Bosnia: Politics and Current Events

[Soldier of Macedon]

Oh please. Another bleeding heart liberal. Whatever...
My comments may be extreme at times, but Im extremely pissed right now. Take it with a grain of salt Makedonche.

Yeah, everybody can vent a little, but you were "pissed" about something (incident in Norway) which you didn't understand in the first place. Perhaps next time it would pay for you to read the news reports a little more carefully.

[Soldier of Macedon]

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~bip/docs/kosovo_polje/srebrenica_hoax.html

"The Srebrenica Massacre": A Hoax?, By George Pumphrey. Bonn, Germany
November 1998.

The "massacre of Srebrenica", where 8,000 Muslim males of military age are reported to have been summarily executed by Bosnian Serbian troops in the aftermath of the takeover of the town, has been termed the worst war crime in Europe since World War II. Most significantly, it has been deemed not merely a crime of war, but evidence of a campaign of genocide, the worst war crime imaginable.

The case of Srebrenica, and the subsequent genocide indictment, can be seen to have brought about a major change in the political and social rules of conduct in international relations, and not only for this region of Europe. A new set of factors have been introduced into world politics. Some of the most important changes are:

the discrediting of the United Nations for supposedly having stood idly by, allowing a "genocide" to take place on territory under its authority, which was a prerequisite for:
promoting NATO as the world's new "peace keeping" force, allowing the US-led military alliance to strike and eventually occupy sovereign states or to take sides in civil wars outside the constraints of the democratic and peace-oriented principles of the United Nations Charter;
the relativisation and resulting trivializing of Nazi barbarism, a prerequisite for releasing Germany from its obligations to seek reconciliation with its World War II victims and allowing it once again to exercise military force anywhere in the world;
creating public acceptance of inquisitorial methods of journalism and judicial inquiry, denying the accused not only the presumption of innocence and the benefit of the doubt, but of long-established democratic rights to proper legal defense;
undermining journalistic standards of fairness in favor of propaganda in a media industry organically linked to dominant economic and military powers;
the imposition of a discriminatory "moral" double standard of "human rights", selectively applied in favor of particular national, social, cultural or "ethnic" groups, leaving others without "rights" worthy of respect by Euro-American powers, and therefore:
growing acceptance of treating a whole nation or people as inherentlly criminal and therefore unworthy of basic rights of equity before the law.
In short, with Srebrenica important mainstays in the international political order of the post-war period were ushered out the door. This has all been made possible through a massive propaganda campaign spreading the story of a yet-to-be-proven massacre, which has become the key piece of evidence for an also yet-to-be-proven campaign of genocide. Momentous political decisions have been based upon and justified by the supposition that a huge massacre took place in Srebrenica, decisions determining the welfare of the peoples of this region and beyond.

Three years later, in 1998, the effort to find evidence was still underway, as yet more areas in the vicinity of Srebrenica were being dug up in search of the "mass graves" presumed to contain the remains of the victims of the "Srebrenica massacre." As with previous years' excavations, representatives of the UN Security Council's ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia held its press conference at the beginning of the dig.

Information from this press conference, as reported in the New York Times, provokes questions about the basis of the juridical work of this ad hoc tribunal. Mike O'Connor, reporting on the beginning of a dig in the village of Kamenica, in the spring of 1998, writes that "Exhumations in 1996 [the first year of digging] recovered 460 bodies, (...) 7,500 others were still missing from the town of Srebrenica. Finding the others has been the goal of war-crimes investigators for more than two years." Anonymous investigators (investigators for the Tribunal spoke to the reporter "on condition of anonymity") say that what they hope to find "will bolster the cases against [the] 2 Bosnian Serb leaders" Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Radko Mladic, indicted for genocide by the tribunal.1

Two months later, the NY Times reported that the total number missing was 7,300, that 1,000 bodies had been found, but that "only about 15 bodies have been identified.2 Other reports have given similar, though slightly inconsistent, figures.3 This inconsistency is based on the different sources of the figures given. Whereas O'Connor sticks to the quasi-offical (because least partisan) figures given by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the author of the second Times article, David Rohde, relies on figures from the "survivors" of Srebrenica, meaning Muslim (usually government) sources. That the Muslim authorities have every reason to exaggerate the number of victims on their side of the conflict is without question and therefore to be taken with more than a grain of salt. Already throughout the course of the war their estimations of the numbers of dead - widely reported in the press without verification - have had to be revised downward.4 For this paper, the Red Cross figures will be taken.

But if finding the other 7,000 has been the goal of war crimes investigators for more than two years, the question should be raised: on what did the Tribunal base its charges of "genocide" if they did not even have the proof that the massacre for which the two Serb leaders are charged ever occurred? If they now - three years later - are still trying to scrape together enough bodies to make their indictment plausible, on what was their indictment based? O'Connor writes that they now have to try to "prov[e] that the soil around the bodies came from the original mass graves."5 Does this mean that what they had considered to be "the original mass graves" were either empty or sheltered too few bodies to justify their charges?

Under such circumstances, it appears that the Tribunal charged Karadzic and Mladic according to the principle: "Indict now. Look for evidence of a crime later". And even when the evidence is not found, there is no suggestion that perhaps the proper course would be to revise the indictment or drop the charges.

Diana Johnstone, who has been closely following the developments in the Balkans noted in The Nation:

"When, in the early months of the war which raged across Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992, the Muslim-led government in Sarajevo, seconded by Croatian agencies in Zagreb, presented Western media with reports indicating that the Serbs were pursuing a deliberate policy of genocide, a basic principle of caution, essential to justice was rapidly abandoned. That is the principle that the more serious the accusation, the greater the need for proof, since otherwise accusations will become an instrument of the lynch mob."6
In the media, each succeeding generation of speculation - even falsification - is built upon preceding generations of unproven reports, many of which were set in motion as deliberate disinformation by secret services and public relations agencies. Once they have been repeated over and over as certainty, anyone who would dare to venture upstream to the source and demand substantiating evidence runs the risk of being verbally lynched for having denied something as obvious as the earth's surface being flat.

Given the fact that the number of persons alleged to have been summarily executed could make the difference between a charge of "genocide" and a charge of "war crime", and faced with the difference between the 8,000 alleged to have been killed and the 460 dead bodies actually found, the first step in beginning to sort out fact from fiction would be to clear up this discrepancy in numbers.

