User talk:Theodosias

Welcome!

Hello, Theodosias, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thanks for your contributions; I hope you like it here and decide to stay. We're glad to have you in our community! Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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Happy editing!

-- Sango123 15:30, July 15, 2005 (UTC)

P.S. Feel free to leave a message on my talk page. :)

No problem! :) Have fun editing. Regards, Sango123 15:46, July 15, 2005 (UTC)

Changes

So, when will you start considering to make changes in "Alternative views..." article? Have you read the articles from the links I put above? How can I upload video footages and pictures so you can include them as part of the article? Regads, Theodosias

I cannot make any changes to the article as it is protected from editing. I don't have any more powers around here than you do. You need to convince an administrator to unprotect the page, and only then can it can be changed. It will help if you can quote a change that you wish to make.

Read the picture tutorial, mentioned at the top of the page, to learn how to include pictures in articles. The other links in Sango123's welcome message will also help you to understand this place. Read Wikipedia:Uploading images to find out how to upload pictures. We do not carry videos, and we are serious about copyright laws.

Finally, if you want that the article is changed, you should be prepared to do the work yourself. My primary interest is mathematics.

Hope this helps, Jitse Niesen (talk) 00:22, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Have you read the articles? If you had, I'd like to hear your opinion. I cannot convince administrators on my own, I need help of someone who is neutral because I cannot be considered neutral since I am a Serb. Anyway, I don't see the reason why we shouldn't include related articles because most of it is not written by Serbs and I think we shouldn't doubt in its neutrality. I'm not talking about editing the whole article. I just want to make changes in the part that relates to alternative views. Theodosias

You've forced me to put some of the pictures here. Will someone finally pay attention?

Milomir Prodanovic who was killed and roasted and burned by Muslim troops in Podravanje

Mujahedeen soldier in Bosnian Muslim Army is photographed holding the decapitated head of Blagoje Blagojevic as a trophy in Crni Vrh near Teslic.

Theodosias

I strongly suggest you remove the pictures again. They generate a lot of ill-will towards you and don't help your case. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 22:25, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

I have removed pictures from Srebrenica massacre talk page but I won't remove them from here until someone pay attention. Do you have any proposal how to "help my case"? Why the pictures generate a lot of ill-will towards me? Picures are real, that DID happen, and I don't see the difference between showing them or that video footage on Srebrenica massacre page, which actually did not happen in Srebrenica. But who cares. Give people blood, give them a good story and they'll believe whatever you want. I've mentioned that I have some video material before. Would you like me to show it? Does anyone care anyway? What people have we become? Etnic cleansing of 250,000 Serbs in Krajina has never quallified for genocide.

Quote:"It is notable that the ICTY has never called the Croat ethnic cleansing of 250,000 Krajina Serbs "genocide" although in that case, many women and children were killed and the ethnic cleansing applied to a larger area and larger victim population than in Srebrenica. (On August 10, 1995, Madeleine Albright cried out to the Security Council that "as many as 13,000 men, women and children were driven from their homes" in Srebrenica.) Perhaps the ICTY had accepted Richard Holbrooke's designation of the Krajina as a case of "involuntary expulsions." The bias is blatant; the politicization of a purported judicial enterprise is extreme."

I also said that I have list of Serbian civilans killed during the war in Bosnia. And I'm going to show you for sure when time comes. Could you direct me to someone I might talk about this actual problem? Thanks. Theodosias

Im one of the mediation people, familiar with dispute resolution. Your point is probably well understood by various parties, but youre expressing it in a manner that is neither sufficiently constructive nor civil to be take as authoritative or even NPOV. Simply adding photos makes you appear to be a sensationalist "POV warrior" out to make a point rather than to be of help to Wikipedia. Please do not use such photos on talk pages again, and begin your work here by finding consensus to add material to the appropriate articles. -SV|t 03:57, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Srebrenica Research Group report

Here's the conclusions Srebrenica Research Group (SRG) have made about their report. Unfortunately, I couln't find full text of report on web pages.

Conclusions of Srebrenica Research Group

Following three years of research as a group and many more as individuals, the Srebrenica Research Group reports the following conclusions:

1. Both the scale of the casualties at Srebrenica and the context of events have been misrepresented in official reports from governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as news organizations. Senior UN military and civilian officials, NATO intelligence officers and independent intelligence analysts dispute the official portrayal of the capture of Srebrenica by the International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia, (ICTY) as a unique atrocity in the Bosnian conflict. The contention that as many as 8,000 Muslims were killed has no basis in available evidence and is essentially a political construct.

