The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

Prelude to the Capture of Srebrenica
oners held by the Bosnian Serbs were overwhelmingly male and had
numbered fewer than ten thousand at the peak of detention five months
previously. Jerome Bony for the French program Envoye Special reported
his experience in tracking the rape story: “When I was at 50 kilometers
from Tuzla I was told, ‘go to Tuzla high school ground (where)
there are 4,000 raped women’. At 20 kilometers this figure dropped to
400. At 10 kilometers only 40 were left. Once at the site, I found only
four women willing to testify.” 23
By 1993, following further investigation, the official number of rape
victims, by all three sides, was revised downward to an estimated 2400
victims based on 119 documented cases of pregnancies due to rape, according
to a report by UN Special Rapporteur Tadeusz Mazowiecki. 24
By then, however, public impressions had been established and corrective
news accounts were given little prominence. Writing in October of
1995, Lt.-Col. John Sray, U.S. Army military analyst described a “prolific
propaganda machine” made up of “public relations (PR) firms in
the employ of the Bosniacs, media pundits, and sympathetic elements
of the U.S. State Department, who have managed to manipulate illusions
to further Muslim goals.” Sray goes on to add:
Another persistent element of the propaganda onslaught involves
legitimate ownership of land. The BSA [Bosnian Serb
Army] could never have “overrun, seized, or captured” 70 percent
of the country as Bosniac government verbal gimmicks
state. While they controlled 70 percent of the territory during
much of this conflict, the BSA certainly did not possess the military
manpower to overrun, seize, or capture it. The media and
PR firms employ these inflammatory words only to obfuscate
the pre-war situation. Due to their agrarian way of life, the Serbs
formed a plurality in 64 percent of the territory at the beginning
of the war while the more urban Muslim business-oriented people
resided in the cities. 25
There is substantial testimony from senior military and diplomatic
officials that Muslim forces deliberately undertook operations that
would portray themselves as victims. European Union negotiator Lord
David Owen, who took over from Lord Peter Carrington following the
London Conference in 1992, wrote that Muslim forces would from
time to time shell the airport to stop relief flights and focus world at-
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