Also, about that 3600 number...
It is agreed by all sides that Serbs suffered a number of casualties during military forays led by Naser Orić. The controversy over the nature and number of the casualties came to a head in 2005, the 10th anniversary of the massacre.[272] According to Human Rights Watch, the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party "launched an aggressive campaign to prove that Muslims had committed crimes against thousands of Serbs in the area" which "was intended to diminish the significance of the July 1995 crime."[272] A press briefing by the ICTY Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) dated 6 July 2005 noted that the number of Serb deaths in the region alleged by the Serbian authorities had increased from 1,400 to 3,500, a figure the OTP stated "[does] not reflect the reality."[273] The briefing cited previous accounts:
The Republika Srpska's Commission for War Crimes gave the number of Serb victims in the municipalities of Bratunac, Srebrenica and Skelani as 995; 520 in Bratunac and 475 in Srebrenica.
The Chronicle of Our Graves by Milivoje Ivanišević, president of the Belgrade Centre for Investigating Crimes Committed against the Serbs, estimates the number of people killed at around 1,200.
For the Honourable Cross and Golden Freedom, a book published by the RS Ministry of Interior, referred to 641 Serb victims in the Bratunac-Srebrenica-Skelani region.
The accuracy of these numbers is challenged: the OTP noted that although Ivanišević's book estimated that around 1,200 Serbs were killed, personal details were only available for 624 victims.[273] The validity of labeling some of the casualties as "victims" is also contested:[273] studies have found a significant majority of military casualties compared to civilian casualties.[274] This is in line with the nature of the conflict—Serb casualties died in raids by Bosniak forces on outlying villages used as military outposts for attacks on Srebrenica[275] (many of which had been ethnically cleansed of their Bosniak majority population in 1992).[276] For example the village of Kravica was attacked by Bosniak forces on Orthodox Christmas Day, 7 January 1993. Some Serb sources such as Ivanisevic allege that the village's 353 inhabitants were "virtually completely destroyed".[273] In fact, the VRS' own internal records state that 46 Serbs died in the Kravica attack: 35 soldiers and 11 civilians.[277] while the ICTY Prosecutor's Office's investigation of casualties on 7 and 8 January in Kravica and the surrounding villages found that 43 people were killed, of whom 13 were obviously civilians.[278] Nevertheless the event continues to be cited by Serb sources as the key example of heinous crimes committed by Bosniak forces around Srebrenica.[272] As for the destruction and casualties in the villages of Kravica, Siljkovići, Bjelovac, Fakovići and Sikirić, the judgement states that the prosecution failed to present convincing evidence that the Bosnian forces were responsible for them, because the Serb forces used artillery in the fighting in those villages. In the case of the village of Bjelovac, Serbs even used warplanes.[279]
The most up-to-date analysis of Serb casualties in the region comes from the Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation Centre, a non-partisan institution with a multiethnic staff, whose data have been collected, processed, checked, compared and evaluated by international team of experts.[274][280][281] The RDC's extensive review of casualty data found that Serb casualties in the Bratunac municipality amounted to 119 civilians and 424 soldiers. It also established that although the 383 Serb victims buried in the Bratunac military cemetery are presented as casualties of ARBiH units from Srebrenica, 139 (more than one third of the total) had fought and died elsewhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina.[274]
Serb sources maintain that casualties and losses during the period prior to the creation of the safe area gave rise to Serb demands for revenge against the Bosniaks based in Srebrenica. The ARBiH raids are presented as a key motivating factor for the July 1995 genocide.[282] This view is echoed by international sources including the 2002 report commissioned by the Dutch government on events leading to the fall of Srebrenica (the NIOD report).[283] However these sources also cite misleading figures for the number of Serb casualties in the region.[citation needed]
The efforts to explain the Srebrenica massacre as motivated by revenge have been dismissed as bad faith attempts to justify the genocide.[284] The ICTY Outreach Programme notes that the claim that Bosnian Serb forces killed the prisoners from Srebrenica in revenge for crimes committed by Bosnian Muslim forces against Serbs in the villages around Srebrenica provides no defence under international law and soldiers, certainly experienced officers, would be aware of the fact. To offer revenge as a justification for crimes is to attack the rule of law, and civilization itself, and nor does revenge provide moral justification for killing people simply because they share the same ethnicity as others who perpetrated crimes. Emotion cannot explain the killing of 7000–8000 people within the space of one week. The methodical planning and mobilization of the substantial resources involved required orders to be given at a high command level. The VRS had a plan to kill the Bosnian Muslim prisoners, as Dragan Obrenović confirmed.[285]
To quote the Report of the UN Secretary-General on the Fall of Srebrenica:[286]
Even though this accusation is often repeated by international sources, there is no credible evidence to support it... The Serbs repeatedly exaggerated the extent of the raids out of Srebrenica as a pretext for the prosecution of a central war aim: to create a geographically contiguous and ethnically pure territory along the Drina, while freeing their troops to fight in other parts of the country. The extent to which this pretext was accepted at face value by international actors and observers reflected the prism of 'moral equivalency' through which the conflict in Bosnia was viewed by too many for too long.
The number, according to multiethnic and expert commissions is closer to something in the scope of between 500 and 1000, and this includes soldiers fallen in battle who probably represented the majority of the victims.