2. The 8,000 figure was first provided by the Red Cross, based on their crude estimate that the Bosnian Serb Army (BSA) had captured 3,000 men and that 5,000 were reported "missing." It is well established that thousands of those "missing" had reached Tuzla or were killed in the fighting, but in an amazing transformation displaying the eagerness to find the Bosnian Serbs evil and the Muslims victims, the "reaching safety/killed-in-action" basis of being missing was ignored and the missing were taken as executed! This misleading conclusion was helped along by the Red Cross's reference to the 5,000 as having "simply disappeared," and its failure to correct this politically biased usage despite its own recognition that "several thousand" refugees had reached Central Bosnia. It was also helped along by the Bosnian Muslim leadership's refusal to disclose the names and numbers of those reaching safety, but there was a remarkable readiness in Western governments not only to ignore those reaching safety, but also to disregard deaths in fighting and to take dead bodies as proving executions. The will to believe here was limitless: reporter David Rohde saw a bone sticking up in a grave site near Srebrenica, which he just knew by instinct was a remnant of an execution and serious evidence of a "massacre." It was standard media practice to move from an asserted and unproven claim of thousands missing, or a report of the uncovering of bodies in a grave site, to the conclusion that the claim of 8,000 executed was thereby demonstrated.

3. With 8,000 executed and thousands killed in the fighting, there should have been huge grave sites and satellite evidence of both executions, burials, and any body removals. But the body searches in the Srebrenica vicinity were painfully disappointing, with only some two thousand bodies found in searches through 2001, including bodies killed in action and possibly Serb bodies, some pre-dating July 1995. The sparseness of these findings led to claims of body removal and reburial, but this was unconvincing as the Bosnian Serbs were under intense military pressure after July 1995. This was the period when NATO was bombing Serb positions and Croat/Muslim armies were driving towards Banja Luka. The BSA was on the defensive and was extremely short of equipment and resources, including gasoline. To have mounted an operation of the magnitude required to exhume, transport and rebury thousands of corpses would have been far beyond the BSA's capacity at that time. Furthermore, in carrying out such a program they could hardly hope to escape observation from OSCE personnel, local civilians, and satellite observations.

4. On August 10, 1995, Madeleine Albright showed some satellite photos at a closed session of the Security Council, as part of a denunciation of the Bosnian Serbs, including one photo showing people--allegedly Bosnian Muslims near Srebrenica--assembled in a stadium, and one allegedly taken shortly thereafter showing a nearby field with "disturbed" soil. These photos have never been publicly released, but even if they are genuine they don't prove either executions or burials. Furthermore, although the ICTY speaks of "an organized and comprehensive effort" to hide bodies, and David Rohde claimed a "huge Serb effort to hide bodies," neither Albright nor anyone else has ever shown a satellite photo of people actually being executed, buried, or dug up for reburial, or of trucks conveying thousands of bodies elsewhere. This failure to provide evidence occurred despite Albright's warning the Serbs that "We will be watching," and with satellites at that time, making at least eight passes per day and geostationary drones able to hover and take finely detailed pictures in position over Bosnia during the summer of 1995. The mainstream media have found this failure to confirm of no interest.

5. There have been a great many bodies gathered at Tuzla, some 7,500 or more, from all across Bosnia, many in poor condition or parts only, their collection and handling incompatible with professional forensic standards, their provenance unclear and link to the July 1995 events in Srebrenica unproven and often unlikely, and the manner of their death usually uncertain. Interestingly, although the Serbs were regularly accused of trying to hide bodies, there has never been any suggestion that the Bosnian Muslims, long in charge of the body search, might shift bodies around and otherwise manipulate evidence, despite their substantial record of dissembling. A systematic attempt to use DNA to trace connections to Srebrenica is underway, but entails many problems, apart from that of the integrity of the material studied and process of investigation, and will not resolve the question of differentiating executions from deaths in combat. There are also lists of missing, but these lists are badly flawed, with duplications, individuals listed who had died before July 1995, who fled to avoid Bosnian Muslim Army service, or who registered to vote in 1997, and they include individuals who died in battle or reached safety or were captured and assumed a new existence elsewhere.

6. The 8,000 figure is also incompatible with the basic arithmetic of Srebrenica numbers before and after July 1995. Displaced persons from Srebrenica--that is, massacre survivors-- registered with the World Health Organization and Bosnian government in early August 1995, totalled 35,632. Muslim men who reached Muslim lines "without their families being informed" totaled at least 3,000, and some 2,000 were killed in the fighting. That gives us 37,632 survivors plus the 2,000 combat deaths, which would require the prewar population of Srebrenica to have been 48,000 if 8,000 were executed, whereas the population before July was more like 37-40,000 (Tribunal judge Patricia Wald gave 37,000 as her estimate). The numbers don't add up.

7. There were witnesses to killings at Srebrenica, or those who claimed to be witnesses. There were not many of these, and some had a political axe to grind or were otherwise not credible, but several were believable and were very likely describing real and ugly events. But the available evidence indicates hundreds of executions, not 8,000 or anything close to it. The only direct participant witness claim that ran to a thousand was that of Drazen Erdemovic, an ethnic Croat associated with a mercenary group of killers whose members were paid 12 kilos of gold for their Bosnian service (according to Erdemovic himself) and ended up working in the Congo on behalf of French intelligence. His testimony was accepted despite its vagueness and inconsistencies, lack of corroboration, and his suffering from mental problems sufficient to disqualify him from trial--but not from testifying before the Tribunal, free of cross-examination. within two weeks of this disqualification from trial. This and other witness evidence suffered from serious abuse of the plea-bargaining process whereby witnesses could receive mitigating sentences if they cooperated sufficiently with the prosecution.

