False Lack of Information

Six years ago, in July 1995, in the vicinity of the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica (in those days a zone under the protection of UN troops) a few thousand Muslims were killed - estimates for now range between six to eight thousand. Under cover of evacuating the population of the UN camp in Potocari, the Bosnian Serb army separated the women and children from men over 16 years of age, after which all traces of the men are lost. The majority of them were subsequently found over the last six years in a few mass graves in the vicinity of Srebrenica - apart from establishing the identity of the victims, it was also uncovered that some of the bodies bore traces of hand binds which is also proof of execution after surrender and therefore an obvious war crime. Gradually establishing what really happened in Srebrenica, The Hague tribunal raised indictments of genocide and serious war crimes against the representatives of the military and political leadership of the Bosnian Serbs (primarily, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic), while general Radislav Krstic awaits the final verdict for that same act at this moment. When after it all, on July 11 of this year, RTS aired a documentary film on Srebrenica, it turned out that the public in Serbia seemed to be the last one informed of the events which occurred not so long ago in its immediate vicinity. Was it because it couldn´t "swallow" a few thousand corpses? Or because it didn´t want to be informed? Or simply because they read the wrong newspapers?

INITIAL NEWS: On July 1995, state-run media reported on the "liberation of Srebrenica" in its regular reports on the activities of the Republika Srpska army, which, after four years of war and daily "liberations" and "advances" were no news at all. "Our goal was to bring the Muslim terrorists to their senses, to force them to stop their terrorist activities on this territory which was given them thanks to the good will of the Serbian people. The Muslim women and children, as well as UNPROFOR soldiers, weren´t our targets. We had to drive the Muslim fundamentalists out of this region", reports general Ratko Mladic to Vecernje Novosti daily on July 13, 1995. Even though no word was spoken on how the "fundamentalists were driven away" or "brought to their senses", by reading between the lines one could deduce what had actually happened. Two days later, Borba daily quotes the words of an officer of the Republika Srpska army who announces that "a few groups of Muslim extremists refused to surrender", that they were "suicidally attacked by Tuzla´s Muslim corps", as well as that "owing to the energetic counter-offensive of the Republika Srpska army, a large number was killed in Konjevica Polje and Kasaba while some of them surrendered". Therefore, it was already clearer that in the vicinity of Srebrenica someone was killed, but exclusively due to their own suicidal attacks. All those who might have questioned whether it had to be so, were consoled (and encouraged?) by Vecernje Novosti´s report of July 17 from the newly "liberated" town: "For each of the 12 decapitated Serbs whose impaled heads were paraded through Srebrenica by Kemal Mehmedovic and Hajrudin Memisevic, they were awarded with 25 kilograms of flour. That´s how much - testifies Mirsad Sulejmovic, a prisoner of the Muslim BiH army - the life of any Serb was worth in Srebrenica". After this testimony, the wider public probably didn´t consider the following news too significant when on July 22 Nasa Borba daily quoted an unidentified source from the UN: "Two days after entering Srebrenica, Mladic called the commander of the Dutch batallion and informed him of the hundreds upon hundreds of corpses in the neighboring villages, corpses of the people who ran away and were killed by his troops".

The politicians and regime media then dealt with the fall of Krajina, the colums of refugees and the negotiations in Dayton, and it appeared that all had forgotten about Srebrenica. Everyone, apart from the international community: on November 22, 1995, Nasa Borba daily published that "The Hague has nearly completed its search for Srebernica´s graves" and quoted the tribunal´s prosecutor according to which "despite Mladic´s promises that the Muslim soldiers would be treated as POWs, they were unselectively massacred". Two days later, for those who wouldn´t be satisfied with quoting only a single daily, Politika informs its readership that according to the "newest report of the Red Cross" there is no evidence of mass crimes committed against the Muslims in Srebrenica. On December 11, that same daily quotes the representatives of the Muslim government and the Republika Srpska army, who say that the evacuation from Srebrenica passed without incident. Ten days later, both Politika and Vecernje Novosti will publish the words of a civilian commissioner of the Srebrenica municipality - Skelani Miroslav Deronjic: "I personally escorted dozens of TV crews and other US journalists to each position where, trusting the AVAX pictures, they expected to find Muslim mass graves. Mike Wallas especially thanked me for full freedom of movement and investigation, but he and his colleagues never expressed their stand in the media".  

Then where did the international community stumble upon the idea that anyone was killed in Srebrenica? That question was answered by Politika Ekspres on December 18 in an article The Satellite - Lied: "It was enough for Madelaine Albright to wave unidentified satellite pictures in the Security Council in August of this year for everyone to believe the story of Muslim graves in Srebrenica. Those pictures were essential for the US administration at that time, as an answer to the Serbs´ bloody trail from Krajina which their neigborly Croats `accompanied them off´ to." Even though a smaller caption stated that the reader was in store for a "Srebrenica massacre" (normally, in quotation marks) "in the light of more than clear evidence", no mention was made of what the satellite pictures actually showed or how they "lied". Instead of that, the point was made about "diplomatic and other games": "The minute Washington points a finger at someone that becomes more than evidence. That finger was mainly pointed at the Serbs, albeit sometimes with a reason, but most often without any real evidence". In the case of Srebrenica, what was reason and what evidence and, finally, what does all of that have to do with the corpses, clothes and bindings which were being uncovered in those days, wasn´t specifically explained. On December 20 Politika will try to dispel the last doubts: The Muslims Killed Themselves in Srebrenica was the caption of a story on a politically motivated massacre which the Serbs had nothing to do with.

