From: chetnik@infopls.chi.il.us (Andre Popov)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Truth Is The Victim In Bosnia <- HERE IT IS
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 92 00:03:29 CST
Organization: INFOPLUS support, Wheeling, IL

 
 
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      Peace                       
    Democracy                 ISSUE #:031            DATE:08/17/92
        &                 TITLE: Truth is the victim in Bosnia        
    Freedom!!             ORIGIN/AUTHOR: N.Y. Times - SerbNet Inc.    
=======================================================================
            THE NEW YORK TIMES, AUGUST 17, 2992          y A13
 
              TRUTH IS THE VICTIM IN BOSNIA
                  -------------------------------
       Before We Risk American Lives, Shouldn't We Get The Facts?
 
"Today only half the Yugoslav story is being told to Western audiences-
the Croatian side."
                          -Peter Brock, American journalist, frequent
                           visitor of Yugoslavia, now political editor
                           of the El Paso Daily Herald. 7/16/92
 
"Unfortunately, (unlike the Croatians) the suffering of innocent Serbs
in Croatia has received no such attention."
                          -BBS Central European Correspondent 
                           Misha Glenny
 
"Perhaps one of the worst things in this war is that the international
community has imposed sanctions on Serbia and is condemning only Serbia.
But the Croatian side is committing the same, if not worse atrocities
in the west of Bosnia. They are getting away - literally - with murder.
If you want to see justice done, then the sooner Croatia is exposed and
punnished in the same way, the better."
                          -Official of the International Committee of
                           The Red Cross quoted in London Times. 7/12/92
 
            NOT ALL THE ATROCITIES ARE OUT ON THE BATTLEFIELD
 
   We are saddened by the suffering of all who are victims of war -
including brave journalists who lost their lives trying to cover the
story. We salute those reporters who have resisted pack journalism and
tried to be fair. Too often, however, truth has been a casualty of war
in Bosnia: One-sided coverage; planted stories of atrocities; "death
camps" that turn out to be POW camps; Serbian funerals on CNN that are
reported as Muslim funerals; false stories of bounties for child-
killing passed on by Croatia's public relations firm and aired by the
BBS to 300 million listeners. Where is fairness, facts and a respect
for history?
   The Serbs, who fought the Nazis and suffered through the Holocaust,
have been slandered! Will the worst offenders apologize? - Connie
Chung? Dan Damon? John Chancellor? Newsday? Can they explain why news
organizations ignored detailed evidence of atrocities against Serbs
in Croatian and Muslim camps for over two months?
 
                 FIVE MAJOR MEDIA BLUNDERS
 
1) Don't compare POW camps with concentration camps
   - Simon Wiesenthal
 
   As the Red Cross confirmed, all three sides in the war have held
prisoners under harsh conditions. But Simon Wiesenthal, leading 
historian of the Holocaust, sharply criticized the media for singling
out the Serbs, who, alond with Jews and Gypsies were Holocaust victims
of the Croatian and Muslim fascists during World War II.
 
   "To call the camps (Croatian, Muslim, Serbian), concentration camps
is a minimization of Nazi concentration camps," said Wiesenthal. Yet
many commentators, particularly on TV, went a step further and called
them "death camps," a claim that was rejected by Red Cross spokesman
Pierre Conod, who stated there was "no evidence" to support such a
charge. Meanwhile, many of the same commentators neglected to even
mention Croatian and Muslim camps where terrible abuses have occured,
according to detailed eyewitness reports submitted by the Serbian
Orthodox Bishops to the media and international organizations as early
as May 27 of this year.
 
2) "Ethnic Cleansing" began against Serbs
 
   The World War II Holocaust against 750,000 Serbs, 60,000 Jews and
26,000 Gypsies in Croatia and Bosnia was the most extreme form of
"ethnic cleansing." According to British historian Nora Beloff, the
postwar drive for "ethnic purity" began against Serbs, led by
Communist ruler Josip Broz Tito, who permitted Albanian extremeists
to drive 100,000 Serbs from the Kosovo province of Serbia which he
gave autonomy in 1974. Rapes and murders of Serbs went unpunnished,
cemetaries were desecrated. Top Orthodox clergy members were assaulted
in broad daylight in what Beloff describes as an effort "to eliminate
Serbs and create a pure Albania." Tito permitted no news coverage of
these events in Serbia.
 
   Simon Wiesenthal confirmed this week that Serbs were the first
ethnic group to be displaced or "cleansed" when the current conflict
began in Croatia last year. "The first refugees in the Yugoslav
conflict were the 40,000 Serbs who fled Croatia after a consti-
tutional amendment defined them as a minority," Wiesenthal told a
Reuters reporter.
 
   The first "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia also began by Croatian
forces against Serbs, in the Bosanski Brod area and in Western 
Hercegovina. Now, as the UN confirms, militias from all sides have
taken up these dreadful tactics, which have been condemned by Yugo-
slav Prime Minister Milan Panic. Over 300,000 Serbs have been 
"ethnically cleansed" from Bosnia. Serbs have been driven from their
ancestral homes in 70 cities and villages of Bosnia-Herzegovina, 
including Mostar, the capital city of Hercegovina.
 
