Text-Dokument über die Massaker von Serben an Muslimen – das Video war 9 Jahre versteckt – zeigt, wie 8000 bosnische Muslime, Männer und Jungs von serbischen Soldaten erschossen worden sind. Hier ein Text aus dem Internet dazu.
Auch die INAKTIVITÄT der UN-Truppen ist ein Kapitel für sich…..diese Seite, die FEM hier kopiert hat, gilt als GEDENKEN an das Massaker – an die Qualen, das Leid, den Tod – die schlimmsten Massaker seit der NS-Zeit.
Massacre in Srebrenicab
See also the major Srebrenica page at Domovina Net, with archives, human rights and war crimes reports, information on cultural heritage, and photographs.
This page is placed to commemorate the massacre of approximately 8,000 Muslim men and boys, and the torture, rape, and killing of many women and children, which occured from July 12 through July 18, in and near the UN declared „safe area“ of Srebrenica. The massacre was carried out after the commander of the UNPROFOR (United Nations Protection Force), General Bertrand Janvier, refused to carry out UNPROFOR’s mandate to defend the Safe Area and handed it over to Serbian army General Ratko Mladic.
New as of November 2004:
Call Him Packet Man: Ljubisa Beara, Srebrenica’s Academician of Death, an article by Emir Sulajic in Dani, Posted by the Bosnian Institute.
RS Commssion Acknowledges Approximately 7,800 Bosnjiak Boys and Men Massacred at Srebrenica
Ethnic Cleansers‘ Worst Nightmare; Complete Report of the Srebrenica Commission 19 June 2004,30
Another Srebrenica Mass Grave Excavated: Kevljani
More Srebrenica Victims Found in Mass Graves
New as of October 2004: The Unfolding Shame of Radovan Karadzic:
More Mass Graves Found in Srebrenica-Bratunac Area June 2004
New Incidents at Konjevic Polje Near Srebrenica, cite of RS Persecution, Ethnic Cleansing, and Extermination
New as of May 2003: Srebrenica, apparatus of denial collapsing. 1) Momir Nikolic, pleads guilty and describes extermination porgram. 2) 20 May 2003: Dragan Obrenovic pleads guilty, details exterminations. Excerpt: „He {Ostoja Stanisic} was angry as the last group of prisoners were not taken to the dam to be executed, but were executed right there at the school and that his men (the 6th Battalion Rear Services) had to clean up the mess at the school, including the removal of the bodies to the dam.“ See also the IWPR report on the Obrenovic plea.
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Transcripts of the French parliamentary hearings on Srebrenica, with new materials added regularly. Included already is the December 14 2000 testimony of Admiral Lanaxade and a copy of confidential cable z-1020 sent by Yusaki Akashi to Kofi Annan. The cable (in English) details Akashi’s meeting with SlobodanMilosevic on the July 17, 1995. Also included are press reviews, testimonies of survivors and much more.
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For the International Criminal Tribunal Indictment against Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic for genocide, crimes against humanity, and grave breaches of the Geneva convention at the „Safe Haven“ of Srebrenica, see The Srebrenica Indictment
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Click here for the Christian Science Monitor’s Pulitzer Prize winning reports by David Rohde.
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Click here for A Cry from the Grave.
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For a meticulously detailed and gripping account of the complicity between United Nations Commanders and Officials, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, and Serbian army General Ratko Mladic in the Srebrenica massacre, see Bianca Jagger, „The Betrayal of Srebrenica,“ The European, 15 September – 1 October 1997, pp. 14-19, copyright Bianca Jagger. Bianca Jagger has been honored for her 20 years of work on human rights by Amnesty International. She has worked throughout the world, from Nicaragua to Northern Ireland, collating evidence and producing reports on issues of human rights.
With Ms. Jagger’s permission we post the entire text of this important article here, in two parts. This text begins with an account of the background of the tragedy, the actual atrocities as represented in the Tribunal indictments and eyewitness testimony of survivors. The article then articulates the details of:
the secret deal between General Janvier and General Mladic made in Zvornik on June 4, 1995, prior to the massacre;
the June 9 conversation among Yasushi Akashi, Janvier, and General Rupert Smith;
the intrigue and collaboration among Akashi, Mladic, and Milosevic as the massacre was occurring;
the handing over by the Dutch Battalion of unarmed Muslims to Mladic as Dutch commanders drank champagne with General Mladic;
the Dutch Battalion’s supplying of fuel for General Mladic to drive away his captives for torture and execution;
General van der Wind’s debriefing of July 13 and the beginning of the attempted cover-up.
