Wednesday, February 23, 2005

With malice for Tadic

Reporting on last week's visit by Serbian president Boris Tadic to Kosovo, AFP took care to note that “Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian-dominated government has barely acknowledged Tadic’s visit and there were no plans for him to meet any local officials.”

Reuters claimed that “Kosovo’s Albanian prime minister Ramush Haradinaj—whom Serbia has branded a war criminal—left the province before Tadic arrived.”

But the New York Times – or rather, its European avatar, the International Herald Tribune – published a hatchet job on February 15, berating Tadic for “giving [Kosovo’s] majority Albanians little overt sign of the kind of reconciliation that would be needed for a lasting solution” and “deliberately [having] no meetings with leaders of the majority Albanian community.”

The NYT/IHT reporter Nicholas Wood also quoted Albanian media, who described Tadic as a “criminal” and objected that he “did not ask for forgiveness for all the crimes that the Serbs have done in this country.” Furthermore, the article was rife with insinuations and outright lies about Kosovo (such as the “10,000 Albanians killed”), exemplifying the worst kind of official propaganda. Given the Reuters and AFP reports cited earlier, presenting Tadic’s visit as deliberately snubbing Albanians was not only dishonest, but untrue.

The Associated Press also chose to interpret the visit maliciously. “President’s Visit Fuels Tensions,” the headlines proclaimed, going on to say that “U.N. officials had hoped the visit by Boris Tadic would promote reconciliation… [but] Tadic’s declarations that Serbia would never accept an independent Kosovo angered ethnic Albanians.”

Also, the AP questioned Tadic's practice of handing out "giant" Serbian flags to enclaves he visited. Why should the Serbs not have a right to fly their own flag, in their own country? Albanians fly the flag of Albania proper, and UNMIK, AP or anyone else says not a word.

To repeat something I said a little while ago, this isn't double standards - it's no standards at all.

3 comments:

CubuCoko said...

I am providing direct links: I reference stuff I've written before on Antiwar.com, and most of the links on Serbianna are wire reports - AP, Reuters, AFP, etc. Of course, if the only sources you trust are Epoka e Re and Bota Sot, then you're out of luck here...

Marco1978 said...

The problem is not how to verify Gray Falcon's sources. His own experience and his writings in the last five years are a much more reliable track record than what the disgraceful Western writers can boast about, with very very few exceptions of course. All the facts of what happened from 1991 and even before to today in Serbia and Jugoslavija oops Yugoslavia for Western ignorants, as I used to be, are extremely easy to check but what's needed is, in my view, the will to read the sources from Serbia, the right ones. And also the websites that tell people the truth about the Serbian version of events by using Western sources, yes Western! If there's no will to check the Serbian sources as Gray Falcon said, then you obviously do not wish to know the truth. Gray Falcon, is there a way (through Antiwar.com, for example) to find an e-mail address that can be used to contact you directly? Thank you for your writings, they are a real wake-up call. The blog is great too

CubuCoko said...

The easiest way to reach me is to send an email to backtalk@antiwar.com, and they will forward it on.
Thank you for your support!