National Congress of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (NCR B&H)
ONLINE NEWSLETTER No. 481 - International issue
August 7, 2007
1. ASSIMILATED JEWS: FINCI'S SERBIAN NATIONALISM STRONGER THAN JUDAISM
2. Holocaust History Misappropriated
3. CONTINUATION OF ETHNIC CLEANSING IN BOSNIA BY “FRIENDS OF BOSNIA”
4. Bosnian Geophysicist Uncovers a Pyramid Scheme
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1. ASSIMILATED JEWS: FINCI'S SERBIAN NATIONALISM STRONGER THAN HIS JEWISH IDENTITY
By Sahin Pasic,
NCR B&H
Last week, the Prime Minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) Nikola Spiric, who is a Serbian nationalist, criticized Foreign Minister Sven Alkalaj, who is Jewish, by stating, among other things, that nobody wants Alkalaj to be minister because he is a member of "other nationalities".
The term "other nationality" in BiH means neither Bosniak, nor Serb, nor Croat, so it is clear that Spiric referred to the fact that Alkalaj is Jewish. In fact, under the ridiculous apartheid constitution of BiH written in the Dayton agreement, all public offices, including ministerial posts, are reserved for the Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats, with no posts to be filled by the "others". This apartheid is self-enforcing because that division ferments distrust and resentment, and none of the three major ethnicities can afford to cede any of their positions and be left at a disadvantage.
There are calls from parties that are predominantly Bosniak and Croat to end such divisions. Minister Alkalaj was nominated by a Bosniak-dominated "Party for BiH" to fill a post slated for a Bosniak, and won the post because Bosniak lawmakers supported him. Alkalaj's presence aggravates Spiric and other Serb nationalists, because he symbolizes a break from the apartheid thinking that keeps the entity "Republic of the Serbs" (RS) in existence.
Spiric also is hostile to Alkalaj personally because of several moves that asserted the statehood of BiH over RS. For example, Alkalaj recently made it known that the RS foreign office in Bruxelles is not legal because the RS does not have the constitutional authority to carry out foreign policy. That authority is reserved for BiH as a state, and carried out through the foreign ministry led by Alkalaj.
Premier Spiric did come under much criticism from the Bosnian public for his display of bigotry, and Alkalaj has admitted feeling hurt and insulted by Spiric. However, to Spiric's defense came Jacob Finci, another prominent Bosnian Jew, saying that Spiric's statement that Alkalaj is undesirable as one of the "others" is not anti-Semitic because Spiric never explicitly mentioned that Alkalaj is Jewish! Finci therefore thinks that it is OK to discriminate against people for being Jewish as long as that reason is only implied very clearly.
Also, Finci avoids this perfect opportunity given to him to comment on the discrimination against Jews and the rest of the "others" by the constitution, which is much more important than just Spiric's bigotry.
Jakob Finci is a type of person who boasts about his Jewish heritage in every public appearance, but his political initiatives have always betrayed him to hold Serbian nationalist convictions. In that he is no different from many chest thumping "social democrats" or "Muslims clerics" or "Croat Ustashe" in Bosnia who never miss an opportunity to score a victory for Serb nationalism into which they have been indoctrinated while growing up in Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. Notably, Finci was behind an initiative for a war crimes and genocide public forum. The idea was to have a public debate between accused war criminals and victims to replace the court trials because, according to Finci, it would lead to "reconciliation". The problem with such public forums is that facts are not checked, witnesses are not protected, and equality between "the sides" is assumed from the start -- there are no defendants or prosecutors. So manipulation and twisting of the truth and public intimidation of witnesses would all become tools to convince everyone that "all sides were equally guilty", which is the line that Serbian nationalists have been trying to sell about the war for years.
But Serbian nationalists cannot sell such an idea because their intentions are too transparent, so they have Finci do it for them. Similarly, it would have been pointless for Spiric's Serb nationalist colleagues to defend his anti-Semitic remarks. Finci, the Jew, is much more effective.
Finally, please note that Finci, as a Jew, should not naturally have such strong sympathy to Serb nationalism, because Serb nationalism has been historically very hostile to Jews. This hostility, including the story of how Belgrade became "Judenfrei" during The Second World War, is summarized in the article "Holocaust History Misappropriated" by Philip J. Cohen
(MIDSTREAM: A Monthly Jewish Review November 1992. Volume XXXVIII No.8).
For your convenience we post the article in the following item.
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2. Holocaust History Misappropriated
by Philip J. Cohen
MIDSTREAM: A Monthly Jewish Review
November 1992. Volume XXXVIII No.8.
In conjunction with the war in former Yugoslavia, Serbia has undertaken a campaign to persuade the Jewish community of Serbian friendship for Jews. This same campaign portrays Croats as a common threat to both Jews and Serbs, in an attempt to gain Jewish sympathy and support at a time when most nations have isolated Serbia as a Balkan pariah. However, even as Serbia courts Jewish public opinion, their propagandists conceal a history of well-ingrained anti-Semitism, which continues unabated in 1992. To make their case, Serbs portray themselves as victims in the Second World War, but conceal the systematic genocide that Serbs had committed against several peoples including the Jews. Thus Serbs have usurped as propaganda the Holocaust that occurred in neighboring Croatia and Bosnia, but do not give an honest accounting of the Holocaust as it occurred in Serbia.
During four centuries of Ottoman rule in the Balkans, the Jewish communities of Serbia enjoyed religious tolerance, internal autonomy, and equality before the law, that ended with the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of the Serbian state. Soon after a Serbian insurrection against Turkish rule in 1804, Jews were expelled from the interior of Serbia and prohibited from residing outside of Belgrade. In 1856 and 1861, Jews were further prohibited from travel for the purpose of trade. In official correspondence from the late 19th century, British diplomats detailed the cruel treatment of the Jews of Serbia, which they attributed to religious fanaticism, commercial rivalries, and the belief that Jews were the secret agents of the Turks. Article 23 of the Serbian constitution granted equality to every citizen but Article 132 forbade Jews the right of domicile. The Treaty of Berlin 1878, which formally established the Serbian state, accorded political and civil equality to the Jews of Serbia, but the Serbian Parliament resisted abolishing restrictive decrees for another 11 years. Although the legal status of the Jewish community subsequently improved, the view of Jews as an alien presence persisted.
Although Serbian historians contend that the persecution of the Jews of Serbia was entirely the responsibility of Germans and began only with the German occupation, this is self- serving fiction. Fully six months before the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia, Serbia had issued legislation restricting Jewish participation in the economy and university enrolment. One year later on 22 October 1941, the rabidly anti-Semitic "Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibit" opened in occupied Belgrade, funded by the city of Belgrade. The central theme was an alleged Jewish- Communist-Masonic plot for world domination. Newspapers such as Obnova (Renewal) and Nasa Borba (Our Struggle) praised this exhibit, proclaiming that Jews were the ancient enemies of the Serbian people and that Serbs should not wait for the Germans to begin the extermination of the Jews. A few months later, Serbian authorities issued postage stamps commemorating the opening of this popular exhibit. These stamps, which juxtaposed Jewish and Serbian symbols (but did not contain Nazi symbols), portrayed Judaism as the source of world evil and advocated the humiliation and violent subjugation of Jews.
Serbia as well as neighboring Croatia was under Axis occupation during the Second World War. Although the efficient destruction of Serbian Jewry in the first two years of German occupation has been well documented by respected sources, the extent to which Serbia actively collaborated in that destruction has been less recognized. The Serbian government under General Milan Nedic worked closely with local Nazi officials in making Belgrade the first "Judenfrei" city of Europe. As late as 19 September 1943, Nedic made an official visit to Adolf Hitler, Serbs in Berlin advanced the idea that the Serbs were the "Ubermenchen"
(master race) of the Slavs.
Although the Serbian version of history portrays wartime Serbia as a helpless, occupied territory, Serbian newspapers of the period offer a portrait of intensive collaboration. In November 1941, Mihajlo Olcan, a minister in Nedic's government boasted that "Serbia has been allowed what no other occupied country has been allowed and that is to establish law and order with its own armed forces". Indeed, with Nazi blessings, Nedic established the Serbian State Guard, numbering about 20,000, compared to the 3,400 German police in Serbia. Recruiting advertisements for the Serb police force specified that "applicants must have no Jewish or Gypsy blood". Nedic's second in command was Dimitrije Ljotic, founder of the Serbian Fascist Party and the principal Fascist ideologist of Serbia. Ljotic organized the Serbian Volunteers Corps, whose primary function was rounding up Jews, Gypsies, and partisans for execution. Serbian citizens and police received cash bounties for the capture and delivery of Jews.
The Serbian Orthodox Church openly collaborated with the Nazis, and many priests publicly defended the persecution of the Jews. On 13 August 1941, approximately 500 distinguished Serbs signed "An Appeal to the Serbian Nation", which called for loyalty to the occupying Nazis. The first three signers were bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church. On 30 January 1942, Metropolitan Josif, the acting head of the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church, officially prohibited conversions of Jews to Serbian Orthodoxy, thereby blocking a means of saving Jewish lives.
At a public rally, after the government Minister Olcan "thanked God that the enormously powerful fist of Germany had not come down upon the head of the Serbian nation" but instead "upon the heads of the Jews in our midst", the speaker of these words was then blessed by a high-ranking Serbian Orthodox priest.
