Srebrenica ‘genocide’ claims, unproven, used to justify Western intervention

Site with mass graves commemorating alleged genocide at Srebrenica.

[This article was published on July 11, 2024, the 29th anniversary of the so-called Srebrenica massacre, whose context has been distorted by Western media and governments with the purpose of supporting renewed military interventions allegedly undertaken to stop human rights abuses and genocide.—eds.]

In June 2021, the Biden White House issued a statement approving the decision of the United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague to affirm its conviction of Serb General Ratko Mladic for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Srebrenica in the former Yugoslavia, where Serb forces purportedly massacred 8,000 unarmed Bosnian Muslims.

Claiming that the United States had helped lead the international effort to end the atrocities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and bring perpetrators like Mladic to justice, the White House statement proclaimed: “This historic judgment shows that those who commit horrific crimes will be held accountable. It also reinforces our shared resolve to prevent future atrocities from occurring anywhere in the world.”

On May 23, 2024, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) passed a resolution officially designating July 11 as “International Day of Reflection and Remembrance of the Srebrenica Genocide of 1995.”

That resolution, as shown by the voting results, was highly contested. Unlike the two other UNGA genocide resolutions – Rwanda in 2003 and the Holocaust in 2005 – which both passed by consensus, this resolution showed a highly polarized General Assembly. Of the UNGA’s 193 members, only 84 voted in favor, while 19 against, 68 abstained, and 22 did not participate in the voting. This amounts to a passage of only 84 in favor to 109.

The underlying purpose of this resolution was to have that body officially declare the alleged Bosnian Serb “massacre” in Srebrenica a “genocide” and to make any refutation of this still-contested allegation illegal.

Of course, Germany’s motivation is not altruistic. This resolution – especially at this time, when the German government is providing military, legal, and political support to the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza – is not because the German government has suddenly become opposed to the crime of genocide. Its official policy throughout history shows the contrary to be the case. The reason would lie closer to Germany’s past and current political objectives.

The German government is ill-placed to accuse anyone of genocide, given the fact that it has never acknowledged that its own crimes committed during World War II had amounted to “genocide” – hiding behind the fact that the term “genocide” was only coined in the aftermath of World War II to describe the horrendous crimes its forces had committed throughout the war.

The German government currently in power refuses to legally recognize that its colonial forces had committed genocide on the Herero and Nama peoples of German Southwest Africa, today’s Namibia, at the beginning of the previous century. Using various tricks, it persists in refusing to pay reparations to the descendants of its victims. (endnote to be added[1])

No German or West German government has ever recognized the legality of the verdicts handed down by the Nuremberg Tribunal. Also, to hide this blemish, the German government was an ardent supporter of the U.S.-initiated kangaroo court set up in The Hague—the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)—for the purpose of providing a bogus judicial image of the legality of U.S.-German support of the right-wing extremist governments in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in their campaign against the Serbs.

Had it not been for the German government’s unilateral recognition of Slovenia and its former World War II fascist ally, Croatia, there may not have been a break-up of Yugoslavia, or at least not one accompanied by the ethnic-motivated violence that ensued.

At this moment, charges are being brought by Nicaragua at the International Court of Justice against the German government for its complicity in genocide on the basis of Germany’s steadfast political, military, and propagandistic support for the genocide being committed by the Israeli regime on the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip.

But most importantly, Germany is seeking to achieve official declaratory international “confirmation” of allegations it cannot prove. On the contrary, not being able to provide the evidence of the alleged massacre of up to 8,000 males, several belligerent countries have been applying pressure on governments in the United Nations to sign on to what amounts to a goose in a sack.

In NATO countries—the EU and Canada among others—efforts are being made to outlaw discussion of Srebrenica, particularly discussion of whether the presumed “mass execution” was ever committed, as well as whether an alleged “mass execution” solely of males, constitutes “genocide”—when the women, children and elderly of the enclave had been orderly evacuated to safety behind Muslim lines.[1]

For nearly 30 years, Srebrenica has provided justification for “humanitarian interventions,” the idea that the U.S. and West have a “right”—even an “obligation”—to prevent massacres and genocide from ever reoccurring by attacking a sovereign country and overthrowing its government.

