The Media and Their Atrocities - May 2000, by political scientist Michael Parenti.
Contians sections titled "<i>The Ethnic Cleansing Hype</i>" and "<i>The Disappearing "Mass Graves"</i>:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>three Croatian generals were indicted by the Hague War Crimes Tribunal for the bombardment and deaths of Serbs in Krajina and elsewhere</b>. John Ranz, chair of Survivors of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, USA, asks:
<b>Where were the TV cameras when hundreds of Serbs were slaughtered by Muslims near Srebrenica?[</b>2]
The official line, faithfully parroted in the US media, is that Bosnian Serb forces committed all the atrocities at Srebrenica.
...During the Bosnian war in 1993, <b>the Serbs were accused of pursuing an official policy of rape</b>. "Go forth and rape," a Bosnian Serb commander supposedly publicly instructed his troops. The source of that story never could be traced. The commander's name was never produced. As far as we know, no such utterance was ever made. Even the <b>New York Times belatedly ran a tiny retraction</b>, coyly allowing that,
"[T]he existence of 'a systematic rape policy' by the Serbs remains to be proved."[3]
<b>Bosnian Serb forces supposedly raped anywhere from 25,000 to 100,000 Muslim women, according to various stories</b>. The Bosnian Serb army numbered not more than 30,000 or so, many of whom were involved in desperate military engagements. <b>A representative from Helsinki Watch noted that stories of massive Serbian rapes originated with the Bosnian Muslim and Croatian governments and had no credible supporting evidence</b>. Common sense would dictate that these stories be treated with the utmost skepticism-and not be used as an excuse for an aggressive and punitive policy against Yugoslavia.
<b>The "mass rape" propaganda theme was resuscitated in 1999 to justify the continued NATO slaughter of Yugoslavia. A headline in the San Francisco Examiner (April 26, 1999) tells us: "Serb Tactic Is Organized Rape, Kosovo Refugees Say." No evidence or testimony is given</b> to support the charge of organized rape. <b>Only at the bottom of the story, in the nineteenth paragraph</b>, do we read that reports gathered by <b>the Kosovo mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe found no such organized rape policy</b>. The actual number of rapes were in the dozens, "and not many dozens," according to the OSCE spokesperson. This same story did note in passing that the <b>UN War Crimes Tribunal sentenced a Bosnian Croat military commander to ten years in prison for failing to stop his troops from raping Muslim women in 1993-an atrocity we heard little about when it was happening</b>. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->(<i>Helsinki Watch</i> is a human rights organisation.)
Michael Parenti writes:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>The well-timed, well-engineered story about a Serbian massacre of unarmed Albanians</b> in the village of Racak, hyped by U.S. diplomat and veteran disinformationist William Walker... An Associated Press TV crew had actually filmed the battle that took place in Racak the previous day in which Serbian police killed a number of KLA fighters. <b>A French journalist who went through Racak later that day found evidence of a battle but no evidence of a massacre of unarmed civilians, nor did Walker's own Kosovo Verification Mission monitors.</b> All the forensic reports reveal that almost all of the forty-four persons killed had previously been using fire arms, and all had perished in combat. Sell simply ignores this evidence.
The media-hyped story of how the Serbs allegedly killed 7,000 Muslims in Srebrenica is uncritically accepted by Sell, even though the most thorough investigations have uncovered not more than 2,000 bodies of undetermined nationality. The earlier massacres carried out by Muslims, their razing of some fifty Serbian villages around Srebrenica, as reported by two British correspondents and others, are ignored. <b>The complete failure of Western forensic teams to locate the 250,000 or 100,000 or 50,000 or 10,000 bodies (the numbers kept changing) of Albanians supposedly murdered by the Serbs in Kosovo also goes unnoticed</b>.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Lying for Empire - Chapter 8: The Empire as the good guy: Clinton kills civilians to save them, by David Model:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->One of the most publicized battles in the war was the Serbian siege of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. Although Serbian forces committed atrocities in Sarajevo, the Bosnian atrocities against the Serbs were just as great. <b>The three infamous marketplace massacres in Sarajevo in 1992, 1994, and 1995 were blamed on the Serbs when, in fact, there is evidence that the Muslims were responsible for the massacres.</b>
...
Two major factors contributed to the growing strength of the KLA: the drug trade and support from the U.S. In 1998, the western perspective on the conflict began to shift from a condemnation of the KLA as a terrorist organization to a condemnation of the actions of the Serbian forces in Kosovo. <b>The U.S. began equipping the KLA with very sophisticated weapons. </b>
On March 9, 1998, the U.S., Germany, the U.K., France, and Italy met in London and established conditions which the FRY had to meet in order to avoid punitive measures. The London meeting ignored the actions of the KLA who were brutally attacking the Serbs and focused exclusively on the actions of Serbian forces. The conflict in Kosovo had become a civil war with outside powers supporting the KLA. <b>Near the end of 1998, stories about ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo began to surface. This and other myths were part of the propaganda campaign </b><i>to win public support for a war against Serbia</i>.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->(the last italicisation was mine)
Contians sections titled "<i>The Ethnic Cleansing Hype</i>" and "<i>The Disappearing "Mass Graves"</i>:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>three Croatian generals were indicted by the Hague War Crimes Tribunal for the bombardment and deaths of Serbs in Krajina and elsewhere</b>. John Ranz, chair of Survivors of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, USA, asks:
<b>Where were the TV cameras when hundreds of Serbs were slaughtered by Muslims near Srebrenica?[</b>2]
The official line, faithfully parroted in the US media, is that Bosnian Serb forces committed all the atrocities at Srebrenica.