Playing the Numbers:

The International Committee of the Red Cross published a press statement on September 13, 1995, in which it was stated:

"The ICRC's head of operations for Western Europe, Angelo Gnaedinger, visited Pale and Belgrade from 2 to 7 September to obtain information from the Bosnian Serb authorities about the 3,000 persons from Srebrenica whom witnesses say were arrested by Bosnian Serb forces. The ICRC has asked for access as soon as possible to all those arrested (so far it has been able to visit only about 200 detainees), and for details of any deaths. The ICRC has also approached the Bosnia-Herzegovina authorities seeking information on some 5,000 individuals who fled Srebrenica, some of whom reached central Bosnia."7
The September 15, 1995, New York Times gives another accounting:

About 8,000 Muslims are missing from Srebrenica, the first of two United Nations-designated 'safe areas' overrun by Bosnian Serb troops in July, the Red Cross said today. (...) Among the missing were 3,000, mostly men, who were seen being arrested by Serbs. After the collapse of Srebrenica, the Red Cross collected 10,000 names of missing people, said Jessica Barry, a spokeswoman. In addition to those arrested, about 5,000 'have simply disappeared,' she said.8
Aside from simply adding the 3,000 Muslim men in Srebrenica upon arrival of the Bosnian Serb military (who the Serbs then took as prisoners of war) and the 5,000 Muslim men, reported to have left Srebrenica before the arrival of Bosnian Serb forces, to inflate the figures - and therefore the gravity of the accusation - this report makes no mention of the fact that by mid-September 1995 a sizable portion of the group of 5,000 had already reached Muslim territory and safety. And the fact that the Red Cross was asking the Bosnia-Herzegovina [Muslim] authorities for information about the 5,000 (the original figure) - "some of whom [had already] reached central Bosnia" - has completely disappeared from the news. The entire 5,000 of the one group and the 3,000 of the other are still today - 3 years later - being counted as "missing" and therefore presumed dead.

The Red Cross report was, itself, lacking the objectivity that one would have hoped for from a non-partisan organization. Its very off-hand "some of whom reached central Bosnia" gives the impression that only a handful could be accounted for by mid-September. But again the press gave another picture. Within a week of the takeover of Srebrenica (July 18, 1995) one learns that:

"Some 3,000 to 4,000 Bosnian Muslims who were considered by UN officials to be missing after the fall of Srebrenica have made their way through enemy lines to Bosnian government territory. The group, which included wounded refugees, sneaked past Serb lines under fire and crossed some 30 miles through forests to safety."9
Similar reports appeared in other journals at the time. On August 2, 1995, The Times of London published the following:

"Thousands of the "missing" Bosnian Muslim soldiers from Srebrenica who have been at the centre of reports of possible mass executions by the Serbs, are believed to be safe to the northeast of Tuzla. Monitoring the safe escape of Muslim soldiers and civilians from (...) Srebrenica and Zepa has proved a nightmare for the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross. For the first time yesterday, however, the Red Cross in Geneva said it had heard from sources in Bosnia that up to 2,000 Bosnian Government troops were in an area north of Tuzla. They had made their way there from Srebrenica "without their families being informed," a spokesman said, adding that it had not been possible to verify the reports because the Bosnian Government refused to allow the Red Cross into the area.10
The Washington Post explains: "The men set off at dawn on Tuesday, July 11, in two columns that stretched back seven or eight miles."11

Two weeks before the Red Cross representatives Angelo Gnaedinger and Jessica Barry gave their numbers to the press, another spokesperson for the International Red Cross in Geneva, Pierre Gaultier, provided an important detail. In an interview given to the German journal Junge Welt, he explained:

"All together we arrived at the number of approximately 10,000 [missing from Srebrenica]. But there may be some double counting... Before we have finished [weeding out the double countings] we cannot give any exact information. Our work is made even more complicated by the fact that the Bosnian government has informed us that several thousand refugees have broken through enemy lines and have been reintegrated into the Bosnian Muslim army. These persons are therefore not missing, but they cannot be removed from the lists of the missing (...) because we have not received their names."12
Since the number of "missing" (and therefore assumed dead) has remained at roughly 8,000 throughout the past 3 years, it can be reasonably assumed that the Muslim government has never furnished the Red Cross with the names of those who reached Muslim lines. Also to be noted is that when Prof. Milivoje Ivanisevic at the University of Belgrade took a close look at the Red Cross list, he discovered it contained the names of 500 people who were already deceased before Bosnian-Serb troops entered Srebrenica. Even more interesting, when comparing the Red Cross' list with the electoral list for the 1996 fall elections, he also found that 3,016 people listed by the Red Cross as "missing" were on the electoral lists the following year.13 This leads to one of two possibilities: either the Muslims were having their dead vote, meaning that the voters were bogus, and the election a fraud; or the voters were in fact alive, in which case, here is an additional piece of evidence that the massacre is a fraud.

Early in the war, journalists of Time magazine saw through the game being played on the press and international organizations. They wrote: "Bosnian Muslims, fighting at the raw level of their rivals, are likewise guilty of barbarism--and of inflating horror stories about the Serbs to win sympathy and support."14 It appears that they were not without success.

With deliberately inflated figures clearly being used to fuel a major propaganda campaign to make "Srebrenica" a symbol of Serbian "genocide", some Red Cross spokespersons in effect became a party to the conflict by failing to bring important information to public attention. It is difficult to understand how correspondents such as Mike O'Connor and their editors could be unaware of the extremely misleading and inaccurate content of the reports they published.

Both Red Cross and UN officials knew that thousands were safe. Yet neither corrected the communique given in September. And both failed to report that Ms. Barry's 5,000 who "simply disappeared," had simply disappeared back into the ranks of the Bosnian army. The propaganda put into circulation by representatives of the Bosnian government was allowed to stand uncontested even by organizations otherwise seen as non-partisan.

Within days of the take-over of Srebrenica, Zepa, a second Moslem enclave (and UN Safe Area), was also captured by Bosnian Serb forces. Among the defenders of Zepa were hundreds of the "missing" soldiers from Srebrenica. The New York Times recounts:

"The wounded troops were left behind, and when the Bosnian Serbs overran the town on Tuesday, the wounded were taken to Sarajevo for treatment at Kosevo Hospital. Many of them had begun their journey in Srebrenica, and fled into the hills when that 'safe area' fell to the Bosnian Serbs on July 11. These men did not make it to Tuzla, where most of the refugees ended up, but became the defenders of Zepa instead. 'Some 350 of us managed to fight our way out of Srebrenica and make it into Zepa,' said Sadik Ahmetovic, one of 151 people evacuated to Sarajevo for treatment today.(...) They said they had not been mistreated by their Serb captors."15
It might seem strange that the Muslim soldiers of Zepa would abandon their wounded comrades and that 5,000 Srebrenica soldiers would abandon their women and children to an enemy with a reputation - at least in the media - of being sadists, and rapists seeking to commit "genocide". Could it be that these Muslim soldiers knew that they need not be particularly worried about their women, children and wounded comrades falling into the hands of their Serbian countrymen? The Serbian forces had the wounded Muslim soldiers evacuated behind Muslim lines to their Muslim hospital in Sarajevo. Is this how one goes about committing genocide? Is this the military force compared to Nazis? What a trivialization of Nazi barbarism!