A factual recapitulation of what occurred in Srebrenica casts doubt on the official narrative.

The truth is buried

Journalist and author Diana Johnstone,[2] who has been closely following the developments in the Balkans for decades, noted in an article published in The Nation:

“When, in the early months of the war, which raged across Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992, the Muslim-led government in Sarajevo, seconded by Croatian agencies in Zagreb, presented Western media with reports indicating that the Serbs were pursuing a deliberate policy of genocide, a basic principle of caution, essential to justice was rapidly abandoned. That is the principle that the more serious the accusation, the greater the need for proof since otherwise accusations will become an instrument of the lynch mob.”[3]

In the case of Srebrenica, the lynch mob was ready to turn on anyone who questioned the official narrative of Serb genocide—even though that narrative was built upon unproven reports and disinformation advanced by secret services and public relations agencies.

Sorting fact from fiction

One thing should be made clear—contrary to what the mass media would have everyone believe—the Serb troops, who walked into Srebrenica on July 11, were not an “invading force.”

“Before his death in a road accident in Bosnia, U.S. envoy Robert C. Frasure worked on a diplomatic solution that would have traded the putative safe areas, Srebrenica, Žepa and Gorazde for the Serb-held suburbs of Sarajevo. But the same hardline U.S. faction that arranged illegal arms for Muslim forces, helped kill Frasure’s diplomatic solution in the spring of 1995.”[4]

The Serb forces’ entry into the enclave was the agreed coordinated territorial exchanges in preparation for the Dayton Agreements. The Muslim troops that had been operating out of Srebrenica attacking the surrounding Serb villages had already withdrawn the day before the Serb contingent’s entry.

Srebrenica first became associated with a large-scale summary execution one month after Serb forces had taken over the administration of the enclave. On August 10, 1995, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright hijacked the agenda of a closed session of the UN Security Council, preparing to open discussions on Croatia’s “Operation Storm.” Croatia’s “Operation Storm” ethnically cleansed the Krajina Serb population—the largest ethnic cleansing operation of the Yugoslav breakup. It had been executed with official U.S. and mercenary assistance.

Albright showed aerial surveillance photos purporting to show that Bosnian Serb troops “committed wide-scale atrocities against Muslim civilians” in the aftermath of the July 12 takeover of Srebrenica. She was not more precise than to say “wide-scale atrocities against Muslim civilians.”

When The New York Times, the following day, reported on Albright’s peep-show, the journal noted: “Ms. Albright’s presentation today came as thousands of Serb refugees fled their homes after a Croatian military offensive, carried out with tacit American approval, overran an area of Croatia previously held by rebel Serbs.”[5]

While making her presentation to the Security Council, Albright was already preparing political and public opinion for the fact that there would be no evidence to back up her claims. She warned: “We will keep watching to see if the Bosnian Serbs try to erase the evidence of what they have done.”[6] The question today is, where is all that evidence that Albright was keeping an eye on?

On September 13, 1995, three months after Bosnian Serb troops entered Srebrenica, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) published a press statement that stated:

“The ICRC’s head of operations for Western Europe, Angelo Gnaedinger, visited Pale and Belgrade from 2 to 7 September to obtain information from the Bosnian Serb authorities about the 3,000 persons from Srebrenica whom witnesses say were arrested by Bosnian Serb forces. The ICRC has asked for access as soon as possible to all those arrested (so far it has been able to visit only about 200 detainees), and for details of any deaths. The ICRC has also approached the Bosnia-Herzegovina authorities seeking information on some 5,000 individuals who fled Srebrenica, some of whom reached central Bosnia.”[7]