...During the Bosnian war in 1993, <b>the Serbs were accused of pursuing an official policy of rape</b>. "Go forth and rape," a Bosnian Serb commander supposedly publicly instructed his troops. The source of that story never could be traced. The commander's name was never produced. As far as we know, no such utterance was ever made. Even the <b>New York Times belatedly ran a tiny retraction</b>, coyly allowing that,
"[T]he existence of 'a systematic rape policy' by the Serbs remains to be proved."[3]
<b>Bosnian Serb forces supposedly raped anywhere from 25,000 to 100,000 Muslim women, according to various stories</b>. The Bosnian Serb army numbered not more than 30,000 or so, many of whom were involved in desperate military engagements. <b>A representative from Helsinki Watch noted that stories of massive Serbian rapes originated with the Bosnian Muslim and Croatian governments and had no credible supporting evidence</b>. Common sense would dictate that these stories be treated with the utmost skepticism-and not be used as an excuse for an aggressive and punitive policy against Yugoslavia.
<b>The "mass rape" propaganda theme was resuscitated in 1999 to justify the continued NATO slaughter of Yugoslavia. A headline in the San Francisco Examiner (April 26, 1999) tells us: "Serb Tactic Is Organized Rape, Kosovo Refugees Say." No evidence or testimony is given</b> to support the charge of organized rape. <b>Only at the bottom of the story, in the nineteenth paragraph</b>, do we read that reports gathered by <b>the Kosovo mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe found no such organized rape policy</b>. The actual number of rapes were in the dozens, "and not many dozens," according to the OSCE spokesperson. This same story did note in passing that the <b>UN War Crimes Tribunal sentenced a Bosnian Croat military commander to ten years in prison for failing to stop his troops from raping Muslim women in 1993-an atrocity we heard little about when it was happening</b>. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->(<i>Helsinki Watch</i> is a human rights organisation.)
Michael Parenti writes:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>The well-timed, well-engineered story about a Serbian massacre of unarmed Albanians</b> in the village of Racak, hyped by U.S. diplomat and veteran disinformationist William Walker... An Associated Press TV crew had actually filmed the battle that took place in Racak the previous day in which Serbian police killed a number of KLA fighters. <b>A French journalist who went through Racak later that day found evidence of a battle but no evidence of a massacre of unarmed civilians, nor did Walker's own Kosovo Verification Mission monitors.</b> All the forensic reports reveal that almost all of the forty-four persons killed had previously been using fire arms, and all had perished in combat. Sell simply ignores this evidence.
The media-hyped story of how the Serbs allegedly killed 7,000 Muslims in Srebrenica is uncritically accepted by Sell, even though the most thorough investigations have uncovered not more than 2,000 bodies of undetermined nationality. The earlier massacres carried out by Muslims, their razing of some fifty Serbian villages around Srebrenica, as reported by two British correspondents and others, are ignored. <b>The complete failure of Western forensic teams to locate the 250,000 or 100,000 or 50,000 or 10,000 bodies (the numbers kept changing) of Albanians supposedly murdered by the Serbs in Kosovo also goes unnoticed</b>.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Lying for Empire - Chapter 8: The Empire as the good guy: Clinton kills civilians to save them, by David Model:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->One of the most publicized battles in the war was the Serbian siege of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. Although Serbian forces committed atrocities in Sarajevo, the Bosnian atrocities against the Serbs were just as great. <b>The three infamous marketplace massacres in Sarajevo in 1992, 1994, and 1995 were blamed on the Serbs when, in fact, there is evidence that the Muslims were responsible for the massacres.</b>
...
Two major factors contributed to the growing strength of the KLA: the drug trade and support from the U.S. In 1998, the western perspective on the conflict began to shift from a condemnation of the KLA as a terrorist organization to a condemnation of the actions of the Serbian forces in Kosovo. <b>The U.S. began equipping the KLA with very sophisticated weapons. </b>
On March 9, 1998, the U.S., Germany, the U.K., France, and Italy met in London and established conditions which the FRY had to meet in order to avoid punitive measures. The London meeting ignored the actions of the KLA who were brutally attacking the Serbs and focused exclusively on the actions of Serbian forces. The conflict in Kosovo had become a civil war with outside powers supporting the KLA. <b>Near the end of 1998, stories about ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo began to surface. This and other myths were part of the propaganda campaign </b><i>to win public support for a war against Serbia</i>.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->(the last italicisation was mine)