A most striking example of Serbian anti-Semitism combined with historical revisionism is the case of Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic (1880-1956), revered as one of the most influential church leaders and ideologists after Saint Sava, founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church. To Serbs, Bishop Velimirovic was a martyr who survived torture in the Dachau prison camp. In truth he was brought to Dachau (as were other prominent European clergy), because the Nazis believed he could be useful for propaganda. There he spent approximately two months as an "Ehrenhaftling" (honor prisoner) in a special section, dining on the same food as the German officers, living in private quarters, and making excursions into town under German escort. From Dachau, this venerated priest endorsed the Holocaust:
Europe is presently the main battlefield of the Jew and his father, the devil, against the heavenly Father and his only begotten Son... (Jews) first need to become legally equal with Christians in order to repress Christianity next, turn Christians into atheist, and step on their necks. All the modern European slogans have been made up by Jews, the crucifiers of Christ: democracy, strikes, socialism atheism, tolerance of all religions, pacifism, universal revolution, capitalism and communism... All this has been done with the intention to eliminate Christ... You should think about this, my Serbian brethren, and correspondingly correct your thoughts, desires and acts. (Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic: Addresses to the Serbian People--Through the Prison Window. Himmelsthur, Germany: Serbian Orthodox Eparchy for Western Europe, 1985, pp. 161-162).
Despite Serbian claims to the contrary, Germans were not alone in killing the Jews of Serbia. The long concealed Historical Archives in Belgrade reveal that Banjica, a concentration camp located in Belgrade, was primarily staffed by Serbs. Funding for the conversion of the former barracks of the Serbian 18th infantry division to a concentration, came from the municipal budget of Belgrade. The camp was divided into German and Serbian sections. From Banjica there survive death lists written entirely in Serbian in the Cyrillic alphabet. At least 23,697 victims passed through the Serbian section of this camp. Many were Jews, including at least 798 children, of whom at least 120 were shot by Serbian guards. The use of mobile gassing vans by Nazis in Serbia for the extermination of Jewish women and children has been well documented.
It is less appreciated, however, that a Serbian business firm had contracted with the Gestapo to purchase these same victims cloths, which sometimes contained hidden money or jewelry in the linings. In August 1942, following the virtual liquidation of Serbia's Jews, Nedic's government attempted to claim all Jewish property for the Serbian state.
In the same month, Dr. Harald Turner; the chief of the Nazi civil administration of Serbia, boasted that Serbia was the only country in which the "Jewish question" was solved. Turner himself attributed this "success" to Serbian help. Thus, 94 percent of Serbia's 16,000 Jews were exterminated, with the considerable cooperation of the Serbian government, the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Serbian State Guard, the Serbian police and the Serbian public.
Today, many Serbs proudly cite the Chetniks as a resistance force and even claim that the Chetniks were somehow allied with the United States during the Second World War, but this is simply historical revisionism. According to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Chetnik resistance against the Nazis came to a complete stop as early as the end of 1941.
Thereafter, the Chetnik resistance actively collaborated with the both Nazis and Fascists, and for this reason Jewish fighters found it necessary to abandon the Chetniks, in favour of Tito's Partisans. In reality, the Chetniks, dedicated primarily to the restoration of the Serbian throne and territorial expansion of the Serbian state, were the moral counterpart of Croatia's Ustatsha. Both were quintessentially genocidal; the Chetniks committed systematic genocide against Muslims, who, for nearly all of 500 years had lived peacefully with the Sephardic Jewish community. Under explicit orders from their leader Draze Mihajlovic, the Chetniks attempted to depopulate Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Croatia of all non- Serbs and in the process, massacred most of the 86,000 to 103,000 Muslims who perished during the war.
For years, the Serbian dominated Belgrade government has supported and trained PLO terrorists. Immediately after the murder of Leon Klinghoffer aboard the Achille Lauro in 1985, the terrorist mastermind Abu Abbas was welcomed in Belgrade. Since the late 1980's, Abu-Nidal has maintained a large terrorist infrastructure in Yugoslavia, in coordination with Libyan, Iraqi, and Yugoslav intelligence services. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, as Iraqi missiles landed in Israel, Belgrade supported its ally Iraq. Support of anti-Israel terrorism may be a consequence of support for nonaligned Arab states, rather than an expression of anti-Jewish sentiment.
Although the Jewish community of Serbia is not currently experiencing persecution, overt expressions of Serbian anti-Semitism do surface in such mainstream institutions as the Serbian Orthodox Church and the official news media. The 15 January 1992 issue of the official publication of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Pravoslavlje (Orthodoxy), carried an article entitled, "Jews Crucify Christ Again." In this polemic, "treacherous" and "surreptitious" Israeli politicians were said to be constrained from expressing their "pathological" hatred of Christians openly because "they know that Christian countries gave them the state." Allegedly, nuns are so frequently beaten in Israel, that one nun was actually "happy, because they only spit in her face." Only weeks later, when Russia extended diplomatic recognition to the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Slovenia, the official Yugoslav (Serbian perspective) news agency Tanjug blamed "a Jewish conspiracy"
against Serbia, hauntingly reminiscent of the theme of the 1941 anti-Masonic exhibit.
The essential strategy of Serbian propaganda is to portray the spiritual kinship between Jews and Serbs as victims of the Holocaust and endangered by Croats. This concept is disseminated through the Serbian-Jewish Friendship Society, founded in Belgrade in 1988 and supported by the Serbian government. In January and February 1992, Dr. Klara Mandic, the secretary-general and principal voice of this organization, syndicated a chilling article in the North American Jewish press. This article alleged that Ankica Konjuh, an elderly Jewish woman, was tortured and murdered by "Croat extremists" in September 1991.
However, even as she released this story to the press, Dr. Mandic knew that Ankica Konjuh was neither a Jew nor could have been killed by Croats. Bona-fide witnesses have testified that Ankica Konjuh, a 67 year-old Croat, was one of 240 civilians massacred by Serbian forces after the last Croat defenders were driven from the region. Moreover on 23 December 1991, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia met in Belgrade and demanded in writing that Dr. Mandic cease and desist misrepresenting Ankica Konjuh as the first Jewish victim of the war.
Nevertheless, in late February 1992, when Dr. Mandic lectured at the Hillel House of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., she provided the rabbi with a copy of that misleading article, delivered without further comment. It is noteworthy that this speaking engagement was part of a tour arranged by Wise Communications, a Washington-based public relations firm representing the Serbian oil company Jugopetrol, a thinly veiled proxy for the Communist Belgrade government. Beginning with the proposition that anti-Semitism has never existed in Serbia, Dr. Mandic portrayed Croatia as preparing to repeat the Holocaust. She claimed to be a "Jewish leader," although Jews are distinctly absent from her constituency. Less than half a dozen Jews are actual members of her society of several thousand. She introduced herself as an "eyewitness" speaking on behalf of Croatian Jews, although since the war began, she has had no contact with any of the nine Jewish communities of Croatia. When Dr. Mandic was asked to comment on Serbian (Yugoslav Army) shelling of the synagogue of Dubrovnik, the second oldest surviving synagogue in Europe, she denied that the synagogue had ever been damaged at all. Meanwhile, the attack has been well documented by the Jewish community of Dubrovnik and the World Monument Fund.
Jewish sensitivity to the Holocaust is similarly exploited by the Jewish-Serbian Friendship Society of America (Granada Hills, California), an offshoot of Dr. Mandic's organization. Its newsletter equates the Jewish and Serbian positions during World War II, both as victims of Croats, but fails to mention Serbian complicity in the Holocaust, Serbian collaboration with the Nazis, and Serbian genocide against Croats, Gypsies, and Muslims. It warns of an imminent Holocaust being initiated in Croatia. A contrasting portrayal of Croatia, however, emerges from a spectrum of Croatian Jews, American Jews who have visited Croatia, and international Jewish agencies monitoring events on site.
All concur that there is no state-sponsored anti-Semitism in Croatia; the rights of the Jewish minority are respected; and anti-Semitic incidents are virtually unknown. Thus, only a few dozen of the 2,000 Jews of Croatia have chosen to emigrate to Israel since the war began.
Serbia of today and Germany in World War II offer striking parallels. In 1991, Vojislav Seselj, a member of the Serbian Parliament and leader of the Serbian irregulars who call themselves Chetniks, declared, "We want no one else on our territory and we will fight for our true borders. The Croats must either move or die." Croats in Serbian conquered regions are forced to wear red-and-white armbands, analogous to the yellow armbands worn by Jews in Serbia during the Holocaust. The stated purpose of the expulsion of Muslims and Croats from captured regions is "ethnic cleansing." The indigenous non-Serbian populations of the invaded territories are being driven from their homes, exterminated, or imprisoned in concentration camps, to create regions of Serbian ethnic purity. Jewish community centers, synagogues, and cemeteries have been damaged and destroyed by characteristically indiscriminate Serbian artillery attacks. To all of this, the Jewish-Serbian Friendship Society has remained conspicuously silent.
Belgrade has promoted the myth of Serbian kinship with the Jews as fellow victims of Nazi oppression, while concealing the true extent of Serbian collaboration with the Nazis. It is ironic that Serbia is now seeking Jewish support for a war in which both the ideology and methodology so tragically echo Nazism. The European Community, the Helsinki Commission, the United Nations, and the United States have all condemned Serbia as the aggressor. Western diplomats have characterized the current Serbian regime as "a lying, terrorist criminal organization." Serbia, however, claims to be the victim and campaigns for Jewish sympathy and support, exploiting the powerful symbolism of the Holocaust. Serbia's professed solicitude for the Jewish people must be reexamined.
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3. CONTINUATION OF ETHNIC CLEANSING IN BOSNIA BY “FRIENDS OF BOSNIA”
By Muhamed Borogovac,
Editor of the Online Newslater of NCR B&H
In its latest newsletter, dated July 18, 2007, The Center for Balkan Development (CBD, formerly known as “Friends of Bosnia”), has announced an action to help people who are victims of genocide and refugees from Srebrenica. The proposed initiative may seem noble to an uninformed person, but it is actually a Trojan horse to the people of Srebrenica. Namely, the proposal is to help those people from Srebrenica who are temporarily resettled to Ilijas, near Sarajevo, to settle there permanently. This "sustainable resettlement" is simply a way to preserve the results of the genocide carried out in Srebrenica. It is in stark contrast to the sustainable return that was promised in the Dayton agreement to the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), which they still await.