The Associated Press (AP) had obviously fanned out its field reporters to interview various less-informed ICRC employees on details in Gnaedinger’s press statement. Spin doctors then transformed the answers they gave into what became the AP article published by The New York Times on September 15:

“About 8,000 Muslims are missing from Srebrenica, the first of two United Nations-designated ‘safe areas’ overrun by Bosnian Serb troops in July, the Red Cross said today…Among the missing, were 3,000, mostly men, who were seen being arrested by Serbs. After the collapse of Srebrenica, the Red Cross collected 10,000 names of missing people, said Jessica Barry, a spokeswoman. In addition to those arrested, about 5,000 ‘have simply disappeared,’ she said.”[8]

Back in the 1970s, the International Herald Tribune carried a series of articles on the scandal over the discovery of the CIA having manipulated the media into spreading its grey[9] and black[10] propaganda. In one of the articles, The New York Times quoted “an Agency [CIA] official [who had] said that the CIA had in the past used paid agents in the foreign bureaus of the Associated Press and United Press International to slip agency-prepared dispatches onto the news wire.”[11] The fact that the “flagship” New York Times carried this grey propaganda gives more credibility to the story.

Eyewitnesses

However, even the original accounting provided by the Red Cross had itself been false. Gnaedinger used the numbers of “3,000 persons” from Srebrenica, whom “witnesses say” were arrested. Who were those witnesses he was referring to?

They were none other than the Dutch Battalion (“Dutchbat”) UN Protection Force stationed in Srebrenica. They were eyewitnesses to the flight of the Muslim soldiers prior to the entry of Serb forces, to the evacuation of the women, children and elderly to Tuzla by the Bosnian Serb military, as well as to the arrests of the men of military age, who had remained in the enclave. However, the Dutchbat had given a different estimate of how many had been arrested.

During the course of their evacuation from Srebrenica back home to the Netherlands, journalists asked Dutchbat soldiers about the Serb troops’ behavior. Their answers gave quite a different impression than what the media have been reporting since then.

The New York Times reported on July 24, 1995, that the “Dutch peacekeeping troops evacuated from Srebrenica…say that Bosnian Serb invaders…abducted from 150‑300 men aged 16‑60.”[12]

This would mean that the 300 “abducted” Muslim men arrested as prisoners of war by Serb troops, witnessed by the Dutchbat in Srebrenica, had, in the meantime, been multiplied by ten to become the “3,000” that “witnesses” had supposedly reported in the Red Cross’s press statement.

The 200 prisoners the Red Cross had visited in custody would come much closer to the Dutchbat’s imprecise estimate of “from 150‑300 men.”

The Dutchbat had also, in fact, been eyewitnesses to summary executions in Srebrenica. According to The New York Times, “Dutch peacekeeping troops evacuated from Srebrenica…say that Bosnian Serb invaders executed at least 10 Muslim defenders” and explain, “in one incident, Bosnian Serb invaders had taken a Muslim man, placed him against a wall and shot him in the back of the head. In another, nine men had been executed in a house, shot in the back in the same room.”[13]

Summary executions are war crimes. But ten executions would not fit, by any stretch of the imagination, a narrative of “genocide that Bosnian Muslim authorities and their Western allies have been trying to pin on Serb forces.

The New York Times reports that “the accounts of the Dutch,…given during a series of interviews and news conferences, suggested that the killing they had seen had been more limited than refugees had described.”[14]

However, in order to limit the impact of their testimony, the Dutchbat had to be discredited. This process had already begun during their preparations to return home. The Dutch Minister of Defense, Joris Voorhoeve, at the time, had arrived in Zagreb not only to accompany his troops on their homeward journey but also to begin to discredit them as eyewitnesses. Over the next decades, their eyewitness testimony was largely ignored and discredited, while institutions in the Netherlands compiled voluminous “reports” supporting the unproven narrative of the pro-NATO ICTY.

