Srebrenica Massacre
| Date | 11 July 1995 - 13 July 1995 |
|---|---|
| Location | Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina |
| Blamed on | Army of the Republika SrpskaScorpions paramilitary group |
| Type | • Military assault • mass murder •  ethnic cleansing•  genocide |
| Deaths | 8373 |
| Interest of | Stefan Karganovic, Wim Kok, Joris Voorhoeve, Andy Wilcoxson |
The Srebrenica massacre, also known as the Srebrenica genocide, refers to the July 1995 killing, during the Bosnian War of Bosnian Muslim men and boys in and around Srebrenica in Bosnia. The western Official Narrative puts the number killed at 8,000; Phillip Corwin, the highest ranking UN official in Sarajevo at the time, estimates the actual number at probably around 800 - and his career has suffered grievously as a direct result of his honesty in daring to challenge the official orthodoxy.
The corresponding Wikipedia page is a virtual historical compendium of the whole affair from the perspective of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and western establishment orthodoxy. Dissenting opinion is not allowed.
This page needs considerable work to properly summarise things from a Serb perspective. In the meantime the following Wikispooks-hosted documents should be of help to those who understand the propaganda uses to which the affair has been ruthlessly harnessed by the US/NATO official narrative.
Contents
25th anniversary
"60,000 peacekeeping troops needed"
On 10 July 2020, daughter Emily Thornberry wrote a hagiography of Cedric Thornberry to mark the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre:
As deputy chief of the UN mission, Cedric Thornberry sought to broker talks between the warring parties, and protect minority groups from the threat of ethnic cleansing.
In October 1992, he and his colleagues warned the UN hierarchy in New York that a minimum force of 60,000 peacekeeping troops would be needed to properly defend the six “safe havens”. But no one listened, or if they did, they could not persuade global leaders to act.
The following June, after the Serbs bombed a football match in Sarajevo, killing 11 people, including four children, my Dad warned again that “we are terribly thin on the ground”, and blamed governments around the world for not providing the numbers of troops required.
“In peacekeeping,” he said, “without credibility – you are dead.”
He was moved out of Bosnia a year later, still furious about how poorly defended the UN’s “safe havens” were, and deeply fearful of what would happen when the Serbs attacked them, not from a distance with shells and snipers, but through ground assaults.
Nothing changed. And when the butchers rolled into Srebrenica 25 years ago this week, there were still just a few hundred Dutch soldiers in place to deter them, who saw they were massively outnumbered, and turned their backs as the genocide began.
People sill argue today that those Dutch peacekeepers should feel ashamed, but I know how my dad would respond: that the real shame lies not with them, but with the governments and leaders around the world who thought that a few hundred soldiers were enough.
It lies with all those in the international community who heard his warnings growing louder each year and saw the forces surrounding Srebrenica growing larger each month, but still sat on their hands and failed to act, until it was too late.[1]
78 days of US-led terror-bombing
On 12 July 2020, Stephen Lendman wrote:
Big Lies and deception about what happened in Srebrenica a generation ago were part of the 1990s rape of Yugoslavia by the Clinton co-presidency and NATO killing machine.
Events of that time were and remain one of history’s great crimes — killing a nation to advance America’s imperial aims, a scorched earth policy to transform all countries into US vassal states, along with gaining control of their resources and populations.
The Official Narrative of what happened in Srebrenica reinvented reality — a longstanding US-led Western specialty.
Big Lies and deception suppressed truth and full disclosure. Repeated by establishment media, most people to this day are none the wiser.
Events of the 90s culminated in all-out preemptive war on Yugoslavia from March 24 – June 10, 1999 — 78 days of US-led terror-bombing.
Like all wars, what happened was based on Big Lies and deception.
So-called Operation Noble Anvil was an act of infamy against the former Yugoslavia and its people.
Claims about wanting to counter Slobodan Milosevic’s aim for a “Greater Serbia” were falsified.
US aims were and remain all about wanting the country balkanised for easier control, its legitimate leadership replaced by pro-Western puppet rule.