The article places the details of the complicity within a larger moral vision and exposes the stakes for all of us when genocide is appeased and facilitated. It quotes Tribunal President Cassese’s eloquent defense of the importance of the Tribunal and of justice. The end of the article also includes a chilling account Bianca Jagger’s recent trip to Srebrenica and the nearby extermination sites.
Bianca Jagger, „The Betrayal of Srebrenica,“ part 1
Bianca Jagger, „The Betrayal of Srebrenica,“ part 2
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For the full account of the Srebrenica massacre, see David Rohde, Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe’s Worst Massacre since World War II (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997). (Order information: 212-741-6900. Fax: 212-741-6973). New Information and Revelations in David Rohde,
END GAME
The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica
An exhaustive investigation bosed on hundreds of interviews, confidential UN documents, and US. government cables. Endgame, by Pulitzer Prize winner David Rohde, exposes those responsible for the July 1995 fall of the world’s first UN-declared „safe area“ and the death of 7.000 Bosnian Muslim men. The book highlights both US. and UN negligence and unveils new evidence that the commander ofthe UN forces in the former Yugoslavia may Intenlionally have allowed the world’s first UN-protected civilian „safe area“ to be sacrificed.
Using previously unknown accounts of private UN meetings, Endgame reveals that French general Bernard Janvier, the senior UN corrsnander in the former Yugoslavia, repeatedly recommended that the UN abandon Srebrenica and two other UN „safe areas“ for Muslim civilians in eastern Bosnia. Janvier’s standing orders from the UN Security Council (Resolution 536) were to use „the necessary measures, including the use of force,“ to defend the safe areas. But the night before Srebrenica fell, Janvier turned down a crucial request from UN peacekeepers in Srebrenica for NATO close air support to bait attacking Bosnian Serbs. Janvier cited darkness, a pause in the Serb attack, and a telephone call with General Zdravko Tolimir as his reasons. „He says they do not intend to take the enclave,“ Janvier told his aides. „I believe him. If I’m wrong I’ll draw my conclusions in the morning.“ Srebrenica fell the following day Janvier then called for the UN to withdraw from the two remaining safe areas in eastern Bosnia. Finally, in a previously unknown July 4 letter, Janvier instructed his subordinates not to use NATO close air support to protect the UN safe area of Zepa. Eleven days later, Zepa’s defenders finally succumbed to better-armed Serbs after NATO planes failed to appear.
The conclusion is that either Janvier carried out his own recommendation to abandon the safe areas with the permission of the UN Security Council or he was incompetent. Endgame calls on Janvier, who has refused to speak publicly, to voluntarily explain his actions during what is arguably the darkest hour in United Nations history, or be compelled to do so.
In their first interviews, Dutch peacekeepers and Bosnian Muslim survivors present additional evidence of Bosnian Serb Army commander General Ratko Mladic’s tight control over Bosnian Serb troops which killed an estimated 3,000 Bosnian Muslim prisoners in mass executions and 4,000 mostly unarmed Bosnian Muslims as they fled the fallen enclave. A detailed portrait of Mladic’s megalomania and hatred of Muslims emerges from previously unknown speeches and conversations with Muslim refugees and UN peacekeepers. On the day he took Srebrenica, Mladic stated in an interview with Serb television that he intended to exact revenge on Muslims in the area for Serbs killed in an uprising 150 years ago. Mladic, apparently emboldened by the West’s repeated failure to stand up to him militarily, mocked Dutch peacekeepers after the town fell, called them his „prisoners,“ and told Muslim negotiators, „Allah can’t help you now but Mladic can.“
U.S. and UN intelligence failed utterly in identifying the threat posed to Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces gathering around the enclave. Interviews with American diplomats and intelligence officials reveal that even on the day the town fell, U.S. and UN analysts were misjudging Bosnian Serb intentions. Several weeks before the faIl of Srebrenica, officials in the National Security Council privately discussed early versions of an „end game strategy“ that involved the Muslim-led Bosnian government trading the three UN safe areas of Srebrenica, Zepa, and Gorazde to the Serbs. But U.S. officials have denied that they intentionally or tacitly allowed Srebrenica and then Zepa to fall to the Serbs. No concrete evidence that U.S. officials were involved in a secret conspiracy to sacrifice Srebrenica or Zepa has been found, but a secret cable from U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith pleading with U.S. officials to save Zepa exists; it was ignored. Endgame details the poor performance of both U.S. intelligence and UN peacekeeping operations. Both bureaucracies–especially UN peacekeeping–are seemingly in need of major reform.