The London Times article quoted above mentions that 2,000 Srebrenica soldiers made their way to the north of Tuzla "without their families being informed". Were their families ever informed? Other than the very few articles that took notice of their resurrection from the presumed dead, the public at large was never informed that they were in fact alive. On the contrary. And the women of Srebrenica continue to demonstrate demanding information about their loved ones, whom they believe are still alive.

To maintain the hoax, it is not only necessary to create the illusion that the proof of a massacre exists, but it is also necessary to suppress any evidence that it did not happen. Not only must the 5,000 never be accounted for, but not too many of the 3,000 listed by the Red Cross as prisoners of war must be allowed to return "from the dead."

On January 17, 1996, the British daily "Guardian" published an article concerning one group of the former Muslim POWs from Srebrenica and Zepa, who, once liberated from a POW camp, were flown directly to Dublin:

"Hundreds of Bosnian Muslim prisoners are still being held at 2 secret camps within neighboring Serbia, according to a group of men evacuated by the Red Cross to a Dublin hospital from one camp - at Sljivovica.(...) A group of 24 men was flown to Ireland just before Christmas [1995](...). But some 800 others remain incarcerated in Sljivovica and at another camp near Mitrovo Polje, just three days before the agreed date for the release of all detainees under the Dayton peace agreement on Bosnia(...). The Red Cross in Belgrade has been negotiating for several weeks to have the men released and given sanctuary in third countries. A spokeswoman said most were bound for the United States or Australia, with others due to be sent to Italy, Belgium, Sweden, France and Ireland.(...) Since late August, the Red Cross has made fortnightly visits from its Belgrade field office.(...) Teams from the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague have been in Dublin to question and take evidence from the men."16
Why would prisoners of war, whose normal first wish upon being freed would be to be reunited with their families and to restart their interrupted lives in peacetime, be rushed off to Dublin, with "papers to remain in Ireland"? Why would the Red Cross - usually known for reuniting families - be seeking to secretly spirit them out of their homeland, away from their family and friends? Were their families ever informed?

The ex-prisoners were widely dispersed. To a second country...:

[The] US decided to accept 214 Bosniaks who, (...) had been detained in Serbian camps and give them refugee status.17
Why have neither the Red Cross (which has been visiting the prisoners since August), nor the Tribunal (in its search for evidence of a "genocide" in Bosnia, for which Srebrenica is slated to be the key incriminating evidence), nor the American government made mention since August 1995 of these men being held as war prisoners?

And a third country... The pro-government [Muslim] news agency TWRA reports:

"[One] Hundred-three Bosnian soldiers who were recently released from prisons in Serbia, were sent to Australia against their will", claims their commander, Osmo Zimic. Zimic also criticizes the UNHCR, whose spokesman claimed these soldiers demanded departure to Australia and by no means return to Bosnia for they would allegedly face criminal charges as deserters there. "This is not true", says Zimic. Australian immigration & ethnic affairs office spokesman says he was informed [of] Zimic's allegation from the Bosnian embassy in Canberra and that the investigation was initiated."18

"The Bosnian Embassy in Australia requested the Hague International Tribunal (ICTY) to start an investigation on the deportation of Bosniaks (800 persons) from Serbia to Australia and Europe in which, supposedly, UNHCR assisted, instead [of] involving Bosniaks in the exchange of prisoners, esp. for they had been in the camps in Serbia which claimed not to be involved in the war in Bosnia. The principal witness for the prosecution is Osmo Zimic, a Bosnian Army Officer, one who had been deported to Australia against his will."19

It seems as though the Red Cross, the UNHCR, and a host of "western" governments around the world were engaged in hiding the fact that these men were not massacred. Who stood to gain?

As a result of the Srebrenica hoax, a new order of the world is beginning to take shape, where the UNHCR assists in creating refugees, where the Red Cross helps separate families and where tribu nals indict first and look for crimes later.

Before discovery of conclusive evidence that the alleged crime has even been committed, the indictment alone is made to serve as punishment. This reverses the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" and amounts to inquisitorial "justice". For three years the Tribunal has been searching for evidence of an alleged "genocide" which has already largely served its political purpose. Now the search is on for a retrospective judicial fig leaf.

[Risto the Great]

Interesting article SoM.
Obviously we won't be relying on the Bosniam Muslims to add some truth to the argument.

[Soldier of Macedon]

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0517/Mladic-trial-delayed-because-of-evidence-issues

Mladic trial delayed because of evidence issues

The former Bosnian Serb general's trial has been postponed because prosecutors may have failed to disclose evidence to the defense.

An apparent clerical error prompted judges to postpone the long-awaited war crimes trial of former Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic on Thursday, possibly for months.

The delay cast a shadow over one of the court's biggest cases — and over the reputation of the court itself, where most prominent trials have proceeded at a snail's pace, frustrating many victims.

It also highlighted problems faced by international tribunals in prosecuting sweeping indictments covering allegations of atrocities spanning years in countries far from the courts where defendants face justice.

Who is Ratko Mladic? Four key questions answered.

"It is fraught with delay because of the volume of documentation and scope of alleged crimes," Richard Dicker, the director of Human Rights Watch's international justice program, said in a telephone interview Thursday. "Add to that the need to translate and it really takes it to a whole new level of complexity that you don't see in domestic trials."

Presiding judge Alphons Orie said he was delaying the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal case due to "significant disclosure errors" by prosecutors, who are obliged to share all evidence with Mladic's lawyers.

Orie said judges will analyze the "scope and full impact" of the problem and aim to set a new starting date as soon as possible. The presentation of evidence was supposed to begin later this month.

Prosecutors had already acknowledged the errors and did not object to the delay. Mladic's attorney has asked for six months to study the materials.

Mladic is accused of commanding Bosnian Serb troops who waged a campaign of killings and persecution to drive Muslims and Croats out of territory they considered part of Serbia during Bosnia's 1992-95 war.

His troops rained shells and snipers' bullets down on civilians in the 44-month siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. They also executed thousands of Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, the site of Europe's worst massacre since World War II. The war itself left over 100,000 dead.

Mladic has refused to enter pleas to the charges but denies wrongdoing. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Court spokeswoman Nerma Jelacic told The Associated Press that much of the material the defense did not get was about witnesses prosecutors had intended to call to testify before the court's summer break. Prosecutors acknowledged the error "could impact on the fairness of the trial," she said.

The tribunal published a letter from prosecutors to Mladic's lawyer that said the missing documents were not uploaded onto an electronic database accessible to defense lawyers. "We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience," it read.