“We don’t know what happened, where we didn’t have eyes and ears,” Voorhoeve is quoted to have said, and he “insisted that the officers’ version [of what they had seen – GP] did not minimize the possibility that atrocities had been committed.…If only two-thirds of the refugee accounts are true, this adds up to horrible events,” he told reporters. “What we do know is that several thousand men and boys are missing” since the city fell, he said. He stated this even after several journals had reported that thousands of the “missing” had already made it to safety behind Muslim lines.

This is clearly an effort to discredit the Dutch eyewitnesses to what had been—and had not been—happening on the ground in Srebrenica while he was sitting in his office nearly 2,000 miles away in The Hague.

Doesn’t add up

There is another discrepancy in Gnaedinger’s press statement. In speaking of the group of 5,000, who had fled Srebrenica before Serb troops entered, he says “some of whom reached central Bosnia,” which gives the impression that only a handful could be accounted for by mid-September.

Already, more than two months prior to the Red Cross press communiqué—just a few days after Serb forces had entered Srebrenica—The New York Times had reported that “some 3,000 to 4,000 Bosnian Muslims, who were considered by UN officials to be missing after the fall of Srebrenica, have made their way through enemy lines to Bosnian government territory.”[15]

The same day, The Washington Post reported: “About 4,000 Bosnian army soldiers … trudged for five days through Serb-held territory to escape from Srebrenica and reach a safe haven here (in Medjedja, on Muslim-controlled territory).[16]

The Washington Post explained: “The men set off at dawn on Tuesday, July 11, in two columns that stretched back seven or eight miles.[17]

The Times (UK) reported on August 2, 1995, that “thousands of the ‘missing’ Bosnian Muslim soldiers from Srebrenica, who have been at the center of reports of possible mass executions by the Serbs, are believed to be safe to the northeast of Tuzla….For the first time yesterday, however, the Red Cross in Geneva said it had heard from sources in Bosnia that up to 2,000 Bosnian Government troops were in an area north of Tuzla. They had made their way there from Srebrenica ‘without their families being informed,’ a spokesman said, adding that it had not been possible to verify the reports because the Bosnian Government refused to allow the Red Cross into the area.”[18]

3,016 massacre victims vote…

Two weeks before International Red Cross representatives Gnaedinger and Barry gave their numbers to the press, another spokesperson for the ICRC in Geneva, Pierre Gaultier, provided an important detail. In an interview with the German journal Junge Welt, he explained:

“All together we arrived at the number of approximately 10,000 [missing from Srebrenica – editor’s note] But there may be some double counting [- GP]… Before we have finished [weeding out the double counting – editor’s note] we cannot give any exact information. Our work is made even more complicated by the fact that the Bosnian government has informed us that several thousand refugees have broken through enemy lines and have been reintegrated into the Bosnian Muslim army. These persons are therefore not missing, but they cannot be removed from the lists of the missing…because we have not received their names.”[19]

Later, when Professor Milivoje Ivanisevic at the University of Belgrade took a closer look at the Red Cross’s list, he discovered it contained the names of 500 people who had died prior to Bosnian Serb troops entering Srebrenica. Even more interesting, one year later, when he compared the Red Cross’s list with the electoral list for the 1996 elections in the fall, he also found that 3,016 people listed by the Red Cross as “missing” were also on the electoral list.[20]

In other words, either Bosnian Muslims were having their dead “vote,” signifying that the voters were bogus and the election a fraud; or the voters were, in fact, alive, in which case, this is additional evidence that the mass execution is a hoax.

Back in August 1992, during the George H.W. Bush administration, journalists from Time magazine saw through the game being played on the press and international public. They wrote: “Bosnian Muslims, fighting at the raw level of their rivals, are likewise guilty of barbarism—and of inflating horror stories about the Serbs to win sympathy and support.”[21]

That objectivity changed under the Clinton administration. The Clinton administration had an agenda, and the major media outlets played a crucial role in its implementation.

