Balkan Witness: Bosnia

Noam Chomsky invited to give the annual Amnesty International Lecture in Belfast
October 30, 2009

Amnesty appears oblivious to the controversies that surround some of Chomsky’s views on human rights, and in particular the support that he has offered and continues to offer to polemicists who deny the substance, scope and authorship of the worst atrocities perpetrated during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. Without explanation, Chomsky characterises Ed Vulliamy’s description of Omarska and Trnopolje as “probably” wrong while at the same time he endorses the claim by Thomas Deichmann and LM magazine that Vulliamy, Penny Marshall, and Ian Williams gave a false account of the situation in the Prijedor camps as “probably” correct.

Open Letter to Amnesty International - The horror of what happened at Omarska and Trnopolje has been borne out by painful history, innumerable trials at the Hague, and - most importantly by far - searing testimony from the survivors and the bereaved. These were places of extermination, torture, killing, rape and, literally “concentration” prior to enforced deportation, of people purely on grounds of ethnicity. While Prof. Chomsky was not among those who first proposed the idea that these camps were a fake, he said many things, from his ivory tower at MIT, to spur them on and give them the credibility and energy they required to spread their poisonous perversion and denials of these sufferings. Chomsky comes with academic pretensions, doing it all from a distance, and giving the revisionists his blessing. And the revisionists have revelled in his endorsement. By Ed Vulliamy, October 2009

Open letter to Noam Chomsky and Amnesty International - The focus of our human rights organisation's work is the support that we give to minority groups who have been the victims of genocide and dispossession. You call genocide when it suits your ideological purposes. Who could condone the murkier aspects of American foreign policy or fail to condemn the way that policy has supported and encouraged crimes against humanity? But you express your criticism of the crimes of the recent past in a perverse way, that makes genocide the almost exclusive prerogative of organisations with close links to the US. It is only then that you consider it to be genocide. And it is only your political/ideological friends who are apparently incapable of committing genocide. By Tilman Zülch, President of the Society for Threatened Peoples, October 30, 2009

Chomsky's Bosnian Shame David Campbell dissects Chomsky's contradictory statements and misleading denials on the LM/ITN controversy. This article succinctly captures Chomsky's non-denial denials. Campbell is the author of Atrocity, Memory, Photography, a two-part article on the allegations concerning the filming of the Trnopolje inmates. November 16, 2009

Discussion of Edward Herman and David Peterson's open letter to Amnesty International. December 1, 2009

Related Publications of Amnesty International:

Bosnia-Herzegovina: How can they sleep at night? Arrest now! Can they sleep at night? The surviving victims or their relatives, who know that those who are responsible for the violations they endured remain at large? The international troops serving in Bosnia-Herzegovina, who know that every day they patrol areas where individuals suspected of committing genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of humanitarian law are at liberty? The international community, who demanded the establishment of the Tribunal after being horrified and outraged by these crimes, and who know that it will itself be judged by history if justice is not done? Ironically, those who are most likely to be able to sleep at night are those who perpetrated the crimes, knowing that their leaders will protect them and that the international community does not dare to arrest them for fear of the perceived difficulties which would result. By Amnesty International, September 30, 1997

Report on the ongoing search for justice by the victims of rape in Bosnia. Published on the heels of its announcement of the Chomsky lecture, by Amnesty International, September 30, 2009

Controversy over the interview with Chomsky in the Guardian (UK) October 31, 2005

Though flawed, the Guardian article by Emma Brockes had some interesting observations on Chomsky's attitude toward the Srebrenica massacre. The interview has been pulled from the Guardian's website but is available here.

In an earlier interview, Chomsky stated,

Srebrenica was an enclave, lightly protected by UN forces, which was being used as a base for attacking nearby Serb villages. It was known that there’s going to be retaliation. When there was a retaliation, it was vicious. They trucked out all the women and children, they kept the men inside, and apparently slaughtered them. The estimates are thousands of people slaughtered.