Anyone who knows anything about the country (Glenn Ruga, President and mastermind of the CBD certainly does) understands that the major struggle that overshadows all aspects of life in Bosnia-Herzegovina right now is between those who invented and carried out Ethnic Cleansing, and those who wish to reverse its effects. Ethnic cleansing is a fancy word for genocide, a mechanism devised and carried out by Serbian ultra-nationalists in the 1990's to transform BiH, a multicultural nation that was for centuries ethnically and religiously mixed virtually everywhere, into one with as large ethnically homogenous (Serb) territories as possible. Ethnic cleansing started by means of mass murder of non-Serb civilians, torture, rape and intimidation. That initial part of the campaign has been confirmed in various international courts to constitute genocide.
The Dayton Agreement, signed at the end of the war in BiH, created an entity within the country, called Republika Srpska (RS, meaning Republic of the Serbs), on precisely those territories from which all non-Serbs had already been violently expelled. It gave RS all attributes of statehood -- executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. Also, it gave RS the power of veto over the function of the BiH government. Moreover, there are laws that explicitly discriminate against all non-Serbs living in RS, such as the election law that forbids non-Serbs to run for certain government posts, including the presidency. By establishing those powerful "legal" (apartheid) mechanisms, the Dayton Agreement actually serves to continue the ethnic cleansing campaign. Imagine a situation after World War II, in which high level Nazi officials are on trial for their crimes, but their former underlings govern most of Europe, the SS is in charge of protecting Jews when they return, Poland is renamed "Republic of the Aryans", and pictures of the Fuhrer can occasionally be seen in the streets. That is the Republic of the Serbs today, except the war criminals in the pictures are different. It is not meant to welcome back refugees and victims of genocide.
The Dayton decree that all people should be enabled to return to their homes is clearly meaningless when compared to those elaborate mechanisms that prevent return. The main problem is neither the significant economic hardship for returnees, nor the fact that the two main war criminals have not been apprehended. Rather, the problem is the existence of the Republic of the Serbs as the major "accomplishment" of those same war criminals, where the many followers of their thriving ideology are guaranteed to stay in power by the constitution. People cannot return because they are not safe living under the same institutions that slaughtered their loved ones. Before the war, the majority of the rural people lived from their land, and the fact that so many of them still reside in the squalor of their temporary resettlements shows that it is not the lack of employment, but fear, that is preventing them from returning. Furthermore, all the NGO and advocacy organizations started by the refugees from the Srebrenica region argue for taking Srebrenica administratively out of the Republic of the Serbs, in order to enable return.
The “Friends of Bosnia” newsletter runs contrary to the wish of the people of Srebrenica to return home in safety and freedom. The initiative to settle them in Ilijas permanently, where they do not own any land, would help only the war criminals who committed the genocide, and who are eager to keep the Republic of the Serbs as it is right now -- ethnically clean. The CBD asks others not to "manipulate" the people of Srebrenica, victims of genocide. Yet Glenn Ruga uses the offer of economic aid to refugees from Srebrenica, in order to manipulate them to give up their right to go back to their home towns and achieve freedom and equality. If the CBD truly wants to help, it should instead offer those resources and support to those people who have returned, in order to encourage more to do so. More importantly, the CBD should use its newsletters to argue against the continued ethnic cleansing through apartheid laws, not for it.
At the end let me mention that I met Mr. Glenn Ruga personally on many events regarding Bosnia. He is an intelligent man, who built his career on the Bosnian tragedy, and is knowledgeable about the essence of the Bosnian problem. The harm that this action would cause is not the result of any naiveté or foolishness on his part, but rather of intent.
Dr. Muhamed Borogovac
Editor of the “Online newsletter of the National Congres of the Republic Bosnia-Herzegovina”
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4. Bosnian Geophysicist Uncovers a Pyramid Scheme
A rational explanation of the Visoko “phenomena”
Dear Dr. Khavroshkin,
I am writing in reference to your locally televised statement at a Sarajevo press-conference of 28 July, on your involvement in the so-called "Bosnian pyramids project". While describing your recent preliminary geophysical measurements, you asserted that humans had shaped Visocica hill. As a geophysicist, I have no reason to doubt your measurements interpretation (even though early interpretations may seem quite premature at this point). However, your being a scientist of international repute gives a whole new twist to one unfortunate story that has no counterpart in damaging my country's image.
Let me note at the outset that this hill (as you correctly call it yourself) seems semi-shaped, not fully shaped. However, even if semi-shaped, that geometrical peculiarity couldn't be due to some 10+ kyr civilization as the man who dragged you into his world of deceit would have it. This has been so well established by researchers in the past, that I won't even quote any references. I would also like to inform you that our culture minister Mr. Gavrilo Grahovac has recently called for an investigation into that man's tax fraud; see yesterday's edition of Science magazine, at: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol317/issue5837/newsmakers.dtl.
The oldest known archaeological artifact found anywhere on Visocica is a Roman observation post sitting on top of the hill. This comes as no surprise, since Bosnia used to be a most important regional crossroads of ancient times, with the Drina River serving as the border between the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. Given that some important supply corridors, connecting East and West (North and South) traversed my country at that time, Roman rulers (senators) and their successors obviously had an enormous interest in Bosnia. Indeed, the high-level Roman military presence is found throughout the country; the military-post remains at the Visocica peak being one such artifact.
Therefore it seems most – if not only – plausible that it was Roman legionaries who had shaped Visocica too, applying an ancient military tactics of ironing the hill-slopes (note: only those overlooking the river Bosna corridor!). Because, what's the purpose of an observation post unless you secured it against siegecraft first? As a geodesist, I can see why they would have set it out parallel to the cardinal lines and then corrected it for the Moon orbital plane inclination (some 5 degrees to the ecliptic): moonlight could thus (under always favorable conditions), assuming clear skies, naturally expose any adversaries attacking the post. Once moonlit, the attackers could then be deflected by pouring molten lead or boiling water (oil) on them, or by rolling stone balls from the post down the slopes, and so on.
Similarly, I am amazed by how unaware people are of the network of tunnels (found inside Visocica) resembling an artifact of the sapping – the most typical military tactics for conquering ancient fortifications. I'm sure your grandchildren' encyclopedias contain more detail on those primitive military tactics, as I remember such readings being the "Harry Potter" of my childhood. Advanced reader should see Epitoma rei militaris ("Military matters") by Flavius Vegetius Renatus (www.intratext.com/ixt/LAT0189 ). Obviously, given a whole slew of feasible military-relic explanations, chances for a 10+ kyr civilization in Bosnia are virtually none!
Finally, even if one assumes, as the only alternative, that Romans hadn't leveled the Visocica slopes for tactical purposes, but in sapping a settlement Illyrians-Teutans had built even earlier on the artificially excavated/cut limestone terraces of Visocica (resembling the 1st century BC Fetele Albe monumental findings in the Orastie Mts. in Dacia – Sureanu Mts. in present-day Romania), this still would mean that expert archaeologists, not geophysicists, are the ones to make such calls, if required.
Therefore, without getting into motives for your involvement, I urge you to consider immediately withdrawing from this outrageous "project". I say outrageous because from the time of its inception – some two years ago – no mainstream scientist has supported it in any way. Those who opened their minds for just a moment were swiftly sucked into a smutty media campaign that twisted their words beyond recognition. Therefore, your prolonged involvement could not only harm your repute, but could also weaken the position of science in a society devastated by corruption and ruse.
Respectfully yours,
Mensur Omerbashich, Ph.D.
geophysicist & geodesist
Sarajevo
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
NKRBH - #481 INTL
NKRBH - #503 INTL
National Congress of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina
ONLINE NEWSLETTER - International
No. 503
October 29, 2007
http://republic-bosnia-herzegovina.com/
CONTENT
1. Bosnian Politicians are Trying to “Score” a Green Light for European Integration
2. This is not Police Reform, it is Destruction of Bosnian Statehood
3. UNITED STATES THREATENES ACTION AGAINST SERBIANS LIVING IN BOSNIA OVER POLITICAL BOYCOTT
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1. Bosnian Politicians are Trying to “Score” a Green Light for European Integration
This week Bosnian politicians have announced yet another agreement on police reform, which is a condition for continuing the EU integration process. Yet, this agreement is nothing more than a charade, and is mainly designed to score empty points with the disillusioned Bosnian people -- points that a newspaper headline of a conditional green light from Europe would provide. Namely, there is nothing new or different here than their proposals from the past. Indeed, they make great efforts not to specifically promise to give up their local and corrupt police forces, just to superficially present them as “multi-ethnic” and “functional” without giving any hint about how that would be accomplished – probably because they have no intention of accomplishing it.
This is reminiscent of lazy and incompetent college students, who take the same exam many times over without ever properly learning or understanding the subject, in the hope that the professor will eventually get tired of seeing them and pass them.
By the admission of the politicians who signed this agreement (Silajdzic, Dodik, Ivanic, Tihic, Covic, Ljubic), none of the “contentious” changes were agreed on, or even discussed. Those important changes are left for future talks on some new constitutional reform agreement. They seem to simply be taking a shot at the outside chance that the European Commission will bite and give that conditional approval which would enable them to buy some more time. Perhaps they are also hoping that someday Europe may get tired of Bosnia, or the European policy makers may be changed by some future election, so that the current state of police forces in Bosnia might finally become acceptable for EU integration.