It is also noteworthy how many relatively impartial observers in or near Srebrenica in July 1995 didn't see any evidence of massacres, including the members of the Dutch forces present in the "safe area" and people like Hubert Wieland, the chief UN investigator of human rights abuses, who could find no eyewitnesses to atrocities after five days of interviewing among the 20,000 Srebrenica survivors gathered at the Tuzla airport refugee camp. Carlos Martins Branco, former UN Deputy Director of UNMO (UN Monitors) in Bosnia, who debriefed UN monitors assigned to Srebrenica, writes that casualty estimates of 8,000 have been “used and manipulated for propaganda purposes…there is little doubt that at least 2,000 Bosnian Muslims died in fighting the better trained and better commanded BSA “ in three years of fierce fighting. This is roughly the number of bodies (2,028) which were exhumed by the International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the region by the year 2001. Many of these deaths occurred before the fall of Srebrenica, according to Branco.

8. The events of Srebrenica and claims of a major massacre were extremely helpful to the Clinton administration, the Bosnian Muslim leadership, and Croatian authorities. Clinton was under political pressure in 1995 both from the media and from Bob Dole to take more forceful action in favor of the Bosnian Muslims, and his administration was eager to find a justification for more aggressive policies. Clinton officials rushed to the Srebrenica scene to confirm and publicize the claims of a massacre, just as William Walker did later at Racak in January 1999. By inflating the casualties following the capture of Srebrenica, US officials also diverted attention from larger-scale, US-supported Croatian attacks on Serb populated UN Protected Areas (UNPAs) in Western Slavonia (“Operation Flash”) and the Krajina region (“Operation Storm”) in May and August of 1995. Having undermined a UN-European Community agreement that would have prevented the outbreak of war (the March 1992 Lisbon agreement) and two other negotiated settlements (the Vance-Owen and the Owen-Stoltenberg agreements) which would have ended the fighting in 1993, US State Department hardliners were committed to imposing a military solution, that prolonged the war till 1995.

By facilitating the illegal transfer of weapons to Bosnian Muslim forces and turning a blind eye toward the entry of foreign Mujahadeen fighters, the US turned supposed safe zones for civilians into staging areas for conflict and a tripwire for NATO intervention. Dr. Cees Wiebes who authored the chapter on military intelligence in the Dutch government report on Srebrenica, notes that the US Defense Intelligence Agency facilitated the transfer of illegal arms from Muslim countries to the Tuzla airport using black Hercules C-130 transport planes and arranged for gaps in air surveillance by AWACs which were supposed to guard against such illegal arms traffic. Along with these weapons came Mujahadeen fighters from both Iranian Shiite training camps and al-Qaeda, including two of the hijackers involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Khaled Sheik Mohammed who helped plan the attack. Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Ladin, himself, was issued a Bosnian passport by the Embassy of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Vienna in 1993, according to the Bosnian Muslim publication Dani. Bin-Ladin was observed on two occasions at the office of Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic.

9. Both US and US-appointed ICTY officials acknowledged political considerations in issuing genocide indictments, which were announced prior to an investigation of events surrounding the capture of Srebrenica. On July 24, 1995 the UN’s chief investigator (for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) Henry Wieland, who had spoken to scores of Muslims at the main refugee camp at Tuzla airfield told the London Daily Telegraph “we have not found anyone who saw with their own eyes an atrocity taking place.” Three days, later, however, the ICTY issued indictments charging Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. In news accounts reports of July 27, ICTY Chief Judge Antonio Cassesse praised the indictments as “a good political result” and added that the indictment means that “these gentlemen [Mladic and Karadzic] will not be able to take part in peace negotiations.” The Boston Globe reported the same day: “The Clinton Administration has not obtained independent confirmation of atrocities [at Srebrenica],” but does not doubt that these occurred “I realized that the War Crimes Tribunal was a very valuable tool,” Richard Holbrooke told the BBC. “We used it to keep the two most wanted war criminals in Europe out of the Dayton process and we used it to justify everything that followed.”