The key words here are "retaliation," "apparently," and "estimates"; the slaughter "apparently" took place; the thousands killed were mere "estimates"; they were, in any case, simply "retaliation" for earlier Muslim crimes. While Chomsky raises doubts about the fact and scale of the killings, he is absolutely categorical that they were retribution for earlier Muslim crimes - the slaughter apparently took place, but if it did, then it was definitely retaliation. See Marko Attila Hoare's discussion of the Guardian interview and Chomsky's position on Srebrenica, Chomsky’s Srebrenica Shame - and The Guardian’s, November 21, 2005

Protest to the Guardian Over “Correction” to Noam Chomsky Interview By a group of Bosnian genocide survivors, academics, journalists, and others with a specialization on the subject of the Bosnian war. December 8, 2005

Chomsky's Complaints Chomsky is liberal with his charges of ‘invented contexts’, but he is vague in stating what the inventions comprise. His statements fall squarely in the category of minimizing Bosnian Serb crimes - not by denying they took place but by deflating their moral significance. Letter to the Guardian editor by Oliver Kamm, November 15, 2005

Chomsky's Genocide Denial By Marko Attila Hoare, December 17, 2005

The Guardian, Noam Chomsky and the Milosevic Lobby The Guardian interview exposed Chomsky's position on the Srebrenica massacre, which Chomsky described as "probably overstated" and which he has minimized at various times and in various ways. The interview also cited him as saying that reports of Serb concentration-camps were "probably not true," and that claims that these camps had been deliberately invented by the Western media to demonize the Serbs were "probably correct." By Marko Attila Hoare, February 4, 2006

An overview of the whole affair

Srebrenica Documentary Background

NEW DNA Results Reveal the Identity of 6,186 Srebrenica Victims Through the use of DNA identity testing, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) has revealed the identity of 6,186 persons missing from the July 1995 fall of Srebrenica, by analyzing DNA profiles extracted from bone samples of exhumed mortal remains and matching them to the DNA profiles obtained from blood samples donated by relatives of the missing. The overall high matching rate between DNA extracted from these bone and blood samples leads ICMP to support an estimate of close to 8,100 individuals missing from the fall of Srebrenica. ICMP, July 9, 2009

The Work of the International Commission on Missing Persons ICMP provides forensic expertise to locate and identify victims of the wars in the Former Yugoslavia, including the Srebrenica massacre. To date the ICMP has positively identified about 3000 bodies of Srebrenica victims and has partial remains of about 1000 more. The ICMP still predicts that about 8000 were killed in the massacre. By Adam Boys, ICMP, in The Scotsman, March 14, 2007

On the Western role in the Srebrenica massacre:
> Srebrenica: a genocide foretold, by Sylvie Matton, 2005. Reviewed in Dani, March 3, 2006
> Interview with ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte, by Sylvie Matton, Paris-Match, November 2, 2006 (PDF, in French). Page 1 Pages 2-4 Ms. del Ponte claims that international observers and politicians knew of plans for mass murder in Srebrenica in advance.
> Holbrooke: 'I was under initial instructions to sacrifice Srebrenica, Zepa and Gorazde' Reference to Paris-Match article, November 2, 2006
> Del Ponte: Srebrenica plan was known to Internationals, by Caroline Fletscher, Der Tagesspiegel, November 2, 2006
> Report on Bosnian Murders Fuels Debate, by Mark Perelman, Jewish Daily Forward, November 10, 2006

Srebrenica Suspects Revealed 28,000 people, according to the Republika Srpska authorities, were directly or indirectly involved in the massacre.

Srebrenica’s search for justice
The discovery of a mass grave in August 2006 near Zvornik in eastern Bosnia containing the remains of 1,150 Bosnian victims of the Srebrenica massacre is only the most recent evidence of the scale of the atrocity perpetrated in and around the town in the days after 11 July 1995. By Peter Lippman, August 24, 2006

Focus on Srebrenica Suspects Profiles of defendants in largest joint trial ever seen at the Hague court. IWPR, July 7, 2006

Depositions given with the guilty pleas of two high-ranking Bosnian Serb officers who admitted to their participation in the planning and implementation of the Srebrenica massacre, and the subsequent burial and reburial of the victims' bodies:
Momir Nikolic, Chief of Intelligence and Security of the Bratunac Brigade during the Srebrenica executions in July 1995. May 6, 2003.
Dragan Obrenovic, acting commander of the Zvornik Brigade. May 20, 2003

The Interim Report (June 11, 2004, Word document) of the Republika Srpska (Bosnian Serb) government Commission for Investigation of the Events In and Around Srebrenica Between 10^th and 19^th July 1995; and the Final Report (Addendum) (October 15, 2004, PDF file).
   "The report itself admits and provides details of the plan and deliberate liquidation of thousands of Bosniaks [Muslims] by the Bosnian Serb forces," said Bernard Fassier, deputy to Bosnia's top international administrator. (As quoted by the Associated Press, Nov. 8, 2004.)

