The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

Summary and Conclusions
the conflict or that related to Srebrenica, but it does describe the longstanding
mainstream media perspective and helps explain why now,
more than 15 years later, a highly skewed version of what happened at
Srebrenica dominates public perceptions, and has helped influence decisions
made about the fate of Bosnia, Kosovo, and Serbia itself.
18. But haven’t the Bosnian Serbs “confessed” that they had murdered
8,000 civilians? This has been the view of the Western
media, once again demonstrating their subservience to their leaders’ political
agenda. The Bosnian Serbs first put out a report on Srebrenica in
September 2002, but this report was rejected by the then-High Representative
Paddy Ashdown for failing to come up with the proper conclusions.
Over the next two years, he dismissed a stream of Republica
Srpska politicians and analysts, even threatening to bring-down the Republica
Srpska government, and forced the drafting of a second and
eventually a third report prepared by people whose version of the events
came progressively closer to the officially approved conclusions. The
third report, issued in June 2004, was greeted in the Western media as
a meaningful validation of the official line—”Bosnia’s Serbian leadership
has admitted responsibility for the massacre of at least 7,000 Muslim
men and boys in the town of Srebrenica,” went the standard refrain. 49
Amusingly, even this coerced and imposed report didn’t come close to
acknowledging 8,000 executions. Instead, it speaks of 7,800 “missing”
and it questions the integrity of the methods by which the several and
varying lists of the “missing” were compiled; and while recommending
that the Republica Srpska government “bow to the victims of Srebrenica,”
it expresses hope that the various authorities in Bosnia and
Herzegovina will do the same for the other innocent victims killed during
the wars. 50 The media did not mention these qualifications, and the
likelihood that the authorities will carry out investigations and call for
apologies on behalf of the thousands of non-Muslim (and implicitly
unworthy Serb) victims is exceedingly small.
19. Another feature of the Srebrenica case is the insistence on bringing
all the (Serb) criminals to trial and getting the “willing executioners”
to admit guilt, allegedly to advance the causes of justice and
reconciliation. This rule is not applied in cases like Indonesia in East
Timor (1975-1999), where a U.S. and British ally engaged in mass murder;
and of course it would never be thought of in cases where the
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