With all these facts being swept under the rug, it has long since been clear that this was an orchestrated campaign pursuing political objectives. This campaign called for depicting Serbs as being compared to Nazis.

Serbs take Žepa, a second enclave

Within days of the take-over of Srebrenica, Žepa, a second Muslim enclave (and UN Safe Area), was also captured by Bosnian Serb forces. Among the defenders of Žepa were hundreds of the “missing” soldiers from Srebrenica. The New York Times recounts:

“The wounded troops were left behind, and when the Bosnian Serbs overran the town on Tuesday, the wounded were taken to Sarajevo for treatment at Kosevo Hospital. Many of them had begun their journey in Srebrenica, and fled into the hills when that ‘safe area’ fell to the Bosnian Serbs on July 11. These men did not make it to Tuzla, where most of the refugees ended up, but became the defenders of Žepa instead. ‘Some 350 of us managed to fight our way out of Srebrenica and make it into Žepa,’ said Sadik Ahmetovic, one of 151 people evacuated to Sarajevo for treatment today….They said they had not been mistreated by their Serb captors.”[22]

Shouldn’t it seem strange that the Muslim soldiers of Žepa would abandon their wounded comrades and that the 5,000 Srebrenica soldiers would abandon their women and children to an enemy with a reputation—at least in the Western media—of being sadists and rapists out to commit “genocide?” Could it be that the Muslim soldiers knew that they need not be particularly worried about their women, children, and wounded comrades falling into the hands of their Serb countrymen?

The Serb forces medevacked the wounded Muslim soldiers behind Muslim lines to their Muslim hospital in Sarajevo. Is this how one commits genocide? Is this comparable to the treatment Gazans are experiencing? Is this the military force compared to Nazis? Is the purpose also to trivialize Nazi barbarism? Even the fact that the Serbs had provided safe passage to the women, children, and elderly has been interpreted as sinister when it is proof that no “genocide” was being committed.

The Times (UK) article quoted above mentions that 2,000 Srebrenica soldiers made their way to the north of Tuzla “without their families being informed.” Were their families ever informed? Other than the very few articles that took notice of their resurrection from the presumed dead, the public at large was never informed that they were in fact alive. On the contrary.

Since the number of “missing” (and therefore assumed dead) has remained at roughly 8,000 throughout the past 29 years, it can be reasonably assumed that the Muslim government has never furnished the names of those who reached Muslim lines safely to the Red Cross.

POWs disappeared

To maintain the hoax, it is not only necessary to maintain the illusion that there is proof of a massacre; it is also necessary to suppress any evidence to the contrary. Not only must the 5,000 never be accounted for, but not too many of the Red Cross’s “3,000” prisoners of war should resurface from the “assumed dead.”

On January 17, 1996, the British Guardian published an article about one group of the former Muslim POWs from Srebrenica and Žepa who, once liberated from a POW camp, were flown directly to Dublin:

“Hundreds of Bosnian Muslim prisoners are still being held at 2 secret camps within neighboring Serbia, according to a group of men evacuated by the Red Cross to a Dublin hospital from one camp—at Sljivovica….A group of 24 men was flown to Ireland just before Christmas [1995]….But some 800 others remain incarcerated in Sljivovica and at another camp near Mitrovo Polje, just three days before the agreed date for the release of all detainees under the Dayton peace agreement on Bosnia….The Red Cross in Belgrade has been negotiating for several weeks to have the men released and given sanctuary in third countries. A spokeswoman said most were bound for the United States or Australia, with others due to be sent to Italy, Belgium, Sweden, France and Ireland….Since late August, the Red Cross has made fortnightly visits from its Belgrade field office….Teams from the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague have been in Dublin to question and take evidence from the men.”[23]

Why would prisoners of war, who, upon release, their first wish would normally be to reunite with their families and restart their interrupted lives in peace-time, be rushed off to Dublin with “papers to remain in Ireland”? Why would the Red Cross—usually known for reuniting families—be seeking to secretly spirit them out of their homeland, away from their family and friends, so close to the scheduled date of the POW exchange? Were their families ever informed?