UN officials either did not grasp the extent of the atrocities or were apparently unconcerned. The civilian head of the UN peacekeeping mission in the former Yugoslavia, Yasushi Akashi, privately complained to aides about negative media coverage the day after Srebrenica’s fall. „It would help,“ Akashi said, „if we had some TV pictures showing the Dutch feeding refugees.“ While having lunch with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic a month after Srebrenica’s fall, Akashi asked, „Do you see bear and deer from the deck we’re on?“ Milosevic‘ replied, „Yes, from time to time, but there’s no hunting next to the lodge. You have to go one or two kilometers away.“ Akashi then made a joke. „A safe area for animals,“ he said. The entire table burst out laughing.
Srebrenica should not have fallen. The failure of UN commanders to call in NATO close air support and the Bosnian Army’s questionable decision to pull out Srebrenica’s commander and its top fifteen officers for retraining resulted in the rapid collapse of the town’s defenses. The fall of Srebrenica was not just a case of the United States, Britain, and France ignoring yet another distant atrocity. The international community stripped the town’s Muslim defenders of tanks and artillery and then turned them over to their potential executioners. The actions of the Clinton Administration and its allies aided, encouraged, and emboldened the executioners.
The investigation has found that most Bosnian Serbs were not involved in the torture and executions that occurred after Srebrenica’s fall. The Bosnian Serb leadership cultivated an atmosphere of nationalism and revenge through state-controlled media, and a minority of Serb ultra-nationalists appear to have carried out the atrocities. The fact that the majority of Serbs were not involved in the bloodletting makes comprehensive war crimes trials in the former Yugoslavia all the more important. For peace to last, nationalists on all sides must confront the crimes carried out by their leadership, and individuals, not groups, must be blamed for the atrocities, as was the case in Germany after World War II.
Over 7,O00 U.S. troops are risking their lives and billions in taxpayer dollars are being spent on a peace in Bosnia that is widely expected not to hold. A new round of violent retribution–this time led by Muslims seeking revenge–is likely in Bosnia once U.S. troops depart. Western leaders may try to shrug off a new conflict as part of „ancient ethnic hatreds,“ but these will be hatreds enhanced by a U.S. policy of promising justice but failing to deliver it.
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In 1996, Rohde was awarded the 1996 Pulitzer Prize in foreign reporting and George Polk, Overseas Press Club, Sigma Delta Chi, Livington and investigative Reporters and Editor awards for his stories in the Christian Science Monitor that helped expose the Srebrenica massacres. Some of the key documents below have been kindly supplied to us by David Rohde.
On June 9, 1995, General Bertrand Janvier, General Rupert Smith, and Special Representative to the Secretary General (SRSG) Yasushi Akashi met in Split, Croatia. This meeting in effect sealed the fate of Srebrenica and led directly to the betrayal of the Safe Haven to General Ratko Mladic and the subsequent massacre. In the transcript of the meeting, Janvier and Akashi continually argue against Smith’s effort to plan resolute measures to protect the enclave. After three years of consistent atrocities in areas taken by Mladic, and after Serbian nationalist broadcasts and threats of revenge, the statements of Janvier and Akashi are almost inconceivable. Thus, at one point, Janvier made this haunting remark:
16. The Serbs need two things: international recognition, and a softening of the blockade on the Drina. I hope that these conditions will be met quickly, given the urgent situation. I think the Serbs are aware of how favorable the situation is to them – I don’t think that they want to go to an extreme crisis. On the contrary. they want to modify their behavior, be good interlocutors. It is for this that we must speak to them – not negotiate, but to show them how important it is to have a normal attitude.
For the full transcript of this fateful dialogue, see
Transcript of the June 9, 1995 Meeting at Split: Akashi (SRSG), Janvier, and Smith
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The following is an excerpt from the wire sent by the US Embassy in Sarajevo.
