FAIR Misrepresents
the Racak Massacre
By Roger Lippman
April
30, 2001
In
a Media Advisory of February 1, 2001, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)
misrepresents the 1999 Serbian killings of 45 residents of Racak, Kosovo.
(
DOUBTS ON MASSACRE: Media Ignore Questions About Incident That Sparked
Kosovo War )
FAIR's article alleges that there is “new evidence casting doubt on claims
that the bodies were civilian victims of a massacre” and attributes the first-hand
source for that information to a recently-published report by a Finnish team of forensic
pathologists hired by the European Union to investigate the deaths. According to e-mail I
have from Rachel Coen of FAIR’s staff, that report was published in the issue of Forensic
Science International dated February 15, 2001.
FAIR’s article is erroneous or misleading in the following ways:
1.
It misrepresents the content of the Forensic Science International article.
2.
It is at odds with substantial previous credible documentation on the Racak
incident.
3.
Information released since the publication of FAIR’s article also contradicts
the article’s position.
4.
There are numerous errors of detail in the article.
5.
The Berliner Zeitung article on which FAIR’s was largely based also
contains many errors and distortions.
1. The Forensic Science International report contains nothing new and does
not cast doubt on there having been a massacre of civilians.
There is nothing in
this
report that contradicts either earlier reports by this team or public statements by
the team leader, Dr. Helena Ranta, who has described the killings as “a crime against
humanity.” Since FAIR neither cited the report by title nor offered any quotations
from it, it is difficult to know what the basis is for FAIR’s characterization of the
report as saying that “there
is no evidence of a massacre” at Racak.
The report,
published in a scholarly journal, is highly technical. Most of the report is devoted to
recounting the scientific methods and observations of the pathology team. In the
report’s final section, the authors make certain observations regarding their role as
pathologists. They write,
The function of
forensic investigation is the detailed and skilled documentation of biological facts. It
is partly on the basis of these objective documents that the responsible authorities can
draw their conclusions. Besides the documentation of findings, the forensic investigation
of victims in political or ethnic conflict is reasonable because the investigation defines
the probabilities and can eliminate certain versions of events. The definition of the
course of events consists of many elements. Speculation about different possibilities can
be directed more justifiably when certain limits are imposed, including those
circumscribed by medical data.
The team of pathologists, accustomed to
preparing evidence for legal proceedings, attempted to avoid characterizing the killings
in a political way. The report is meant to provide evidence, not to arrive at final
conclusions on the basis of that evidence. A complete explanation of what happened has to
be sought elsewhere. An unfortunate result of the pathologists’ circumspection was
that the report was left open to manipulation and distortion by those seeking support for
their political agenda.
2. Previous documentation supports the conclusion that Serbs massacred Albanian
civilians at Racak.
Reported information on Racak needs to
be understood in a context, established by the following events:
A. Immediately
after the Racak killings, Human Rights Watch conducted an extensive investigation,
interviewing numerous witnesses. The resulting report was published within two weeks of
the killings, on January 29, 1999. That report accused Serbian special police forces and
the Yugoslav army of “indiscriminately attacking civilians, torturing detainees, and
committing summary executions. The evidence suggests that government forces had direct
orders to kill village inhabitants over the age of fifteen." Yet, FAIR makes no
reference to the HRW report.
B. In mid-March
1999, the Finnish team of forensic pathologists released a summary of its findings. The
team attempted to limit its report to the physical evidence. The report included evidence
that the victims were unarmed civilians, not soldiers. The team leader, too, described the
dead as unarmed civilians, including older men and a woman, who had all been killed at the
same time. Under pressure from insistent reporters to reveal her own conclusions, she
stated that the killings were “a crime against humanity.” Nothing said or
published by any members of the team has contradicted that statement.
The following
statement within the report has been taken out of context by the Yugoslav government and
its supporters:
The Racak events have been described as a
"massacre." However, such
a conclusion does not fall within the competence of the European Union forensic team or
any other person having participated solely in the investigation of the bodies. The term
"massacre" ... is a legal description of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of
persons as judged from comprehensive analysis of all available information.
This statement, like the rest of the report,
cannot plausibly be read as doubting that a massacre took place at Racak.
C. Serbian
forces had committed many mass killings of Kosovo Albanian civilians in the year preceding
the Racak killings. This information is readily available. See, for example,
Violations of the Rules of War by Government Forces
and
Violations in the Yugoslav-Albania Border Region
(Both are reports by Human Rights Watch.)
D.
Evidence
suggests that the Racak massacre was ordered not by local renegade commanders but
by the head of the Yugoslav Ministry of the Interior forces in Kosovo.
3. Subsequent information also
supports the conclusion
that Serbs massacred Albanian civilians at Racak.