The European Commission had rejected previous police reform proposals, which were not much different from this one, and we hope that it will similarly continue to insist on the three principles in this case. The people of Bosnia and Herzegovina do not need to simply join the EU. Rather, they need the reforms that have so far been mandated as conditions for joining, including police reform that fully implements the three principles. Giving a green light without true progress on reform would send the wrong message.
The following is our earlier analysis of a rejected proposal for police reform. We are including it as a summary of the key points and past events on police reform.
Muhamed Borogovac Ph. D., Canton MA
781-770-0317
National Congress of the Republic of Bosnia-herzegovina
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2. This is not Police Reform, it is Destruction of Bosnian Statehood
Analysis of the Dodik-Silajdzic Protocol Regarding Police Reform.
The Dodik-Silajdzic police reform agreement proclaims to respect EU's three principles for police reform. Let us consider whether that is really the case.
Section V: "The territorial jurisdiction of regional centers will coincide with the territorial jurisdictions of the current regional, and cantonal prosecutorial districts within the entities and the Brcko District." Well that is clearly a violation of the principle requiring functional police regions. This formulation respects the entity line, which is a very non-functional construct. For example, Sarajevo, and East Sarajevo would be parts of different police regions, even though the entity line even passes right through residential buildings in the Dobrinja neighborhood of the city.
Section XII defines the budget, which is to be appropriated by a decision of the Parliament, but then it is divided into lower levels that are supposed to actually decide how to use the money. That is a clear violation of the principle of budgeting on the state level, because that principle is intended to put the state in control of the money, which means control of how money is spent, and not simply control of where the money comes from.
This way, all the abuses by the entity police from before can continue because the state will still not be able to use the power of the purse to set specific plans for the local police forces to follow.
Section VII defines a "council of directors" at the state level. That council is only a body that manages cooperation between the entity police forces. As proposed, it is not a body that holds power over the entity police forces, but one that derives its powers only from the consent of the entities. In addition to giving it only coordination type role, Silajdzic and Dodik also propose that decisions within it are made based on entity and ethnic consensus. The RS and FBiH, and Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks can all put in a veto on any decision and completely paralyze this body. Therefore, all the ethnic and entity politics have to be considered in order to make any minor decision having to do with the simple coordination and cooperation of the two entity police forces. That has to be a violation of the principle of police that is independent of politics. And it is certain that such a police structure would not be functional at the state level.
Furthermore, there are also entity level police councils (Section IX) that are "independent". They are chosen by entity parliaments, so they are really not independent of entity politics. They are instead independent of the state, and because the RS parliament is dominated by a single ethnic group, those councils are also not burdened by the consensus principle. Silajdzic and Dodik have created functional entity police forces, and dysfunctional state-level coordination between those police forces.
This agreement violates the spirit and the letter of the three principles mandated by the EU. If the EU approves this, it will pull into its borders all the current problems with a police force that has been judged as having committed genocide, and represents institutional corruption and abuse of human rights.
But for the Bosnian people, this agreement holds many more poison pills even beyond the violation of the three principles. For example, immediately after signing this agreement, Silajdzic made a speech in which he touted the fact that the agreement ensures representation by all ethnic groups at all local levels of the police, proportionate to the 1991 census - before the ethnic cleansing and genocide changed the ethnic map of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Yet that provision is already in effect, so this does not present any progress. In fact, it is a poison pill, because the language of the provision in question, Section II.7, states that the most recent census is always to be used - not explicitly 1991 as before. In about three years, when a new census is carried out, the effects of the genocide on the ground will become official, and the police ranks will have to reflect that "reality". Many police officers will surely lose their jobs at that time.
Silajdzic has no shame. In a speech to his party immediately subsequent to signing this agreement, he blamed it on the international community. He framed it as not his own choice or fault, but as a dictate made to help the RS by some powerful international entity, that he commonly refers to as "the world" and leaves his audience always to guess at whether that means the US, the EU, or maybe High Representative Lajcak. However, the facts are that the EU has asked for the three principles, which are good for Bosnia and Herzegovina. In fact, that insistence by the EU is the only reason why we have police reform at all - because a common state level police force would be better suited to correct all the abuses by the entity police forces, which are controlled by ethnically clean entity parliaments.
So the EU is not pressuring him into an agreement that preserves the RS police. On the contrary, EU's pressure is on the RS to give up power, if they want to be accepted in EU, not on the BiH. Even Lajcak's recent proposal was much better than this. It is appropriate also to mention the US House draft resolution proposed by Rep. Chris Smith (NJ) that calls for the dismantlement of the RS police which was declared by the ICJ to have perpetrated genocide in Bosnia. In fact, it is likely that the timing of this deal by Dodik and Silajdzic is to head off this resolution.
Namely, why would the US congress bother with such a resolution, if Silajdzic is willing to consent to the RS police in the name of the state of BiH, and the Bosnian people? Yet the passing of such a resolution would expose completely his "world conspiracy" story which he has been using for years to frighten Bosnians into not questioning the existence of the RS.
The latest news: The leaders of other major parties in BiH, Tihic and Lagumdjija commented that they do not accept this deal because it is "even worse" than Lajcak's proposal. The leader of a major Croat party in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ljubic, also said that he will reject the deal for the same reason.
Sahin Pasic, Boston MA
617-319-4692
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3. UNITED STATES THREATENES ACTION AGAINST SERBIANS LIVING IN BOSNIA OVER POLITICAL BOYCOTT
SARAJEVO, Bosnia (October 28,2007) - The United States threatened action against the Serbians living in Bosnia who have threatened to quit Bosnia's state government in protest at moves to streamline decision-making.
"Continuing down this path of confrontation will bring a swift and strong reaction from the United States," the U.S. Ambassador to Bosnia Charles English stated.
"It is their obligation to back away from an avoidable confrontation.
We will view a decision to walk out of the Bosnian state institutions as unnecessary provocation," the U.S. Ambassador added.
The new dispute in Bosnia has erupted over measures proposed by the International Community's High Representative in Bosnia, Miroslav Lajcak, to stop political representatives of the Serbians living in Bosnia blocking new laws by making it easier to pass decisions.
The political representatives of the Serbians living in Bosnia have threatened to resign en masse from the central assembly, blocking the Bosnian Government, unless the International Community's High Representative in Bosnia Miroslav Lajcak backs down from the reforms.
The U.S. Ambassador to Bosnia Charles English supported the International Community's High Representative in Bosnia Miroslav Lajcak's measures and said that "a confrontation with the High Representative is a confrontation with the United States."
Under Lajcak's proposals to avoid obstruction through absenteeism, the Bosnian Government would be able to hold sessions in the presence of six ministers and operate with a simple majority.
The changes would allow the Bosnian authorities to submit motions to the Bosnian Parliament without any participation of the politicial representatives of the Serbians living in Bosnia who are constantly blocking Bosnia's progress towards European integration by opposing the strengthening of the functionality of the Bosnian state.
National Congress of the Republic of Bosnia-herzegovina
NKRBH - #501 INTL
National Congress of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina
ONLINE NEWSLETTER - International
No. 501
October 22, 2007
http://republic-bosnia-herzegovina.com/
CONTENT
1. NEITHER BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA NOR EUROPE SHOULD BEND TO THE BLACKMAIL OF THE “REPUBLIC OF THE SERBS”
2. DID LAJCAK GIVE IN TO BLACKMAIL?
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1. NEITHER BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA NOR EUROPE SHOULD BEND TO THE BLACKMAIL OF THE “REPUBLIC OF THE SERBS”
Oct. 22, 2007.
On Sunday, all media in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) reported that Milorad Dodik's party (SNSD) made an ultimatum to High Representative Miroslav Lajcak, threatening that all Serb office holders in government institutions in BiH will collectively resign from their posts in 10 days, if Mr. Lajcak does not withdraw measures which removed certain procedural obstructions from legislative and government processes, and which he imposed using the “Bonn powers”.
Remember that with the adoption of the Bonn powers, Bosnia and Herzegovina became a de jure and de facto protectorate of the United Nations.
This threat by the leaders of the entity “Republic of the Serbs” (RS) closely echoes a move by Serb ultra-nationalist leaders carried out in 1992, with the difference that this time they are not being backed by heavy artillery dug into the hillsides around Bosnian towns by the Yugoslav National Army of Serbia and Montenegro.
Bosnia and Herzegovina finds itself in this situation today because of past concessions to those extortions of the quasi-state Republic of the Serbs, created and backed by Serbia. We will repeat the lesson that was learned then: one must never give in to blackmail, because an extortionist always demands more.
We remind the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the international community that the Dayton agreement suspended and replaced the constitution of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. With this ultimatum, the RS seeks to paralyze the institutions of BiH as defined in Dayton, including the Bonn powers wielded by the High Representative, and continues its broader campaign to obstruct the implementation of the Dayton agreement. The proper resolution of a situation in which one party to an agreement is not holding to the obligations assumed under the agreement, is to revert to the last legal state before the agreement was put into effect -- in this case, to the constitution of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Therefore, these threats by the RS to dissolve BiH if its demands are not met should not be taken seriously. In fact, by paralyzing the Dayton Bosnia, and yet again proving the Dayton experiment to be a failure, the RS is only inviting its own dissolution, and a return to the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Additionally, as stated above, BiH already is a protectorate of the international community. The citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina gave their consent to create this protectorate by agreeing to the Bonn powers, in the interest of achieving stability, and reversing the effects of ethnic cleansing (genocide). They gave the Office of High Representative the Bonn powers, with the expectation that they would be used, if needed to achieve those goals. Therefore, the use of those powers should never be deterred by blackmail from the leaders of the Republic of the Serbs. The Office of High Representative can and should use the Bonn powers, and use them beyond simply marginally strengthening the institutions of the state at the expense of the entities. Namely, if the entities refuse to live up to their assumed obligations, and continue to block the Dayton institutions or their reform, the OHR should suspend the failed Dayton constitution altogether, and organize elections according to the laws of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. That would restore the constitution of the state that was suspended by illegal means -- extortion, aggression and genocide.
