Crimes against Kosovo Serbs: Burning the Evidence

The news on war crimes against Serbs could be considered rare news in the Western media. On the burning of the remains of Serb miners in a Kosovo mine, killed in June of 1998, the basic Google search produced this one UPI article. Is it a lack of newsworthiness, a busy news week or something else that prevented news media from reporting on the fires that have most likely devoured the remains of 12, perhaps more, Serb miners, thrown by Albanians in the mine pits near Obilić, in the NATO-occupied Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija?

source: smedia.rs

Not only that the so-called "international justice system" has been indifferent, even ill-disposed, to the suffering of Serbs in the wars of Yugoslav succession, conveniently positing them as the all-guilty side despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, but it has allowed even the most obvious and best documented cases of terrorism and war crimes against Serb civilians to be ignored, excused, tampered with, hidden in plain sight and the evidence most blatantly destroyed. To an informed Serb, it is needless to prove that the Western-imposed justice is but a justice of a mace and, as such, it should have no moral or historical bearing on the future and the consciousness of the Serbian nation. However, since a lot of Serbs, out of a specific ideological proclivity, a base material interest or mere ignorance, simply accept the imposed and unwarranted blame in the most masochistic of ways, the struggle to keep educating Serbdom and its friends on the truth of the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s is ongoing and perhaps harder than ever. 

In a continued effort to inform and educate, I am relaying here my translation of the text of the latest press release of the Serb National Council of North Kosovo and Metohija, the local organization of the North Kosovo Serbs, led by Milan Ivanović, on the subject of the burning of Serb remains in the mine pit. The publishing of the translated press release on the Serbian Roundup has been approved by the organization. The Serbian original is posted here.

Serb National Council of North Kosovo and Metohija

Press Release

June 16, 2012

In the makeshift coal mine of the village of Žilivode near Obilić, fires have been burning for the third day in the pits in which the Albanian terrorists had thrown bodies of 12 Serb miners, kidnapped on June 22, 1998. Outside of these confirmed findings, it is believed that the Albanians had thrown 14 additional bodies of Kosovo Serbs in the mine pits.

To thwart the already started exhumation of remains of the ill-fated Serbs, local Albanians filled the pits with large amounts of gasoline-soaked rugs and burned them two days ago. The fire which engulfed both the coal and the bones of the kidnapped Serbs is burning for the third consecutive day. However, neither the Albanian authorities nor KFOR and EULEX moved to send emergency fire units to Žilivode, because the morbid cover-up of the crimes against Serbs did not bother them, to say the least.

Ban Ki Moon, UN Secretary General, will most likely not be informed of the fact that Albanian terrorists are unimpeded in killing the 12 Serbs for the second time ahead of his visits to Belgrade and Priština, since he expressed his ''concern'' only over ''the security situation in the North of Kosovo'' and praised the efforts of KFOR and EULEX aimed to ''calm the situation,'' not even mentioning the unprovoked armed attacks of KFOR against the barehanded Serb civilians.

In accord with the famous saying: ''After me – the deluge,'' there has not been even a formal reaction by the technical cabinet of [Serbia's] Democratic Party and its Ministry for Kosovo and Metohija on the repeated killing of the 12 Serbs in Obilić, which is, mildly put, a moral crime of the outgoing government.

Dr Milan Ivanović

President of the Serb National Council of North Kosovo and Metohija

And while the evidently orchestrated events the Western media called "the Račak massacre'' served as a pretext for NATO to bomb Serbia in 1999, this crime, committed by the local Albanian terrorists six months prior to the Račak hoax, has never been punished and, as things stand, no Albanian will ever be held accountable for it, since NATO and EU occupiers of Kosovo gave their Albanian proteges a free hand in destroying the evidence.

The Right to Seek the Truth against the Srebrenica Myth

source: vaseljenska.com

It appears the Serb Republic-funded Srebrenica Historical Project has been doing a good job of providing evidence and arguments that the allegations of genocide committed in and around Srebrenica in July of 1995 have been standing on a shaky ground all along. How do I know this? Well, if Michael Dobbs, a watchful anti-Serb pundit writing for Foreign Policy magazine goes on the offensive against Stephen Karganović and his project, that means Karganović has made progress dangerous enough for the continued standing of the myth Bosniaks and their allies like to call “the Srebrenica genocide.”

