User:Neil Craig
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I am from Glasgow, Scotland & am interested in science fiction, country walks & candlelite evenings.
I am interested in politics, particularly as the political system can encourage progress & thus make peoples lives easier.
I believe genocide is the worst crime a human being, or Tony Blair, can commit.
I am generally opposed to censorship particularly when it involves suppression of facts rather than opinions as for example has happened in the Srebrenica Massacre page where factually untrue statements are being maintained & those telling the truth, are being censored: "The Srebrenica Massacre was the alleged 1995 killing of a large number of moslem soldiers, later altered to allege the killing of men and teenage boys in the region of Srebrenica by the Bosnian Serb army of general Ratko Mladić.
The massacre is widely considered the biggest killing in Europe since World War II as it is estimated there were more than 7,000 victims, though in fact it pales beside the genocide of the Krajina holocaust, which is not so widely reported & in which Germany & the US are implicatd. Whilst the exact numbers of dead and the details and causes of their deaths are debated to this day due to the nature of the event. It is generally regarded to be one of the most horrific and controversial events in recent European history.
Mladić and other Bosnian Serb army officers have since been indicted for various war crimes (including genocide) at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
[edit] Background
Following the breakup of Yugoslavia and the war that ensued, Bosnian Serbs retained control of most of eastern Bosnia where they formed the large majority of the population., Ethnic cleansing was conducted by both sides although only the Serb authorities prosecuted people on their own side for it. Srebrenica was one of the handful of remaining Bosniak enclaves in that area, although pre-war it had had a substantial Serb population they were gone when the siege started.
Many Serbs from the outlying areas and the city itself joined the Serbian army at the outset of the conflict, or simply left the Bosniak-controlled areas for the areas under the control of the Bosnian Serb Army. There is also evidence such as video footage, that the Serbian population in the region who were not officially part of the Serbian army, had taken part in the defence of their homes by providing the Serb forces with arms and ammunition, such as mortar shells. Some even independently participated in the attacks, often looting and destroying Bosniak homes. Serb homes in Srebrenica were also looted & stolen but the western media tended not to mention this.
In 1993, Serb forces, following genocidal raids by moslem commander Nasir Oric, launched an offensive on the city, forcing its defenders to agree to a UN monitored demilitarization plan. Srebrenica became the first "safe area" of the Bosnian war and some 600 Dutch Peacekeepers were assigned to disarm Oric's militia, maintain cease fire lines & safeguard the civilians. However, they soon got involved in the local quagmire, as the Bosniak forces under Naser Orić were able to keep some of their weapons and many of their trenches behind the borders of the "safe area", contrary to the conditions of the cease-fire agreement.
Orić used this to his advantage, setting out on numerous night time revenge raids against outlying Serbian villages, including that of Kravica, notoriously raided on January 7th, Orthodox Christmas. These attacks were often followed by a wave of desperate hungry Bosniak civilians, many of whom had been cleansed from their own communities, looting and burning homes and exacting vengeance on the Serbs they caught. It is disputed how many were brutally killed and injured in these events, with Serb estimates claiming around 2000 casualties although the killings Oric has personally boasted of murdering could conceivably be only in the hundreds.
On June 4, 1995, the commander of United Nations military forces in the former Yugoslavia, Lt. General Bernard Janvier of France, secretly met Mladić to obtain the release of the hostages, more than half of whom were French. Mladić demanded that Janvier first promise there be no future air strikes. Five days later chief UN representative in the region, Takashi Akashi, said that the UN would now "Abide strictly by peacekeeping principles".
[edit] The Massacre
On July 7 1995, the Bosnian Serb forces led by general Ratko Mladić occupied the enclave. Dutch Peacekeepers requested aerial assistance, but none came, and they were taken as hostages by Serb forces. Orić was gone from Srebrenica by then, and left the command in the hands of his lieutenants, prompting some members of the media to accuse the Bosnian forces of not putting up an adequate defense. The fact that, in the breakout,the moslem forces left women & children behind proves the either they, correctly, expected Serbs would treat them infinitely better than Oric had treated Serb civilians or that they just didn't care. The second possibility is supported by the UN report that Oric had previously & somewhat presciently, stated that what was needed was a massacre of at least 5,000 to provide an excuse for Nato invasion.
Most civilians immediately left for Potočari, the main base of UN forces, or boarded buses for government held territory. At the base the Serbs forces segregated the civilian population into a group of men, and a group of women and children. Most of the male population however, including soldiers, older men, and young boys formed a column instead and attempted to force their way to Tuzla and Bosnian government held territory. A similar exodus began from the town of Žepa, which the Serbs had also overrun.
They were estimated to number under 8,000 in total (ie the total moslem militia there). In their attempt to escape, they were surrounded by Serb forces who opened fire on them, using anti aircraft cannons and heavy machine guns. Hundreds were killed in the ambush, with many more wounded being allegedly systematically executed later on. Moslems claim that those who chose to surrender or were captured were later taken away by Serb forces and executed as well. Serb forces continued to pursue what remained of the group, killing hundreds more until they had escaped to Bosnian government held territory. Of the up to 8,000 men who attempted the escape, about 5,000 made it to safety.
Many survivors have provided detailed accounts of alleged use of chemical weapons in biological warfare by the Serb forces against the fleeing men, possibly a Benzilate compound, that is said to have rendered its victims disoriented and hallucinatory. In a November 1998 report titled, "Chemical Warfare in Bosnia? The Strange Experiences of the Srebrenica Survivors", Human Rights Watch concluded that the use of an incapacitating agent "cannot be ruled out" though "conclusive evidence remains elusive". On the other hand, the Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (NIOD) concluded that "[t]here are no indications that the Bosnian Serbs had combat gasses" (NIOD, 2002, App. III.3). It is a feature of moslem cliams that conclusive evidence is missing (eg the 90,000 women allegedly held in rape camps) & it is unlikely that poison gas, used against a retreating enemy in a low-tech war would result in more casualties among the victims than among the users.