The ex-prisoners were widely dispersed. To a second country…:

[The] US decided to accept 214 Bosniaks who…had been detained in Serb camps and give them refugee status.[24] The Los Angeles Times published an AP bulletin additionally explaining that “The Clinton administration will allow 214 Bosnian Muslim refugees to resettle in the United States from Serbia.…State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns [now U.S. Ambassador to China] said Wednesday that the 214 are drawn from about 800 Bosnian Muslims, mostly soldiers, routed from the United Nations ‘safe areas’ of Srebrenica and Žepa by attacking Bosnian Serb rebels.…Australia has agreed to accept 103, France 70 and Ireland an undetermined number, Burns said. He said other countries are being asked to allow resettlement as well.”[25]

“The Association of Camp Prisoners from Republika Srpska gives the example of Munira Subasic, President of the Bosnian Muslim Association of Srebrenica Women, who claimed that her son was one of the Srebrenica Muslim victims. It was later discovered that her son lives in United States under a new name.[26]

And a third country… The pro-government [Muslim] news agency TWRA reports:

“[One] Hundred‑three Bosnian soldiers who were recently released from prisons in Serbia, were sent to Australia against their will,” claims their commander, Osmo Zimic. Zimic also criticizes the UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), whose spokesman claimed these soldiers demanded departure to Australia and by no means return to Bosnia for they would allegedly face criminal charges as deserters there. “This is not true,” says Zimic. Australian immigration & ethnic affairs office spokesman says he was informed [of] Zimic’s allegation from the Bosnian embassy in Canberra and that the investigation was initiated.”[27]

“The Bosnian Embassy in Australia requested the Hague International Tribunal (ICTY) to start an investigation on the deportation of Bosniaks (800 persons) from Serbia to Australia and Europe in which, supposedly, UNHCR assisted, instead [of] involving Bosniaks in the exchange of prisoners, esp. for they had been in the camps in Serbia which claimed not to be involved in the war in Bosnia. The principal witness for the prosecution is Osmo Zimic, a Bosnian Army Officer, one who had been deported to Australia against his will.”[28]

Why were these POWs skirted out of their country just prior to the agreed prisoner exchange? Obviously, the intention was to keep the hoax of a mass execution alive.

It seems that the allegedly non-partisan Red Cross, the allegedly neutral UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), and a host of “Western” governments around the world were engaged in hiding the fact that these men had not been executed.

How many more of those “at least 800” prisoners were similarly slipped out of the country is unknown. What is now known is that neither the Red Cross, which had been visiting the prisoners since August, the Tribunal, in its frantic search for evidence of “genocide” in Srebrenica and culprits to arrest among the Bosnian Serb leaders, nor the Americans have made mention since August 1995 of these men being prisoners of war. Obviously, they were concealing exonerating evidence to the allegation that the Serbs had committed mass executions.

In early January, the Muslim authorities unilaterally postponed the scheduled exchange of war prisoners. Was there a connection between this and the underground emigration?

“Demanding an explanation of the fate of thousands of Muslims missing in Serb-held Bosnia, the Bosnian government postponed one of the largest scheduled exchanges of prisoners of war Monday [January 15, 1996]. The government said the exchange, part of the Dayton agreement, could not go ahead until the Bosnian Serbs provided information about the fate of 24,000 people the government lists as missing.”[29]

“Bosnia’s Foreign Minister, Muhamed Sacirbey, declared Wednesday in Sarajevo, that it is better to postpone an incomplete prisoner exchange than to write off the lives of those persons still held in labor camps.”[30]

The Muslim authorities and their American backers insisted upon the Serbs releasing all of their war prisoners—even unilaterally. But what about Serb prisoners being held incognito in Muslim captivity?