Early in 2001, the European Union
released an Executive Summary of the work of the Finnish team from January 1, 1999, to
June 30, 2000. That document describes the team’s work at Racak. Significantly, it
describes investigation at the gully where 23 Albanian bodies were found. While Yugoslav
government sources have claimed that the bodies were arranged there after a battle, this
document reports that bullets were found in the ground as deep as 15 cm., directly below
the locations of the bodies, indicating that the Albanians were killed where they were
found.
Recently, Dr. Ranta has reiterated
the conclusions she announced two years ago.
In an interview
reported in two articles in the March 10, 2001 issue of the
respected Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, she characterizes the Berliner
Zeitung article and similar articles as “nonsense.” She completely rules out
the Serbian scenario, that the Albanians were KLA soldiers. Rather, she says that her team
found that the victims were unarmed civilians, countering the Berliner Zeitung
article’s claim that “the
Finnish investigators could not establish that the victims were civilians, whether they
were from Racak, or even exactly where they had been killed.”
4. Additional problems with
FAIR’s Media Advisory
Paragraph 1:
“New
evidence casting doubt on claims that the bodies were civilian victims of a massacre
…”
FAIR
cites no new evidence anywhere in this article. In paragraph 7, FAIR asserts that a new
report (presumably in Forensic Science International) finds that “there is no
evidence of a massacre,” but does not quote the report, and the report says no such
thing. FAIR states that “there has been a virtual blackout on the news in the U.S.
press,” but there was actually no news, no new development, and nothing to report.
FAIR
reported
on the opinion of the Berliner Zeitung reporters, and if FAIR's writers had read
their source and been familiar with
other available information on Racak, including the Human Rights Watch report, FAIR would
have recognized the inaccuracy of their report. FAIR's claim that there is "new
evidence" is a false statement.
Paragraph 5:
FAIR quotes a 1999 Berliner Zeitung article, which says, “the Racak bodies
‘were not-- as Walker declared-- victims of a Serbian massacre of civilians,’
but were mostly KLA fighters killed in battle.”
However,
both the HRW and Finnish reports concluded that the victims were civilians who had been
killed wearing civilian clothes, not KLA uniforms as alleged by the Yugoslav government.
Paragraph 7:
“After the massacre, the European Union hired a Finnish team of forensic pathologists
to investigate the deaths. Their report was kept secret until now, two years later.”
A
summary of the Finnish report was presented to the media March 17, 1999. The complete
report was at that time provided not only to the European Union, but also to the Institute
of Forensic Medicine at the University of Pristina and to the Pristina District Court,
both of which were then controlled by the Serbian government. (If the Finnish report in
any way supported the Yugoslav position, one would expect that the report would have been
quoted or released by the Yugoslavs.) The European Union provided a copy to the
International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia. Subsequent visits to Racak by the forensic
team, as described above, provided more data, and a supplementary report was submitted to
the ICTY on June 21, 2000.
The
report referred to in paragraph 7 was not the official report of the Finnish team but
rather a journal article. That article was not kept secret until now. It was submitted to Forensic
Science International on May 8, 2000, and it was subsequently revised and
accepted for publication.
Paragraph 8:
“According to the Berliner Zeitung (1/16/01), the Finnish investigators could
not establish that the victims were civilians, whether they were from Racak, or even
exactly where they had been killed.”
This Berliner
Zeitung report is based simply on an inaccurate reading of the Forensic Science
International article. FAIR’s use of this quotation suggests that FAIR has not
read the FSI article. Dr. Ranta explicitly refuted this argument in recent
interviews,
stating that the
victims were
civilians.
She made that statement in March 1999, and she repeated it in the March 2001 Dutch
interview. For FAIR to claim that a report says the opposite of what the lead investigator
says it means is absurd.
Paragraph 9:
“The Berliner Zeitung also reports that these findings were completed as early
as June 2000, but that their publication had been blocked by the UN and the EU.”
Findings
that the victims were in fact civilians were made by March 1999. Subsequent visits to
Racak by the forensic team established further details of the killings that were
incorporated in a report completed in July 2000.
Paragraph 10:
“Except for one brief wire story from United Press International (1/18/01), not a
single U.S. media outlet has run a story on the Finnish team's findings. News outlets
continue to refer to the Racak massacre without qualification, despite the cloud of
uncertainty hanging over the story.”
Again,
perhaps this lack of press coverage is because there really is no uncertainty about Racak,
except that which has been spread by Yugoslav government propaganda.
