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Last modified September 18, 2022

Serbian denial of Serb war crimes in Bosnia continues, even after the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre. This denial is endorsed and abetted by various Western commentators, even including some supposedly in the progressive community.

Here we examine some common misrepresentations of Serbian war crimes in Bosnia.

“The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.”
             --William Faulkner

 

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Srebrenica

Visegrad

Numbers of Bosnian War Dead

Greek role in the Bosnia conflict


Prijedor Serbian concentration camps at Trnopolje and Omarska

The case of Bosnia v. Serbia: International Court of Justice decision

Guardian (UK) interview with Noam Chomsky

Destruction of Bosnia's Cultural Heritage

BIRN Presents Database as Tool to Educate and Counter Revisionism The new database of adjudicated facts on the 1992-5 war in Bosnia is designed as an educational tool that will also counter revisionist narratives and genocide denial. Balkan Transitional Justice, April 6, 2022
See the database (In Bosnian. Use Google Translate for English.)

Places of suffering and places of remembrance Documentation from wartime Bosnia, including large searchable database and photos, 1991-1995 Downloadable PDF Center for Nonviolent Action, Sarajevo and Belgrade, 2016

Mladic War Diaries The documents show how Serbia almost entirely funded the Bosnian Serb military forces. It is clear from the diaries that the Republika Srpska Army was created on the basis of a plan designed in the cabinet of then Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. Southeast European Times, August 5, 2010
See also:
The day when British justice humbled the British and Serbian governments
The most spectacular, and historically most important, event in Ejup Ganic's trial was Serbia's formal admission that up to May 15, 1992 the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was an international military conflict, in which the Yugoslav Army fought under Belgrade's command - an official, written Serbian admission that it was a case of an "international armed conflict in which two concerned parties took part, namely Bosnia-Herzegovina on one side and Serbia on the other." Bosnian Institute News (London), August 21, 2010

Sontag in Sarajevo Susan Sontag wrote to a German friend that “to go to Sarajevo now is a bit like what it must have been to visit the Warsaw Ghetto in late 1942.” A Bosnian theater director said that she was the first international person who said publicly that what is happening in Bosnia in 1993 was a genocide. Adapted from Sontag: Her Life and Work, by Benjamin Moser, September 2019

Genocide on the Drina A book by Edina Becirevic, 2009. The book begins with the basics about genocide in the first chapter and then gives a historical overview of genocide in the Balkans. Special emphasis is placed upon Serb nationalist programs from the 19th century, ranging from the Serb nationalist politician Ilija Garašin's program to the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Memorandum from 1986 in the second chapter. The third chapter deals with the Bosnian Serb modus operandi in committing the Bosnian Genocide. The fourth chapter is the most important one; in it the author explains in detail how genocide was committed in 10 towns in Eastern Bosnia in 1992/93. The fifth chapter deals with modern-day Bosnia and the common issue of post-genocidal societies: denial of committed crimes.

In the past years the spotlight has been almost exclusively on the Srebrenica genocide, which suits many political and intellectual circles in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. The "genocidal processes" in other areas from 1992-1995, as the author puts it, are completely forgotten and even denied. Unlike other authors, Edina has the courage to use the term "genocide" instead of the jaded term "ethnic cleansing" to explain the events in Eastern Bosnia in 1992/93, which were the systematic destruction, murder, and rape of Bosniaks. The author's central thesis is that genocide in Eastern Bosnia started in 1992 in several towns such as Zvornik, Bratunac, Vlasenica, Visegrad, Rogatica, Foca and Srebrenica. The author provides us with new details of Serb genocidal bureaucratic policies such as the ordering of the establishment of the infamous Susica concentration camp, which she substantiated with an original document ordering its formation, as well as orders for the expulsion of the Muslim inhabitants of Birac. She also pays special attention to the "slow genocide" in Srebrenica, where tens of thousands of starving Bosnian Muslims were kept under siege, and to the raids carried out in quest for food in surrounding militarized Serb villages. She clearly notes: "The defenders of Srebrenica were under constant pressure from starving people who protested on a daily basis, in front of the war presidency in Srebrenica, asking for organized action to gather food."

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


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War-crimes Deniers    Srebrenica Debate
 

 


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