Department of State (Declassified Document)
12 Jun 1995
FM AMEMBASSY SARAJEVO
TO SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 0377
INFO AMEMBASSY ZAGREB IMMEDIATE
SECDEF WASHDC IMMEDIATE
USMISSON USNATO IMMEDIATE
USMISSON USUN NEW YORK IMMEDIATE
1. Entire Text
Summary: Prime Minister Silajdzic drained and downcast called me in twice July 11 to inform me of the spiraling crisis in Srebrenica and to criticize U.S. policy on lift END SUMMARY
2. Prime Minister Silajdzic called me in on an urgent basis at 1400 July 11 to discuss developments in Srebrenica. We said we had spoken with the mayor of Srebrenica by radio 0600 this morning. The mayor asked „is my city under death sentence?“ The mayor had radioed and signed off „this is my last call. This is the end.“
[FOLLOWING EIGHT LINES OF TEXT BLACKED OUT BY CENSOR]
COMMENT: The PM gave a local radio interview after our meeting at 10. he called me in to criticize U.S. policy. END COMMENT
[FOLLOWING FOUR PARAGRAPHS OF TEXT BLACKED OUT BY CENSOR]
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Srebrenica Time Table
May 23-24, 1995:
Bosnian Serb army seizes heavy weaponry from UN depots.
May 25-26:
NATO air strikes hit Serb nationalist weapons depot at Pale.
May 25-30:
Serb nationalists take 270 UN hostages, later seize at least 100 more.
June 2:
U.S. Pilot Scott O’Grady shot down. (Rescued without capture, June 8.) Bosnian Serb nationalists release 121 hostages, take 45 others.
June 3:
Bosnian Serb army captures Srebrenica outpost.
June 4:
UN Gen. Bernard Janvier meets Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic to discuss release of hostages for end to NATO air strikes.
June 7:
Serb nationalists release 111 hostages.
June 9:
UN Special Representative Yasushi Akashi announces UN will abide by „strictly peacekeeping principles,“ i.e., no use of force.
June 13:
Serb nationalists release about 118 hostages.
June 18:
Serb nationalists release all remaining hostages.
July 6:
Serb army attacks Srebrenica.
July 11:
Serb army captures Srebrenica.
July 12-18:
In mass-executions or ambushes, Serb army and militias kill up to 8,000 Srebrenica men and boys.
Aug 8:
In executions or ambushes, Serbs kill up to 8,000 Srebrenica men and boys.
Aug 10:
U.S. Ambassador to UN Albright reveals CIA proof of mass executions of Srebrenica males.
For an excellent report by Roy Gutman on the fall of Srebrenica, and the role of the UN, please follow this link.
David Rhode of the Christian Science Monitor wrote a series of stories on the Srebrenica Massacre that won him the 1996 Pulitzer Prize. These stories include:
January 23, 1996
Media Event at Bosnia Massacre Sites May Not Help War Crimes Probe
August 18, 1995
Evidence Indicates Bosnia Massacre
October 2, 1995
Bosnia Muslims Were Killed by the Truckload
October 5, 1995
Eyewitnesses Confirm Massacres in Bosnia
October 24, 1995
Serbia Held Responsible For Massacre Of Bosnians
November 16, 1995
Graves Found That Confirm Bosnia Massacre
November 16, 1995
Graves Found That Confirm Bosnia Massacre
„Safe Haven,“ Rights and Wrongs, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, PBS, June 6, 1996.
Should Janvier be Held Accountable for the Events at Srebrenica, Le Nouvel Observateur
Chain of Command at Srebrenica, Boston Globe, 5/19/96
Berserkistan in Bosnia: Articles on Srebrenica
Srebrenica Victim Graves Probed at Brnica
Tribunal Probes Srebrenica’s Killing Fields
War Crimes Team Probes Suspected Mass grave
Documentary Claims Serbia Provided Arms For Srebrencia Massacre
Mass Grave May Hold 2700 Srebrenica Victims
Serbs Massacre Muslims in „Safe Area“ of Srebrenica
Massacre Hill-Bosnia’s Killing Fields
Ghosts in the Woods
Survivors Tell of Slaughter of 2,000 in Warehouse Near Srebrenica.
The Associated Press reports that new evidence that Serb militias massacred up to 7,000 Bosnian Muslims will be handed over to the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal. According to reports, John Shattuck, U.S. assistant secretary of state for human rights, was in eastern Bosnia collecting evidence of alleged war crimes.