10. Bosnian Muslim leaders had been struggling for several years to persuade the NATO powers to intervene more forcibly on their behalf, and there is strong evidence that they were prepared not only to lie but also to sacrifice their own citizens and soldiers to serve the end of inducing intervention. Bosnian Muslim officials have claimed that their leader, Alija Izetbegovic, told them that Clinton had advised him that U.S. intervention would only occur if the Serbs killed at least 5,000 at Srebrenica. The abandonment of Srebrenica by a military force much larger than that of the attackers, and a retreat that made that larger force vulnerable and caused it to suffer heavy casualties in fighting and vengeance executions, helped produce numbers that would meet the Clinton criterion, by hook or by crook. There is other evidence that the retreat from Srebrenica was not based on any military necessity but was strategic, with the personnel losses incurred considered a necessary sacrifice for a larger purpose. On July 9, 1995, two days before Bosnian Serbs had captured the nearly empty town of Srebrenica and before any serious fighting had taken place, President Izetbegovic was already calling President Clinton and other world leaders urging them to take action against “terrorism” and “genocide” by Bosnian Serb Forces. This was part of an ongoing pattern in which charges of mass rape, death camps, staged atrocities were used to manipulate public opinion in favor of military intervention.

Military sources confirm that the 5,500 strong Muslim military force in Srebrenica made no effort to defend Srebrenica against 200 Serbian troops supported by five tanks. Tim Ripley, a military analyst for Janes’ Defense publications notes that Muslim forces fled from Srebrenica to the surrounding hills before Serbs captured the nearly empty town. He writes that Dutch troops “saw Bosnian troops escaping from Srebrenica move past their observation points carrying brand new anti-tank weapons, still in their plastic wrappings. This, and other similar reports, made many UN officers and international journalists suspicious.” Former Deputy Director of UNMO (UN Monitors) Carlos Martins Branco who debriefed the UN monitors who served in Srebrenica, writes: “Muslim forces did not even try to take advantage of their heavy artillery, under control of the United Nations (UN) forces at a time in which they had every reason to do so … Military resistance would jeopardize the image of ‘victim’, which had been so carefully constructed, and which the Muslims considered vital to maintain.” Lt Col British Lt.-Col. Jim Baxter, assistant to UN Commander Rupert Smith, told Tim Ripley “They [the Bosnian government] knew what was happening in Srebrenica. I am certain they decided it was worth the sacrifice.”

Muslim leaders from Srebrenica claim that the town was deliberately “sacrificed” by the Presidency of the Bosnia and the Military High Command in order to encourage NATO intervention. In their testimony before the Hague Tribunal, Bosnian Muslim Generals Halilovic and Hadzihasanovic testified that General Staff of the Bosnian Army abruptly removed 18 top officers of the 28th division in Srebrenica. This was done even as the high command was ordering sabotage operations against Bosnian Serbs. One of these was a militarily meaningless attack on a strategically unimportant nearby Serb village of Visnica. The final operation was an attack on Bosnian Serb Army units on the road south of Srebrenica, just days before the Serbs captured the nearly undefended town.

Ibran Mustafic, the head of the Muslim SDA party in Srebrenica, who had clashed with local Bosnian Muslim military commander Naser Oric, and was badly wounded in two assassination attempts, told Slobodna Bosna: “The scenario for the betrayal of Srebrenica was consciously prepared. Unfortunately the Bosnian presidency and the Army command were involved in this business … Had I received orders to attack the Serb army from the demilitarized zone, I would have rejected to carry out that order without thinking and would have asked the person who had issued that order to bring his family to Srebrenica so that I can give him a gun let him stage attacks from the demilitarized zone. I knew that such shameful, calculated moves were leading my people to catastrophe. The order came from Sarajevo”

In his book Warriors for Peace, Bernard Kouchner, former head of Doctors Without Borders, states that on his death bed, Bosnia’s wartime president, Alija Izetbegovic, acknowledged to both Kouchner and former UN envoy Richard Holbrooke that he had exaggerated claims of atrocities by Serbian forces to encourage NATO intervention against the Serbs. Specifically he mentions wartime POW camps that all three factions in the Bosnian civil war utilized, but which his government claimed in 1992 were really "death camps," a charge which was widely publicized by reporters such as Newsday's Roy Gutman (who shared a Pulitzer prize for this story) and ABC anchor Peter Jennings. Izetbegovic admitted to Kouchner and Holbrooke that "There were no extermination camps, whatever the horror of those places. I thought my revelations [sic] would precipitate bombing [against Serbs]."

11. Croatian authorities were also delighted with the claims of a Srebrenica massacre, as this deflected attention from their prior devastating ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Western Slavonia (almost entirely ignored by the Western media), and it provided a cover for their already planned removal of several hundred thousand Serbs from the Krajina area in Croatia. In “Operation Flash,” carried out in Western Slavonia in May 1995, the Croatians did not provide safe passage for a huge column of Serb refugees, which included many women and children. “Many Serbs perished in heavy Croatian tank, artillery and aerial bombardments …as they tried to flee southward toward the Sava River bridge into Bosnia,” wrote New York Times reporter Roger Cohen, who noted that “the estimate of 450 Serbian dead, given by Gojko Susak, the Croatian Defense Minister appears to be conservative.” The followup massive ethnic cleansing operation by Croatia in Krajina was carried out with U.S. approval and logistical support within a month of the Srebrenica events, and it may well have involved the killing of more Serb civilians than Bosnian Muslim civilians killed in the Srebrenica area in July: most of the Bosnian Muslim victims were fighters, not civilians, as the Bosnian Serbs bused the Srebrenica women and children to safety; here as in Western Slavonia the Croatians made no such provision and many women, children and old people were slaughtered in Krajina. The ruthlessness of the Croats was impressive: "UN troops watched horrified as Croat soldiers dragged the bodies of dead Serbs along the road outside the UN compound and then pumped them full of rounds from the AK-47s. They then crushed the bullet-ridden bodies under the tracks of a tank." But this was hardly noticed in the wake of the indignation and propaganda generated around Srebrenica, with the aid of the mainstream media, whose co-belligerency role in the Balkan wars was already well-entrenched.

