The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao
The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao
The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
Securing Verdicts: <strong>The</strong> Misuse of Witness Testimony at <strong>The</strong> Hague<br />
Serbian Constitution made no claim to jurisdiction over neighboring<br />
Serb-populated territories; Milosevic signed on to every single international<br />
peace plan put forward during the 1990s; Milosevic supported<br />
the withdrawal of Yugoslav armed forces from Croatia and Bosnia, and<br />
he did nothing to protect the Krajina Serbs in Bosnia from the massive<br />
ethnic cleansing they suffered in August 1995. All of these actions were<br />
incompatible with support for a single unified Serbian state.<br />
In fact, during Milosevic’s trial, Seselj made it very clear what the<br />
concept of Greater Serbia means: “<strong>The</strong> concept of Greater Serbia implies<br />
a unified Serbian state including all Serbian lands where Serbs are<br />
a majority population. However, it is opposed to century-long Vatican,<br />
Austrian and other attempts to reduce the Serbian people only to members<br />
of the Orthodox Christian religion because the Serbian people in<br />
its ethnic being includes Orthodox, Catholic, and Muslim Serbs<br />
equally....And what is defined as a Serbian land, where Serbian language<br />
is spoken....An overwhelming majority of today’s Croats are Serb<br />
Catholics, Catholic Serbs. All Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina and<br />
the area of Raska are Muslim Serbs.” 28 Milosevic, as Seselj pointed out,<br />
not only did not support such a concept, he actively opposed it.<br />
<strong>The</strong> trial judges’ June 2004 dismissal of the acquittal motion had<br />
been explicit about “the accused’s advocacy of and support for the concept<br />
of a Greater Serbia” (emphasis added), and its open abandonment<br />
by the prosecution should have been the death knell of the case. But it<br />
wasn’t—this was a political trial, not a real judicial proceeding.<br />
Lurid Tales of Genocidal Plans<br />
In constructing its <strong>Srebrenica</strong> narrative, the ICTY simply ignored evidence<br />
that pointed the wrong way, such as written orders issued by the<br />
Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic that unambiguously forbade<br />
executions, or indeed any war crimes. 29 In keeping with its purposes, the<br />
ICTY encouraged witnesses to come forward with lurid tales of genocidal<br />
plans, orders to carry out ethnic cleansing and secret plots to destroy<br />
evidence and to bury and rebury bodies. Many of these stories<br />
came from the mouths of witnesses who claimed to have overheard conversations<br />
to which only they can attest. Thus, Miroslav Deronjic, the<br />
civilian commissioner of <strong>Srebrenica</strong> and another key <strong>Srebrenica</strong> witness,<br />
claims that Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic told him during<br />
167