„We believe there are up to 7,000 missing, and I’m afraid their fate could very well be very clear from the mass graves and mass executions we’ve heard about in the area,“ he told reporters. Shattuck said survivors have named the abandoned, bombed-out village of Glogova, nestled among snowy hills, as the grave of those killed in one of the worst of the alleged war crimes. „Up to 2,000 people were herded into a warehouse and then fired upon by grenades and other weapons, and anyone who was left was shot when they left“ the town of Kravice, just up the road, Shattuck said. Kravice was part of the eastern Muslim enclave of Srebrenica that was overrun by the Bosnian Serb forces on July 11, 1995. Shattuck did not explain how or why the bodies were moved from Kravice to Glogova.
Shattuck said he could see blood spatters and massive holes in the warehouse from the heavy weapons and grenades. „Two thousand missing people very nearby could mean that up to 2,000 people could be buried in this mass grave,“ Shattuck said, standing in a desolate, snow-covered field in front of a gutted house. He predicted diggers would begin work at Glogova with the spring thaw.
Shattuck also toured Nova Kasaba, another reputed mass grave, and Konjevic Polje, where witnesses say 200 people were shot as they tried to flee along along the road. In the town of Karakaj, Shattuck said his team looked at a school house and gymnasium where Muslims were reportedly held before being taken out in groups of 30 and shot before open pits.
„This is the evidence many eyewitnesses have provided,“ he said.
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Nov. 3, 1996, The Sunday Times, by Jon Swain
Empty Bosnian graves baffle UN
THE onset of winter in Bosnia has halted the gruesome and painstaking task of excavating mass graves until next spring. But as the weary teams of United Nations war-crime investigators pack away their shovels after lifting several hundred bodies from the earth’s cold embrace, a crucial question still needs to be answered about Europe’s largest case of mass murder since the second world war. Where have all the bodies gone?
In several months of digging at mass graves in the macabre hinterland around Srebrenica, the investigators recovered far fewer bodies than they had expected. Of the thousands of men and boys from the UN safe area who were executed by Bosnian Serbs in July 1995, only a few hundred – less than 10% of the 7,000 Muslims missing – have been dug up.
The empty graves speak volumes about the conspiracy by Bosnian Serbs to cover up the massacre at Srebrenica. Their leadership claims that few bodies have been found because the stories of atrocities there were exaggerated.
The more plausible theory is that bodies have been made to „disappear“. As long as a year ago, American spy satellites first revealed evidence of tampering at several grave sites which, when later exhumed, yielded fewer corpses than expected.
One such grave site is at Pilica. This is where 1,200 Muslims were shot on July 16 last year, according to testimony by Drazen Erdemovic, a 25-year-old Serbian soldier and self-confessed executioner. However, UN grave-diggers found only 200 bodies there.
One explanation for the empty graves is that the bodies may have been dug up and taken to an aluminium factory at Zvornik to be chemically dissolved.
American satellite images from between September 27 and October 2 last year show unusual activity both at the aluminium plant, which officially was shut down, and at the grave site itself.
The aluminium factory had the capability to dissolve human flesh because it was using sodium hydroxide to convert bauxite ore into aluminium. Sodium hydroxide is highly toxic and, according to Abdulah Sacerbegovic, a Muslim and the plant’s former manager, it easily dissolves human flesh, leaving virtually no trace except a sludge.
Sacerbegovic believes the factory may have been involved in the disposal of bodies in 1992, when Zvornik was being „ethnically cleansed“ of Muslims.
The tampering with graves complicates efforts to bring prosecutions at the war crimes tribunal in the Hague against those responsible. It also means that relatives may never find their loved ones‘ remains.
Manfred Novak, the UN expert on missing people in Bosnia, is calling for all 10 known mass grave sites around Srebrenica to be excavated next year without fail. „If this whole question of the disappearance is not solved to the satisfaction of the families and the politicians,“ he said, „I think it will be a major obstacle to peace.“
During the past year the Nato-led peace implementation forces in Bosnia have made only minimal efforts to guard the Srebrenica graves. With their mandate due to expire at the end of this year, it seems unlikely the sites will be found intact when digging resumes next spring.
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One of the instruments of the UN’s inaction toward the Bosnian suffering, even in the moments like those preceding the massacre in Srebrenica, wheere towns were shelled relentlessly, people killed and wounded, UN ground troops harrased and taken hostages without any resistance is the infamous
SRSG Criteria for the use of a close air support
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For Another Key Site on Srebrenica, see the Srebrenica Justice Campaign.
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SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (Apr 1, 1996 7:45 p.m. EST) — Even now, the curse of this city’s history lies upon the streets.
