Sunday, July 14, 2013

The Big Lie

Two months ago, I wrote about a horrifying feature of Yugoslavia II (1945-1991): the moral equivalence the regime of Josip Broz Tito imposed between the royalist Serbs and the Nazi Croats (both Catholic and Muslim).

The very real genocide (entirely fitting Lemkin's definition) of Serbs in the "Independent State of Croatia" (NDH) was thus systematically minimized and suppressed, while the royalists ("Chetniks") were accused of massacring Croat and Muslim civilians and open collaboration with the Nazis. The West participated in this cover-up, partly to prop Tito's regime as a wedge in the Eastern Bloc, but also to protect the Roman Catholic Church, whose clergy backed the NDH.

Thanks to the suppression of truth about the NDH, Croat exiles were able to impose the myth of their own suffering at Communist hands (e.g. Bleiburg, Cardinal Stepinac) as a foundation of an independent Croatia proclaimed in 1991 (and forcibly "cleansed" of Serbs by 1995, with Empire's help). Part and parcel of this was a media operation in the early 1990s, by which the heirs of NDH were presented as victims, and their intended victims as executioners:
"...the Croatian and Bosnian past was marked by a real and cruel anti-semitism. Tens of thousands of Jews perished in Croatian camps. So there was every reason for intellectuals and Jewish organizations to be hostile towards the Croats and Bosnians. Our challenge was to reverse this attitude. And we succeeded masterfully." (James Harff or Ruder Finn, 1993 interview
This went beyond "reversing the attitude" of Jewish organizations; through the legerdemain of perception management, the very real Nazi connections of Croats, "Bosnians" (i.e. Bosnian Muslims) and later Albanians - during the 1999 attack on Serbia - transformed into the entirely fabricated "Serb fascism" in the Western public opinion. Vile screeds such as "Serbia's Secret War" and "Heavenly Serbia: From Myth to Genocide" were just the tip of the propaganda iceberg.
What you see vs. what happens (source unknown)
Not only did this whitewash the Holocaust, it manufactured a cover for its continuation, this time under Imperial sanction. The outcome of NATO's "Deliberate Force" (1995) and "Allied Force" (1999) was arguably worse than of Hitler's "Strafgericht" (1941): there are hardly any Serbs left in today's Croatia, while those that survived 14 years of ethnic cleansing, pogroms, murder, rape and worse in Albanian-occupied Kosovo are now being forced to submit to KLA rule. Serbia itself has a quisling government far worse than the puppet regime of General Nedić. Only in Bosnia did the Serbs manage to defend their rights, though the political assault on them shows no sign of abating.

Part of that assault have been the "war crimes" trials of the entire political and military leadership of the Bosnian Serbs. The ICTY, a "court" conjured by the Empire for the purpose of legitimizing its Balkans meddling, is insisting that the Bosnian Serbs committed "genocide" against the Muslims. Not in a general sense, mind you, but in seven or so municipalities, cherry-picked by the prosecutors. Both this, and classifying what happened in (or rather, outside) Srebrenica in 1995 as genocide are patently absurd.

The actually legitimate ICJ ruled in 2007 against the claim of "municipal genocide". Last year, the ICTY "judges" dropped that particular charge against wartime Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadžić. This week, an appeals panel led by ICTY president Theodor Meron, reinstated the charge - on July 11 no less, the date Muslims mark as the anniversary of "genocide" in Srebrenica.

Political symbolism? Marlise Simons (see here) of the New York Times thinks so:
"By scheduling the hearing on what has become a sacred date for Bosnian Muslims, the presiding judge, Theodor Meron, seemed to want to send a message to the war’s survivors as he recited an usually long and gruesome list of atrocities committed against Muslim civilians and prisoners of war." (emphasis added)
However, among the "evidence" cited by Meron is the following:
"...there was evidence from meetings attended by Karadzic in the early 1990s 'that it had been decided that one third Muslims would be killed, one third would be converted to the Orthodox religion and a third will leave on their own'."
Lest you think this is Al-Jazeera editorializing, Simons cites the same passage in her NYT article. So does Carol Williams of the LA Times. And here it is, in the official ICTY press release:
"For example, the Appeals Chamber observed that the Trial Chamber received evidence that in meetings with Karadžić “it had been decided that one third of Muslims would be killed, one third would be converted to the Orthodox religion and a third will leave on their own” and thus all Muslims would disappear from Bosnia." 
If this is what it considers "evidence," the ICTY ought to disband itself immediately, disbar all its judges and prosecutors, and sentence itself to whatever is appropriate for contempt of court and obstruction of justice. Because this particular claim is a word-for-word plagiarism (with names changed) of a statement made by Mile Budak, Nazi Croatia's minister of culture, in a 1941 speech about Croatian plans for the Serbs. 

Nor can ICTY "judges" claim ignorance of this fact, because the original statement by Budak was quoted in the Karadžić "trial" not two months ago, by Nenad Kecmanović (testifying on May 31 this year, official transcript, end of p. 7133).

Take a minute for this to sink in. Not only is a political court, acting on political instructions, fabricating a political accusation for political purposes, the false evidence it cites to accuse the Serbs of genocide is based on a Croatian Nazi plan to commit a genocide of Serbs. This isn't just blaming the victim, this is blaming the victim in order to absolve the actual culprit.

And not a single Western journalist covering the "trial" has noticed this.

Still think the media have anything to do with the truth? That ICTY has anything to do with either truth or justice? Why?

4 comments:

Сербство said...

Mile Budak's statement was also used by Muamer Zukorlic on Al Jazeera http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-fo6Ji3XjA

Unknown said...

This is truly shocking. Any student of the Holocaust will be familiar with the horrific Croatian Mile Budak quote in 1941. Then to see it attributed to Radovan Kradazic by the press is almost surreal. This is propaganda at a new level never witnessed before in history.

Asteri said...

Its worth checking out the work of David B. Macdonald on the subject 1990s Yugoslav wars propaganda. He is certainly no Serbophile, but nor is he any Croatophile either. There is lots to take issue with (he says he doesnt think the Ustase treatment of Serbs was genocide, but is open to being proved wrong) but he is about as neutral as you're going to get.

Interestingly he devotes some time debunking Philip J. Cohen's book which he describes as 'revisionist propaganda' and even quotes Cohen admitting he has no evidence to back up his claims. There is also a discussion of Ljubica Stefan's work which is in the same vein.

Macdonald basically rejects the idea that anyone in the former Yu can draw parallels to their experiences to the Holocaust.

Teddy said...

I would remind Meron & his cronies that are spreading their fairy tales of genocide that thousands upon thousands of Bosnian Muslims fought along side the Bosnian Serbs against the fascist regime in Sarajevo.