The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

U.K. Media Coverage of Srebrenica
ernment, knowing that Srebrenica was unviable, was glad to have its international
victim status restored.” The intention is evidently to underplay
these “conspiracy theories.”
By November 1995, during the Dayton peace talks, the possibility
was raised that Oric—described as “a Bosnian government military
commander in an eastern Muslim enclave,” and “commander of the
Srebrenica enclave”—was “expected to be indicted for war crimes.” 48
Oric did not figure prominently in this brief story, nor did Srebrenica,
since the prospect of his being charged for war crimes did not sit easily
with the orthodox version of the Srebrenica massacre. Efforts to maintain
Oric’s “heroic” image continued in John Sweeney’s December 1995
description of him as “the capable Bosnian commander of the town’s
militia.” 49
By the following year, Serbian allegations of atrocities committed by
Oric were being mentioned, though sometimes in such a way as to cast
doubt on them. Julius Strauss wrote in the Daily Telegraph that “Bosnian
Serb television likes to show one particularly gruesome half-hour
film with close-up shots of atrocities allegedly committed by the military
commander of Srebrenica, Naser Oric, against Serb villagers.” 50 Another
1996 Telegraph article acknowledged that “many Muslims blame
Mr Oric for the breakdown of law inside the Srebrenica pocket” and
that for “many Srebrenica refugees” Oric is “a hate figure accused of
making money out of the misery of others.” More controversially, the
article went on to note that “he is also accused by the Bosnian Serbs of
being a war criminal who organised attacks on Serb civilians near Srebrenica
throughout the war.” Unusually, this general statement was not
undermined but supported by specific illustration: “For Veselen Sarac,
a Bosnian Serb now living in Milici, there is little doubt that Mr Oric
is a criminal. More than a dozen white flecks of scar tissue on his arms
are all the proof Mr Sarac needs for what sort of man Mr Oric became
in the war.” 51
Oric then seems to have disappeared from articles about Srebrenica
until 2001, when he got a brief mention in reports on proceedings at the
ICTY. Both articles implied that he was being unfairly accused of war
crimes. In The Guardian, Jonathan Steele reported that Oric wanted to
“tell the Hague tribunal the truth about his role during the 1992 - 95
war,” and that he had “led the defence of Srebrenica before thousands
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