“A Red Cross official took the unprecedented step of publicly accusing the Bosnian government of holding more prisoners than it has listed for release under the peace agreement. Under the pact, about 900 POWs were to be released by all three former foes in Bosnia. A limited release took place Friday. But Beat Schweizer, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said that 645 of the prisoners were still being detained by the former warring parties, 318 by the government, 150 by Bosnian Serbs and 177 by the Croats. He said the Red Cross had information that the Bosnian government was detaining in Tuzla prison some Serbs who are not on the list presented to the Red Cross.”[31]

One month after having helped evacuate the Muslim POWs from the country before the prisoner exchange began, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent (ICRC) announced it would form an “expert commission” to search for the fate of “Srebrenica’s missing persons.” This promise was made to quiet protests by Srebrenica’s female refugees outside the ICRC’s Tuzla headquarters. That commission was to include all three conflict parties and “the international representatives, and it would be a proper forum for collecting data on thousands of the missing persons, about whom there had been no news.” Claims on locations where “the missing persons might be, will be checked,” the International Committee of the Red Cross stated.[32] Here it is clear that the families of the evacuees had not been informed.

The hoax of a Srebrenica massacre is the basis for the allegation of “genocide” committed by Serbs in the course of the Bosnian Civil War.

(To be continued.)

  1. Mladic addresses Bosnian Muslims in 1995 video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYUhwIbRBOg
  2. Diana Johnstone is author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions and other books.
  3. Diana Johnstone, “Selective Justice in The Hague: The War Crimes Tribunal on Former Yugoslavia Is a Mockery of Evidentiary Rule,” The Nation, September 22, 1997.
  4. Edward S. Herman, ed., The Srebrenica Massacre: Evidence, Context, Politics (Evergreen Park, IL: Alphabet Soup, 2011). https://www.zaliv.net/forum/priroda-nauka-istorija/istorija/1912-the-srebrenica-massacre-evidence-context-politics
  5. Barbara Crossette, “U.S. Seeks to Prove Mass Killings,” The New York Times, August 11, 1995. Contrary to The New York Times article, the Krajina was not an area “held by rebel Serbs” but a region where Serbs had been at home for several centuries, in fact, longer than Europeans had been settled North America.
  6. Tim Weiner, “U.S. Says Serbs May Have Tried to Destroy Massacre Evidence,” The New York Times, October 30, 1995.
  7. “Former Yugoslavia: Srebrenica: help for families still awaiting news,” ICRC News 37, September 13, 1995. https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/resources/documents/news-release/2009-and-earlier/57jmjl.htm
  8. Associated Press; The New York Times, “Conflict in the Balkans: 8,000 Muslims Missing,” September 15, 1995, p. 8. ( https://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/15/world/conflict-in-the-balkans-8000-muslims-missing.html) In fact, the Times simply reprinted an AP article (“Red Cross Says 8,000 People from Fallen Safe Area Are Missing” (http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1995/Red-Cross-Says-8-000-People-from-Fallen-Safe-Area-Are-Missing/id-e819fee986982e076194b1b9b71524a8 )
  9. Grey propaganda is mixed, partially true, or stunted facts to create a false impression, such as in the case above
  10. Black propaganda is totally fabricated—fake news.
  11. John M. Crewdson, “CIA secretly built, manipulated a Global propaganda network,” International Herald Tribune (NYT), January 3,1978.
  12. Alan Cowell, “Peacekeepers at Fallen Enclave Confirm Some Atrocities but Say They Saw No Rapes,” The New York Times, July 24, 1995, https://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/24/world/conflict-balkans-refugees-peacekeepers-fallen-enclave-confirm-some-atrocities.html