Eight months have passed since the Bosnian Serb army overran this United Nations „safe haven“ and some 8,500 Muslim men and boys disappeared, many now believed to have been executed and dumped in mass graves nearby. But the memory of them lingers on.
The tangled remains of Srebrenica’s two mosques are still crumpled on its main street. Piles of garbage reveal burned books with Muslim names on the flyleaves. And the Serbs who have returned here say the city is a ghost of itself.
„We call it a cursed city, the town of spirits,“ said Bosko Obric, 67, who returned to his pre-war home last July and found rotting corpses on the streets. „Nobody wanted to come back here.“
International war crimes investigators Tuesday begin examining more than a dozen mass graves scattered around Srebrenica. The investigators, protected by troops from the NATO peace-keeping force, or IFOR, want to unearth the graves and have forensic scientists examine the remains.
Investigators, including FBI agents from the United States, hope that the graves will provide answers about the fate of the missing Srebrenica men as well as how the massacres occurred. A handful of survivors have testified about mass executions by the Bosnian Serbs, but there are not survivors for every site.
The inspection has been postponed by winter weather and the reluctance of Bosnian Serbs in the months since the signing of the Bosnian peace agreement in December. Human rights officials have worried about possible tampering at grave sites, either by soldiers trying to hide evidence or by returning refugees.
Although Bosnian Serb leaders have recently pledged to cooperate with war crime investigators, many local Bosnian Serbs are hostile to outside inquiries. As two of the first Western journalists to arrive in the Srebrenica area in recent months interviewed decomissioned Bosnian Serb soldiers in a bar near here, an ambulance driver, Dragisa Borovina, hissed, „Don’t tell them anything, they’re looking for war criminals.“
The International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, Netherlands, is building a case against Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic, whom they charged with genocide in connection with the Srebrenica massacres.
The case against Mladic and Karadzic has grown stronger since two former Bosnian Serb army soldiers, Drazen Erdemovic and Radoslav Kremenovic, recently told the Western media they had been forced to take part in a massacre of Bosnian Muslims in Branjevo, about an hour’s drive north of Srebrenica.
Their testimony is important because it establishes that Bosnian Muslim men were deliberately rounded up and bused to a site far from Srebrenica, indicating that a campaign of executions was planned in advance. The two men were extradited to the Hague from Belgrade last weekend.
Residents here appear to be in collective denial about what occurred to the Muslims of Srebrenica, many of whom were their friends before the war. Srebrenica’s Serbs, who became refugees in 1992 and spent the war in the nearby town of Bratunac insist that the Muslims who lived in this safe haven made it to safety when the Bosnian Serb Army arrived here last July.
„It’s all propaganda,“ says Milena Milovanovic, dismissing the news of mass graves with a wave of her hand.
Those residents who admit that many Muslim men died fleeing Srebrenica insist that the Muslims killed each other. One faction wanted to surrender, they argue, and a second didn’t. In a quarrel, the two sides fell upon each other with their guns.
Only one Serb remained in Srebrenica thoughout the war and could possibly shed some light on what actually occurred, residents said. „But she won’t talk — she simply starts crying and and says, ‚don’t ask me about it,“ said Milovanovic.
Those who arrived in the city shortly after its liberation say they found a gruesome trail of death. Bodies lay in the streets and in the city’s hospital.
„When I came, there were dead bodies all over the place,“ said Obric. „They were burying the dead with no (identifying) mark, no I.D., no difference whether they were Serb or Muslim.“
But most were soldiers, and Bosnian Serbs here say they were killed in combat. They insist no civilians were executed.
Before the war, Srebrenica was a resort nestled in the rolling mountains of Eastern Bosnia, surrounded by deep forests and renowned for a nearby spa that boasted cures for rheumatism.
Today, the hills are denuded, covered only with a brownish scrub. The trees were chopped down for fuel by the Bosnian Muslims who withstood a three year siege by Bosnian Serbs.
In the nearby village of Potocari are the battered remnants of the compound where Dutch UN troops were headquartered. The peacekeeping force had been assigned to protect Srebrenica in 1994. But when Bosnian Serbs attacked the town on July 12 last years, the lightly armed Dutch troops put up little resistance as Muslim men fleeing the Serb advance were rounded up.
Abandoned UN tanks and vehicles bear witness to the Dutch surrender to the Bosnian Serbs.