Before I get into the argument, I want to underline a couple of technical issues. I am not a genocide "denier" because it is impossible to deny something that doesn't exist. I am a Srebrenica “truther” and the truth about Srebrenica encapsulates historical developments stretching from 1992 to 1995 that can in no way be limited to July of 1995. On the other side of the spectrum, we have the Srebrenica “mythers,” whose version of events currently “prevails” with the North Atlantic community’s interested public. The difference between the “truthers” and the “mythers” is in the fact the “truthers” are willing to seek the truth, while the “mythers” are only obstinate in defending the myth they have fabricated to favor their political agenda. And the litmus test for "mythers" is their complete denial of more than 3000 Serb victims in and around Srebrenica at the hands of Naser Orić and his "unarmed" cohorts. The very basis for the Srebrenica myth is the monopolization of victimhood by the Bosnian Muslims. 

Dobbs has been performing an unofficial function of the public advocate for the anti-Serb Republic interest, with the Srebrenica genocide allegations being the central theme of his watchdog career. He is a typical “myther” of a Western variety. Karganović, on the other hand, is a Serb-American lawyer who heads the Srebrenica Historical Project, funded by the government of the Serb Republic. This project was undertaken to seek the truth and challenge the myth surrounding the Army of the Serb Republic’s capture of Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, fabricated by the Sarajevo government and its Western allies. These two men, one on a serious mission of defending the legitimate interest of the Serbian people to free the besieged truth, the other seriously attempting to undermine that defense, were bound to clash. 

source: kurir-info.rs

In a “revolutionary” turn of perfidious events, Dobbs triumphantly ''uncovered'' that the Serb Republic is actually financing Srebrenica Historical Project! Well, I ask you, Mr. Dobbs, if someone accuses you of committing a crime you know you haven’t committed and based on that accusation your entire existence is being threatened, wouldn’t you try to defend your claims? 

It was about time the Serb Republic has encouraged projects such as this one to finally and decisively clarify the events surrounding the capture of Srebrenica to the Serbian public. The leadership of the Serb Republic would be committing injustice towards generations of young Serbs who would have to learn their history from the decisions of a foreign court, evidently hostile to Serbs, if it has not attempted to seek the truth in a non-compromised way.

Since he cannot produce any substantiated offense against Karganović’s findings other than the reiteration of the very genocide qualifications Karganović has been arguing against, Dobbs tries to appear understanding by seemingly allowing the disagreement and differing interpretations of the events, but expressing outrage at what he called “the unsubstantiated challenges to underlying facts that have been proven beyond reasonable doubt.” This construction is a spin in itself because it doesn’t make logical sense to not mind dissent on one end but to disprove of the right to express the substance of that dissent on the other. On a more important note, Dobbs cunningly slips in expressions like ‘’proven beyond reasonable doubt’’ or, in another place “suppressing the truth,” instituting the acceptance of what he wants the reader to believe is the truth. Not many allegations related to Srebrenica have been proven beyond reasonable doubt and no one honestly seeking the truth can afford to claim so. By doing this, Dobbs sets the audience up for denying the Serb Republic a right to challenge what the “mythers” established as “the truth.” In their eyes, there can be no truth but their truth and people like Karganović and, by implication, Milorad Dodik, are, in such a twisted paradigm, naturally branded ‘’deniers’’ of such a truth. By extension, this qualification applies to the entire Bosnian Serb population. He finishes with a punch, best he could muster, err, parrot: 

“For the government and parliament of Republika Srpska to finance such outlandish theories makes the Bosnian Serb statelet complicit with efforts to suppress the truth about the worst massacre in Europe since World War II.” 

What kind of a “myther” would Dobbs be without the Amanpourian references?

source: glassrpske.com

Instead of me boring you with intepretations, I’ll quote Karganović is his response to Dobbs’ panicked finger-pointing:

“…we receive a grant which is voted by the National Assembly of the Republic of Srpska. Those deputies are elected by the people of the Republic of Srpska. The people of the Republic of Srpska are not complaining, presumably because they regard our work as worthwhile. So why is Dobbs unhappy? Is he a Republic of Srpska taxpayer? He unctuously claims that 'I have no objection at all to a vigorous and open debate about the evidence presented to the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, which deserves to be fully scrutinized.’ So even if he were personally contributing to our budget as a taxpayer shouldn’t he still be expected to be consistent and to put his money where his mouth is?”

Enough said.

The leadership of the Serb Republic owes the search for the truth to the men and women who bled to build the Republic, as defenders of their own, not as genocidal killers the ‘’mythers” and the overzealous Western anti-Serb crusaders made them out to be. The Banja Luka government owes to these people the truth they could continue to build their Republic on. Moreover, whatever the truth turns out to be, children of the Serb Republic must learn it from their parents and their teachers, not from their war enemies, malevolent foreign agents, anti-Serb trial chambers and the prosecutors of the Republic’s founding fathers.