Hatidza Mehmedovic, whose husband and two sons were slain by Serb forces during the Srebrenica massacre, said she hoped the delay would not be too long.

"We are worried he won't live to see justice," Mehmedovic said in the tribunal's lobby as she prepared to make the long trek back to Srebrenica.

Her fears are not without reason. Mladic, now 70, suffered three strokes during his 15 years as a fugitive, his lawyer says.

In another case that suffered repeated delays, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic died of a heart attack in 2006 before judges could deliver a verdict in his trial, which dragged on for four years. Milosevic was accused of orchestrating deadly conflicts across the Balkans in the 1990s.

The delays in Milosevic's trial were largely caused by his ill health and his lengthy political grandstanding while acting as his own defense lawyer.

"The script we have seen used for Milosevic's trial is now repeating," said Enisa Salcinovic, who said she was attacked by Serb soldiers under Mladic's command. "First, they did not want to capture him while he was healthy enough to stand a trial and now when he is sick they will let the trial drag on just as they did with Milosevic."

Suspects like Milosevic and his Bosnian Serb counterpart Radovan Karadzic — whose trial is at its half-way stage after starting in October 2009 — "seek to use the criminal process as a platform to expound their views and rewrite history in a way that is favorable to them," said Dicker.

The Yugoslav court is not the only war crimes tribunal to suffer. Cases at the International Criminal Court and the trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor also have been hit by lengthy delays.

The U.N. Security Council set up the Yugoslav tribunal with war still raging in Bosnia in an attempt to hold the perpetrators of massive crimes in the conflict criminally responsible.

The move was quickly followed by a similar court dealing with the genocide in Rwanda as activists pinned their hopes on international justice not only to deter crimes but also to promote reconciliation in countries torn apart by conflict. Temporary tribunals also have since been set up to deal with crimes in Sierra Leone, Lebanon, East Timor and Cambodia, followed in 2002 by the International Criminal Court, the first permanent war crimes tribunal.

Earlier Thursday, prosecutors wrapped up their opening statement in Mladic's genocide trial by recounting in chilling detail his forces' systematic slayings in Srebrenica in July 1995.

Mladic's army "carried out their murderous orders with ... dedication and military efficiency," prosecutor Peter McCloskey said.

Mladic showed no emotion as McCloskey showed video footage of what he said were the bodies of executed Muslim men piled in front of a bullet-riddled wall.

McCloskey described how Mladic's forces summoned buses and trucks from across Bosnia to transport women and girls out of the Srebrenica enclave. The Muslim men and boys were then driven to remote locations and gunned down by firing squads, their bodies plowed into mass graves.

The remains — sometimes no more than a couple of bones — of 5,977 victims have been exhumed so far, McCloskey said. Estimates of the dead run to 8,000.

He showed photographs of an exposed mass grave to underscore the point that the victims were not war casualties. One photo showed a skull, its teeth exposed and its eyes covered by a blindfold. Another showed a pair of hands bound with a strip of cloth behind a body's back.

In a video, Mladic was seen strutting through the deserted streets of Srebrenica and berating the commander of Dutch U.N. peacekeepers.

It was all too much for Mehmedovic, who wept in the court's lobby.

"I buried both of my sons and my husband. Now I live alone with memories of my children," she said. "I would never wish even Mladic to go through what I go through. Not Mladic or Karadzic. Let God judge them."

In Mladic's former wartime stronghold of Pale, Bosnian Serbs who regard him as a hero clapped each time he appeared on TV screens in cafes.

"I'm sorry to see our general being treated like this," said Bosnian Serb Milan Tadic. "We should all be ashamed of allowing this to be happening to him. He only defended the Serbs. He will always have support in Pale."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/16/ratko-mladic-war-crimes-trial

Ratko Mladic's trial opens with a cut-throat gestureThe ex-Bosnian Serb commander faced the ghosts of Srebrenica and Sarajevo on the first day of his war crimes trial

The electric blinds rose like a curtain on a West End production and there stood the protagonist: the former general charged with crimes against humanity that almost defy the imagination, reduced to a hollow-looking old man in a blue-grey suit and matching tie.

Ratko Mladic's military cap and angry heckling – on combative display just after his arrest last year – had gone, on advice from his lawyers, and the erstwhile Bosnian Serb commander had shrunk to the point that he was barely recognisable from his bluff, ruddy-faced wartime prime. But the bile was still there, impossible to disguise or suppress.

He greeted the bereaved families and survivors in the public gallery on the other side of the bulletproof glass with a sarcastic slow handclap and thumbs up, deriding their victory over him as if it were a temporary setback, soon to be reversed.

And when the furious mother of one of the 8,000 men and boys killed in 1995 in Srebrenica could restrain herself no more and made a dismissive hand signal at him, he drew a single finger across his throat.

A chill went through the old Dutch insurance building where the Hague war crimes tribunal does its business. Even a seemingly empty gesture from a bitter old man has the power to shock when that man is facing 11 charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including two counts of genocide.

Mladic's lawyer, Branko Lukic, made light of the incident, as you might shrug off the growling of an old attack dog that it had never been entirely possible to tame.

"We visited him before the trial and tried to persuade him to be quiet, not to say anything at all," Lukic said. "He told me he made that sign at a woman in the gallery who provoked him by showing him the middle finger. He is like that. He does the same to me."

The Dutch presiding judge, Alphons Orie, called a toilet break and afterwards told Mladic to ignore the gallery and focus on the trial.

He warned the angry women in the gallery to avoid "inappropriate interactions in the future" or he would lower the curtain once more on the oval goldfish bowl of a courtroom and continue in camera.

Over the following four hours, the prosecution at the Hague court, known formally as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, outlined the case against Mladic.

One of the prosecutors, Dermot Groome, took the tribunal through reams of material demonstrating that, as the head of the Bosnian Serb general staff during the 1992-95 war, Mladic had firm control over the regular army and irregular paramilitaries who carried out mass killings across Bosnia.

"The prosecution will present evidence that will show beyond a reasonable doubt the hand of Mr Mladic in each of these crimes," Groome said.

The statement was a litany of mass murder: 100,000 people died in the Bosnian war, mostly ethnic Muslims and Croats, tens of thousands of them civilians; 10,000 died in the 44-month siege of Sarajevo; 8,000 men and boys were slaughtered in the storming of the Srebrenica enclave in 1995.

Groome interspersed the statistics with reminders of the individual murders hidden within them, each a tragedy leaving whole families with unbearable pain that they will never overcome. He described the death of Nermin Divovic, a seven-year-old who went out to fetch firewood with his mother and sister in Sarajevo in the freezing winter of November 1994.