12. The International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) and UN also had an important role to play in the consolidation of the standard Srebrenica massacre narrative. From its inception the ICTY served as an arm of the NATO powers, who created it, funded it, served as its police arm and main information source, and expected and got responsive service from the organization. The ICTY focused intensively on Srebrenica and provided important and nominally independent corroboration of the massacre claims along with citable "judicial" claims of planned "genocide." Although the death toll in Operations “Flash” and “Storm” is believed to be in the thousands, in contrast with its treatment of Srebrenica, but in keeping with its role as a political instrument of NATO, no genocide indictments were issued by the ICTY for these ethnic cleansing operations and massacres.

13. The UN is less thoroughly integrated into NATO-power demands than the ICTY, but it is highly responsive, and in the Srebrenica case, it came through just as the United States and its main allies desired. Under pressure from the US, the UN employed a double standard for reporting alleged abuses by Serb forces as compared with comparable abuses by Croatian Muslim forces. Between May of 1992 and April of 1993, scarcely a day went by without massacres and scorched earth attacks by Muslim warlord Naser Oric on towns and villages such as Sikirici, Konjevic Polje, Glogova, Zalazje, Fakovici, Kaludra, Loznica, Fakovici, Brezani, Krnica, Zagoni, Orlice, Jezhtica, Bijlaca, Crni Vhr, Milici, Kamenica, Bjelovac, Kravica, Skelani and Zabokvica. "Naser Oric was a warlord who reigned by terror in this area and over the population itself," General Phillippe Morillon testified at the Hague Tribunal. "He could not allow himself to take prisoners. According to my recollection, he didn't even look for an excuse.” Oric’s forces are responsible for 1,200-1,500 deaths in the Srebrenica area.

Yet, despite extensive evidence of Oric’s direct participation in such atrocities in a report submitted to the UN by the Yugoslav State Commission on War Crimes, the US State Department, the UN and major news organizations were largely silent on these crimes. UN Security Council resolutions to condemn abuses by Muslim forces or Croatian forces were routinely thwarted by threatened veto from Madeleine Albright. The report on Oric was submitted to the UN Commission of Experts on War Crimes, whose chairman Cherif Bassiouni was appointed by Ambassador Albright, but Oric was not even mentioned in the final report of the Commission. When the ICTY finally got around to indicting Nasir Oric on March 28, 2003, very possibly to create the image of judicial balance, he was charged with killing only seven Serbs who were tortured and beaten to death after capture, and with the "wanton destruction" of nearby villages. Although he bragged to Western reporters of slaughtering Serb civilians, the ICTY reportedly "found no evidence that there were civilian casualties in the attacks on Serb villages in his theater of operations."

Former NATO Deputy Commander Charles Boyd, who was in charge of intelligence assessments, wrote in Foreign Affairs that the Croatian attack on the UN Protected Serb-inhabited area of Western Bosnia, which preceded the capture of Srebrenica “appears to differ from Serbian actions around the UN safe areas of Srebrenica and Zepa only in the degree of Western hand-wringing and CNN footage the latter have elicited. Ethnic cleansing evokes condemnation only when it is committed by Serbs, not against them.”

14. Another anomaly also showing the sacred, untouchable, and politicized character of the Srebrenica massacre in Western ideology has been the ready designation of the killings as a case of "genocide." The Tribunal played an important role here, with hard-to-match gullibility, unrestrained psychologizing, problematic legal reasoning, and the ready acceptance of trial testimony by prosecution witnesses who committed perjury as part of plea bargains (most notably, Drazen Erdemovic and Momir Nikolic). The term genocide, once reserved for the most horrific crime, the planned extermination of a particular group, was manipulated by the ICTY to justify indictments that preceded any serious investigation of events related to the capture of Srebrenica.

