TO: Scott Palley, CBS NEWS
FROM: Raymond K. Kent, Historian
RE: Your last report on the Serb General at the Hague
DATE: 4 August 2001
Once again, I am forced to write to you and for much the same reason.
>From a two-hour interview granted you by the Yugoslav President
Kostunica, you had extracted and twisted a miniscule segment. Its
purpose was to create the impression that he "admitted" what your
presumed home audience "wanted to hear," namely a collective Serb
"guilt." Last evening you linked the alleged "Serb Genocide" at
Srebrenica with the Jewish Holocaust in WW II, no doubt because this
is what your presumed home audience "wanted to hear." The General was
"sentenced" to 46 years in prison.
Let me state at once that there is no connection between the Holocaust
and what had taken place at Srebrenica in 1995. European Jews were not
in a state of civil war with the Germans or with the Croatian Nazis in
ex-Yugoslavia. They had never done any physical harm to their murderers
and tormentors. In 1995, Bosnia was in a state of civil war. Srebrenica
had been designated as a "Safe Zone" by the U.N.and buttressed by a
Dutch military contingent. What somehow never gets reported is that the
Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica, under the leadership of Nasir Oric,
regularly raided the countryside, inhabited exclusively by the Serbs. In
a period of almost a year, they destroyed 48 large Serb villages,
looting, torching and killing between 1,800 and 3,000 (estimates
vary) Serb women, children and men. This is what "genocide" really looks
like. The only definition of "genocide" which merits credibility
across the board amounts to a "systematic physical destruction of an
entire ethnic or ethno-religious group." This was the case of the Jews
in Nazi-occupied Europe and in Croatia, where local Nazis did the dirty
work. Any other "elastic definition" of "Genocide" becomes a tell-tale
sign
that the Holocaust memory is being manipulated for political ends.
Your "report" did mention that "25,000 women and children were deported"
from Srebrenica.. The word "deported" is used to imply the Bosnian Serb
Army's additional guilt. Did you know that the U.N. provided gasoline
for the buses taking Muslim women and children into SAFETY? But,
leaving this aside, did you ever stop to THINK that when
all the Muslim women and children are SAVED by being bused out of
Srebrenica a case
for "Genocide" cannot be made. Had this type of "genocide" been applied
to the Jewish women and children in WW II at least a half of Europe's
Jews would not have been murdered.
Next, there is the question of "massacre" involving the Bosnian Muslim
men "and boys." You mentioned that the Serb general's defense was that
most of the men were casualties of war (combat) but that many were found
with hands tied behind their backs. Both statements have a proximity to
truth. What is missing is the context.
After taking Srebrenica in a militarily competent fashion, Serb Army
commanders asked the Bosnian Muslim men to surrender. Instead, most
opted to flee to Tuzla, nearest Bosnian Muslim stronghold. In so doing
they became an army in flight. Does one need to recite to you the
instances when our armed forces shelled fleeing men of opposing armies?
That many were unarmed in flight did not turn them into civilians. This
is because in all civil wars civilians become soldiers when they carry
a weapon and become civilians again by discarding it. All sides in the
Yugoslav civil wars of the 1990's isolated men from the rest of their
ethno-religious kin. Some were tortured, some where killed and some were
detained under duress and hardships. Many were exchanged as well. Given
what Nasir Oric and his men had done SYSTEMATICALLY (and out of sight of
the Western Media) to the Serb civilian population in Srebrenica's
countryside, it should hardly come as a total surprise that there was
little room for pity or compassion among the soldiers and officers of
the Serb Bosnian Army. Now to the question of numbers and methods of
killing.
The figures of "7,000 or 8,000 massacred: men and boys," came
originally from the interior ministry of the Bosnian Muslim Government
at Sarajevo. Sarajevo was understndibly silent on a couple of rather
startling items affecting the figures. One is that Nasir Oric and a
large number of his men fled Srebrenica a few days before the Serb Army
attacked and took it. They were immediately inducted into the Bosnian
Muslim Army with the request that this be kept secret. Later on, in the
first "post-war" elections involving Srebrenica, the registry revealed
that 3,003 of the presumably missing Bosnian Muslim men had actually
cast their ballots. The mass graves reported at a large field near
Srebrenica were never found but some 7,000 bodies were excavated in the
Serb-held part of Bosnia by forensic personnel after the Dayton Accords.
The "conclusion" passed on to Western Media was that the Serbs simply
re-buried the bodies away from Srebrenica. Where else could the bodies
have been "imported" from?
Well, an event of major bearing on the "problem" was virtually "erased"
from public view. Earlier in the Bosnian war, in a single major battle
the Serb Army entrapped and wiped out the entire elite Vth Corps of
the Bosnian Muslim Army moving through the Serb part of Bosnia. The Vth
Corps lost about 10,000 men. . There was thus hardly any shortage of
bodies to transform into "civilian" male victims of a "massacre."
On their fligt to Tuzla, the Bosnian Muslim men, some with their sons,
ran through and along mostly wooded areas under indiscriminate enfilade
fire from Serb tanks and machine guns. This was a rout, resulting in
many deaths but it was not a "massacre" execution- style. There
definitely were some real massacres that even "justifiable retribution"
cannot excuse, given Oric's "contributions." That the figures for those
massacred in cold blood did not really involve 7 or 8 thousand came out
of the Sarajevo claim that "4,000" were "found with hands tied behind
their backs." We are thus a long way to establishing in some definitive
way what had really happened at Srebrenica. But, this will,of course,
deter neither you nor anyone else who promotes hate-mongering against
"the Serbs" from the simplistic repetition of a "Holocaust-like
Genocidal massacre" of Muslim victims by the Serb "neo-Nazis."
Does it not strike you as most revealing that the major networks at home
have so far shown only the alleged Serb war criminals at the Hague
(from Tadic to Krstic). Never did a single Bosnian Muslim came into
view. Yet, Nasir Oric had shown video tapes of his own mayhem around
Srebrenica to at least two Western Reporters. Instead of being indicted
and at the Hague, he is running a disco for our GIs in Tuzla.
Similarly, the Albanian Muslim General Agim Ceku, who led the Croat Army
into the killings and massive ethnic cleansing of Krajina' Serbs, in
the same year of 1995, is now commander of the U.N. Constabulary at
Kosovo. Behind these two specimen are at least several hundred Bosnian
Muslims who should have reached the Hague but Washington under William
Jefferson Clinton and Madeleine Albright would have none of it. Ask
yourself why.
One last word on the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia
(ICTY) at the Hague. It is by no stretch of imagination a court of Law
despite the fact that its judges wear robes and have legal training. To
enlighten you and your bosses on this subject I enclose the corrected
proofs of an article of mine published five years ago in a French
journal. It is entitled "Contextualizing Hate - The Hague Tribunal, the
Clinton Administration and the Serbs." ( Dialogue, Paris, December 1996,
Volume 5, no.20).I am sending you the last copy in my possession The
paragraphs lined in red were used by one of my former students for an
essay of his own, so disregard the red ink. Two or three typos and
errors corrected are in black ink. I hope that all of you will be able
to read it.
History Department,
Raymond K. Kent, Emeritus
University of California,
Berkeley, CA. 94720
(tel.510/642-1971)
Serbian News Network - SNN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.antic.org/
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