We must not bend to this blackmail, because it would imperil both Bosnia and Herzegovina and its people, as well as destroy the authority held by Europe. If Dodik and his cronies succeed in blackmailing the High Representative and Europe, there will be no more Bosnia and Herzegovina, only chaos.
National Congress of the Republic Bosnia-Herzegovina
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2. DID LAJCAK GIVE IN TO BLACKMAIL?
BREAKING DEVELOPMENTS: Today (10.22.2007) the daily “Nezavisne Novine” from Banja Luka is reporting that High Representative Lajcak visited Premier Dodik of the "Republic of the Serbs", in response to Mr. Dodik’s resignation announcement. After the meeting, they spoke with the media, and announced that Mr. Lajcak had clarified to Mr. Dodik the imposed modification of the BiH parliament procedures. Dodik stated that he now finds acceptable Mr. Lajcak’s explanation that the new necessary majority for passing laws in the parliament must include representatives from both entities. Still, Dodik reiterated that the measures that his party resorted to would remain in effect until he received a written legal document that would confirm what Lajcak had explained to him.
While their statements to the media are not sufficiently precise, it seems that the story of these measures has changed from what had been reported earlier. Namely, the stated intention was to lessen the ability of a small minority of representatives belonging to one entity to block legislation in the parliament. However, by what Dodik and Lajcak now say, it seems that this ability of a minority to blockade has been preserved by this measure. In fact, we have a concern that it may become even easier to block legislation, and so we hope that the written clarification that will be delivered to Dodik will be available to the rest of us as well.
We cannot speculate on whether this really was only a misunderstanding between Lajcak and Dodik, or a change of course by Lajcak forced by Dodik’s ultimatum. Either way, it seems that the effective blockade of Bosnia’s Dayton institutions will continue.
Muhamed Borogovac Ph. D.
NKRBH - #497 INTL
National Congress of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina
ONLINE NEWSLETTER - International
No. 497
October 12, 2007
http://republic-bosnia-herzegovina.com/
CONTENT
1. Negotiations of Bosnian Politicians on Police Reform Failed -- It is Europe's turn
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1. Negotiations of Bosnian Politicians on Police Reform Failed -- It is Europe's turn
By Muhamed Borogovac, Ph.D.
Bosnian media are reporting that today's (October 11, 2007) police reform negotiations between Bosnian politicians have concluded without an agreement.
These final negotiations were based on the proposal of two Croat leaders, Covic and Ljubic. It is unclear why High Representative Lajcak sent that proposal to the European Commission for a review; probably it was in the interest of fairness -- to treat this "Croat" proposal the same as the earlier "Bosniak-Serb" (actually Silajdzic-Dodik) proposal. Recall that this earlier one was rejected by the European Commission on the grounds that it did not satisfy the three principles for police reform mandated by the EU.
The Covic-Ljubic proposal also panders to the demands of the leaders of the entity Republic of the Serbs (RS), and therefore it also violates the three principles in the same points that the Silajdzic-Dodik proposal violated the principles. This new document has also suffered the same fate as the Silajdzic-Dodik one -- it has been dismissed, prior to the EC review, by nearly all the relevant parties, except those who drafted it.
However, there is another document still on the table that does fully respect the three principles -- the report given by the expert committee for police reform. Namely, more than a year ago, Europe reached an agreement with the Bosnian politicians on police reform, which was actually ratified by both entity parliaments. The idea was the following -- since the entities could not agree on details of police reform, they instead agreed to form the committee of police experts which would make a plan that would be binding when it came back. The entities had representatives in this committee, but those representatives did not have the power to veto a majority decision in the committee. The committee did its job and created a plan for police reform that respects the three principles. The RS politicians did not like this plan, and wanted to scrap it, and so they requested a return to the negotiating table, where they could block any meaningful police reform indefinitely. The High representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina Miroslav Lajcak did not hold the RS to the agreement, and allowed a return to such negotiations.
Nothing functions in post-Dayton Bosnia because everything depends on the consensus of corrupt politicians, who have ethnic and entity vetoes at their disposal. These new negotiations were not an exception, as they predictably failed. Lajcak finally threw in the towel today and announced that there is "no hope" for an agreement, and that there is "no chance" for Bosnia to continue on a path to EU integration.
Yet, instead of giving up, it may be more constructive for Mr. Lajcak to simply put into law and implement the conclusions of the expert commission. According to the Dayton Agreement, he has the power to do that. More importantly, the plan has already been agreed to by the entity parliaments, as described above. The entities, including the Republic of the Serbs, must respect agreements that they make with Europe and with each other, even if elections bring new politicians to power, as was the case here.
The choice for Europe and Mr. Lajcak is the following: either to implement the plan of the expert committee for police reform, and in that way take leadership away from corrupt politicians Silajdzic, Tihic, Lagumdzija, Dodik, and others who work to sabotage reform, or to fail and leave Bosnia and Herzegovina to be controlled by those irresponsible people and organized crime.
The EU will never allow BiH to join as long as it has the ineffective and corrupt cantonal and entity police forces, one of which committed genocide in the past -- a fact that was confirmed by the International Court of Justice at the Hague. Such an integration would be analogous to mixing five kg of fresh meat with 1 kg of rotting meat. Therefore, failure in police reform is not an option for Europe, and all negotiations where some politicians can veto any proposal in the name of their entity or ethnic group are destined to fail. It is clear what Europe must do.
The aim of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was to destroy the Bosnian Muslims
Author: Florence Hartmann, interviewed by Dani (Sarajevo)
Uploaded: Thursday, 16 August, 2007
Florence Hartmann covered the former Yugoslavia for Le Monde, later became the most prominent spokesperson for the Hague Tribunal, and is the author of a study of Slobodan Miloševic entitled La diagonale du fou [The fool’s/bishop’s diagonal], expanded edition Paris 2002. She recently visited Sarajevo to take part in a Conference on research into crimes against humanity and genocide.
Dani: Not many people know that you were the first journalist to discover the existence of a mass grave at Ovčara in 1991. What did you speak about at the conference?
Hartmann: My experience as a journalist covering the area of the former Yugoslavia before the war, and the six years I spent working for the Hague Tribunal, encouraged me to remind the conference of certain essential facts which permit one to understand the nature of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Since the theme of the conference was prevention of genocide, it was important to recall that there were many signs pointing to what would happen in that war. Unfortunately the observers, including in the main the international community, chose to disregard the evidence and failed to act in a manner that might have prevented or halted the unfolding criminal enterprise.
At the start of the 1990s, you came to Bosnia as a reporter for the Paris daily Le Monde. Were you already then able to foresee the scope of the crime? In other words, were you able to recognise the genocidal intention?
Yes, in part. Some of Karadžić’s statements, such as the one he made in front of the Bosnian parliament building, were public and as such reported upon; but there were also ones that at the time were known only to the chief actors within the international community, because the Bosnian government made available to them the intercepted conversations between Karadžić and his collaborators who took part in the Great Serb project.
It is necessary, of course, to bear in mind that the intention associated with the crime of genocide need not be publicly stated by the perpetrators and their collaborators. The specific intention, therefore, is proved by the perpetrators’ words and deeds. The plan to divide Bosnia-Herzegovina was clear and precisely formulated in early 1991. Today, however, thanks to investigation undertaken by the Hague Tribunal, all the 250 intercepted conversations have been made publicly available.
The International Court of Justice has decided otherwise. That is to say, in its judgment in the case of the charge made by Bosnia-Herzegovina against Serbia and Montenegro it found that genocidal intent was present only in the area of Srebrenica. How do you explain this?
The war plan included the destruction of the Bosnian Muslims within a limited geographical area, i.e. within part of the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina, with the aim of joining that part to Serbia. Milošević was the initiator and the moving force behind the execution of the plan to secure for the Serbs certain areas in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He was Serbia’s political leader and was considered and admired by them as the leader and protector of all ethnic Serbs living on the former Yugoslav territory. He utilised Karadžić to formulate and articulate their joint intentions. In a conversation between Milošević, Karadžić and Babić conducted in July 1991, Karadžić said that ‘the Muslims should be expelled from the valleys in order to join together all Serb territories in Bosnia-Herzegovina’. Milošević and his collaborators made their intentions clear even before the start of the Yugoslav crisis. It was obvious that the inclusion of territories of other republics, and changes to the established borders, carried with them a high risk or likelihood of violence. They needed to use violence in order to achieve their aim, especially in an ethnically mixed country such as Yugoslavia. In other words, everything was known and predictable, but nothing was done to prevent it.
In the research you have conducted and in the articles you wrote during the war, and later in your books and publications, you analysed the speeches, conversations and writings of the actors involved in the genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina. What are the most striking ones in your view?