Milosevic wanted Yugoslavia’s disintegration prevented. He wanted minority Serbs protected. He wanted peace, stability, and cooperative relations with the West, not war.
US-led aggression replaced Yugoslavia’s market socialism with pro-Western neoliberal harshness, its people exploited, not served.
In February 1999, the so-called Rambouillet Agreement was prelude to war — an ultimatum no responsible leader could accept.
Designed for rejection, it was an unacceptable take-it-or-leave-it demand.
It effectively ordered Milosevic to surrender Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) sovereignty to a NATO occupation force.
It demanded unimpeded access to its land, airspace and territorial waters, as well as any area or facility therein.
It required the FRY to let NATO freely operate outside federal law. Demanding it was outrageous. Milosevic’s justifiable refusal became a pretext for US-led aggression.
At the time, nobel laureate Harold Pinter denounced the rape of Yugoslavia.
Mincing no words, he called US-led terror-bombing and dismemberment of the state “barbaric (and despicable), another blatant and brutal assertion of US power, using NATO as its missile (to consolidate) American domination of Europe.”
For 78 days, around 600 aircraft flew about 3,000 sorties.
Thousands of tons of ordnance were dropped, as well as hundreds of ground-launched cruise missiles.
Its ferocity was unprecedented to that time — military and non-military sites struck.
Targets included power plants, factories, telecommunication and transportation facilities, roads, bridges and rail lines, fuel depots, schools, a TV station, China’s Belgrade embassy, hospitals, government offices, religious sites, historic landmarks and more.
Throughout the country, terror-bombing raped and destroyed most everything of value, countless numbers of civilians massacred.
An estimated $100 billion in damage was inflicted — the toll much greater in today’s dollar terms.
Environmental contamination was extensive. Along with mass slaughter, two million people lost livelihoods, many their homes, communities and futures.
Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic were subjected to sham trials — both falsely declared guilty by accusation.
Alleged genocide at Srebrenica was more myth than massacre — a Big Lie that won’t die.
Deaths were hugely inflated. The International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was established to blame victimized Serbs for war crimes committed against them.
Srebrenica was a combined Muslim military base and refugee “safe area.”
Serbian President/Federal Republic of Yugoslavia leader Slobodan Milosevic wanted Serbs restrained from overrunning it.
Before the alleged July 1995 massacre, falsely claiming 8,000 Muslim Bosniak deaths, Srebrenica-based Muslim forces carried out numerous attacks on nearby Serb villages.
Muslim Sarajevo officials withdrew their Srebrenica commanders, leaving thousands of soldiers leaderless.
When Bosnian Serb forces captured Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, civilians wanted to leave because of chaotic conditions.
Women and children were separated from men to locate perpetrators of raids on Serb villages and take revenge.
A small number alone were detained. Alleged Srebrenica victims reflected lies and half-truths based on what’s known – reality omitted in official and major media accounts to this day.
The 8,000 number included the Red Cross estimate of 3,000 “witnesses” allegedly detained by Bosnian Serbs, along with another 5,000 the Red Cross said “fled Srebrenica,” many to Central Bosnia.
They fled for safety and weren’t killed. Years later, forensic teams discovered 2,361 bodies where heavy fighting occurred – including combatants on both sides, not massacred civilians.
Milosevic, Karadzic, and Mladic were falsely considered guilty by accusation.
Injustice against them was and remains typical of how imperial USA and its imperial partners blame victims for crimes committed against them.
Milosevic didn’t survive the ordeal, perishing from willful medical neglect — posthumously exonerated when it was too late to matter.
Balkanised Yugoslavia is a shadow of its former self, its people exploited by punishing neoliberal harshness — victimised by the scourge of US imperialism.[2]
Event
| Event |
|---|
| Srebrenica Massacre |
Witness
| Witness | Description |
|---|---|
| Netherlands/Army | Prosecuted for war crimes in Iraq, Indonesia & Bosnia. Their role in the Srebrenica massacre is particularly sketchy. |
Related Documents
The Official Culprit
| Name |
|---|
| Army of the Republika SrpskaScorpions paramilitary group |
