A Foundation of Lies

For years, the "Srebrenica Genocide Blog" has been dedicated to the shrill repetition of the official line about what happened in July of 1995: a "genocide" of innocent Muslim civilians, brutally slaughtered by evil Serbs, to hear them tell it.

Just below the main title, in bold block letters, the SGB proclaims:

SREBRENICA GENOCIDE IS NOT A MATTER OF ANYBODY'S OPINION; IT'S A JUDICIAL FACT RECOGNIZED FIRST BY THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA AND SUBSEQUENTLY BY THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE.

Oh, is it now?

The Bosnian Muslims have claimed "genocide" since 1993, when the Izetbegovic regime filed a suit before the International Court of Justice (urged by judicial activist Francis Boyle) against Serbia (FR Yugoslavia). None of the "evidence" they offered stood up to ICJ's scrutiny, except for Srebrenica - and even that was never examined by the ICJ, merely assumed as true based on ICTY's ruling.

John Laughland asked the obvious question, just the other day:

But what is the evidence for the finding that genocide was committed at Srebrenica? I am not asking this question in the useful sense in which it has been asked (and answered) by investigators such as Jonathan Rooper. I am asking what evidence was submitted in court at the ICTY in support of this uniquely successful claim.

Turns out that Germinal Civikov, a Bulgarian who lives in The Hague and Cologne, has written a book about the whole case. Laughland describes the findings of “Srebrenica: Der Kronzeuge” (Wien: Promedia, 2009, in German) as "devastating":

Civikov explains that the ICTY ruling that genocide was committed at Srebrenica on the orders of the Bosnian Serb leadership is based on the testimony of a single witness, a self-confessed perpetrator of one of the massacres called Drazen Erdemovic.

Erdemovic claimed he was part of a unit that executed some 1200 Muslim civilians in the course of one night. They were taken off the buses in groups of ten, and shot in a nearby field. Civikov did the math, and came to the obvious conclusion: even if it took 10 minutes to kill each group, the executions would have taken twenty hours, not five. They would have had to shoot a group every 2.5 minutes to maintain the pace, and that left no time for "arguments... between the executioners and the victims" or for the executioners to "drink and quarrel," as Erdemovic described. Yet he kept telling this story over and over to the ICTY, despite the fact that it was physically impossible.

Not letting facts get in the way of a good story has been a feature of the Bosnian War from the very beginning. Remember the story of Borislav Herak, who claimed (coached by his Muslim captors) that he saw the Canadian General Lewis McKenzie at an alleged "rape camp" near Sarajevo? McKenzie was not even in Bosnia at that time, and the claim has been demonstrated over and over to be complete and utter rubbish - but every so often the Muslims dig it up and serve it anew, and the press just gobbles it up.

Then there is the story of Momir Nikolic, a Serb officer who collaborated with the ICTY and - caught in perjury - admitted making things up in his testimonies. A reporter for a pro-Tribunal propaganda outfit (which, incidentally, is linked prominently on the SGB) dared challenge the ICTY's plea-bargaining system over the incident, and got fired. Nikolic's false testimony was not only not overturned on account of perjury, but used to convict several other Serb officials!

Erdemovic, described by Civikov as a "pathological liar," served ICTY's purpose perfectly. He spun a story, pointed fingers, got a symbolic conviction and was given a new life in the West. Meanwhile, based on his testimony, a bloody episode of the Bosnian War was branded "genocide," an entire nation was demonized because of it, and even the ICJ was duped into believing the ICTY verdict was legitimate.

Turns out the "judicial fact" is very much a "matter of opinion," after all.

Manufacturing Guilt

Commenting on Shirking Duty, Predrag writes:

The Serbs are generally conflict shame [sic] people, which will say it is very important for us not to offend even our enemies (up to a certain point). It may sound ridiculous but here are a couple of examples.
Even after all this wars that happened during the past decade I still have some “friends” of other Balkan nations. When I visit them at their homes, it is totally normal for them to have dozens of items showing their national insignia in their homes and they are proud about it. Serbs are different, when they are having a visit from a friend of another Balkan nationality; they tend to hide their national insignia so their visitor is not offended by it.

I've observed this phenomenon firsthand. It's perfectly OK to be a Slovenian, Croat, Albanian, "Bosniak" (whether with the lilacs or with the crescents, "Montenegrin" (of the Doclean kind) or whatnot, but God forbid you have an icon on the wall, let alone a flag or anything actually remotely national. It's perfectly OK for them to talk how they were "oppressed" and "victims of genocide," but when a Serb mentions politics that's "hurting their feelings."

Well, too bad. For them, I mean.

Here's how I riddle this. The whole conflict-avoidance/shame thing is an inferiority complex manufactured after WW2 to make the Serbs governable. Historically, Serbs are a tough lot to rule. Those princes and kings that ended up merely in exile were fortunate.

Consider also that the Communist Party of Yugoslavia had an overtly anti-Serb platform; their principal enemy was "greater Serbian bourgeoisie," i.e. the crown and the merchants/free peasants that supported it. Originally (at least since its 1928 congress in Dresden), the CPY championed the abolition of Yugoslavia and the "liberation" of Croats, Slovenians, Macedonians, Montenegrins... oh, and the annexation of "Kosova" to Albania (that's a subject for another article...). The Nazis did exactly that in 1941, but by 1945 - thanks to Soviet and British support - the Communists found themselves in possession of Yugoslavia. Suddenly dividing it up did not seem like such a good idea. But how could they hang on to power in Serbia, where they were extremely unpopular?

The answer was to manufacture guilt. Long before the term "moral equivalence" was coined, the children in socialist Yugoslavia learned that Chetniks (Serbian royalists who fought for the king) were no different than the Ustasha (Croatian Nazis who conducted a mass extermination of Jews and Serbs so brutally even the German Nazis were disturbed by it). Anyone familiar with "political correctness" of today will recognize the matrix along which the Serbs - defined as "oppressors" of everyone else by the virtue of their existence - were treated in comparison with Slovenes, Croats, Macedonians, Muslims and Montenegrins (the latter three given nationhood by Tito).

The reason Slobodan Milosevic became so wildly popular in the 1980s is because he dared challenge that matrix. When he said "No one is allowed to hit you" to the Serb demonstrators in Kosovo Polje (at the time getting clobbered by ethnic Albanian police) April 1987, Milosevic tapped into a vein of popular resentment that ended up bringing him to power.

Ironically, the West labeled Milosevic "the last Communist" and answered him with - Communist propaganda! The whole "genocidal Serbian aggressor" line, peddled since the early 1990s, reeks of it. Considering it originated with Slovenian, Croat and Bosnian Muslim separatists (who were the product of Tito's system), that should not be surprising.

Currently the torch-bearer for the notion of Serb Guilt are the so-called "reformers" - the media, NGOs, and political parties composed of erstwhile Reds who simply switched masters, and now work for the Empire (or the EUSSR). Every day, in every way, they peddle the line that Serbs are evil as a people, that they need to "reckon with the past" and "embrace the future" and atone and apologize and repent...

For sixty years (at least) the Serbs have been trapped in a matrix that insists their very existence is evil, abominable and shameful. This is how they've been kept enslaved. No man or woman who accepts being inferior can truly be free. But they are not kept in bondage by chains and whips, but by the force of ideas implanted into their minds.

Only by rejecting this manufactured guilt and by understanding who made it and with what purpose can the Serbs begin their path to freedom.