Military Analyst Richard Butler testified extensively at The Hague on Bosnian Serb military preparations for the Srebrenica massacre. His testimony (November 10-26, 2003) is indexed here.
His written reports are available in large PDF files. They include:
   Srebrenica Military Narrative, Operation Krijava 95 Nov. 1, 2002, 138 pages (8 MB PDF)
   Supporting documentation, 344 files, 85 MB (in two Zip files)
   VRS Brigade Command Responsibility Report Oct. 31, 2002, 40 pages (2.4 MB PDF)
   Supporting documentation, 37 files, 43 MB (in one Zip file)

Preliminary list of dead of the genocide at Srebrenica in 1995. Bosnia Federal Commission for Missing Persons, June 5, 2005

Beyond Reasonable Doubt, a documentary film produced by SENSE, examines evidence adduced from the judicial process. The film presents the testimony of victims, forensic experts and the confessions of several of the massacre’s perpetrators, side-by-side with the denials and revisionist interpretations that seek to minimize the scale of atrocity. Requires high-speed connection. 2005

NPR report June 3, 2005 (click on "listen")

Belgrade’s Srebrenica Connection, by Aleksandar Mitic, Transitions Online, June 6, 2005

SREBRENICA INVESTIGATION: Summary of Forensic Evidence – Execution Points and Mass Graves. May 16, 2000

Dean Manning witness statement on Srebrenica in Milosevic trial November 24, 2003

Dutch Reports:
Srebrenica: Reconstruction, background, consequences, and analyses of the fall of a safe area An extensive survey of the massacre, carried out by Dutch experts. (Click on "Table of Contents.") Long, wandering, unwieldy, coming to contradictory conclusions. -- Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD), April 10, 2002
   Summary of the conclusions from the Epilogue of the NIOD report April 10, 2002
   Owning Up to Srebrenica by Tim Judah, IWPR, April 12, 2002
   Dutch government resigns in wake of NIOD report April 16, 2002
   Dutch report is so broad that both prosecution and defence witnesses are using it IWPR, February 6, 2004

Dutch Parliamentary Report January 27, 2003
   Dutch Parliamentary Inquiry Fails to Answer Key Questions into Srebrenica Massacre January 31, 2003
   The Netherlands failed at Srebrenica - but so did NATO, Dutch ministers tell parliamentary inquiry IWPR, November 27, 2002

France criticises UN on Srebrenica French Parliamentary inquiry. BBC News, November 29, 2001

Bridges of Bone and Blood - identifying victims in Bosnia Scientists with the International Committee for Missing Persons (ICMP) identify remains of those killed at Srebrenica. This article discusses how they work, and provides explicit discussion of the Serbian practice of digging up mass graves and hiding the bodies elsewhere.
In downplaying the massacre, the war-crimes denier Edward Herman has written that he finds evidence of body removal and reburial "unconvincing." Radio Netherlands, July 11, 2005

All That Remains: Identifying the Victims of the Srebrenica Massacre A succinct summary of the Srebrenica massacre and the process of body identification. By Laurie Vollen, Human Rights Center, U.C. Berkeley, 2002

Two Srebrenica Survivors Lawsuits

1. A group of some 6,000 surviving relatives of the victims of the fall of the enclave of Srebrenica, has formed the group Mothers of Srebrenica. This group holds the State of the Netherlands and the United Nations jointly responsible for the fall of the enclave at Srebrenica and therefore liable for the death of their family members and the consequent loss suffered. The group has commenced legal proceedings in the Netherlands against the State of the Netherlands and the United Nations.

Click here for information on the lawsuit. (Follow links on right sidebar for details of the proceedings.)

2. Hasan Nuhanovic researched and documented the terrible events at Srebrenica in meticulous detail over more than 500 pages before taking his case to law, alongside a similar action brought by the family of the murdered electrician Rizo Mustafic.

A few days after the enclave fell to the Serb forces on 11 July 1995 the Dutch Blue Helmets were ordered by their government to leave Srebrenica, abandoning the defenseless Bosnians entrusted to their protection. The names of 8373 former inhabitants of the UN safe area who were murdered by the triumphant Serb forces and buried in mass graves are known. One of them, Hasan Nuhanovic's father, was recently identified from remains discovered in one of those mass graves. The fate of Hasan's mother and his brother remains unknown. Many of the mass graves were subsequently destroyed by Serb troops using bulldozers to conceal all evidence of the crime. The victims' remains were taken away and reburied elsewhere.