In Srebrenica, heads turn at every passing car, and two Western journalists and an aid worker visiting over the weekend were eyed suspiciously. Bosnian Serb police have routinely stopped journalists trying to enter the area, but as freedom of movement across Bosnia has improved under the peace accord, so has access to Srebrenica.
Some 12,000 people lived here before the war. Now, numbers have swelled to an estimated 15,000. Many new residents are refugees who fled the Sarajevo suburbs when it came under Muslim-Croat control. They arrived hoping for a new home, but instead have found even more hardship.
Residents say Srebrenica was hit by a plague of fleas last year that tormented its residents. There is a shortage of food, electricity and water.
An outdoor market where only cigarettes and chocolates are for sale stands in front of the ruined mosque. Two cafes have feebly set out chairs amid garbage that still lines the streets. There are no jobs, no restaurants, and virtually nothing to do.
The only sign of life is around the political headquarters of the Serbian Unity Party, headed by a Serbian paramilitary fighter known as Arkan, who is creditted for being the first military leader to carrying out widespread ethnic cleansing.
„It’s horrible, it’s creepy,“ complains Dragica Macanovic, who left a fully furnished home for a house here with no water, no electricity and no furniture. „I am so bitter, I have cried my eyes out.“
„Everything is destroyed, everything is destroyed,“ said Obrovic, „Srebrenica used to look like a painting, and now it looks like a pig farm.“
Aid is slow in coming, and residents suspect they are being singled out because of the city’s notoriety.
„Even if it (the massacres) happened, why would refugees be responsible for something other people had done?“ said the Red Cross Director here, Mico Pavlovic. „Why would a child or an old person be responsible for what happened?“
Newlyweds Svetlana and Dalibor Puskic are among those assigned by the Bosnian Serb government to live in Srebrenica, after they fled their homes in the Sarajevo suburb of Ilias. They are not very happy with their choice.
At least they have been able to install new windows in their new apartment, whitewash the walls and move their furniture here. But the apartment has a commanding view of the old Muslim cemetery, a reminder of Srebrenica’s multiethnic past.
Asked how he feels about the cemetery outside his window, Dalibor pauses.
„It would have been better if it was bigger,“ he says.
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Declassified document: Former PM Prime Minister on then Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd’s Blocking of Efforts to Help Bosnians, on the occasion of the 1993 shelling of civilians in Srebrenica by the forces of Ratko Mladic.
14 February 2005
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Und hier ein aktueller deutscher Bericht aus dem Internet: FAZ vom 6. Juni 05, von Michael Martens, Zagreb..
“ Mörder in serbischer Uniform: SZene aus dem Video
Srebrenica-Video“
Nicht Hollywood, sondern brutale Wahrheit
Von Michael Martens, Zagreb
06. Juni 2005 Seit dem Sturz von Slobodan Milosevic im Oktober 2000 und der Ermordung von Zoran Djindjic im März 2003 hat nichts die Öffentlichkeit in Serbien so stark bewegt wie ein zehn Jahre alter Videofilm, der den Serben am Mittwoch vergangener Woche erstmals in die Wohnzimmer flimmerte. Auch die im ganzen Land empfangbaren staatlichen Fernsehnachrichten zeigten die Aufnahmen, auf denen Angehörige einer serbischen Sondereinheit mit dem Namen „Skorpione” sechs zuvor offensichtlich gefolterte bosnische Muslime erschießen.
In mehrfacher Hinsicht erschüttern diese Bilder Überzeugungen, die in Serbien bisher wenn nicht mehrheitsfähig, so doch sehr weit verbreitet waren. In einem Kommentar der Belgrader Tageszeitung „Politika”, die in den letzten Herrschaftsjahren Milosevics zu einem Sprachrohr von dessen Regime verkommen war, hieß es dazu am Wochenende: „Das, was viele schon wußten oder nur erahnten, andere mutmaßten, bezweifelten oder hartnäckig leugneten, haben wir jetzt alle gesehen. Die brutalen echten Hinrichtungsszenen sind kein Produkt von Hollywood, sondern leider der nackte, brutale und bestialische Mord, den einige Serben an Leuten aus Srebrenica begangen haben, weil sie keine Serben waren.”
