Gwynne Dyer: Top Serbian politicians won't concede that Srebrenica massacre amounted to genocide

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      It’s hard to say sorry, but it’s even harder to say you’re sorry for a genocide.

      The word just sticks in the throats of those who should be saying it, as the Turks have been demonstrating for the past 100 years in the case of the Armenians of eastern Anatolia. And the Serbs have just shown themselves to be just as tongue-tied in the case of the Bosnian Muslims slaughtered at Srebrenica.

      Saturday (July 11) was the 20th anniversary of the murder of between 7,000 and 8,000 people when Srebernica was taken by Bosnian Serb forces in 1995. The town's population was swollen by refugees who had fled there to escape the "ethnic cleansing" that was being carried out against Muslims elsewhere in eastern Bosnia, because it was a United Nations-designated "safe area defended by NATO troops. Or rather, not defended.

      When the Bosnian Serbs, having surrounded Srebrenica for three years, finally moved to take it in July 1995, the UN and NATO commanders refused to use air strikes to stop them. And the Dutch troops who were there to protect the town decided they’d rather live and let unarmed civilians die.

      So all the Bosnian Muslim men and boys between the ages of 14 and 70 were loaded onto buses—the Dutch soldiers helped to separate them from the women and children—and driven up the road a few kilometres. Then they were shot by Serbian killing squads, and buried by bulldozers. It took four days to murder them all.

      The crime has been been formally declared a genocide by the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Both the Bosnian Serb president of the time, Radovan Karadzic, and the Serban military commander at Srebrenica, General Ratko Mladic, are awaiting verdicts in trials for directing genocide. You would think that even the Serbs cannot deny that it was a genocide, but you would be wrong.

      There are certainly some Serbs, like journalist Dusan Masic, who are willing to call it what it is. His idea was to have 7,000 volunteers lie on the ground before the National Assembly in Belgrade on Saturday, symbolizing the approximate number of Muslim victims at Srebrenica.

      "On July 11, while the eyes of the whole world are on the killing fields near Srebrenica", he said, "we want to send a different picture from Belgrade.

      "This will not be a story about the current regime, which has failed to define itself in relation to the crime that happened 20 years ago," he continued, "or about a place where you can still buy souvenirs with images of Karadzic and Mladic. It will be a story about...a better Serbia." But the better Serbia has not actually arrived yet.

      Serbia’s interior minister, Nebojša Stefanović, didn’t like the picture Masic wanted to send. When right-wing groups threatened to disrupt the demonstration last Thursday, Stefanović banned it in order to guarantee "peace and security in the whole of Serbia". And the Serbian government had already asked Russia to veto a UN Security Council resolution describing the Srebrenica massacre as a "genocide".

      Russia was happy to oblige, and vetoed it on Wednesday. Maybe Moscow was just sucking up to the Serbs, whom it would like to steer away from their current ambition to join the European Union—but maybe President Vladimir Putin was also thinking that he didn’t want any precedent for some future attempt to describe what he did during the second Chechen war in 1999-2002 as a genocide.

      Words matter. Serbia’s Prime Minister Aleksandr Vucic, who seems to have changed his mind about Srebrenica since his early days in Serbian politics, still cannot bring himself to use the word "genocide" when he talks about it.

      Back in 1995, Vucic was a radical nationalist who declared in the Serbian National Assembly, only a few days after the Srebrenica massacre, that "If you kill one Serb, we will kill 100 Muslims". By 2010, however,  he was saying that a "horrible crime was committed in Srebrenica".

      Vucic even traveled to Srebrenica on Saturday to take part in the commemoration of the events of 20 years ago, a brave gesture for a Serbian prime minister who must contend with an electorate most of whom do not want to admit that Serbs did anything especially wrong. But he still doesn’t dare say the word "genocide". The voters would never forgive him.

      Most Serbs would acknowledge that their side did some bad things during the Balkan wars of the 90s, but they would add that every side did. They will not accept the use of the word "genocide"—whereas that is the one word Bosnian Muslims have to hear before they can believe that the Serbs have finally grasped the nature and scale of their crime.

      That’s why, when Vucic was at Srebrenica paying his respects in the cemetery, some Bosnian Muslims started throwing stones at him. His glasses were broken, and his security detail had to hustle him away.

      It was a stupid, shameful act, and the Bosnian Muslim authorities have apologized for it. But like the Turks and the Armenians, the Serbs and their neighbours will never really be reconciled until the Serbs say the magic word.