"A Serb sniper aligned his rifle with Nermin's mother and the bullet passed through her abdomen and into his head," Groome said. The boy's mother, Dzenana Sokolovic, lay wounded on the street, not immediately aware that her son was dead. She thought he was simply obeying her instructions to drop to the ground when under fire.

Groome also told the story of Dino Salihovic, a 16-year-old from Srebrenica, shot dead on video by a Serb paramilitary group calling itself the Scorpions.

"He was taunted by his murderers that he would die a virgin," Groome said, displaying only a still from the sickening and notorious video.

"You watch him walk forward with his hands tied behind his back and see bullets tear through his back."

It is the prosecution's contention that all the killing was part of an "overarching" plan, in the form of six war aims drawn up by Mladic, a former Yugoslav army officer who was recruited by the Bosnian Serb nationalists at the start of the war.

The plan involved carving out an expansive Serb homeland from the ethnic patchwork of prewar Bosnia, and "ethnically cleansing" the Muslim and Croat communities, creating a corridor linking its eastern and western halves and gaining access to the sea.

In this endeavour, Mladic was one of a triumvirate of murderous Serb nationalists.

Slobodan Milosevic was the cool mastermind for whom Bosnia was just part of a regional scheme for a Greater Serbia. The former Yugoslav president was handed over to The Hague in 2001 by the Serbian government that ousted him, but died of a heart attack in his cell here in 2006 while his trial was still under way.

Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb political leader, was the dandy of the trio, a psychiatrist with a bouffant hairdo who fancied himself a poet. He was seized in Belgrade, where he had been posing as a new age healer under an assumed name. Karadzic is currently midway through his own trial and he and Mladic have been reunited as cellmates here.

Mladic was the hot-headed bulldozer of the three. His inability to imagine that he might end up where he is today meant that he left plenty of hostages to fortune in his many explicit military directives ordering the ethnic cleansing of the Republika Srpska, and his frequent boasts designed to intimidate the foreigners, officials and journalists that he came across.

In 1992, he told one UN envoy that he would make Sarajevo "shake" if even one of his soldiers were injured, saying: "I will retaliate against the town … Sarajevo will shake, more shells will fall in one second than in the entire war so far."

Driving with a Canadian Serb in August 1994, he laughed and was recorded on video as saying: "Whenever I go by Sarajevo, I kill someone. We kick the hell out of the Turks [a reference to Bosnian Muslims]. Who gives a fuck about them?"

Some of his lieutenants said his behaviour became increasingly erratic after the suicide of his daughter Ana, who used his army revolver to shoot herself in the head in March 1994, possibly after reading reports of atrocities committed by her father's army.

During his 16 years on the run, he became steadily more isolated and impoverished. He was finally arrested by Serbian security forces last year, hiding in a cousin's cottage in a village not far from Belgrade.

One of the Srebrenica survivors in the Hague gallery, Zumra Sehomerovic, said Mladic's trial had been a long time coming, but that it was never too late for justice. "I am proud when I see Mladic finally behind that glass, in front of the court. It has come after 16 years, but there is no statute of limitations on the crimes he committed."

Sehomerovic's husband and three other family members were killed at Srebrenica and she said she saw the general up close when he appeared at the scene to "reassure" the terrified captives.

"When I look at him today, I see the man I saw then in 1995. I was standing a metre from him," she recalled.

"There he was with his sleeves rolled up, and he was telling us everything would be OK. He was giving chocolate to the children and said he said he just needed to keep some of the men for a prisoner exchange, but that everybody would be together again soon. And then he killed them all."

[Soldier of Macedon]

Bosnia: Politics and Current Events

http://www.smh.com.au/world/antigovernment-protests-spread-across-bosnia-20140208-hvbo1.html

Anti-government protesters have stormed into the Bosnian presidency and another government building in Sarajevo and set them ablaze as riot police fired tear gas in a desperate attempt to stop them.

Smoke was rising from several Bosnian cities on Friday night as thousands vented their fury over the Balkan country's 44 per cent unemployment rate and rampant corruption. It was the worst social unrest the country has been through since the 1992-95 war following Yugoslavia's dissolution, which killed more than 100,000 people.

As night fell on Friday, downtown Sarajevo was in chaos. Buildings and cars burned, and riot police in full gear chased protesters and pounded batons against their shields to get the crowd to disperse. Nearly 200 people were injured throughout the country in clashes with police, medical workers reported.

Bosnians have many reasons to be unhappy as general elections approach in October. The privatisation that followed the war decimated the middle class and sent the working class into poverty as a few tycoons flourished. Corruption is widespread and high taxes for the country's bloated public sector eat away at residents' income.

In the northern city of Tuzla, protesters stormed the local government building, throwing furniture and files out its windows on Friday before setting it on fire. The local government resigned. By evening, protesters also burnt the city's court building. Protesters also set upon local government buildings in Zenica, Mostar and Travnik. The crowd in Zenica pushed several cars belonging to local officials into the nearby river and city authorities announced they will resign.

The protests began in Tuzla earlier this week with a clash between police and the unpaid workers of four former state-owned companies. The companies' new owners were supposed to invest and make them profitable but instead sold the assets, stopped paying workers and filed for bankruptcy.

In an unprecedented move, hundreds gathered on Friday in the capital of the Bosnian Serb part of the country, Banja Luka, to back the protesters in Bosnia's other mini-state, which is shared by Bosniaks and Croats. "We gathered to support the protests in Tuzla where people are fighting for their rights," said Aleksandar Zolja, an activist from Banja Luka.

[Gocka]

A bit shocking. I haven't seen or heard anything about this until yesterday but apparently its been going on for some time now. I saw a video and the protesters looked like they mean business. They had this fire in there eyes, it wasn't one of those lets just go out and make some noise protests, they looked like they were ready to march over anyone who got in their way.

These kind of protests have already happened in Slovenia, Bulgaria, Greece, and now Bosnia. We are one of the few that have not begun to rebel against mass corruption and poverty and we most likely never will.

[Stojacanec]

Its a shame that it takes this kind of public outrage for government to realise and take notice that they aren't happy. Good on the Bosnians, I think the government deserves nothing less.

Any form of misappropriation of public money should be punished severely.

On that note, I don't know how Zoran Zaev owns half of Strumica and is worshiped by the Strumicani.

[Soldier of Macedon]

On that note, I don't know how Zoran Zaev owns half of Strumica and is worshiped by the Strumicani.

I would imagine that they like him because of the money invested in the city itself. I am not entirely familiar with how much that is (or how much he is accused of collectively scamming), but when I was there not long ago (only for a short time) the city centre did appear to be in good shape, they have a large shopping mall, the roads were clean, and the people there seemed pretty relaxed and content. Not sure how much of that is owed to Zaev though or how it is being sustained.