On gullibility, one Tribunal judge accepted as fact the witness claim that Serb soldiers had forced an old Muslim man to eat the liver of his grandson; and the judges repeatedly stated as an established fact that 7-8,000 Muslim men had been executed, while simultaneously acknowledging that the evidence only "suggested" that "a majority" of the 7-8,000 missing had not been killed in combat, which yields a number substantially lower than 7-8,000. The Tribunal dealt with the awkward problem of the genocide-intent Serbs bussing Bosnian Muslim women and children to safety by arguing that they did this for public relations reasons, but as Michael Mandel points out, failing to do some criminal act despite your desire is called "not committing a crime." The Tribunal never asked why the genocidal Serbs failed to surround the town before its capture to prevent thousands of males from escaping to safety, or why the Bosnian Muslim soldiers were willing to leave their women and children as well as many wounded comrades to the mercies of the Serbs; and they failed to confront the fact that 10,000 mainly Muslim residents of Zvornik sought refugee from the civil war in Serbia itself, as prosecution witness Borisav Jovic testified.

Among the other weaknesses in the Tribunal judges' argument, it was genocide if you killed many males in a group in order to reduce the future population of that group, thereby making it unviable in that area. Of course, you might want to kill them to prevent their killing you in the future, but the court knows Serb psychology better--that couldn't be the sole reason, there must have been a more sinister aim. The Tribunal reasoning holds forth the possibility that with only a little prosecution-friendly judicial psychologizing any case of killing enemy soldiers can be designated genocide.

There is also the problem of definition of the group. Were the Serbs trying to eliminate all the Muslims in Bosnia, or Muslims globally? Or just in Srebrenica? The judges suggested that pushing them out of the Srebrenica area was itself genocide, and they essentially equated genocide with ethnic cleansing. It is notable that the ICTY has never called the Croat ethnic cleansing of 250,000 Krajina Serbs "genocide" although in that case, many women and children were killed and the ethnic cleansing applied to a larger area and larger victim population than in Srebrenica. (On August 10, 1995, Madeleine Albright cried out to the Security Council that "as many as 13,000 men, women and children were driven from their homes" in Srebrenica.) Perhaps the ICTY had accepted Richard Holbrooke's designation of the Krajina as a case of "involuntary expulsions." The bias is blatant; the politicization of a purported judicial enterprise is extreme.

15. Media treatment of the Srebrenica and Krajina cases followed the same pattern and illustrates well how the media make some victims worthy and others unworthy in accord with a political agenda. With the Serbs their government's target, and their government actively aiding the massive Croat ethnic cleansing program in Krajina, the media gave huge and indignant treatment to the first, with invidious language, calls for action, and little context. With Krajina, attention was slight and passing, indignation was absent, detailed reporting on the condition of the victims was minimal, descriptive language was neutral, and there was context offered that made the events understandable. The contrast is dramatic: the attack on Srebrenica "chilling," "murderous," "savagery," "cold-blooded killing," "genocidal," "aggression," and of course "ethnic cleansing." With Krajina, the media used no such strong language--even ethnic cleansing was too much for them. The Croat assault was merely a big "upheaval" that is "softening up the enemy," "a lightning offensive," explained away as a "response to Srebrenica" and a result of Serb leaders "overplaying their hand." The Washington Post even cited U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith saying the "the Serb exodus was not 'ethnic cleansing'." The paper does not allow a challenge to that judgment. In fact, however, the Croat operations in Krajina left Croatia as the most ethnically purified of all the former components of the former Yugoslavia, although the NATO occupation of Kosovo has allowed an Albanian ethnic cleansing that is rivalling that of Croatia in ethnic purification.

Many journalists covering Srebrenica and the Bosnian war consistently accepted Bosnian and US government pronouncements as fact instead of independently verifying evidence. U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel John Sray, on the scene in Bosnia, wrote in October 1995 on “Selling the Bosnian Myth: Buyer Beware,” that while “many journalists, who undeniably labor under dangerous and miserable conditions… have permitted themselves to become pawns of the propaganda structure….These correspondents frequently limit their time in Bosnia to short stays and fail to gain an appreciation for the true nuances at play in this war. Watching and reading their reports too often conveys the impression that they feel the pressure of competition for a voyeuristic audience against their pampered tabloid-like peers (such as those who covered the O.J. Simpson trial) and try to react accordingly. This segment of the media views its job security as dependent upon obtaining thirty seconds of good video footage accompanied with appropriate sound bites from Muslim officials or their populace. The result, obviously, becomes tawdry reporting that panders to the Bosniac point of view and results in misleading news reports.”

Obviously, this characterization does not describe all the coverage of the conflict or events around Srebrenica, but it describes the long-standing mainstream perspective and serves to remind us that ten years later, a highly skewed version of what happened at Srebrenica dominates public perceptions, and may influence decisions now being made about the fate of Kosovo and Bosnia.

An understanding of the events surrounding Srebrenica may also determine if the Serbs will continue to bear the brunt of the blame for the tragic conflict that occurred when the major powers -- the EU, the United States and the UN -- encouraged the breakup of Yugoslavia through diplomatic recognition of armed separatist states, despite the warning of UN Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar. Compounding this error, the US, the most important member state of the UN, then helped prolong the conflict by taking sides, instead of permitting the UN to act as an honest broker, its traditional role, which was repeatedly undermined during its mission in the former Yugoslavia.