      Comments

      17 Comments

      P.Peto

      Jul 13, 2015 at 10:06am

      I am back for more abuse! It was interesting to note Gwynne got a lot of flak from anti-Muslim bigots for calling Geert Wilders a piece of" human waste" [shit] and no reaction for commenting on the western saint Aung San Suu Kyi versus the bad Burmese Generals. Now he is vilifying the Serbs for ethnic cleaning ["massacre" and "genocide"] in Bosnia during that now lamented civil war. Fair enough is was a nasty business but the Serbs were not the only ones who were culpable here. Ethnic hatreds are deep seated, cultivated and have a historical origin , in this case, when the conquering Turks massacred the Serb people. took away their lands and forced conversion to Islam on pain of death. Of course, that's no excuse for reciprocating these barbarous outrages but it has certainly been common practice everywhere throughout human history. Let's also not lose sight of the murderous "genocide" perpetrated by the exceptionally well intentioned American conquerors of Amerindians, African slaves,North Vietnamese, North Koreans and a host of other hapless victims.
      Un-be-known to most of you the break up and weakening of socialist Yugoslavia was deliberately planned by American and German interests by fanning old ethnic hatreds within Yugoslavia. We are witnessing this same vile tactic applied today in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Iraq etc by the same American and European Devils for their own selfish purposes. Please don't vilify the Serbs and omit the Israeli's genocide of Palestine Mr. Dyer, place the blame on the Devils who incited this violence in the first place!

      I Chandler

      Jul 13, 2015 at 10:53am

      DYER: "...Serbian politicians won't say the magic word."

      Maybe it's because we are better than them - NATO apologised for bombing innocent people in Serbia - or at least a Non-Apology : "we could not avoid the suffering of civilians" . NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg said he deeply regretted the loss of all lives during NATO’s bombing of Serbia. See Crocodile tears from NATO :
      http://redpilltimes.com/nato-finally-apoligizes-for-bombing-innocent-peo...

      DYER:"Maybe Moscow was just sucking up to the Serbs, whom it would like to steer away from their current ambition to join the EU"

      Sucking up? Isn't Moscow busy invading Ukraine and re-conqueoring the USSR these days?

      Maybe more apologies are due? Iraq?Libya? The Vietnam war was another good war... If the Srebrenica massacre (slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys) is to be described as a "genocide" what do you call the Air America , Bombing Missions Over Laos - See Mother Jones video: https://youtu.be/4UM2eYLbzXg

      That magic word must be the Supreme War Crime - Or Not...A former International Court judge: Dick Cheney should — and eventually will — be tried as a war criminal.

      Jeff E

      Jul 13, 2015 at 12:52pm

      The Canadian government has not exactly embraced the term "cultural genocide", since the release of the Truth & Reconciliation report, either.

      @Jeff E

      Jul 13, 2015 at 1:20pm

      T&R is being pumped by some as though we all need to fall in line, but we do not. In Canada we have "freedom of thought." Nobody needs to accept the content of any report in Canada.

      George S.

      Jul 13, 2015 at 3:21pm

      Dyer is an old leftist hand from way back so it is not surprising to see him recite unverified numbers provided by Nato and Bosnian muslims. He also thinks that Serbs have a similar problem to Turks in that they cannot utter a word like "genocide". Since that murderous assault happened 100 years ago it might be hard to find witnesses to that event. However, I wonder if Dyer would ask his friends the Croats and his allies the muslims of the Balkans if they might utter the name "Jasenovac". That event occured during WWII and there are still witnesses to that event. My guess is he will not be able to find a Croat or a Balkan mulim who ever heard the name let alone admit what happened there. Not out of shame mind you, but out of the arrogance of the victors who have Dyers by the dozen to rewrite history to their sarisfaction.

      Alex W

      Jul 13, 2015 at 3:24pm

      The killing of 8,000 people from Srebrenica, most of whom were soldiers and military aged men, doesn't really compare to the slaughter of 800,000 to 1,500,000 Armenian men, women, and children, but why let that get in the way of this self-serving little story?

      If the Srebrenica massacre qualifies as genocide, then Serbia isn't the only country that ought to be "saying the magic word". If Srebrenica is where you want to set the bar the, then OK, but let's be consistent with our use of the G-word. I don't think there is one country that's pointing it's finger at Serbia that isn't guilty of doing something just as bad, if not worse, than the Srebrenica massacre at some point in its own history.

      The British were the ones who introduced the UN Resolution condemning the Srebrenica massacre as an act of genocide, but you never hear them calling what they did to the Irish during the potato famine, which claimed more than a hundred times as many civilian lives as Srebrenica, an act of genocide. They're happy to accuse the Serbs, but they're not "saying the magic word" when it comes to their own sins.