VERSIONS AND BILLS: During 1996, independent media started to publish testimonies of Srebrenica´s survivors, stories on all that had occurred in that town in the previous year, reports of journalists who stumbled upon clothes scattered next to the road... In that situation, state-run media pushed everything under the rug. Only in 1997 will the Srebrenica story be reintroduced, but then again only to spice up the theories on the media war against the Serbs and "the satanization of a nation". A short text published by Borba on June 12, addresses the "Dead souls on ballot papers", without quoting any facsimiles or material evidence: "Professor Rastislav Petrovic claims that from the list of the six to eight thousand ´assassinated´ Muslims in eastern Bosnia, 3600 of them were recently ´discovered´ on ballot papers in the BiH elections, and seven of the ´deceased´ were tried for commited crimes these days." However, a partial change of scenario of the Srebrenica events wasn´t forsaken: towards the end of May, Politika Ekspres and Politika published that the Muslims from Srebrenica had provoked the Serbs with their constant armed actions, by which "around 40.000 refugees protected by the Dutch batallion... were exposed to the danger of becoming the targets of the Bosnian Serbs´ act of revenge". Politika took care to make things clearer for everyone on what had actually occurred, by publishing the following article with a sub-caption Muslim Army Responsible for Civilian Casualties in This Town. Vecernje Novosti of Aug. 21, 1998 printed another version of the Srebrenica case: the caption Amsterdam - the Dutch Media on Their Blue Helmets Which Assasinated Muslims in Srebrenica, was followed by a story of a Dutch soldier who refused to stop a transporter in face of the Muslim army´s drawn machine guns and ran over 20 to 30 people who were lying on the road. The article describes the pressures to which the Dutch were subjected to by "Muslims, armed to their teeth", but fails to explain where the couple of thousand "surplus" corpses come from.

At that moment, a more rational reader of the state-run dailies who would want to sum up the information from the last two years would come up with the following result: 1) there was no crime, only the terrorists were driven away, 2) there were some satellite pictures, god knows what was on them, the important thing being they were forged, 3) the Muslims killed themselves, 4) they were killed by previously provoked Serbs, 5) they were killed by Dutch soldiers, 6) some of those killed were "allegedly killed"... Once it became clear that any new theory would be more than superfluous, they started to count Serbian corpses and anything that had to do with the Muslim ones was put in quotation marks. Logical, linguistic and possibly even mathematical nonsense characteristic of that period is maybe best illustrated in the article printed in Vecernje Novosti in 1998: "...the world powers ´remind´ the international community of the ´genocide committed by the Serbian side against the Muslims in Srebrenica´ using those ´facts´ and comparing them with the ´terror´ of the Serbs against the Albanians. However, ´the creators of the new world order´ keep forgetting that - no genocide was committed against Srebrenica´s Muslims!" Dr. Jovan Nikolic, president of the Association of Soldiers of the Bratunac municipality tells Novosti what had actually happened in the region of Srebrenica, where Muslims burned over 200 Serbian villages to the ground and brutally killed over 1200 Serbs: "No evidence is needed there. Everything has been recorded and filed, according to the most stringent international criteria. I wish to remind your readers that next to the Drina River, the Muslims slaughtered 109 Serbs in a single day..."

Since he thus, I suppose, completed the picture of who fared how, Srebrenica was definitely pushed into the background - it is only mentioned in context of the "politicized victims of Srebrenica", or as the place where Muslims gather to commemorate the dead. In state-run media, no one even tries to answer the questions of whether someone was killed and who the victims are, especially when everyone said that none existed. In that spirit, in July of last year Politika wrote: "The Muslim and Croatian side in BiH´s Presidency, Alija Izetbegovic and Ante Jelavic, were present in Potocari, a suburb of Srebrenica, at the Muslim commemoration by which this gathering, beside religious, also acquired political overtones. Also, the head of the Islam religious community Mustafa Ceric, during the religious ritual, addresing the mass of 3000 Muslims, delivered a message which transcends religious boundaries. This event resembled a true invasion of Muslims and international powers of the eastern part of Republika Srpska more than a prayer for those who died in Srebrenica." An eager Politika reader would probably be thus satisfied (the Muslims gathered to honor those who were killed in the war, and, as usual, laced it all with political overtones), if then acting federal secretary of information Goran Matic didn´t come out in public with the claim that "the French and Muslim secret services were responsible for the massacre of 1200 Muslims in the vinicity of Srebrenica". Therefore, one more version could be added to the aforementioned list, at first glance fatal for any last semblance of common sense in the Srebrenica story. On the other hand, that version could have been what was needed, the final explanation - it is superfluous (as is a well known fact) to even talk about what secret services took part in.

And truly, everyone stopped talking about it. Until July 11 of this year when the public, still dazed by the pictures of decomposed bodies from Kosovo, was confronted with thousands more. Stormy reactions could be reduced to the story how "all normal nations hide their corpses, only we uncover them" (a BK TV viewer), but also to a renewed counting of Serbian graves (deputies in the Serbian parliament). Which all leads us to the conclusion that mainly the wrong newspapers were read here, that there truly were those who refused to be informed, but also that a few thousand bodies truly is more than one can digest. Even by stomachs used to all kinds of things.
(Documentation - Humanitarian Law Fund and Vreme´s Documentary Center)