Finally to the point

Let me make my point. I'm realy senitive and getting all of this very peronaly because it hurts when I read about lies even in the alternative theses of what there happened. Even that texh indicates and suggests the "supreme truth" seen by ITCY. Well, there are a lot of people that doubt in the official story, which btw has never been proven because 7,800 men are considered missing but in their original research SRG noticed many of them on votes lists at the last elections in Bosnia so as many duplicate names. Also, they stated many of bodies found were killed in the combat and that they were not civilians! Please read the text and then we will discuss. Regards Theodosias 09:35, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

OK. I did not read all of that report, I simply formatted it more properly, (indents make boxed code-text=bad format). Why did I not read it? Because you can speak for yourself, and quoting some report doesnt answer the question of your conduct here. And I dont really have time ATM to aquire new research projects. (You should add that full report to http://www.wikisource.org ) Clearly both the above report and the UC-led commissions represent different points of view, both of which can be called "biased." And because your'e no doubt a Serb its natural that your opinions are likewise Serb-oriented. The recent footage showing a Serb massacre of Muslims must have likewise been upsetting to you. But again, wikipedia isnt a place to vent grievances, and grievances simply make you marginalized. If you have an interest in representing your view of history, toward the goal of making articles less biased, then you are most welcome here. Bias is always a tricky issue, and none of us are immune to it. So, instead of hearing reports and facts, etc. I'd like to hear you comment on what your ideas are for improving the related Wikipedia articles. Sinreg, -SV|t 15:49, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for formatting the report, I'm still new here and still haven't explored all Wikipedia features. I made proposal to Jitse Niesen (but he seemed more interested in math than in history) to erase "Alternative views and massacre theses" part from "Srebrenica massacre" page because it is very "biased" as you say and doesn't actually represent different points of view. You can read alternative views in that report, so as from many other articles from the links I put on "Srebrenica massacre" talk page. If you agree (or someone who should agree) I can write a new article according to that sources and show you, before we decide whether to include it in Wikipedia or not.

The fact that I'm a Serb doesn't change things a lot. If someone give me the proves, solid enough that "genocide" or "massacre" in Srebrenica did happen, I'll apologize. But it's much more like that it never happened according to the informations I have so as many other people all over the world who are not Serbs and who are not compromised by U.S or Serbian propaganda. If you agree I'll try to write the article in next few days and include links to all referent sources. And btw, footage of execution of 6 men doesn't prove anything and it didn't happen in Srebrenica, it happened in Trnovo and not in 1995 but in 1994. And everyone cried when seen that footage how it's the most brutal footage they've ever seen. . And what if I show you Muslim extremists cutting throat to captured Serbian soldiers after they tortured him? When you hear Croat soldier confessing that his mate was wearing necklace made out of children fingers how would that make you feel? Pretty biased... Theodosias 16:54, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

I think the fact is that war sucks —all around. Wars are always claimed to be simple solutions, which erupt into madness, evil, and destruction, and your country's warfare was no different. So, while Im sympathetic to "alternate" views of history, such as you propose, they must all be placed in proportion and within the context of consensus. Now, the way to approach this on wikipedia is to be precise with your language, with your facts, and with your citations, and with your reasoning. Naturally someone opposed to your view will claim that you and your sources are intrinsically biased. Its thus important that you be more rational, more thorough, and more knowledgeble on the views from all sides and the various details. Simply pushing a view does not work. Your view has to be substantiated, and you must defend that view with both sharp, consistent, and critical focus, as well as civility, collegiality, patience, and an open mind. Welcome to Wikipedia, where anyone can edit any article, but only those edits which are agreeable to the most number of people will persist. Sinreg, SV|t 05:51, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

I think the fact is that war sucks I agree. I never wanted that war to happen. And things aren't quite simple as they seem, there isn't such thing as "goog guys" and the "bad guys". War is crime by its definition. But we must be rational when judging and know the history and the reasons for the begining of that war. That war DID NOT occure because "Serbs dreamed about Great Serbia". The reasons are much more complex.That's what I a want to change. And you can't say for the sources I rely that are currupted or biased. Theodosias

Storm etc

I'll respond here because we're offtopic for Talk:Srebrenica massacre.

You're missing the point. The Operation Storm article clearly says how many people were found dead, how many went missing, and how many fled. It's quite apparent that there was a lot of disorder after the Croatian army started making way for civilian institutions which didn't appear soon enough (first and foremost the police), and there was a fair number of people killed as retribution or simply for criminal reasons. The number from the Veritas organization was something like 1,700 when I last pasted it into the article.

However, the vast majority of people did not flee because someone held them at gunpoint, but because they were afraid, or because they didn't want to live in Croatia (meaning Croatia controlled by the national government), or both. Most of them picked up all of their mobile belongings, loaded it into cars, tractor trailers and whatever other vehicles, and went on the road to Serbia and elsewhere. It's those people who number in tens or hundreds of thousands, and they were not killed or expelled.

