The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

The Numbers Game
degree of independence, he sacked several members of the committee
producing the report, replacing them with his own placemen, including
one Muslim. This individual is believed to have largely drafted the
report which Ashdown published in 2004. 98 The mainstream media of
the West took the second report as a serious Bosnian Serb confession,
even misrepresenting its content, which did not unqualifiedly admit the
8,000 executions. 99
In October 2005, a week after Ashdown had been forced to issue an
embarrassing clarification regarding evidence he had given earlier in the
year at the Milosevic trial, the Office of the High Representative announced
that the government of Republika Srpska had provided details
of 19,473 people who had been involved in the massacres at Srebrenica.
100 Once again this “information” had clearly been extracted
under extreme duress (Ashdown’s powers as High Representative enabled
him to carry out virtually any economic or political sanction
against Republika Srpska). 101 No doubt the purpose of this exercise was
to support claims that Srebrenica had been a meticulously planned
genocide, a criminal conspiracy organizationally comparable to the
Holocaust. But, typically, no explanation of this huge and precise figure
has been offered. The implication is that all 19,473 actively participated
in massacres—some 3 people for every alleged massacre victim.
It was a meaningless statistic to deflect attention from the complete absence
of reliable evidence. It was also in conflict with the well-established
finding that the Bosnian Serb decision literally to capture
Srebrenica was not taken until as late as July 9, as the expected armed
resistance by the Bosnian Muslim 28th Division never materialized,
with their leaders either having been pulled from the enclave or striking
out from the enclave to reach Bosnian Muslim-controlled territory.
102
The Skorpions Video
As the 10th anniversary of the fall of Srebrenica approached, attempts
to publicize the massacre story intensified. In both the U.S. and the
U.K., newspapers carried lengthy features a full two months before the
anniversary date. On the legal side, ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla Del
Ponte redoubled her media campaign for the arrest of Radovan Karadzic
and Ratko Mladic, timing a visit to Belgrade to coincide with the
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