Paragraph 12:
“A recent Philadelphia Inquirer story (1/23/01) about Yugoslavia's
relationship with the war crimes tribunal at The Hague claimed that 'Serbs refuse to
accept the world's vision of them as aggressors,’ and noted that Yugoslav president
Vojislav Kostunica ‘alleges the killings [at Racak] were staged to look like a
massacre to embarrass Yugoslavia.’ The Finnish team's findings about Racak, which
prompted Kostunica's recent allegations, went unmentioned.”
The
Finnish team’s findings may have gone unmentioned because they could not possibly
have provided a justification for Kostunica’s allegations.
Read accurately, they discredit Kostunica's statement.
5. Further Inaccuracies in the Berliner Zeitung article
The
Berliner Zeitung article quoted by FAIR also says, “Mrs.
Ranta repeated to the EU officials what she said to a Berliner Zeitung cooperating
Canadian journalist - far away from the interested European public: that her research did
not support the official version of a mass execution; that she did not know what really
happened in Racak.”
I
asked Dr. Ranta by e-mail about this statement, and she responded, as she has said
publicly, “I have
refused to use the word "massacre" because it is basically a legal description
and its use should be restricted to the court.”
She said that the Canadian journalist’s misinterpretation may have its roots
in this statement.
The
Berliner Zeitung also claims that autopsy protocols leaked to the
paper show that there were not executions at Racak – a position that Dr. Ranta has
repeatedly refuted.
In the March 2001 interview cited above, Dr. Ranta describes the Berliner
Zeitung article as “nonsense” and rebuts its conclusions.
It is unfortunate
that FAIR has joined such right-wing sources as
Free Republic and
Reagan.com in endorsing the Berliner
Zeitung's false, misleading, ideology-driven article.
[A translation of the Berliner
Zeitung article can be found here.]
Conclusions
The true nature of the Serbian killings of Albanian civilians at Racak was well
established by the Human Rights Watch report published just two weeks after the killings.
That report was substantiated by the various reports from the EU Forensic Expert Team and
the public remarks of Dr. Ranta, the team leader. Recently, Dr. Ranta has been even more
explicit in stating that the victims were unarmed civilians.
FAIR’s media advisory does not even mention the Human Rights Watch report or
the public comments of Dr. Ranta.
It is not surprising that the perpetrators of the killings of civilians, namely
Serbian forces, would deny their deeds or obfuscate them with propaganda and false (if
plausible) theories. And it’s not surprising that Yugoslav government claims would be
given credence by some journalists.
It is surprising, however, that FAIR would essentially repeat the allegations of
one new article, with virtually no investigation or discussion of the broader,
incriminating context. With this widely distributed report, FAIR places itself firmly in
the camp of Serbian apologists, modern-day war-crimes deniers, sensationalist or careless
journalists, and right-wing isolationists.
The
denial of the Racak massacre serves more than one purpose for the Yugoslav propagandists.
The many other massacres committed in Kosovo by Serbian forces are thus denied by
omission. If the issue is just Racak, a concerted propaganda campaign can confuse a lot of
people. But Racak was only one among many similar atrocities.
The clinical descriptions in the new report cannot be interpreted as casting
doubt on the actuality of a massacre. Rather, they must be understood in the context of
the comments made by the forensic team leader at the time of the release of the team's
report, in March 1999. Dr. Ranta's remarks can be heard at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/295000/audio/_298317_ranta.ram and
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/295000/audio/_298317_rowland.ram.
I am certainly aware of the unsavory role William Walker has played as an
instrument of U.S. policy, especially in Central America. But in this case, most of his
observations have been confirmed by HRW and the Finnish team. If a tree falls in the
forest and William Walker sees it, does that mean the tree didn’t fall?
At the end of the media advisory, FAIR writes: “We especially appreciate
documented example of media bias or censorship.” With FAIR’s biased coverage of
the Racak killings, and its censorship of the numerous reports that contradict its own,
I’m afraid that in this case FAIR needs to look no further than its own shop.
The
Nigerian author Wole Soyinka, former president of the International Parliament of Writers,
decried activity like FAIR's as:
a
world that turns a blind eye to the structured violation of its kind, and then goes
further to insult the claims and duty of memory by the manipulation of language, inventing
a syntax of denial in the testaments of reality.
The
appropriate thing for FAIR to do now, after verifying the information provided above, is
to issue a retraction and distribute it as widely as the original media advisory.
[Update 7-20-2001]
The author provided FAIR with the information
above. In
response, FAIR concedes that forensic investigators determined that "physical
evidence was consistent with a massacre." However, the response disregards most of
the available reports on Racak and concludes that
the
question of what really happened at the Kosovo village of Racak is still unresolved. With
this statement, FAIR has dropped its pretense of media criticism on the Racak question and
has engaged itself in spreading confusion about the issue.
|