The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

CHAPTER 4
The Numbers Game
Jonathan Rooper
Anyone who raises doubts about the fate that allegedly befell the Srebrenica
“safe area” population in July 1995 is invariably treated with
withering scorn. At best they are characterized as “revisionists;” at worst,
as “deniers” of a modern-day holocaust.
No serious analysis of events in and around Srebrenica in the summer
of 1995 would be complete without a detailed examination of the numbers
killed and their manner of death. But from the outset, both the
number of Bosnian Muslim deaths and how these individuals actually
died were exploited for a variety of political purposes.
There can be no clearer example of this than the 10,000 symbolic
graves erected at the Srebrenica memorial in Potocari 1 —a number which
is 25% greater than the highest official estimate of those massacred. 2
Before looking at the evolution of numbers in relation to Srebrenica,
it will be helpful to look at the numbers in relation to the war as a whole.
For years the death toll quoted in almost every news story relating to
the Bosnian war was 200,000 or 250,000 and sometimes even
300,000. 3 Usage of these numbers was so ubiquitous that most people
assumed they were as well founded as the six million Jews who died in
the Holocaust.
In fact, the source for these figures was often the Bosnian Muslim
regime in Sarajevo, including President Alija Izetbegovic, who by the
start of 1993 was claiming that 200,000 Muslims were facing imminent
death. 4 This figure was quickly adopted by reporters who did not
question whether it was likely that roughly 82 percent as many Bosnian
Muslims had died during the first nine months of a civil war in a
small Balkan country of 4 million people as the British armed forces
lost during the whole of World War II (244,621 5 ). Despite nearly three
more years of conflict, the Bosnian total did not rise much beyond its
1992 level, though there was heavy fighting in the last year of the war.
A few critics suggested that the 200,000 figure (or greater) was exaggeration
and wartime propaganda, not rooted in facts; but such warnings
received little attention, and those making them were often
dismissed as “Serb apologists.”
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