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NEWS & LETTERS, July 2004Our Life and Times by Kevin A. BarrySerbs admit massacreNearly nine years after the event, Bosnian Serb officials have made a public, written admission that their forces murdered thousands of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in July 1995. The leadership of the separatist Serbian entity within multiethnic Bosnia confessed under heavy economic pressure from United Nations officials. However, they were careful not to specify the actual number killed--7,000. Nor did they use the correct word to describe their actions--genocide. While the report gave the locations of 32 previously undiscovered mass graves, it did not reveal the whereabouts of war criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, both still at large. It did, however, mention coordination with police from Serbia proper at Srebrenica in 1995. That could spell trouble for Slobodan Milosevic who, in his defense against genocide charges at the Hague Tribunal, has denied such links. This admission by the Bosnian Serb leadership seriously undermines the pattern of obfuscation, conspiracy theories, and outright lies that has characterized Serbia’s defenders over the past decade. Unfortunately, such defenders have included a few prominent leftist intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, Ramsey Clark, and Michael Parenti. For years, they and the Serb nationalists have argued that reports of Serbian genocide were distorted if not doctored by powerful Western political and economic interests out to crush Serbia for its supposedly independent stance. Will they now issue a self-critique? |
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