The Tragedy of the Nuhanovic Family:
Hasan Nuhanovic spent the night of 12-13 July 1995 with his parents and brother in an improvised office in the UNPROFOR support base at Potocari, on the outskirts of Srebrenica, taking orders from the Dutch officer Andre de Haan. De Haan, who was in the same room along with a doctor and a nurse, had been a guest of the family on a number of occasions and was fond of his mother's cooking. Even so, when news was received that nine men had been killed outside the UNPROFOR base no-one came forward to help the family about to be separated from one another, Nuhanovic remembers in the account he gives in his book "Under the UN Flag". The next morning, between 5 and 6 AM, de Haan said to him, "Hasan, tell your mother, your brother and your father that they must leave the base, now."

Court Rebuffs Srebrenica Survivors' Claim BIRN, September 10, 2008

More information:

Interview with attorney Liesbeth Zegveld discussing the case and in particular the reason the Nuhanovic/Mustafic cases are brought against the Dutch government and not against the UN (the Mothers of Srebrenica case is against both).
The interview with Liesbeth is followed by another with Ramesh Thakur, one of the people at the UN responsible for formulating the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine and discussing the implications of the case for its implementation.

Radio Student Slovenia's audio broadcast (in English) of Hasan's presentation describing the fall of Srebrenica. This is based on the research in "Under the UN Flag" and formed the basis of the presentation he gave the court. (Click on the center of the yellow diamond.)

Visual reminders of what the cases are all about:
Tarik Samarah's project "Srebrenica - genocide at the heart of Europe", displayed at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC
A poignant photomontage of Potocari

Read Under the UN Flag, by Hasan Nuhanovic - how the Dutch state and the United Nations abandoned the people of Srebrenica to genocide in July 1995.

Srebrenica: the search for a terrible truth goes on Hasan Nuhanovic has the eyes of a man who has seen too much. His day job is helping to pursue international sex traffickers. In the evenings and at weekends, he hunts for the remains of his murdered family. "There is no closure – closure only comes when we die," he says. "But I need to bury them." The Guardian, October 13, 2009

Articles on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre:

Srebrenica: Anatomy of a Massacre Ten years after the Srebrenica atrocity, tribunal investigators have been able to piece together a detailed picture of the planning and execution of the worst massacre on European soil since World War Two. By Michael Farquhar, IWPR, July 9, 2005

Dead and Missing from Srebrenica War-crimes deniers try to cast doubt on the 8,000 killed at Srebrenica. This article documents the validity of the official lists. By Andras Riedlmayer, July 19, 2005

Srebrenica: ten years on The Bosnian Serb massacre of around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in July 1995 has left deep wounds. Ed Vulliamy revisits the scenes of a terrible crime, meets families and survivors, and reports on the search for human remains and justice. July 6, 2005

Belgrade: war crimes in daily life A day’s walk in Serbia’s capital brings Dusan Velickovic closer to the emotional heart of a country still struggling to face the truth of its past. June 28, 2005

There was genocide in Srebrenica. And it continues to win… Michael Thieren expected a health emergency and found himself in a genocide zone. A decade on, the memory and the anger burn. July 11, 2005

The Village of the Widows The bereaved of Srebrenica are trying to rebuild their lives. But the massacre of their men and boys has doomed them demographically, economically and socially. Newsweek, July 12, 2005

IWPR coverage, July 6, 2005:

A Survivor’s Story Former prisoner tells how he escaped death at the hands of a Serb execution squad.

Most Victims Still Nameless Local forensic investigation teams attempt to return victims’ bodies to grieving relatives.

The Wall of Denial Despite mountains of evidence, many Serbs refuse to accept that a massacre took place.

A Painful Return A few thousand have courageously gone back to the Srebrenica area to rebuild their shattered lives.

- - - - - - - - - -

Books on Bosnia: From Srebrenica to the Middle Ages
A small British publisher teams up with the London-based Bosnian Institute to produce four valuable books on Bosnia.

Serbian concentration camps at Trnopolje and Omarska (Prijedor)

"Living Marxism": Poison in the well of history By Ed Vulliamy, The Guardian, March 15, 2000. Living Marxism magazine (LM), in denying reports on a Serbian-run concentration camp, accused a British TV station of distorting the truth about Bosnia. Mr. Vulliamy, who filed the first reports on the horrors of the Trnopolje camp, explains why these Serb apologists had to be defeated in court. For an index of coverage by The Guardian (U.K.), click here.

Guardian reports on libel trial, by Julia Hartley-Brewer, March 15, 2000:
High Stakes battle over Serbian guilt     ITN in £375,000 libel victory

See the British TV videos by Penny Marshall and Ian Williams, Channel 4 (ITN), August 1992
Rough footage filmed by ITN teams and other backup material on the Prijedor concentration camps
Shame of camp Omarska Expose of Serbian concentration camps in the Prijedor region, by Ed Vulliamy, August 7, 1992
"We can't forget" Survivors return to the concentration camp area 12 years later, by Ed Vulliamy, September 1, 2004

See also:

Living Marxism - Festering Fascism? by George Monbiot, Prospect Magazine, November 1998.

