[This is a somewhat edited version of the Memorandum which Srebrenica Historical Project recently submitted to the Human Rights Committee of the European Parliament in Brussels about reconstruction and development issues that the Serbian community in Srebrenica faces.]


The memorandum that we have the honour to submit to you focuses on socio-economic and material conditions in the municipality of Srebrenica, in Bosnia and Herzegovina,  and solicits your help to increase awareness and mobilize support for overcoming the effects of ethnically discriminatory policies in the district of Srebrenica. 

А. General considerations

1. Srebrenica is a region of particular interest not only for the Republic of Srpska, but also for the international community. It has significant symbolic value as the place of intense combat between the two major communities, Serbian and Muslim, during the 1992 - 1995 conflict in Bosnia. Just as it has had a polarizing effect, it may also exhibit potential for reconciliation if the work of reconstructing homes, villages, and – most importantly – mutual trust is pursued wisely and equitably.  The record shows that both communities in Srebrenica have suffered grievously. However, due to the fact that it has been the object of continuous international attention, the Muslim community has for the most part laid successfully the foundations of a successful recovery. With regard to the Serbian community, that has not been the case at all. Neglected after the war’s end in 1995,  and virtually unrecognized as the victim of massive human and material suffering, the Serbian community has not managed to regain its equilibrium either in the political, material, or social dimensions.  While the Muslim community shows not just signs of physical revitalization, but also a lively thrust to affirm and expand its presence, the Serbian community is just hanging on – barely.

The government of the Republic of Srpska was ordered in 2003 by Bosnia’s then High representative, Paddy Ashdown, to form a commission to report on some events “in and around Srebrenica” in July of 1995. The order was triggered by a suit filed by the survivors of 49 missing Moslems who – quite understandably – were anxious to learn something about the fate of their relatives. The narrow mandate of the commission was to provide information on these 49 missing persons, joined later by an additional 1800 who made a similar application. Its broader (if unspoken) mandate was to furnish a self-incriminating description of Srebrenica events that would be satisfactory to Bosnia’s notoriously anti-Serb High representative.

Just about all serious Srebrenica researchers, whatever their particular view may be, will agree on at least one point: when we are talking about Srebrenica – termed by Professor Edward Herman as the greatest triumph of propaganda at the end of the twenthieth century – nothing is really clear and few things are as they as represented to be.

Everything that we “know” about Srebrenica can be reduced to a construct consisting of a series of interdependent assertions, every one of which is questionable and barely sustainable. Not a single one of them is documented so persuasively that it could withstand a thorough critique or sustain the credibility of the story as a whole. Whenever, by the application of deeper and critical analysis, we neutralise one of the key components of the Srebrenica story, the narrative as a whole is inevitably undermined. It seems that the overall stability of that shaky construction always depends on the reliability of each single brick that went into its making.

An intense debate is currently in progress in Serbia about the adoption of a parliamentary resolution on Srebrenica that would be modeled after the January 15, 2009, Resolution that was passed by the European Parliament. The controversy has revealed widespread ignorance of basic facts about events in Srebrenica in 1995 and their background. To fill that gap, a “Fact Sheet” was created and it was published by Belgrade daily “Politika” on February 11, 2010:

Dear Mr. President and honorable deputies,

As concerned American and European intellectuals and citizens, we call on you to seriously reconsider the plan to adopt a parliamentary resolution that would treat the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995 as a paradigmatic event of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in doing so to use language that could be interpreted as Serbia’s acceptance of responsibility for “genocide.”
The execution of Moslem prisoners in July of 1995, after Bosnian Serb forces took over Srebrenica, was a war crime, but it is by no means a paradigmatic event. The informed public in Western countries knows that, at that time, forces attributed to the Republic of Srpska executed in three days approximately as many Moslems as Moslem forces, raiding surrounding Serbian villages out of Srebrenica, had murdered during the preceding three years. There is nothing to set one crime apart from the other, except that its commission was more condensed in time. In a vicious civil war, in which all sides commit crimes, all innocent victims are entitled to compassion but the victims of one ethnic group should have no special moral claim to unique recognition. Putting the suffering of one group on a pedestal necessarily derogates from the right of the other group – in this case Serbian non-combatants in the devastated villages surrounding the enclave of Srebrenica – to an equal measure of sympathy.

Orthodox Christmas is a good time to keep refreshing Mr. Mirsad Tokača’s memory of war crimes.[1] On January 7, 1993, armed forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina from Srebrenica, under the command of brigadier Naser Orić, attacked and devastated the Serbian village of Kravica, about 10 km from Bratunac. The human cost of the attack (or shall we call it „incident“ in deferrence to the terminology preferred by Mr. Tokača in his Bosnian crime Atlas?) was at a minimum 34 persons, if we exclude rumors and confine ourselves just to the bodies which were subsequently located and on which a proper autopsy was conducted on March 18, 1993.

Given modern technology most things today are practically impossible to hide. There are still those with such vested interests that they are scarcely in a position to discuss wartime suffering in a frank and open manner, and even if they were so inclined their mentors would never allow them to do so in a professional and honest way. As a result, we still cannot take assertions made by Mr. Mirsad Tokača of the Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation Center at face value. We must always keep checking and rechecking whether Mr. Tokača is really prepared to apply the same standards to all victims of the recent war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

[Ari Rusila is a Finnish blogger and political commentator. The fact that the controversy of Srebrenica has engaged the attention of an analyst in far-off Finland is interesting enough. We recommend his comprehensive and thoughtful critique of the Srebrenica evidence to our readers—Editors of Srebrenica Historical Project]

The “Srebrenica massacre” is the greatest triumph of propaganda to emerge from the Balkan wars. (Edward Herman)

http://arirusila.blogactiv.eu/2009/07/19/srebrenica-again-hoax-or-massacre/

The Srebrenica case is in the headlines again – like during every anniversary – and also the story seems to repeat itself from year to year. More light is however coming and the real (political) context is gaining space also in mainstream media. Former Hague Tribunal spokeswoman Florence Hartmann referring to the arrest of Radovan Karadzic told earlier, that as “Karadžić has finally been arrested, he can tell a lot about secret deals that led to the fall of Srebrenica. His testimony represents a great risk for the great western powers.” (SourceB92)

Although almost 15 years have passed since the end of the war, it seems that traces of hatred have not yet dissapeared. Not only have they not disappeared, but they seem to be gaining in intensity. What follows hardly requires sophisticated analysis since everything there is crystal clear. All the reader needs is a bit of additional information to complete the picture of what is going on 14 years after the war’s official end.

If there is any uncertainty whether a new war would bring on an avalanche of new crimes, the incident we are about to describe will remove the doubt. The number of sick brains and those who would be happy to unearth their hatchets, assuming that in their own minds they were ever buried in the first place, is unfortunately increasing from one year to the next.

Readers may recall our comments of several weeks ago about the “Bosnian war crimes atlas” created by the Research and Documentation Center [RDC] in Sarajevo, headed by Mr. Mirsad Tokača.[1]  Those comments were published before Mr. Tokača presented his findings to the public in their final form. For that reason, as is appropriate for a comment about something that we had not had an opportunity to examine fully, our reaction was rather restrained. But in the meantime, on November 4, Mr. Tokača did make his Atlas available to the general public,[2] and we are now at liberty to share our impressions with far less ambialence than was the case then.