The genocidal intentions of Karadžić and other Bosnian Serb leaders expressed especially in the speeches delivered at the 16th session of the Bosnian Serb assembly of 12 May 1992, and - as I have already mentioned - the conversations of Karadžić and others intercepted during 1991 and 1992. It is The six strategic aims of the Serb people, however, published on 12 May 1992 in the RS Official Gazette, that represents the clearest manifestation of the plan to remove non-Serbs from official positions in all the marked areas, and to physically remove non-Serbs from them regardless of whether they formed an ethnic majority in these areas or not. Bearing in mind the context of the growing desire on the part of Karadžić and his collaborators to destroy the Muslims in Bosnia, and everything that followed as a result, these documents can be seen as setting off the machinery for the implementation of the genocidal plan by the Bosnian Serb leaders. The first strategic aim - the separation of the Serb people from the other two ethnic communities - was announced by Karadžić at the 16th session: ‘We can’t live in a unified state. We know it very well: wherever fundamentalism comes in, one can no longer live, there is no toleration. Serbs and Croats, given their birthrate, cannot control the incursion of Islam into Europe; in a united Bosnia, within 5 or 6 years the Muslims will go over 51% ...’. This conflict was instigated with the intention of removing the Muslims. Still earlier, on 12 October 1991, Karadžić had a long discussion with Gojko Đogo. During the conversation Karadžić repeated five times that in the event of war the Muslims would disappear. Allow me to quote him at least in part: ‘They don’t understand that there will be bloodshed and that the Muslim people could disappear. Misguided Muslims, who do not know where he [Izetbegović] is taking them, that they could disappear’; and again: ‘they will disappear, this people will disappear from the face of the earth’. A mere day later, on 13 October 1991, Karadžić, talking to Momčilo Mandić, said: ‘Within a few days there will be no Sarajevo, and there will be over 500,000 dead; within a month the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina will be destroyed!’ Again, on 15 October 1991, Karadžić foresees the extermination of the Muslims in the event of war. Talking to Miodrag Davidović and his own brother Luka, Karadžić said: ‘In the first instance, none of their leaders will remain alive, they will be killed within 3 or 4 hours. They will have no chance of surviving.’ On the same day, in his well-known speech in the Bosnian parliament, i.e. in a public speech, Karadžić again said: ‘The path along which you wish to take Bosnia-Herzegovina is a highway to the hell and suffering that Slovenia and Croatia have already experienced. Don’t think that you are not taking Bosnia-Herzegovina to hell and the Muslim people possibly to disappearance!’ At the start of the war, in April 1992, the crimes started to happen systematically and across a wide area, especially in Prijedor, Brčko, Sanski Most, Zvornik, Bratunac, and later in Srebrenica, as part of a genocidal campaign conducted across the whole desired Serb state in Bosnia. The evidence on repetition, on the model and on the system are indicative of the presence of a genocidal plan or campaign conceived at the leadership level. This should have drawn the attention of the international community, with the aim of taking the necessary measures designed to prevent the Serb leaders from realising not just their military aims, but also their genocidal ambitions. The clear genocidal intention of the Bosnian Serb leadership in connection with Srebrenica was revealed during the war. At the 33rd session of the RS assembly, held on 20 and 21 July 1993, Karadžić stated that if the Bosnian Serbs entered Srebrenica, there would be ‘blood up to the knees’! A year later, in 1994, Karadžić said this about the enclaves: ‘If the international communities treats us like wild beasts, then we will also behave like wild beasts!’ During a meeting with British general Rupert Smith on 30 April 1995, he repeated such phrases: if the international community treats the Bosnian Serbs like wild beasts in a cage, then they will behave accordingly. According to the well-known evidence that Miroslav Deronjić gave to the ICTY, Karadžić said on 9 July 1995 in Pale, following a meeting with Jovica Stanišić: ‘Miroslav, they must all be killed... All and every one you find there.’ For his part, Mladić openly stated this intention during a meeting on 11 and 12 July at Hotel Fontana. Mladić offered the Bosniaks the choice: ‘survive or perish’.
Nevertheless, in your book Milošević - the Fool’s Diagonal you have shown beyond doubt that Milošević was the main link in the chain of decision-making and command.
The essential part of my research was the role played by Belgrade, i.e. concretely Milošević’s regime. Also during my later work for The Hague tribunal, which started a few days after Milošević’s fall, I carefully followed up all the new evidence that emerged as part of his case and in other trials. Milošević always took care to minimise public knowledge about his role in, and influence on, the events in Croatia and Bosnia, which is visible also in many of the intercepted conversations during 1991. I recorded and recalled how in one of the intercepted conversation of December 1991 he warned Karadžić not to speak about a new concept of Yugoslavia, about Great Serbia, for example, but rather to use the expression ‘continuity of ex- Yugoslavia’! He put it like this: ‘Take care, it would be dangerous if they started to think that something new was being created.’ This is especially important when we recall that at that time Cyrus Vance was saying to Milošević: ‘You’ll never get Republika Srpska.’ During the first years of the war, the prospects for legalising the seizure of parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina territory were nil. Milošević felt already in June 1993 that ‘the Bosnian war option has been exhausted’. At a meeting at the highest level held in Belgrade he explained why: ‘They have taken all that is required.’ ‘They’ referred to his collaborators, but they did not in fact have all that they wanted. At some point in mid 1994, Milošević understood that the international community was willing to recognise the gains of war. He told his accomplices at a meeting in Belgrade: ‘They have offered us to extend our territory by a quarter and to legalise that. And to have a confederation straight away.’ But their plan demanded creating compact territory. The enclaves of Srebrenica, Goražde and Žepa stood in the way of this plan. It was this desire and determination to have a compact territory that determined the fate of the enclaves in the summer of 1995. In other words, the tragic events that followed were not a chaotic consequence of localised activity, but a consequence of careful planning and anticipation on the part of the Serb political leaders. This is why I insist that everything was predictable and as such could have been prevented. In January 1995, before the mass killings in Srebrenica, Milošević stressed that the international community would offer a solution - in the ratio of 50-50 - exclusively on the basis of the fact of military victory. Without military victory, he said, the international community ‘would never propose a 50-50 division of Bosnian territory, which never in history belonged to the Serbian state’. After the genocide in Srebrenica but before Dayton, in August 1995, Milošević declared that it would not be necessary to swap the enclaves for other territory, because they would be assimilated into Serb territory without struggle. He then thanked Mladić and his officers for completing ‘their task with honour’. And he added: ‘if the Muslims refuse a peaceful solution, they will be told they will be left alone with Mladić’s sword hanging over them.’ Immediately after Dayton, Milošević said: ‘We have created Republika Srpska on a territory where there never was a Serb state. This is a historic achievement. A great victory has been achieved and the result is Republika Srpska, a republic on half of the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina. ... We have persevered and 50% has been entered into the books.’
But why was genocide not prevented? I am sure you do not go in for conspiracy theories. What in your view is the reason that permitted a genocide to take place before the eyes of the world?
In most cases, including Bosnia, preventing genocide in good time demands observation, recognition of signs, especially when the intent is clearly formulated at the very start of the war. No one was surprised by what happened in Bosnia - anyone who wanted could have foreseen the circle of violence and the intention to destroy the ethnic group called Bosniaks. Prevention of genocide thus depend on outside political will. In the case of Bosnia, the intention was clearly articulated and the great powers knew about it. That the genocide was not prevented was due to the lack of political will. I wish to stress that the absence of political will runs against legal obligations deriving from the Convention on Genocide, and that states which have signed it have a duty to intervene and prevent genocide. Avoidance of these obligations by the international community, and in the first instance the United States and the European Union, was accompanied by purposeful shunning of the use of the term genocide, which denied the genocide in Bosnia, just as was done in Rwanda in 1994.
You attended together with the other conference participants the commemoration and funeral of the victims of the Srebrenica massacre, and visited the Memorial Centre and the Black Room in Potočari. I must admit that I overheard your conversation with Hasan Nuhanović about the events in Potočari in the summer of 1995. Can you tell me what it was about?
That was my second visit to the Memorial Centre. I went there first as spokesperson for the Hague Tribunal in 2003. Due to the protocol, I was then unable to walk round the area of the electric battery factory. What astonished me was that the UN base was sufficiently large and had enough capacity to accept the approximately 30,000 Srebrenica inhabitants who set off for Potočari seeking protection by the UN Dutch battalion. This is why I asked Hasan whether the present-day fence and perimeters are the same as those in 1995. Hasan confirmed this. After all, he described it in his exceptional book Pod zastavom UN-a [Under the UN Flag]. Of all the many questions that remain unanswered, related to the responsibility of the international community for what happened in Srebrenica, there is the fact that the UN troops did not open the gates to let in those who had fled to Potočari, to await there a political solution of the situation. They instead permitted and helped the separation of the men from the women and children. Separation of men from women and children is the widely recognisable first phase of a mass crime. This is unforgivable and shameful, because it was not a question of any military inferiority of the UN forces, as UN representatives and Western government have insisted ever since. If that had been done, it is likely that several thousand lives would have been saved.
Your unexpected departure from the Hague Tribunal caused much speculation as to the reasons. In your statements you stressed your desire to become once again an investigative journalist. What are you writing now?
The reason why I left the tribunal are to be found in its internal relations. I must admit, though, that I am very pleased about returning to my profession and journalistic investigations. One result of it is the book which I plan to publish in September. Its subject is one with which I have been dealing for a long time: the relationship between international politics and international justice. I have written it in the hope that it may help and stimulate a younger generation to continue the struggle for the truth even after the closure of the Tribunal. We do not have the right to stop and close our eyes before the facts which we now know. Because of the truth, and because of the future generations. There will, of course, be a Bosnian translation.
Translated from Dani (Sarajevo), 20 July 2007. The interviewer was Sabina Subašić-Galijatović.
source: http://bosnia.org.uk/news/news_body.cfm?newsid=2295
MILIVOJE IVANISEVIC'S DISTURBED MIND OF GENOCIDE DENIAL
FACT: BELGRADE 'RESEARCHER' MILIVOJE IVANISEVIC USES DISTORTIONS (UPDATED!)
