The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

Prelude to the Capture of Srebrenica
brenica. “I wasn’t surprised when the Serbs took me to a village to show
me the evacuation of the bodies of the inhabitants that had been thrown
into a hole, a village close to Bratunac.” 35 Both Morillon and Lt. Col
Thomas Karremans, who commanded the UN’s Dutch battalion at Srebrenica
prior to its eventual capture, drew a very clear connection between
the murderous attacks of Oric on civilian populations of
Bratunac, Skelani, Kravica, Milici and numerous other towns and villages
and the events of 1995. With unsubstantiated media accusations
against the Serb forces around Srebrenica growing, Lt. Col Karremans
reminded reporters at a news conference in Zagreb on July 23, 1995:
“[W]e know that in the area surrounding the Srebrenica enclave alone,
192 villages were razed to the ground and all the inhabitants killed. This
is what I mean when I say ‘no good guys, no bad guys’. As far as I’m concerned,
they’re all the same.” 36 General Morillon was asked directly by
Judge Patrick Robinson at the ICTY: “Are you saying, then, General,
that what happened in 1995 was a direct reaction to what Naser Oric
did to the Serbs two years before?” Morillon replied: “Yes. Yes, Your Honour.
I am convinced of that.” 37
There is ample evidence that in fiercely contested Eastern Bosnia,
both Serbian and Muslim forces engaged in serious abuses. But in a civil
war where fear and revenge created a fertile climate for atrocities, the
cruelty and scale of Naser Oric’s attacks became well known across
Bosnia. By June 1993, a report by the Yugoslav State Commission on
War Crimes, accepted as a UN document, detailed a pattern of attacks
in which entire villages were burned and all civilians murdered. 38 Internationally
recognized forensic pathologist Zoran Stankovic, formerly
the Director of the Belgrade Military Hospital and a former Minister of
Defense of Serbia and Montenegro, performed full autopsies and forensic
reports on victims in a number of villages where Muslim troops led
by Oric and his Deputy Zulfo Tursunovic massacred the towns’ inhabitants.
Typical victims in Dr. Stankovic’s extensive files are elderly
women and men born between 1915 and 1930. Photos accompanying
these reports reveal throats slashed from ear to ear. Some of these
(mostly) female corpses are pictured as they were found, dressed in military
uniform jackets many sizes too large, a grotesque effort by their executioners
to suggest that these elderly victims died actively defending
their homes. 39
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