   Serbia itself remains a diverse and tolerant Republic. It has
accepted nearly 400,000 refugees, including thousands of Muslims and
Croatians, as well as Serbs who have been displaced by the fighting.
In contrast to Croatia, most refugees have been sheltered in homes
rather than refugee camps. The Jerusalem Post has reported that Jews
fleeing Sarajevo have gone to Belgrade rather than Zagreb, Croatia,
which has a history of anti-Semitism.
 
3) The "orphan" was a Serb - her attackers were not.
   Vedrana Glavas, a Serbian child with living relatives in Sarajevo,
was incorrectly identified by the New York Times and other publi-
cations as a Croatian orphan. Vedrana was killed by snipers during
a dangerous bus ride through a combat zone of Sarajevo, against the
warning of UN personnel. This misguided mission, led by two German
politicians, has since been described as a grossly negligent pub-
licity stunt.
 
   While other reporters noted that it was impossible to say who
may have shot at the bus, the Times attributed the killing to 
"Serbian gunners." But Serbian forces (rarely quoted) note that the
killing took place near the Oslobodjenje building in an area under
Croat-Muslim control. The Times contradictory article notes that a
Croatian policeman reached the scene "within minutes" of the attack,
something that would be extremely difficult to do if the area was
"Serb controlled." The subsequent attack on Vedrana's funeral most
likely came from Muslim forces. As UN General MacKenzie pointed out
in an interview, Vedrana's grandmother was injured by a rifle
gernade - such as those possessed by nearby Muslim forces.
 
4) Croatia, Not Serbia, Still Has Army Units in Bosnia-Hercegovina.
 
   Aside from the wire services, few news organizations bother to
report - as the UN (Report S/24029) confirms - large parts of Bosnia
are "under the control of Croatian military units" including the
regular army of Croatia. The UN report of May 30 - released only
an hour after one-sided sanctions against Serbia were approved -
confirms that non-Bosnian Yugoslav Army troops has already left
Bosnia and withdrawn to Montenegro and Serbia. The UN confirmed
that remaining Bosnian Serb forces were "outside the control of the
JNA (Yugoslav National Army)." Yet many commentators speak about
Serbian "aggression," despite the fact that it is the Croatians who
have crossed borders (military experts say 35 brigades of 44,000
soilders) to fight in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Only a few news organ-
izations bother to mention that Croatian forces are receiving German
arms through Austria and Muslim forces have received military aid
from Libya.
 
5) "Breadline massacre" - not a mortar attack.
 
   Remember the horrifying day when an explosion ripped through
a breadline on Vasa Miskin Street? A Sarajevo film crew just
happened to be on hand when the explosion tore the limbs of people
in the breadline, many of them Serbian. Local Muslim politicians
immediately blamed the Serbs and some news organizations suggested
it was "probably" a Serb mortar shell.
 
   Evidence, however, suggests otherwise. Military analysts point
out that there was no crater that a mortar shell would have made.
Injuries, from the waist down, were more consistent with an anti-
personnel mine. Muslim extremeists Mirza Jamakovic and Rusmir
Hanjic were accused at a press conference of Bosnian Serb officals
a day later of triggering the explosive, but by then, reporters
had moved on to new subjects. General MacKenzie has, however,
confirmed the Sarajevo practice of using contrived incidents to 
win international sympathy. Three days after the "breadline 
massacre" of suspicious origins, the U.S.-sponsored UN sanctions
against Serbia were adopted.
 
                    THAT WAS THEN
                           (1941-45)
     
"I must admit that I have been obsessed with the criminal 
character of the Independent State of Croatia. Even the Germans
were appalled by the crimes committed in it."
                           -Holocaust historian Simon Wiesenthal,
                            1990 interview with Yugoslav Magazine
                            NIN.
 
"The greatest genocide in World War II in proportion to a nation's
population took place, not in Nazi Germany, but in the Nazi-
created Independent State of Croatia. There, in the years 1941-1945,
some 750,000 Serbs, 60,000 Jews and 26,000 Gypsies -- men, women and
children -- perished in a gigantic holocaust."
                           -French historian Edmond Paris from 
                            "Genocide in Satellite Croatia"
 
                     THIS IS NOW
                            (1992)
 
   "Genocide is a natural phenomenon, in harmony with the societal
and mythologically divine nature. Genocide is not only permitted, it
is also recommended, even commanded by the word of the Almighty
Yaweh, whenever it is useful for the survival or the restoration of
the kingdom of the chosen nation, or for the preservation and the
spreading of its one and only correct faith.
 
                      -Current Croatian President Franjo
                            Tudjman, from his 1989 book
                            "Wastelands of Historical Reality"
 
   "There can be no peace or coexistence between Islamic faith and
non-Islamic faith and non-Islamic institutions...The Islamic
movement must and can take power as soon as it is morally and
numerically strong enough, not only to destroy the non-Islamic power,
but to build up a new Islamic one......Turkey, as an Islamic country
used to rule the world. Turkey, as an imitation of Europe, 
represents a third-rate country."
 
                      From the "Muslim Declaration" of current
                           Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic,
                           quoted in London Daily Telegraph
 
 
  (Paid For by SerbNet Inc., P.O. Box 9264, McLean Virginia 22102)
 

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chetnik@infopls.chi.il.us (Andre Popov)
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