Ribuan muslim dihabisi di Srebrenica. Jenderal Mladic akan diadili sebagai penjahat perang.
A Globe correspondent's dinner with the Butcher of Srebrenica PAUL KORING >From Friday's Globe and Mail Published Thursday, May. 26, 2011 9:07PM EDT Last updated Thursday, May. 26, 2011 10:31PM EDT In the blazing Bosnian heat of late spring 1993, Srebrenica was a fetid, dangerous nightmare a silver-mining town cradled in the hills crammed with tens of thousands of fearful, half-starved, "ethnically cleansed" Muslims, driven there by Serb forces commanded by General Ratko Mladic. A ring of Serb steel surrounded Srebrenica. Mortars rained down on a mostly defenceless town, protected only by a ragtag rabble of outgunned Muslim defenders and a "safe haven" label applied by the United Nations. Getting into Srebrenica seemed impossible. Serb commanders weren't disposed to let journalists see the consequences of their work. In 1993, Srebrenica was just one Bosnian hellhole among many. Gorazde, Bihac, Knin, Banja Luka there was misery and suffering and war crimes everywhere and, depending on the place, Serbs, Croats and Muslims were the victims. Two years later, the town became the site of Europe's worst ethnically inspired massacre since the Holocaust. The Balkan wars of the 1990s were an all-consuming conflict of multi-dimensional terror that saw Yugoslavia's various ethnic groups tear their country apart, raping their neighbours' daughters, torching churches and mosques, razing villages and shelling cities indiscriminately. Gen. Mladic, the senior Bosnian Serb military commander, was a much-feared character. His army had swept across eastern Bosnia and was bombarding its capital, Sarajevo. Already branded a war criminal, the big, meaty man in the green kepi was a hero to many, a long-serving professional soldier in the army of Yugoslav strongman Josip Broz Tito newly self-styled as the saviour of the Serbs. We Sue Lloyd-Roberts of the BBC and I were trying to get into Srebrenica. There were frightful rumours of bodies lying in the streets and desperate refugees eating grass. Near the besieged town, we had been searching for Serb commanders, seeking permission to cross into no man's land without getting shot by their troops. And then, there he was. Trailed by a retinue of bodyguards, the General jumped down from his command car only metres away. We called out to him. At first he brushed us off, but then, like most Bosnians (Serb and Croat and Muslim alike) his innate hospitality took over. "Stay for dinner," he boomed after tersely answering a few questions. "Then we'll talk about whether I will let you go to Srebrenica." Generals in all armies issue orders, not invitations. We grabbed at the chance before he could change his mind. Anyway, it was late afternoon and in 1993 in Bosnia, driving after dark was beyond dangerous. After saying grace, Gen. Mladic poured a little slivovitz on his hands, rubbed them together and, with a roaring laugh, said, "Disinfectant." It was a typical soldier's joke, at least among the liquor-fuelled warriors on all sides of the Yugoslav wars. Dinner was a lengthy affair, thick bean soups followed by heaping plates, glasses of wine and shots of slivovitz, the pale and potent plum brandy. "Za mir, " we toasted to peace. Gen. Mladic, who prided himself on a correct military bearing, had impeccable table manners. He was a genial host, but lurking close to the surface was a very angry man, deeply offended by his portrayal as a brute, rather than a brave and principled defender of the faith. "Who has the right to call me a war criminal?" he demanded, well aware of the media coverage. "I was born here. These lands have belonged to us for centuries." Like many passionate Serb nationalists, Gen. Mladic regarded the West's failure to back him as a betrayal of the people who had saved Christendom from Islam and Fascism. At times he verged on tears, lamenting the collapse of Yugoslavia and his own tormented life. "In the village nearest to my birthplace they killed 42 Serbs. They cut an unborn baby from the belly of a pregnant woman and skewered it on a knife. They killed everyone except an old man and a two-month-old girl, but they cut off the little girl's hand," he recalled. But mainly he defended his Bosnian Serb army's ruthless cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Croats and Muslims as a strategic if little understood and underappreciated strike to save Europe from the Islamic hordes that would overwhelm it. "The Islamic world does not have the atomic bomb, but it has the demographic bomb," he said. "The whole of Europe will be swamped by Albanians and Muslims." ------------------------------------ Post message: [email protected] Subscribe : [email protected] Unsubscribe : [email protected] List owner : [email protected] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