[Soldier of Macedon]

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/macedonians-called-on-bosnia-solidarity-protest

Macedonians Urged to Join Bosnia Solidarity Rally

Two Macedonian groups have called for a protest in front of the Bosnian embassy in Skopje, in solidarity with the people protesting in the streets of Bosnia against corruption and poverty. Two anti-poverty groups in Macedonia, the Movement for Social Justice – Lenka, and the Leftist Movement –Solidarity, have urged people to rally on Thursday in front of the Bosnian embassy to express their solidarity with the protesters in Bosnia. “We support what is happening in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the people’s actions and demands, as well as the way they are expressing their discontent,” the two organizations wrote. The call for solidarity comes after eight days of protests in numerous towns across Bosnia, some of which have turned violent. The protests are mostly concentrated in the mainly Bosniak Federation entity. Similar appeals for solidarity have been issued in other Balkan states marked by poverty and growing social inequality. On Monday, several dozen people gathered in Belgrade to express solidarity with the protesters in the neighbouring ex-Yugoslav republic. The Macedonian associations who have called for the protests in Skopje rejected claims made in some pro-government media that no similarities exist between conditions in Bosnia and Macedonia. “We condemn those media that wish to put a dark stain on these ‘spring blooms’ of social awakening among the oppressed, exploited, manipulated workers, and we appeal to the citizens to ignore them,” the organizations said. In an editorial, the daily newspaper Vecer, seen as close to the government of Nikola Gruevski, claimed that the protests in Bosnia were aimed at scrapping the 1995 Dayton Agreement, which ended the 1992-5 war in Bosnia. The daily wrote that the protests were not a geniuine social movement but were politically motivated and aimed at undermining the accord that brought peace to the war-torn country. However, Stevo Pendarovski, a former advisor to Macedonian presidents Boris Trajkovski and Branko Crvenkovski, said critical mass support for protests like those in Bosnia did not exist in Macedonia. “The main reasons for the protests, socio-economic discontent and widespread corruption, are the same in Macedonia, but I do not think they will erupt here,” Pendarovski said. “For that, we need a critical mass, which we don’t have, mainly because those who should be leading and channeling it, like the unions, are content in their cooperation with the government,” he added. The two organizations that have called for the protests gained prominence in 2012 after organising street protests against electricity price hikes in the country. Like other Balkan countries, Macedonia is marred by poverty and unemployment. The average wage is just over 300 euro a month and the unemployment rate is almost 30 per cent. According to the State Statistical Office, which uses the definition of poverty accepted by Eurostat, one in three Macedonians lives in poverty - defined as being deprived of the essentials needed to maintain a minimum standard of living.

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/24666/46/

Montenegro police clashes with protesters

Police in Montenegro fired tear gas and stun grenades Saturday to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing protesters who were blaming the government for high unemployment, economic mismanagement and alleged corruption, and demanding its resignation. The protests were called by an informal Facebook group that asked Montenegrins to voice solidarity with Bosnian anti-government protesters who earlier this month stormed into the country's presidency and other government buildings in Sarajevo and set them ablaze over similar demands. In Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, at least nine riot policemen were injured in the clashes with the demonstrators, many of them wearing masks to conceal their identities. At least 20 protesters were detained during the violence, which erupted when some 300 protesters tried to march toward the downtown government headquarters, AP reports.

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/24632/46/

Months after entering the EU, Croatians planning protests

Not everything is rosy after Croatia entered the European Union. In fact, things quickly got much worse. Higher cost of living, higher import/export taxes, increased unemployment is just some of the reasons Croatians are organizing themselves for a massive protest on February 15th. Under the motto, "Now Bosnia, we are next" Croatians are using Facebook to organize themselves in Zagreb and elsewhere to bring about change in their ineffective Government. People are digging in garbage cans for food, 400,000 unemployed, Government silences and jails everyone who opposes them, time to act, we can fix this - are just some of the comments Croatians are posting in social media.

The start of a Balkan spring?

[George S.]

Someone did mention that a revolt of somekind in Macedonia will not come up,as Macedonians are only interested in their lot only.Ie only concerned with having food on the table a job,securityof a house.The last thing they want is a civilian revolt.You would think we would have all a similar mindset jn the Balkans but no we got different priorities.A shame what a waste.The rom govt gets to do what it wants & no one lifts a finger.Think about what we could be but due to our ineptitude we can't.

[Vangelovski]

Disagreements over Balkan History

Balkan history and the idea of "common truth". Seems like the progressive movement in Europe is pushing a new social experiment (or has been for a while now) known as "common truth". On the surface it appears that "common truth" is mean't to be a neutral assessment of evidence, but in reality it seems like a social experiment that requires much creative reinterpretation of evidence and ignoring certain facts. Much like the suggested "joint history" experiments for Macedonia, Greece and Bulgaria.

Here's an article for consideration.

****
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/arti...schoolchildren

World War I History Divides Balkan Schoolchildren

A hundred years on from the Sarajevo assassination, schools in former Yugoslav countries are teaching different histories about the causes of the 1914-18 war, reflecting more recent conflicts.


“Those people were terrorists – Gavrilo Princip and the rest of them,” said Salih Mehmedovic, standing at the spot by the Latin Bridge in central Sarajevo where the young Bosnian Serb Princip shot dead Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary 100 years ago – an assassination that sparked four years of devastating conflict.

Mehmedovic, a Bosniak, said he had no doubt that Serbia was responsible for the murder. “They did what they did on the orders of Serbia. We should blame Serbia for the war,” he insisted.

As Balkan countries prepare to mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War I this summer, each of them is teaching their children a different interpretation of the killing that set the conflict in motion.
Princip is portrayed in the history textbooks of the various former Yugoslav countries either as a terrorist or as a rebel with a cause – perceptions that reflect contemporary divisions in a region that is still recovering from the deadly conflicts of the 1990s.

While they were part of Yugoslavia, children in all these countries were taught the same history. Now they all have their own versions of the truth, shaped by the more recent wars, and are passing it on to the next generation.

“There used to be only one discourse about World War I while the country was still Yugoslavia. That country disappeared 23 years ago and the discourse disappeared with it, because the new countries that came out of the former Yugoslavia had different perceptions of the past,” explained Nenad Sebek, executive director of the Centre for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe, which has analysed school textbooks in the region.

“Now the past is being adjusted to fit whatever discourse the ruling elites in these countries want at the present moment,” Sebek said.

Bosnian teaching reflects ethnic splits

In ethnically divided Bosnia and Herzegovina, there is no commonly held view either about Princip or about the origins of World War I.

Bosnian Serb children are taught a different interpretation of history to Bosniaks and Croats. For the Bosniaks and Croats, Princip was a Belgrade-backed political assassin. For Bosnian Serbs, the murder served only as a pretext for Austria-Hungary and German to commit military aggression against Serbia.