  13. Idem.
  14. Idem.
  15. Chris Hedges, “Conflict in the Balkans: In Bosnia; Muslim Refugees Slip Across Serb Lines,” The New York Times; July 18, 1995, p. 7.
  16. John Pomfret, “Bosnian Soldiers Evade Serbs in Trudge To Safety,” The Washington Post, July 18, 1995, http://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1995/07/18/bosnian-soldiers-evade-serbs-in-trudge-to-safety/4c0d6c5f-5fc8-45d2-ba4e-aeb34546e02e/
  17. Michael Dobbs and Christine Spolar, “’Anybody Who Moved or Screamed Was Killed,’” The Washington Post, October 25, 1995, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1995/10/26/anybody-who-moved-or-screamed-was-killed/8204f2e7-b0e9-4b3a-a5b4-00392cff570e/
  18. Michael Evans and Michael Kallenbach, “‘Missing’ enclave troops found,” The Times, August 2, 1995.
  19. Pierre Gaultier (interview),“Wo sind die Vermißten aus Srebrenica?” Junge Welt, August 30, 1995.
  20. “Faux électeurs… ou faux cadavres,” Balkans Infos, Paris, October 1996 (No. 6); see also Milivoje Ivanisevic, “Un Dossier qui pose bien des Questions,” Balkans Infos, Paris, December 1996 (No. 8).
  21. J.F.O. McAllister,“Atrocity And Outrage: Specters of barbarism in Bosnia compel the U.S. and Europe to ponder: Is it time to intervene?” Time, August 17, 1992, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,976238,00.html.
  22. Chris Hedges, “Bosnia Troops Cite Gassings at Žepa,” The New York Times, July 27, 1995, https://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/27/world/conflict-in-the-balkans-in-bosnia-bosnia-troops-cite-gassings-at-Žepa.html
  23. Ed Vulliamy, “Bosnia: The secret War – Serbs ‘run secret camps’: Men freed from clandestine detention tell Ed Vulliamy of random beatings and ‘mobile torture machines,’” The Guardian, January 17, 1996.
  24. S.K., “Another Two Mass Graves Discovered,” Press TWRA, January 19, 1996. [NOTE: Do you know what this source is? I don’t. Same for footnotes 27, 28 and 32.]
  25. Associated Press, “Bosnia Muslims Held in Serbia Coming to U.S.,” Los Angeles Times, January 18, 1996, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-01-18-mn-25941-story.html
  26. Boro Maric, “More Proof of Srebrenica Manipulations,” Politika, October 13, 2007, https://www.b92.net/eng/all-comments/44524
  27. A.S., “Bosnian Soldiers in Australia Against Their Will,”Press TWRA, February 6, 1996.
  28. A.S., “Investigation on Deportation of Bosniaks Requested,” Press TWRA, March 9, 1996.
  29. Chris Hedges, “Bosnia Foes Finish Pullback but Fail on P.O.W. Release,” The New York Times, January 20, 1996, https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/specials/bosnia/context/0120yugo-bosnia.html
  30. mz st, Bosnien/Kriegsgefangene; Bosnische Regierung bleibt bei Bedingungen fÅr Gefangenenaustausch, dpa, 17.01.1996 ƒ 16:49 [NOTE: I didn’t do anything with this one.]
  31. Associated Press, “More Glitches Appear in Bosnia Peace Plans,” January 24, 1996, https://www.deseret.com/1996/1/24/19221168/more-glitches-appear-in-bosnia-peace-plans/
  32. “ICRC on the Missing from Srebrenica,” Press TWRA, February 1, 1996.

George Pumphrey—born in 1946 in Washington, D.C.—is a long-time anti-racist and anti-war activist, independent researcher, and author. While living in political exile in Paris he became a French citizen in 1986. Today, he lives in Berlin, Germany. He has written various articles on the Srebrenica Hoax, including “The Srebrenica Massacre”: A Hoax? and “The Srebrenica Massacre’: Analysis of the History and the Legend.”  Together with his wife, Doris, he co-authored the book Ghettos und Gefängnisse: Rassismus und Menschenrechte in den USA,” Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne, West Germany, 1982. George can be reached at: pumphrey@ipn.de.

Source: Covert Action Magazine


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