Mit dem Segen eines Priesters
Doch nicht allein auf dem Schrecken darüber, „daß Greuel in Uniformen mit serbischen Hoheitszeichen” begangen worden sind, beruht die Wirkung der Aufnahmen, die in der vergangenen Woche erstmals im Haager Kriegsverbrecherprozeß gegen Milosevic gezeigt wurden und dann ihren Weg zurück nach Belgrad fanden. Denn der Film, entstanden nach der Einnahme der bosnischen Muslim-Enklave Srebrenica im Juli 1995, stellt auch die serbische orthodoxe Kirche in Frage, der die Serben in Umfragen regelmäßig ihr höchstes Vertrauen aussprechen.
Die Aufnahmen zeigen, wie ein Geistlicher die uniformierten Täter segnet. Zu sehen ist, wie mehrere Uniformierte das ihnen vom Priester dargebotene Kreuz küssen und den Segen von ihm erhalten. „Gib, daß deine gläubigen Soldaten das feindliche Volk bezwingen”, sagt der Geistliche in dem Film. Am Wochenende meldeten serbische Medien die Identifizierung des Geistlichen, bei dem es sich um einen Abt aus einem Kloster etwa 90 Kilometer nordwestlich von Belgrad handele. Das Volk, so wurde berichtet, schreibe dem Vater Gavrilo übernatürliche Kräfte zu, weshalb Heilungssuchende aus ganz Serbien ihn aufsuchten.
Kurz nach der Ausstrahlung erste Verhaftungen
Erstaunlich bleibt dennoch, daß der Film eine so große Wirkung entfalten konnte. Daß die staatlich dotierten Freischärler ihr Handwerk oft genug mit dem Segen serbisch-orthodoxer Priester begannen, ist nichts Neues. Sollte die serbische Gesellschaft aus ihrer Vergangenheitsbewußtseinstarre erwachen, nur weil zufällig die Tötung von sechs der mehr als 7000 Opfer von Srebrenica gefilmt wurde, also nicht zu leugnen ist? Viele Beobachter in Belgrad halten Skepsis für angebracht.
Auf dem Band ist ein Fluch zu hören, daß die Batterien der Kamera zur Ende gingen. Hätten sie eine Stunde früher versagt, würde Serbien heute wohl nicht über Srebrenica diskutieren. Die politische Führung Serbiens hat jedenfalls ungewohnt eindeutig auf das Gezeigte reagiert. Serbiens Präsident Tadic erklärte seine Absicht, sich in Srebrenica vor den Opfern des Massakers zu verneigen. Sein wichtigster Gegner, Ministerpräsident Kostunica, sprach von einem „brutalen, gnadenlosen und beschämenden Verbrechen” an Zivilisten.
Gerade von Kostunica, der sich in der Vergangenheit nicht gewillt zeigte, bei Diskussionen über von Serben begangenen Kriegsverbrechen Roß und Reiter zu nennen, sondern zur Relativierung stets die an Serben begangenen Untaten heranzog, kann eine solche Klarheit überraschen – zumal sie durch Taten seiner Regierung untermauert wurde: Rasch nach der Ausstrahlung des Films meldeten die Behörden erste Verhaftungen von ehemaligen „Skorpionen”. Die Chefanklägerin des internationalen Kriegsverbrechertribunals in Den Haag, Carla Del Ponte, sah sich dadurch in Belgrad zu seltenem Lob veranlaßt: Sie sprach von einer „brillanten Aktion”.
Wendepunkt für die Haltung der Serben?
Manche Beobachter in der serbischen Hauptstadt behaupten sogar, die Äußerungen Kostunicas dienten dazu, die Bevölkerung auf eine Verhaftung des bosnischen Serbengenerals Ratko Mladic noch vor dem nahenden zehnten Jahrestag des Massakers am 11. Juli vorzubereiten. Aufhorchen ließ in diesem Zusammenhang der Präsident von Serbien und Montenegro, Svetozar Marovic, der nach einem Treffen mit Frau Del Ponte sagte, er rechne damit, daß der Fall Mladic in einem Monat erfolgreich abgeschlossen sein werde.
Das wäre eine sensationelle Äußerung gewesen, wäre der Montenegriner Marovic nicht ein dekorativer Politiker ohne wirklichen Einfluß in Belgrad. Eine andere Hoffnung äußerte Rasim Ljajic, Muslim und in Belgrad als Minister für Minderheiten zuständig: „Der Film wird einen Wendepunkt in der Einstellung unserer Bevölkerung markieren und es der Regierung erleichtern, die Forderungen des Tribunals zu erfüllen.”