These divisions are also reflected in the rival commemorations of the upcoming centenary that will be held in Bosnia.

A series of events will be held in Sarajevo, including exhibitions, concerts and a meeting of young peace activists from around the world.

However, Bosnian Serbs will hold their own events in the eastern town of Visegrad, programmed by film director Emir Kusturica, while a statue of Princip is due to be installed in Serb-run East Sarajevo.

In mainly Bosniak areas, like Sarajevo, the Bihac region in the northwest and the central Zenica-Doboj area, school textbooks highlight Princip’s links to Serbia.

The Sarajevo textbook says that Princip’s group, Young Bosnia, was “supported by secret organisations from Serbia”, while the Bihac textbook states more directly that the plotters were “supported by Serbia”. The Zenica textbook describes Young Bosnia as a “terrorist organisation”.
The history book used by Bosnian Croat pupils also describes Young Bosnia as a “terrorist” group.

But in the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity, Young Bosnia is simply described as an “organisation” and textbooks stress that Austria-Hungary “used” Franz Ferdinand’s assassination “to blame Serbia” and declare war on the country.

Unsurprisingly, this description of the outbreak of the conflict is similar to the one contained in textbooks used in Serbia itself.

Zeljko Vujadinovic, a history professor from Banja Luka in Republika Srpska, said that in Bosnia, “what we are looking at is the current political mind-set transferred to the past”.

Suggestions that Young Bosnia was a “pre-World War I Al-Qaida” were a result of the 1990s conflict, he insisted.

“The characterisation of Young Bosnia and Princip as terrorists is an attempt to place the blame for huge worldwide events on ‘Serbian territorial expansion policies’, which is evidently flawed,” Vujadinovic said.
Sarajevo history professor Zijad Sehic agreed that the past had been redrawn in the aftermath of the 1992-95 conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

It was only since the collapse of Yugoslavia that Princip was now described as a Serbian nationalist rather than as a fighter for Yugoslav unity, he noted.

“Now that there is no more Yugoslavia, his actions are being viewed more narrowly and he has been reborn as a Serbian hero,” Sehic said.
Serbia highlights Austrian ‘war crimes’

A new monument to Gavrilo Princip is also due to be installed in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, where schoolchildren are taught that the killer was struggling for a just cause.

Serbia will be minting a silver coin with the assassin’s face on it to mark the centenary, while the government will be staging several commemorative exhibitions.

The Serbian Orthodox Church meanwhile has proclaimed the assassin a national hero. “Gavrilo Princip was just defending his freedom and his people,” a leading cleric, Metropolitan Amfilohije, said recently.

“In Serbia, there is still the old narrative from the former Yugoslavia, which says that the First World War happened because there was this great hero called Gavrilo Princip,” Sebek noted.

“He assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who was the personification of the occupying forces of Austria-Hungary, and then Austria-Hungary and the German Empire invaded Serbia, and the brave Serbs struggled and suffered during the war but were on the right side,” he said.

On Gavrilo Princip Street in Belgrade, many people insisted that Serbia did not cause the 1914-18 war.

“Serbia was exhausted after two Balkan wars [in 1912-13] and didn’t want war in 1914. The Great War was a result of the imperial aspirations of Austria-Hungary and Germany,” said Aleksandar Dasic, a web editor.

“The blame for World War I should be on Austria-Hungary and its imperial desire to capture the whole of the Balkans for its empire. Serbia should not take any blame for Princip,” said Jelena Cebic, a salesperson.

Serbian school textbooks maintain that the overall cause of World War I was “the fight between the big powers for economic control and domination of Europe”.

The seventh-grade textbook says that Austria-Hungary “used” the Sarajevo assassination as an excuse for a “long-desired” war against Serbia, “even though the Serbian government was not responsible for the assassination”.

The Sarajevo assassin is described simply as “a young Serb from Bosnia”.
“Princip was part of the Young Bosnia movement and he believed that assassinations and personal sacrifices could change Austro-Hungarian policies towards the Serbs and other South Slavs,” the book says.

A chapter is devoted to Serbia and Montenegro’s heroic victories during the conflict, while Austria-Hungary’s alleged war crimes against Serbs are given prominence.

“The Austrian army committed horrific war crimes against Serbian civilians,” the textbook says, detailing mass detentions in camps, the burning of villages, the torture of civilians and the banning of Serbian national symbols and the Cyrillic script.

But Dubravka Stojanovic, a professor at Belgrade University, argued that the history of the war is taught in Serbia “in the context of national myth and the interpretation of Serbia as a nation that sacrificed itself”.

Princip had been used as a tool to promote the ruling ideology, Stojanovic said.

“During the era of [former leader Slobodan] Milosevic, the caption under Princip’s image [in textbooks] said ‘Serbian hero’,” she said.

“It is not like that anymore - but it is written that he was a Serbian nationalist, although he said himself that he was a Yugoslav nationalist,” she concluded.

Croatia blames Serbian expansionism

Schools in Croatia however teach that Serbia was to blame for helping to spark the 1914-18 conflict, by seeking to expand its territory and supporting a terrorist. Croatian history textbooks maintain that Serbia was one of the countries responsible for the outbreak of World War I.

While acknowledging that Austro-Hungary wanted to secure control over south-east Europe, the fourth-grade secondary-school textbook says that Serbia “sought territorial expansion over areas that were under Ottoman rule up until the [1912-1913] Balkan Wars, and was unsettled with the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, due to Serbian territorial pretentions towards Bosnia and Herzegovina”.

It describes Young Bosnia as a group that carried out “illegal terrorist actions” and which favoured Serbia taking control of Bosnia and Herzegovina with a view to creating a ‘Greater Serbia’.

“A secret organisation named ‘Unification or Death’ (also known under the name of the ‘Black Hand’) was formed in Serbia in 1911, with the mission of achieving Greater Serbian aims through terrorist activities,” it says.
“The aim of the organisation, defined in its constitution, was the ‘unification of Serbs’,” it adds.

Historian Martin Previsic argued that the idea of a plan to create a ‘Greater Serbia’ is a theme that runs through Croatian textbooks, beginning in the 19th century, stretching through both World Wars and on into the history of the former Yugoslavia.

“That line leads also to 1991 and the ‘Homeland War’ [against Serb forces in 1991-95],” he said.

Some parents in King Tomislav Square in Zagreb were not so sure however if Serbia was to blame. “The idea of liberation from the Austro-Hungarian Empire was legitimate, although it is still hard to see Gavrilo Princip as a hero,” said one of them, Drazenka Kosic.

Kosovo stays neutral despite 1990s war

Parents in the capital Pristina, with recent memories of Belgrade’s violent repression of Kosovo Albanians, insisted that Serbian aggression was definitely a factor behind the outbreak of World War I.