Updated Version! Expanded on November 1st, 2007 with references to the International Criminal Tribunal's statements on Milivoje Ivanisevic's denials of Srebrenica genocide, as well as more information about Munira Subasic's sons whom Ivanisevic mentioned in his propaganda statements...
Photo Caption: One of many Srebrenica mass graves, most recent
one being Zeleni Jadar, where the victims were shot to death and
they included children who were between 7 and 11 years old.
Editor's note: We are responding to recent allegations made by the Belgrade based Srebrenica genocide denier Milivoje Ivanisevic against the Srebrenica massacre survivor Munira Subasic. Ivanisevic claimed that Munira Subasic's son was "well" and "alive" in the United States living "under different name." Nothing could be further from the truth, as we personally contacted the Association of Srebrenica Women and spoke directly to their president, Hajra Catic.
Milivoje Ivanisevic's allegations are factually inaccurate
The story started circulating in Serbian media in a planned, timely maner - just a day before the 12 former U.N. Dutch peacekeepers visited Srebrenica Genocide Memorial to pay their respect to over 8,000 men, children, and elderly who perished in the genocide.
A Bosnian Serb War Veterans’ organisation - comprised of Chetniks who participated in the Srebrenica genocide - has recently claimed it had a 'proof' that at least one thousand victims listed as being killed in Srebrenica were alive or died before the July 1995 massacre. The so called "proof" came from the radical Serbian nationalist (aka: Belgrade researcher) and disgraced Srebrenica genocide denier, Milivoje Ivanisevic. As a side note: Ivanisevic also runs a website that features such articles as "Was 'Srebrenica genocide' a hoax?" and other propaganda material - perfectly suitable to be filed under categories of Science Fiction and Conspiracy.
The list of missing in question appears to be very report published by the Bosnian Serb government - as an admittance of guilt - in connection with the Srebrenica massacre (the Republika Srpska Srebrenica Commission's June 2004 report). The president of the Srebrenica Commission Milan Bogdanic (Serb), said they "were not determining the number of the dead, but the number of missing" and "came up with the final list of all the missing after comparing the data from various data-bases which together contained over 150 thousand of different names." When Bogdanic asked Bosnian Serb War Veteran's organization for their "proof" to be submitted to him, they refused to give it to him.
Little does Milivoje Ivanisevic realize, but the updated/revised report has been published by the Federal Commission for Missing Persons which removed technical errors and duplicates from previous compilations. The list contains the victims' names, parents' names, dates of birth, and unique citizen's registration numbers of 8,106 individuals who have been reliably established, from multiple independent sources, to have gone missing and/or been killed in and around Srebrenica in the summer of 1995. Another detailed report has been evaluated by the Demographic Unit research team of the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague and recently published by the Research and Documentation Center / RDC. The RDC was funded by the Norwegian government, the Swedish Helsinki Committee, the U.S. government, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Dutch government, the United Nations Development Program, and the non-governmental Heinrich Boell Foundation.
Further more, as an example of - what he calls - 'manipulations' with Srebrenica, Milivoje Ivanisevic points fingers to Munira Subasic, president of Mothers of Srebrenica Association. He claims that Subasic reported her son as killed in Srebrenica, "while he was alive and well in the United States, only living under a different name." But this was just another distortionist claim produced by Ivanisevic himself.
We contacted the Associaton of Srebrenica Women (Tuzla) and spoke to Hajra Catic who told us that Munira Subasic is in Sarajevo and has been actively involved with the Mothers of Srebrenica Association in Sarajevo. We learned from Hajra Catic that Munira Subasic's older son Vahidin Subasic managed to reach government controlled territory in deadly moments of 1995 and has been living with her in Sarajevo ever since; and contrary to Milivoje Ivanisevic's claims, her son has never changed his name and has not been listed as killed. Hajra also told us that Munira Subasic's younger son Nermin and her husband Hilmo Subasic died in the massacre when Srebrenica fell to Serbs. Both of them are listed as missing. Sadly, Hajra Catic's son Nino Nihad Catic and her husband Junuz Catic are also missing since 12 July 1995. Our heart goes to both women - Munira and Hajra - and to all the victims and survivors of the massacre.
In his latest media circus, Milivoje Ivanisevic did not want to lose opportunity to repeat one of his favorite conspiracy theories, quote: "Already next year, at the Bosnian Muslim elections held in 1996, more than 700 Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica whose names were on the list of those killed in July 1995 showed up to cast their votes."
To back up this claim, Milivoje Ivanisevic used incomplete and out of date list of missing which was compiled by the Red Cross immediately after the massacre, 1995. The list he refered to was revised numerous times, and other - highly accurate - lists of killed and missing were produced with the support of the United Nations and other non-partisan sources. It would be interesting to see how Ivanisevic came up with more than 700 alleged voters from the list and what methodology he used. Considering his background, extremist leanings, radical nationalist activism, and open denial of Srebrenica genocide - it is reasonable to conclude that he has zero credibility to be even considered a "researcher". He is more accurately categorized as conspiracy theorist, and we recognize him as such.
Milivoje Ivanisevic's claims are nothing new; he is one of the most frequently quoted 'sources' in Srebrenica genocide denial literature which is readily available over the internet. For quite some time, Ivanisevic's claims have been discredited on numerous occassions by the International Criminal Tribunal, the Research and Documentation Center, and Serbia's Human Rights Watch. As an alternative to Milivoje Ivanisevic's discredited make-belief allegations, you can also read our Questions and Answers about Srebrenica Genocide.
As recently as March 14 2007, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at the Hague released the following statement, quote:
I would like to start by commenting on the special supplement titled "Licna karta Srebrenice" in the Monday issue of the Belgrade-based Glas Javnosti newspaper, written by Milivoje Ivanisevic. The introductory part of the supplement states that Mister Ivanisevic's "investigative review" takes side with the view which denies genocide, and that it can serve as a contribution to the possible debate on the genocide committed in Srebrenica. Without going to details of the article, I would like to state that the piece in question represents shameful denial and relativisation of the facts that this court has established beyond reasonable doubt about the genocide committed in Srebrenica. International Court of Justice confirmed that genocide was committed in Srebrenica, but the facts about the genocide were established first in the judgements by the Tribunal's Trial and Appeals Chambers in the case against Radislav Krstc. The ICTY wishes to condemn this as well as other recent attempts to deny the genocide committed in Srebrenica, in which more than 7000 men and boys were executed. I strongly recommend that anyone wishing to debate about the events in Srebrenica starts by reading the judgements of this court, which established facts after careful weighing of evidence produced by years of investigations, thousands of exhibits, testimonies of both survivors and perpetrators, all fully tested and confirmed by a neutral international court. [source: ICTY]
In 2005, the International Criminal Tribunal concluded that Milivoje Ivanisevic's published lists and reports about Serb victims around Srebrenica "simply do not meet reality." In other words, Ivanisevic might have committed forgery. [source link]
Milivoje Ivanisevic has continued to ignore the mountain of evidence with respect to genocide in Srebrenica. He has purposely used misleading and out of date reports to cast doubt on the credibility of over 8,000 victims of the worst massacre in Europe since the World War II. Ivanisevic's ignorance of judicial rulings, DNA evidence, numerous mass grave excavations, hundreds of thousands of pages of eye-witness testimony, and mountain of evidence presented in front of the international courts is no different than Ed Herman's attempt to make disappear from history the roughly 8000 victims of Srebrenica massacre. Both Herman and Ivanisevic failed miserably when confronted with facts. Andras Riedlmayer has published great analysis of Edward Herman's fallacies in the following article titled: Edward Herman on The Lists of Missing at Srebrenica.
source: http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/2007/10/milivoje-ivanisevic-disturbed-mind-of.html
Russian writer shooting at Sarajevo
Russian writer shooting at Sarajevo.
The so called "republic of the serbs" (half of Republic of Bosnia Herzegovina under serb ocupation) is the direct result of acts like these, acts of GENOCIDE.
Eduard Limonov, now of "Other Russia", seen here on the hills above Sarajevo. Next to war criminal Radovan Karadzic. Limonov, now an "opposition activist", together with chess master Garry Kasparov. Serb war criminal Karadzic tells him lies about the past (history). It is lies liek these that most serbs are told while they are kids. This is why murdering people (women and children included) comes so easy to them.
This is yet another video showing the anti urban culture of those who besieged Sarajevo for so long. Two so called writers are shown shooting at helpless and starvin civilians below...What kind of writer, an artist can do this? Greater Serbian collective consciousness needs to be studied in schools along with that of Nazi Germany as it poses insights into what can happen when extreme hate, fear and intolerance takes over the good of the world.
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Ruski cetnik sa cetnikom Radovanom puca po Sarajevu dok mu Raso prepricava srpske lazi. Psihijatru je odavno psihijatrija trebala.
Borite se protiv nepravde i takozvane republike srpske.
France, Great Britain and the United States are hidinng evidence on Miloševic’s involvement in the Srebrenica genocide - an interview with Hartmann
Author: Eldin Karic
Uploaded: Friday, 28 September, 2007
Florence Hartmann’s book Paix et Châtiment (Peace and Punishment) has caused strong reactions in international diplomatic circles. Her charges, supported by evidence, that France, Great Britain and the United States have in effect protected Radovan Karadžic and Ratko Mladic, and are refusing to make available documents showing Miloševic’s involvement in the genocide at Srebrenica, have been denied, but without convincing counter-evidence. Florence Hartmann talks to Sarajevo weekly Start about the involvement of the great powers, the reactions in the region, and Carla Ponte’s own position.