Their fear may have been legitimate to a point, and they certainly shouldn't have been booed at or thrown rocks at (or in one incident as said in the article, even bombarded) on their way out, but that's a whole different thing than to say that all of them were expelled or killed. Relatively few other people stayed, but some did and were not harmed, and the peaceful reintegration of eastern Slavonia in 1997/1998 proved that most people population can go unharmed. Most of the Croatian Serbs have since returned at least briefly to their homes in former RSK and many decided to come back because they no longer feel it's unsafe. (Other problems arose inbetween, such as the Bosnian refugees, but that is being resolved. We have a discussion about that at Demographics of Croatia.)

That's why I think it's disingenuous to talk of expulsion and killing of the entire population. Sure, there were most probably some people in Croatia who wished for this to happen. But they didn't get their way, nor will they ever, hopefully. --Joy [shallot] 11:25, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

You talk like that people had choise... They had no choise...

javi se...

javi se na oldadamm@yahoo.com hitno i vazno --Oldadamml 07:45, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Да ли си сигуран да си добро написао мејл јер сам неколико пута покушао да ти пошаљем али ми је сваки пут враћен уз обавештење да адреса не постоји? Theodosias

Ispravka oldadamml@yahoo.com --Oldadamml 11:27, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Srebrenica massacre

Please stop removing content from Wikipedia. It is considered vandalism. If you want to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you. Ktoto 11:55, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

And what's not cosidered vandalism, adding propaganda to the article? I clearly stated why I removed the text from the article. Theodosias

You might want to give an edit summary - I saw your blanking, and assumed it was vandalism too. Dan100 (Talk) 12:54, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

By changing the caption of the text from "Revisionism and dennial of genocide" to "Controversy" you do nothing good, suggestion of the text still remains the same: anything else than text written above is lie and that's why I can't let this text to be published in Wikipedia. I gave reasons for deleating the part of the text on its discussion page. Theodosias 12:58, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

Improve it, not delete. If there is a dispute as to some facts, make it clear and explain the alternative version. Ktoto 13:26, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I can't improve something that's written bad. I hope you agree with me that text is being used just to prove that genocide did happened and not to present alternative opinions. If you want to read materials I plan to use to create a new "Alternative views" section check http://www.srebrenica-report.com/Theodosias

Actually, I've read the SRG page and you may have noticed that I've included the link to their page in the article. However the SRG claims do not seem really convincing, they don't explain anything and tend to focus on criticizing the official research instead of trying to document the facts. They don't even make the full report available online (why ?). I'm sorry but it seems really dubious so far. Ktoto 15:31, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

The full report is made on more than 200 pages with evidences and facts, what you read is just conclusions made on this material. The full repor, however would be almost imposible to include in Wikipedia. Theodosias

Yes, it's a pity they do not make the report freely available on the Internet. That would improve its credibility. 200 pages does not seem much for a report like this. So far it seems obvious, regardles of whose version we assume, that Bosnian Serbs violated the UN safe zone of Srebrenica and their army entered it. Whatever happened next is obviously their responsibility, regardless of whether the number of civilians killed by them was 700 or 7000. It's also clear that UN proved completely incapable of securing the secure zone in the first place. Ktoto 20:13, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

It's obvious that Srebrenica "demilitarized zone" was not demilitarazed at all and that there were about 5,500 Muslim fighters heavily armed, and not "poorly armed" "some with hunting rifles" as stated in the article. Number of victims is important indeed, as is important whether they were fighters who died in combat or in executions or they were civilians. Idea of siedge of Srebrenica that lasted 3 years is so foolish that I can't even think about it. Oric's troops slaughtered more than 3,000 people in villages around Srebrenica during that period. That changes a lot of things. Theodosias

Image Tagging Image:Mujahedeen .jpg

This media may be deleted.

Thanks for uploading Image:Mujahedeen .jpg. I notice the 'image' page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you have not created this media yourself then there needs to be an argument why we have the right to use the media on Wikipedia (see copyright tagging below). If you have not created the media yourself then it needs to be specified where it was found, i.e., in most cases link to the website where it was taken from, and the terms of use for content from that page.

If the media also doesn't have a copyright tag then one should be added. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then the {{GFDL-self}} tag can be used to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media qualifies as fair use, consider reading fair use, and then use a tag such as {{Non-free fair use in|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags#Fair_use. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other media, consider checking that you have specified their source and copyright tagged them, too. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that any unsourced and untagged images will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Shyam ^(T/C) 22:38, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

hi Theodosias (re Srebrenica)

Hi Theodosias,

You still around? Was reading through the Srebrenica Massacre talk-page archives and thought your comments were impressive.

The article is still a nightmare (probably worse now than when you were editing it!) but I just wanted to let you know about a new project to possibly re-write it (also I saw you mention that you had begun the same thing; what happened with that?) Anyway, it's over at Osli's talk page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Osli73) under the section titled 'Trimming' near the bottom of the page. Cheers Jonathanmills 16:10, 1 August 2007 (UTC)