“The whole world has suffered because of Serbia,” said one Pristina local, Ajvaz Abazi.

“Serbia has harmed many people, as well as those from Kosovo, so naturally they give high importance to their own criminals [like Princip],” said another, Xhevdet Hoxha.

But Kosovo’s schoolchildren are actually taught a version of history that still closely resembles the narrative in the old Yugoslav textbooks, in which Serbia is treated relatively sympathetically as a country trying to avoid a war.

The passages on WWI, written after the 1998-99 conflict between the Kosovo Liberation Army and Belgrade’s forces, describe Princip as a “Serbian nationalist” rather than a Yugoslav one – but they do not accuse Serbia of responsibility for the conflict.

Describing the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia after Franz Ferdinand’s murder, the textbook suggests that Belgrade had legitimate reasons for rejecting it.

“For Serbia, accepting such a request would mean losing its independence,” it says.

Arben Arifi of the Kosovo Institute of History said there was a practical reason for the relatively benign interpretation of Serbia’s role.

“The authors who wrote the history schoolbooks before and after independence are, more or less, the same,” Arifi said.

But Shkelzen Gashi, a political scientist who specialises in history, argued that Kosovo schoolbooks are full of “inaccuracies, lies and falsifications, which very much increase suspicions amongst schoolchildren regarding Serbia”.

“Serbia is not directly accused [of starting the war], but indirectly, by saying the war began because of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand committed by a member of this nationalistic Serbian organisation, Gavrilo Princip,” Gashi said.

Macedonia accuses ‘imperialist’ great powers

Macedonian school textbooks describe the conflict as “the first world imperialist war” and focus on the division of Macedonian territory that followed. However, Macedonians blame neighbouring Bulgaria in particular for aggressive expansionism, not Serbia.

Macedonian historian Novica Veljanovski was also keen to exonerate Serbia. “It has been proven that the Serbian state had no intention or plan to kill the Archduke Franz Ferdinand,” he explained. “Serbia cannot be blamed for the start of the war.”

The Macedonian school textbook says Austria, Italy and Germany were the instigators, using the assassination by Princip’s “secret revolutionary organisation” as a pretext.

“Austria-Hungary used this event to accuse Serbia of organising the assassination, sending an ultimatum to Belgrade with almost unacceptable terms,” it says.

Bulgaria is accused of conducting an “expansionist policy” and of joining the war to “take the whole of Macedonia”.

Many people in the capital Skopje also did not blame Belgrade for WWI.
“Why Serbia? No. Everyone knows that the assassination that [Princip] carried out was only used as an excuse to start the war,” said one Skopje resident, Slavjan Radenski. “An entire country cannot be blamed for the actions of one man,” said another, Milanka Malinova.

No hope of a common truth?

At the spot where Franz Ferdinand was assassinated 100 years ago Sarajevo, some locals said they were not concerned about what schoolchildren were taught about WWI.

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” said Adnan Tepic. “We should just forget such a distant past.”

Others argued that only the facts should be taught, without any bias. “We should teach children the fact that the assassination happened, but we should leave it to each individual to find their own interpretations for themselves,” said Atija Masic.

But as the centenary approaches, there is little hope that rival ethnic and political groups in the Balkans will find a shared view of the causes of the 1914-18 war, said history professor Zijad Sehic.

“We will never have agreement on this issue. The views are too far apart,” he said. “There will never be a common truth.”

[George S.]

sthey would rather not remember a disaster of monumentatal happenigs,
ome countries have their own brand depending on their propaganda.example the Japanese are not taught the real history of the second world war.

[Soldier of Macedon]

If common ground can be found then that is great, but otherwise, there will never be a complete consensus because each nation views historical events differently, irrespective of how stupid some of those views may be.

[fatso]

If common ground can be found then that is great, but otherwise, there will never be a complete consensus because each nation views historical events differently, irrespective of how stupid some of those views may be.

Great Post....

[Soldier of Macedon]

20 years on and tensions in Bosnia seem far from over. The issue of territorial integrity vs historical claims in the Balkans is unlikely to end any time soon. The only real winner in recent times has been the Albanians. But it will be interesting to see how this Bosnian dilemma may play out as part of the broader Russian-American conflict via proxies.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-bo...-idUSKCN11V00F

WORLD NEWS | Sun Sep 25, 2016 | 4:58pm EDT

Bosnian Serbs vote overwhelmingly for holiday disputed by a top court

Bosnian Serbs on Sunday voted overwhelmingly to keep their national holiday in a referendum held despite ethnically divided Bosnia's highest court ruling it illegal. Organizers in the autonomous Serb Republic part of Bosnia said that with 71 percent of the votes counted, 99.8 percent of voters had supported the Jan. 9 "Statehood Day" holiday, with turnout possibly as high as 60 percent. Most of the region's Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croatians oppose the holiday. It coincides with a Serbian Orthodox Christian festival and also marks the Serb territory's 1992 secession from Bosnia, which triggered a bloody three-year war.

Serb Republic nationalist President Milorad Dodik, who has been accused of using the referendum to set the stage for a secession vote, said the vote would go down in history as the "day of Serb determination". "I am proud of the people of Republika Srpska, of all those who came out and voted," Dodik said in Pale, the town near Sarajevo which was the headquarters of Bosnian Serb wartime President Radovan Karadzic, convicted of genocide in the Bosnian war in April.

Bosnia's international peace envoy Valentin Inzko said the referendum was an attack against Bosnia's constitutional order without precedent and that its results would not be legally valid. The Sarajevo-based Constitutional Court had banned the referendum after finding that the holiday itself discriminated against the region's Bosniaks and Croats. Western diplomats have warned that it violates the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended the Bosnian war and could prompt sanctions or criminal charges against the organizers. While the United States, which brokered the Dayton treaty, and the European Union called on the Serb Republic to cancel the vote, fearing instability, Russia voiced support.

Police said no incidents were reported during the vote. The region's government has said it would comply with the court's ruling on the "Statehood Day" and make changes to its law on holidays to ensure it was not discriminating against other peoples, but only after the vote. The Serbs celebrate the holiday by hanging out Serb flags and holding Orthodox Christian ceremonies in public institutions, which non-Serbs say is aimed at excluding them.

Talk of a new war has increased ethnic tensions but both Serb and Bosniak leaders have dismissed such rhetoric. "There will be no war, nobody will destroy Republika Srpska," said Bakir Izetbegovic, the Bosniak chairman of the country's three-man inter-ethnic presidency. But Izetbegovic said he believed that organizers of the illegal vote will be prosecuted, "it was just the matter of time". Dodik dismissed the possibility of criminal charges being filed against him. "Republika Srpska has nothing to fear," he said.