The author of Peace and Punishment, Florence Hartmann, has accused the great powers, and in particular France, Great Britain and the United States, with obstruction of the work of the Hague tribunal in the trials of war criminals indicted for committing war crimes in the area of former Yugoslavia. They interfered most in the indictment of Slobodan Milošević, and in the arrest of Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić. Unlike various earlier superficial assertions based on conspiracy theories, Hartmann has relied on facts and evidence to support her argument about the obstruction of the great powers. Reactions in the main have been as expected. The representatives of the international community in Bosnia-Herzegovina have done their best to deny it all. But the facts are on Hartmann’s side: 4,300 days since the call for their arrest, Karadžić and Mladić remain at large.
Start: The part which has most caused public attention has been the assertion in your book Peace and Punishment that the great powers have been protecting Karadžić and Mladić. Is this indeed the most important part of your book, and what other information do you think is important in this context?
Hartmann: The subtitle of the book, which will be published in the Bosnian language this autumn, is Secret Wars of International Politics and Justice. The book deals with the permanent struggle waged by the Hague tribunal to be allowed to do its work. The court faced not just the obstruction of local governments in the region, but also that of supposed allies, especially France, Great Britain and the United States. The book deals with various instances when the great powers did little to align their political interests with the interests of international justice, which they defended verbally but not always genuinely.
Such obstruction on the part of the great powers has prevented The Hague tribunal from doing its work, i.e. fulfilling part of its mandate. I address this in detail, and with a precise description of events which took place far from public scrutiny, mainly behind closed doors. One such example was the non-arrest of Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić. However, this takes up only one chapter, i.e. some 70 pages out of a total of 230.
But this is what most interests people in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the region.
True, this part of the book is important for public opinion in Bosnia-Herzegovina. But it is not the only part that it will interest it when the book gets published this autumn. For example, one chapter deals with the background of Milošević’s trial, which is actually a good and illustrative example of the various forms of obstruction coming mainly, of course, from Belgrade, but also from France, Great Britain and the United States. They did not allow access to information in their possession, even though this included evidence of Milošević’s involvement in the Srebrenica events. They knew that the tribunal had sufficient evidence to win the case against Milošević, but they did not want to help with additional evidence, for example that which came from intelligence sources. They feared that the public might conclude that the great powers had known what might happen, yet did nothing that could have protected the Safe Area of Srebrenica and its inhabitants. But this adds up to only two out of five chapters.
RS spokesmen have used the findings in your book to shift the responsibility for the non-arrest of RS politicians indicted for war crimes onto the international community. What would be your response to them?
Clearly, you have not read my book! The RS authorities refused to arrest individuals indicted for war crimes, so NATO took upon itself to do it, and delivered thirty of those indicted, who up to that the time had lived unhindered in that entity. Tolimir was the only one arrested by RS - in circumstances, however, which are well known.
Who bears the greater responsibility for the non-arrest of Karadžić and Mladić, the international community or RS?
So far as Karadžić and Mladić are concerned, they are both responsible: RS and indeed Serbia, on the one hand, and the great powers on the other. The prosecution constantly pressurised the great powers to deliver Karadžić and Mladić. The fact is that the great powers would never do so on their own. But this does not change the fact that the politicians from RS and also Serbia are in default of their international obligations, not only towards The Hague but also towards the convention on genocide which they have signed.
What in your view are the reasons why the great powers protected Karadžić and Mladić? Do you believe in the notorious alleged deal between Karadžić and Holbrooke?
There is no firm evidence that there was an agreement between Holbrooke and Karadžić, or between Chirac and Mladić. The great powers deny it, while the supporters of Karadzić and Mladić have not come up with convincing evidence. If there is firm evidence, it would be logical that this would not be made public, because it is Karadžić’s and Mladić’s life insurance. I am not convinced, however, even if such agreements were reached, that they remain valid. Something else, something far more important than promises given to the two people responsible for the most horrific crimes in Bosnia, must have made the great powers unwilling to arrest Karadžić and Mladić during the past twelve years. In my book I give a number of well-founded instances during the past twelve years which show that France, Great Britain and the United States, which played the main role in this, simply did not wish Karadžić and Mladić to be brought to trial in The Hague.
What is your evidence?
I quote a number of instances which, taken together, show that they obstructed their arrest, while simultaneously pursuing the arrests of other indictees. The denials which I hear these days do not help the public, which has not read my book since it is written in French and which has no insight into the evidence. Only a change in the policy of denial practised up to now would refute the assertion that such a policy is being pursued to this day. After all, we shall soon see whether the EU will do the same as NATO did last November - i.e. give up on Mladić’s arrest, and allow Serbia to sign a Stability and Association Agreement.
But what are the deeper reasons why the two were not arrested?
I will briefly state what I have explained in my book at greater length: the reasons for the non-arrest of Karadžić and Mladić are to be found in the decisions of 1995. At that time, the great powers decided to sacrifice Srebrenica and Žepa for the sake of peace, and in so doing they created the conditions which led to a massacre that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice have both termed genocide. It is clear to everyone, here and in the world at large, that it is terrible and unacceptable that the great powers should be doing all they can to hide this.
Holbrooke himself said on Bosnian television in November 2005 that ten years before he had been instructed by his government to sacrifice Srebrenice and the other eastern enclaves for peace. He subsequently denied his own statement, even though it exists on tape. It is also a fact that the earlier peace plan, which the French and German foreign ministers Alain Juppé and Klaus Kinkel had proposed at the end of 1994, had envisaged Srebrenica, Žepa and Goražde being retained as part of the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. But Milošević would not have this. and in the spring of 1995, while negotiating the terms of the new plan that would be unveiled in Dayton, he planned to attack Srebrenica and Žepa with his army and its subsidiary in Bosnia , under the command of the Army of Yugoslavia and General Mladić. The great powers did not prevent this, claiming that Mladić’s men - in fact the united Serbian and Bosnian Serb police and military forces - had no intention of taking the enclaves. After the fall of Srebrenica, the great powers took no adequate measures to protect the population of Srebrenica, although everyone knew that these people were in grave danger. At that time Mladić was being investigated by The Hague for crimes committed during the previous three years. He stated on several occasions that he would revenge himself on the enclave, because he had failed to take it in 1993. In other words, the crimes were foreseen. After all, General Phillipe Morillon and other international witnesses confirmed this in their testimonies given to the court in The Hague. The same is true of General Wesley Clark, who stated that Milošević knew in advance that there would be a massacre. Soon after the event, the great powers took measures to prevent a similar massacre in Žepa. In November 1995, when everyone knew of the terrible fate that had befallen the men of Srebrenica, Srebrenica and Žepa were handed over to Milošević, although the great powers knew of his involvement in the killings. This is why France, Great Britain and the United States were unwilling to have the tribunal establish a link between Milošević and the massacre in Srebrenica.
But why don’t the great powers wish to have Karadžić and Mladić arrested?
Unlike Milošević, who denied any involvement in Srebrenica in line with the great powers’ official story, Karadžić and Mladić cannot seriously mount such a defence. This is why it is believed that, faced with the court of justice, they would put all the blame on the Western states. They would try to show that - whether directly or ‘passively’ - they had a green light to occupy Srebrenica and Žepa. This green light did not, of course, assume a massacre or any other crime. But the forces of Mladić and Milošević used the opportunity to unleash a genocide. The West did not or could not prevent that. They did not even punish them, because at Dayton they did not force Milošević to give up Stebrenica and Žepa, just as they have not to this day brought Karadžić and Mladić to The Hague.
You accuse some of the most powerful states of protecting Karadžić and Mladić. Is there any relevant or powerful state in the world that would wish to see them arrested, or that at least would not obstruct their arrest?
The relations are such that France, Great Britain and the United States decide. This will continue as long as these three powerful states do not change their current policy. They must understand that it is more important for the future of the region, and indeed for themselves, to bring Karadžić and Mladić to justice than to hide their past errors, however terrible these may be. Until that happens, Karadžić and Mladić will not appear in The Hague.
The representatives of the international community in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as some other international politicians, deny your findings. Do you have evidence to support your arguments?
The evidence is largely to be found in the book, which is why they have not come forward to deny them in France, Belgium or Switzerland, where the book has been read.
Why have you waited so long to publish your findings?
Following my departure from The Hague, I found that I had enough data to be able to analyse the attitude of the Western powers towards justice during the first fifteen years of the existence of the Tribunal, the first international criminal court since Nuremberg and Tokyo, in a manner that would be comprehensible to a wider public, and not just to Balkan specialists. It seemed important to me that the international public opinion that cares for international justice should learn what works and what does not - what are the problems faced by the tribunal. I hope that this will encourage others to help find solutions. I should say that I started to write my book after my return to France, in fact once I realised that I had sufficient evidence to deal with the most contentious aspects of the subject, so that the expected denials would not be credible.
What has been Carla del Ponte’s reaction to your book? What have been the responses to it thus far?
She has not rejected it. But so long as she serves as chief prosecutor, she would not be in a position to state her view. As for the responses, those that have reached me have all been highly positive, because the book is properly founded, helps people to understand, and does not discourage those who believe in justice, even though I have shown how hard things have been up to now. The common reaction is that it is a courageous book. There are bound to be negative reactions too, but I expect these to come largely from those who have been obstructing the work of the Tribunal and who do not wish that to be known.
Florence Hartmann worked for eleven years for the French daily Le Monde, during the 1990s as its correspondent in the former Yugoslavia. In 1999 she published her first book, Milosevic, la diagonale du fou, reissued by Gallimard in 2002. From October 2000 until October 2006 she was official spokesperson and Balkan adviser to Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague. Her Paix et châtiment. Les guerres secrètes de la politique et de la justice internationales was published by Flammarion. Paris, in September 2007. This interview is translated from Start (Sarajevo), 18 September 2007
source: http://bosnia.org.uk/news/news_body.cfm?newsid=2301