Genocide

Those people who promote this type of fakery should be ashamed of themselves. It is unbelieavable what Srebrenica genocide deniers are capable of doing in order to deny genocide of 10,000 Bosniaks (Muslims) in Srebrenica. This fake picture of alleged "Serb victims" serves as a reminder what Serbian propaganda is capable of doing to deny and justify Srebrenica genocide, but it also demonstrates how stupid hoax-makers can really be.

Speaking to the Armenian Reporter, Ms. Amanpour said, "When I ask former U.S. officials who were in national security or the State Department during the Clinton administration – in which genocide happened in Bosnia and in Rwanda – I ask them why was there this collective failure to act, and some of them said to me, ‘Look, we need our public behind us. This is something very difficult for us to intervene when our national security is not directly threatened. We need our public behind us.’"

She said her purpose was to raise awareness of international affairs among Americans, the citizens of the most powerful nation on earth.

During an international news conference in 1994, Ms. Amanpour challenged Mr. Clinton: "Do you not think that the constant flip-flops of your administration on the issue of Bosnia set a very dangerous precedent?"

A source close to The Hague Tribunal told the Dnevni avaz paper that a large part of these documents refer to events in Srebrenica, which directly accuse the highest military and political leadership of Yugoslavia for crimes committed over civilians in Srebrenica.

- These documents include transcripts of conversations, including a conversation between Momcilo Perisic and Ratko Mladic. Croatian intelligence wiretapped the telephone call in Slavonia and these documents have been made available to The Hague Prosecution. This recording will reveal the truth of Yugoslavia’s responsibility for genocide committed in Srebrenica – a source told the Dnevni avaz paper.

These documents might be a powerful backbone for Bosnia-Herzegovina`s lawsuit against Serbia, if they are not protected by the court.

Can there be true justice if courts ignore the interests of victims?

The international courts and tribunals in The Hague deal with some of the darkest pages of human history. Yet all too frequently the rights of the survivors of these mass atrocities – whether they are from the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone or the Democratic Republic of the Congo – are sidelined.

The court focuses on the rights of the accused and on bringing the trial to a swift conclusion. There is a growing consensus that the needs of victims need to be addressed, but opinions differ on how this should be achieved.

The Yugoslavia Tribunal has a programme of its own for victims in Bosnia Herzegovina. One of the participants is Kadira Hodzic, who lost her son and her husband in the 1995 Srebrenica genocide:

"This is very little justice for us, the victims. I am surprised it took so long to prove this was a crime. It is so obvious and the punishments have been so minimal. The only justice is that it has finally been confirmed as genocide. However not enough people have been prosecuted. Many of the criminals who were on Potocari are still here, I know them."

Regarding the proceedings against the journalist Florence Hartmann before the Hague Tribunal on 14 November 2008, for her alleged publication of confidential decisions by the appeal council during the trial against Slobodan Miloševi%u0107, the human-rights organisations from successor states of the former Yugoslavia recall that the content of those decisions was the subject of numerous newspaper reports and public debates, following the February 2007 ruling of the International Court of Justice (ISJ) in Bosnia-Herzegovina’s suit against Serbia , and stress that it is not clear why Florence Hartmann should have ended up before the court at The Hague for seeking justice for Srebrenica genocide.
 

Prosecutors in the case had sought sentences totaling 150 years’ imprisonment. However, although the judge ruled that the men had helped round up civilians, he said it had not been proven that they were directly involved in the murders.

“This is a disgrace. While we are looking at mass graves all day long, verdicts like this are made. I’m very unsatisfied with the Bosnian courts,” Sabra Kolenovic, a member of the Mothers of Srebrenica group, told IWPR.

Defendants Zdravko Bozic, Zoran Zivanovic and Zeljko Zaric were released from detention immediately, despite the judge’s finding that they had helped to guard buses holding Bosniak men.

Several protected witness, known only by pseudonyms, said the defendants had guarded detained civilians in Srebrenica, and had also been guards of a column of around 30 buses that shipped the men out of the town of Bratunac.

Of Herman’s many dubious and outright false assertions about Srebrenica, one of the most contemptible is his attempt to make disappear from history the roughly 8000 Bosnian civilians massacred by Serbian forces. Some of his mystification is couched in slippery deniability, in a half-hearted attempt to deflect the criticism he deserves. But taken together, his comments comprise a clear endeavor at war-crimes denial.  Herman is perturbed that the estimated number of victims has stayed relatively constant around 8000. But this estimate has been documented in detail by several independent sources and has been accepted widely, from the corporate media to such progressive reporters as Amy Goodman of “Democracy Now” (Srebrenica 10th anniversary report, July 11, 2005). Though Herman uses misleading and out-of-date reports to cast doubt on the credibility of the lists of missing, he ignores the detailed documentation of the lists from several sources.