Dubious Sources, by David Walls, New Politics, summer 2002. (See the section "Weaving a Fabric of Deceit.")

Atrocity, memory, photography Imaging the concentration camps of Bosnia - the case of ITN versus Living Marxism. The article painstakingly demolishes LM's argument and reveals it to be a thin tissue of fabrications, distortions, and lies. Part 1 details the controversy surrounding the 1992 television image of Fikret Alic and others imprisoned at Trnopolje camp in Bosnia, demonstrating how doubts about its veracity were unsustainable. Part 2 explores the historical, political and visual context in which the particulars of the controversy are located. It explores what is involved in the concept of a 'concentration camp', as well as the nature of the Nazis' concentration camp system and the implications of this for the memory of the Holocaust and our understanding of contemporary atrocity. By David Campbell, Journal of Human Rights, March & June 2002.

Revisionism Will Cripple Bosnia's Future. By Nerma Jelacic, IWPR, October 1, 2004

Living Marxism (LM): a profile by LobbyWatch.

LM's lies about Bosnia have been picked up and redistributed by numerous supposedly reputable commentators, including Edward Herman.

Peter Brock: This advocate for Serbian nationalism is a favored source of Edward Herman and other war-crimes deniers. Brock's Foreign Policy article misrepresenting the Trnopolje camp and other Serbian atrocities is refuted in an article by Charles Lane and another by Michael Sells.

Empty Villages and Crowded Grave Yards Preserving Memory in “Ethnically Cleansed” Prijedor. By Patrick McCarthy, July 2007

Interview with Ed Vulliamy, the British reporter who reported on Serbian concentration camps in Northwest Bosnia. Radio KWMU, St. Louis, November 20, 2007 (audio)

‘I am waiting. No one has ever said sorry’ The writer returns to Bosnia on the occasion of the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, and interviews former concentration camp detainees. By Ed Vulliamy, The Guardian, July 26, 2008

Hundreds of thousands of pages of ICTY testimony with respect to the concentration camps at Trnopolje, Omarska, etc.

The Prijedor Report Description of concentration camps of Omarska, Keraterm, and Trnopolje. Annex V to the Final Report. United Nations Commission of Experts, December 28, 2004

From the Ashes: The Past and Future of Bosnia's Cultural Heritage The Serbian assault on Bosnia included the deliberate targeting and destruction of cultural, religious, and historic landmarks by nationalist extremists. By András Riedlmayer, 2002 (PDF)

Mujahedin in Bosnia A more realistic treatment of the subject than that provided by the hysterical propaganda tracts that have unfortunately clouded our understanding. By Marko Hoare, Bosnia Report, July 2007.

The Serbian Unity Congress and the Serbian Lobby A Study of Contemporary Revisionism and Denial. By Brad Blitz, October 1994

Greek role in Bosnia

   Three short videos on Greece and the war in the former Yugoslavia, by a Dutch journalist
      Part 1 (See especially at 7 minutes, 20 seconds)
      Part 2 (See especially at 1 minute)
      Part 3

   Greek journalist Takis Michas sued for writing about Greek paramilitaries in Bosnia Congress of North American Bosniaks, August 5, 2009
   The Greek Way Links to more information and a video on the involvement of Greece in the Srebrenica massacre and the Yugoslav wars. By Ingeborg Beugel, 2008

   Kosovo Serb Refugees: Unimportant Detail or The Real Ethnic Cleansing? Panayote Dimitras, Greek Helsinki Monitor, July 2, 1999 (On Greek attitudes toward Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and an examination of Greek and Serbian anti-Muslim attitudes.)

Historical Background Documents Commentary Non-violent Solutions

Reports from the Area of Conflict Kosovo Albanians in Serbian Prisons

Post-War Kosovo Post-War Serbia    Post-War Bosnia

Kosovo Independence

Croatia Macedonia Bosnia

Special compilation: the Racak Massacre
The Milosevic War-Crimes Trial
War-crimes Deniers
Srebrenica Debate

Balkan Witness Home Page

LETTERS from KOSOVO and BOSNIA, by PETER LIPPMAN

RELATED INFORMATIONAL SITES   RELIEF ORGANIZATIONS

AUDIO and VIDEO   BOOKS   MAPS

SEARCH BALKAN WITNESS

Contact Balkan Witness

Report broken links