The fact is that certain circles have been misrepresenting both the quantity as well as the quality of what Orić's forces were doing. They inflate the numbers of the victims, they fail to acknowledge that a large number of them were actually soldiers fallen in battle, and they somehow ignore the fact that many of Orić's men were people who were themselves ethnically cleansed by Serb forces before that (some of the places they were attacking were actually places that were cleansed of their non-Serbs inhabitants before that).
Why were so many people in Srebrenica at the time in the first place? And what were conditions in Srebrenica like? And how did the Serb forces contribute to this?
When you take all this into account, it's quite easy to see that while Orić's men did commit crimes, this was completely incomparable to the systematic and pre-planned massacre of 7000 to 8000 people in a very short time during the Srebrenica Massacre. And yet, the likes of the Serbian Radical Party (which I_S seems to support) are doing exactly that - they are making it seem like the two things are basically similar.
If we look at what was going on from a larger perspective, it was pretty much in line with what Serb forces were doing in Eastern (as well as Northern Bosnia) in 1992, causing some members of the Bosniak community to engage in revenge attacks.
It is worth noting that 70% of all crimes during the Bosnian War were already committed in 1992 (that is 3 years before the Srebrenica Massacre), and that the overwhelming majority of these were committed by Serb forces:
http://www.cla.purdue.edu/history/facst ... holars.htm4: Ethnic Cleansing & War Crimes, 1991-1995
BULLET PAGE
Between 1991 and 1995, approximately three million people were displaced in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, due to “ethnic cleansing” - “a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.”
Most scholars concur that “Ethnic cleansing” (1) is carried out systematically, (2) identifies and targets specific groups by ethnicity, nationality, or religion, (3) entails the deliberate use of violence, and (4) reflects the intent of the authorities either to support such a practice or to refrain from prevention.
“Ethnic cleansing” and other crimes were evidently perpetrated to some extent by all parties in the conflict, and there were victims on all sides, although the gravity and dimension differed markedly. The great majority of the violations were committed in April-October 1992 by Serb forces against Bosniacs, and, to a lesser extent, against Croats. Croat forces also conducted “ethnic cleansing” campaigns against Serbs in eastern and western Slavonia and the Krajina, and against Bosniacs in the Mostar and Central Bosnia region. In a few instances, Bosnian Muslim forces victimized Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but on a much smaller scale than the other belligerents. There is no evidence to support claims by Serbian media in 1991-92 of master plans to commit genocide against Bosnia’s or Croatia’s Serbian minorities.
Within Bosnia, perhaps 70% of all expulsions and deaths occurred in April-August 1992, the overwhelming majority committed by Serbian forces. Of the final tally of 2.2 million expellees and 100,000 killed, a clear majority were Bosniacs. Over 80% of non-Serbs disappeared from the territory of Republika Srpska. In the summer of 1995, a large part of the Serb population in the Croatian and Bosnian Krajinas either fled or were deliberately expelled by Croat military forces.
Although the JNA evidently drafted contingency plans for war in Bosnia in 1991, no written document has yet come to light that would prove the existence of a pre-planned “ethnic cleansing” campaign. There are, however, substantial indicators for such an intent, including published statements by several Serbian and Bosnian-Serb political and military officials, discernible operational patterns of violence and expulsion, the speed and efficiency with which they were carried out, and the areas in which they occurred). The methods employed included discrimination (i.e. in employment, health care), intimidation, repression, beatings, torture, rape, the destruction of homes, detention, expulsion, and summary execution.
“Ethnic cleansing” should not per se be equated with “genocide” (defined as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group). To date, only a few of the most extreme examples of “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia-Herzegovina can be characterized as acts of genocide, most notably the Srebrenica massacre in 1995. Forcible transfer does not constitute in and of itself a genocidal act. Only when “ethnic cleansing” implies the specific intent of extermination, does it represent genocide.
And if we also consider why the war started in the first place, the political-ideological mythologizing ramblings of the likes of I_S become even more blatantly absurd.
For an excellent analysis of controversies regarding 11 issues about the Yugoslav conflict, I recommend this to anyone with the time and interest:
http://www.gradjanske.org/admin/downloa ... ach?id=264All those people who are responsible for crimes should be properly punished. But what is wrong is to buy into mythological narratives that obscure facts.
As far as Naser Orić is concerned, should he have been sentenced? I don't know. But the problem in the way people like I_S are presenting this is that they portray it as some sort of anti-Serb conspiracy. The thing is that a number of Serb military commanders who were thought by some to be responsible for crimes were also not punished and the court gave similar reasons as it did in the Orić case. There is practically no "ethnic" bias obvious in the workings of the court.
Scholarly reasarch into the court's workings confirms this.
As for why more than two thirds of all defendants in the Hague are Serbs, a bit over half of the rest are Croats, while the remainder is made up of Bosniaks and Albanians...Well, this is pretty much obvious. Could it be any other way?
"Nations ... as an inherent political destiny, are a myth. Nationalism, which sometimes takes preexisting cultures and turns them into nations, sometimes invents them, and often obliterates preexisting cultures: that is a reality." - E. Gellner
) and indeed crafted an answer to a direct question that diverted attention away from the real answer. In effect you tried to deny the nature of what happened, negate it.
- By Rich
- By ingliz
- By Potemkin