. I took my youngest son Elvir and we fled on the last convoy out of Srebrenica. This mother she fell on the side of the truck and broke her neck [demonstrates bringing both hands to her neck]. But as she slid down she grabbed my legs asking me to help her. I could not help her. I was holding my own child. She had a baby and I just managed to lift the baby with my leg to save her baby. My son was saying �Mum, I will die do not let go of me, hold me with both your hands�. I said, �Son, let me save this tiny baby as well. It�s mother is dead�. When we finally reached Tuzla I handed the baby to the Red Cross and told them his mother is dead. I bathed that baby in Coca Cola. David Sells: Bosnia is at peace, an international force keeps watch and the dead are mourned, but, and the question nags, what about the missing? The families and friends of those buried in this Tuzla graveyard at least know that the person is dead. They can mourn in that sad certainty. Behind me across the road in a makeshift mortuary are the remains of more than 3,000 Bosnian Muslims almost all unidentified [sic!]. Victims of the Srebrenica massacre. Over them hangs a pall of uncertainty. [man in white contamination suit shown walking to door which he unpadlocks and enters] David Sells: It is a grim spot here in Muslim Tuzla, a funeral parlour known as the Memorial Centre. More a morgue these days than a cemetery. And occasionally a Srebrenica body is identified. [man in white contamination suit points at remains in a white bag] [via interpreter] The Hague Tribunal did the autopsy. We�ve had the body here since 1996 but its identity was confirmed only a few days ago. We know exactly which body is where. This wasn�t possible before because the bodies were stacked one on top of the other all along the tunnel. We had problems when a specific body was needed for autopsy. We had to rummage through all of them. David Sells: Relatives of the missing who find the courage to come visiting discover that some bodies are refrigerated some not. The centre is overwhelmed, the arrangements are inevitably ad hoc. [man in white contamination suit]: [via interpreter] No-one explained anything to us or told us that these bodies may be needed one day. They simply handed them to us. No-one cares about them so we simply store them. [opens what looks like a standard shipping container revealing white body bags covering the floor of the container] [Women of Srebrenica again] [Middle-aged woman of Srebrenica]: [via interpreter] I summoned the strength to go and see every bone, to open every bag, but they just weren�t there. [Old woman of Srebrenica]: [via interpreter] It would be nice to have some hope that my husband is alive. But not one of the men I knew from Potocari has ever come back. David Sells: The women of Srebrenica are now a pressure group. The women want the truth about the missing. They want action: graves are undug, bodies unidentified. So they�ve begun to dream dreams about loved ones alive, held prisoner in Serbian camps or slaving in salt mines. The international community which runs Bosnia is embarrassed but it wants to show willing, so this meeting was placatory an effort to explain why it takes forever to check the DNA of exhumed corpses. [Different American woman]: And the reason why they took a long time is because the process is a long and complicated one. One of the things we realised last year is that this work is going to go on for many years. Sadly after four hours all this meeting could conclude was that even to identify the remains we had seen piled on rotting racks could take anything between five and thirty years. No wonder tales of prisoners in Serbian camps and salt mines gain such currency. Some of the women of Srebrenica are still believing, you know, because the bodies aren�t identified they still believe that, you know, their menfolk may be alive somewhere in prison. American woman: Yeh, but that�s something that we have, we have heard but I don�t know that at the end of the day that that�s going to turn out to be the case. Hasan: It is possible that somewhere in Republika Srpska or in Yugoslavia, more likely Yugoslavia, there are people who are still alive. International Red Cross claim that there are no more alive prisoners. All missing persons are probably dead. Everyone is saying this. Also the number of the exhumed bodies does not correspond to the number of missing, you know, that�s also one of the reasons for us to believe somebody�s still alive. David Sells: The Red Cross has made a list of the missing Hasan�s father, mother and brother were on it. The partial truth when it came was almost a relief even though the news was bad. Hasan: The only information I discovered was that my mother was murdered. Yeh. Only one Serb person among more than two, three thousand, sorry, three hundred of them who I met in these four years and offered money, any kind of favours for information. Only one person and I thank him for this information even though he brought very terrible information for me, he saw my mother�s dead body you know which means that he was present there when she was murdered or he just came a little bit later. He refused to tell me who did it � I think he knows � but I thanked him for this information because at least I know that she is dead now. David Sells: But if you don�t know, you hope against hope, as does Mrs Alic of seeing again her husband and son [Middle-aged woman of Srebrenica]: I do hope that they are alive. I still cherish that hope because they are with me every moment of the day. I�m looking for them. I went to England for two weeks and all I did was look for my son and my man because completely innocent children went somewhere and no-one want to say where or why. No-one wants to tell the truth. David Sells: The women of Srebrenica have grandeur in their grief. What they do need is the truth, however grim. This massacre was one of the small black blots of history and iniquity. If God can still weep for the frailties of mankind, he will not forget Srebrenica� Serbian News Network - SNN [email protected] http://www.antic.org/