      Look what the United States did in Japan when they dropped incendiary bombs on Tokyo -- they burned 100,000 people to death in one night, then they dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing another 200,000 people, but you don't hear the United States calling that genocide, no "magic word" there -- but 8,000 people from Srebrenica THAT'S genocide because it was those Russia-sympathizing Serbs who did it -- burning whole villages and dropping Napalm on civilians in Vietnam, not genocide. Supporting death squads in Central America, nope that's not genocide either.

      Now that we've got that straight, let's lecture the Serbs about the evils of genocide denial in Srebrenica because there isn't the slightest whiff of hypocrisy in our words and we speak with such morality and integrity that they'll just have to respect our opinion.

      Mike1999

      Jul 13, 2015 at 6:49pm

      This article is replete with factual errors. There were three different 'Srebrenica Massacres": 1) the murder of 2,500 or so civilians some 750 Bosnian Serb soldiers by Nasir Oric's troops from Srebrenica; 2) the extrajudical killing of 400-800 Bosnian Muslim soldiers who had participated in attacks against Serbian villages and who were on a wanted list; and 3) armed Muslim soldiers who were killed in running battles with Bosnian Serb forces during their retreat to Tuzla.

      The ICTY has in evidence autopsy reports for 1,923 complete bodies, a far cry from the alleged 8,000. The Int'l Committee for Missing Persons, which was in charge of identifying the remains, is a fake NGO whose chairpersons are appointed by the State Department. The ICMP knowingly did the DNA testing in an uncertified laboratory, so it's findings are not reliable and would not be accepted in a US court of law. Finally, the ICTY ceased its exhumations in 2005 and it refuses acknowledge bodies exhumed afterwards. There are currently about 2,200 people buried at Potocari. The charges of genocide against the Serbs are a legal fiction, enacted by the ICTY, which is itself a pseudo-court.

      Are Serbian victims being exhumed annually for reburial in in Potoćari? According to all available factual sources, more Serbian civilians were killed in the Srebrenica area than Muslims soldiers, but the Muslims are commemorated, while the Serbian victims are consigned to oblivion. And they suffer the outrage of having their ethnicity posthumously reassigned and used, in turn, to demonize living Serbs.

      The Serbian politicians who are sympathetic to the West's depiction of Srebrenica that Dwyer quotes are puppets, sell-outs. After Nikolic and Vucic left the Radical Party, they were paying William Montgomery, the former US ambassador, fifty thousand dollars a month for consulting fees. That was when they remade their image. Do you seriously think they represent the Serbian people?

      The annual Srebrenica charade prevents the reconciliation of Serbs and Muslims, and Dwyer, who can't tell her genocide from her elbow, has done her share to promulgate media lies.

      @Alex W

      Jul 13, 2015 at 7:16pm

      it probably won't be printed, but every country is guilty of a genocide against the cannabis culture. We need war crimes trials for the war criminals who have attacked peaceful flower people.

      James David

      Jul 13, 2015 at 9:18pm

      What happened in Srebrenica 20 years ago does not amount to genocide. The Serbs are being stigmatized and vilified for political reasons (i.e. because of the relatively good relations between Russia and Serbia plus the Serbian republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina). The US has no problem with describing the Srebrenica massacre - the killing of almost 8000 Bosnian Muslim men (not women) of fighting age (there are reports that the Bosnian Muslims were using the Srebrenica UN safe zone to stage attacks on nearby Serbian villages) - as a genocide yet absolutely refuses to describe the Turks' killing of 1.5 million Armenian men, women, and children as genocide. The US needs Turkey as an ally, as a bulwark against Russia - hence its steadfast refusal to recognize the Armenian Genocide. This hypocrisy is nauseating.

      McRetso

      Jul 14, 2015 at 7:56am

      Some really stupid arguments in the comments here. Let me address a few.

      1. The US/UK/whoever have no right to call this a genocide because (other genocide they don't recognize).

      Either Srebrenica was a genocide or it wasn't. Being wrong about other genocides doesn't mean these countries can't be right about this one. If you actually care about having genocides recognized as such, you should praise them for recognizing this one and then lobby them to recognize others.

      2. "Srebrenica was a genocide!? But what about Hiroshima (Or Iraq or Vietnam or whatever)?"

      Genocide has a very specific meaning. Bombing civilian targets is reprehensible, but it isn't (necessarily) genocide. Bombing campaigns are waged with the aim of forcing a belligerent government to surrender and/or to degrade its military capability, while genocides have the primary goal of killing off a race/religion/ethnicity, in whole or in part. Intent matters.

      3. "Srebrenica wasn't a genocide because they only killed Muslim men and boys; Mladic's men left the women and girls alive".

      Well good for them. Genocide indicates mass murder on the basis of ethnicity (etc.). Those men and boys were targeted because they were Muslim Bosniancs. That the Serbs discriminated between men and women doesn't really matter here.