The Final Ahtisaari: No 1244, Just Juggernaut

source: fi.wikipedia.org

The Kosovo paradox peaked on Monday; nothing out of the ordinarily deviating path, but a development nevertheless. The International Steering Group (ISG), a self-appointed group of Western countries that "supervised" the so-called independence of the rogue state of Kosovo, declared the end of that supervision. According to the decision, the International Civilian Representative (ICR) for Kosovo, Peter Feith, will close his office in Priština in September, a move that will supposedly remove the babysitting element from the Kosovo Albanian attempt at statehood. All of this sounds fine, right? Wrong.

The end of the supervision is just the latest in the series of illegitimate moves by a group of countries that have recognized Kosovo's independence from Serbia. Although these countries, including the United States and most of the European Union members, called themselves ''the international community,'' there was nothing as global about them as the moniker leads one to believe. The attempt to add weight to Kosovo's illegitimate independence by backing it with an "international" support can indeed fool a lot of observers. This "international" community, consisting of only 25 countries, excluded two permanent members of the UN Security Council, China and Russia and five EU members. It was not a UN body; these countries simply decided they had enough power to carve a new map of Europe, like Hitler thought he could do in 1938. 

Namely, the ISG is a creation of the Ahtisaari Plan, a failed 2007 attempt by former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari to impose a complicated anti-Serbian solution for the occupied southern province of Serbia. Ahtisaari won the Nobel Peace Prize for this plan, despite the fact that the plan failed miserably. But hey, other people have received the devalued prize for nothing, too. 

Ahtisaari does not matter, but his plan does. The Plan, or the draft Settlement, as it ended up being called, proposed creating provisional governing structures that would in effect serve as a transitional mechanism towards Kosovo's statehood. Serbia's Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica rejected the Plan, claiming it violated the UN Charter and undermined Serbia's sovereignty, seriously deviating from the UNSCR 1244, which governed the relationships since the occupation of Kosovo and Metohia by NATO in 1999. Instead of the Plan dead-ending there, the Western countries that would go on to recognize Kosovo a year later, actually went ahead and began implementing it in cooperation with the Kosovo Albanian leadership. Thus, the ISG and the ICR were created. This failed and utterly one-sided proposal ended up clearing the path for Kosovo Albanians' declaration of independence a year later. Serbia's disagreement counted for nothing; Serbia had no say in it, despite its sovereignty and territory being blatantly ripped away from it. The North Atlantic community, led by the United States, disregarded the UN Security Council again, just like in 1999 when it attacked Serbia and occupied Kosovo and Metohia, and implemented a proposal that sides did not agree upon, in order to grant independence to the rogue Kosovo Albanian state.

source: rtvbn.com

In Vienna on Monday, the gang of 25 just finished the job. Serbia, still stuck on the UNSCR 1244, did not even react. How could it? For the official Belgrade, even if it had a standing government, Kosovo's independence is illegal and illegitimate, regardless of what a bunch of Western countries decided. However, the reality on the ground, just or not, legitimate or not, denies one after another of Serbia's claims to its occupied southern province.

I know might makes right. I also know that no matter what the Albanian sponsors unilaterally decide, Kosovo is Serbia until Serbia decides it isn't, even if it can't effectively control the province. But the blatant disregard of the United States and NATO for the internationally accepted norms and standards, not only in respect to Serbia, leads me to believe that the world order in which the UN Security Council served as a hub for global political communications and conflict resolution is over. There are no more conflict resolution forums of the kind and the North Atlantic alliance's steamrolling through the Kosovo case, imposing solutions favorable to one side and carving new states out of the existing UN members, is only the latest example of the intent to dominate at all costs. A complete disregard for the complexity of the problem, which the recurring attacks against the North Kosovo Serbs by NATO remind us of a couple of times a month, shows the world what NATO countries really are: an aggressive military juggernaut bent on obliterating every opposition it isn't afraid of. 

The Monday decision in Vienna is a relatively insignificant one in terms of the developments in the Kosovo case, but it does show the intent to further the agenda, to keep pushing forward. Camp Bondsteel is staying put, so it is not like NATO is withdrawing. Ending the supervision only attempted to give the further legitimacy to Hashim Thaci's government, the legitimacy that upholds the reality on the ground, very unfavorable to Serbia and, more directly, to the Kosovo Serbs. The ISG countries did not pretend to trust the Albanians with governing themselves, but the prolonged official babysitting would not make anyone look good.

One question remains unanswered: how long can Serbia ignore the reality and play the Euro-integration game in denial of the hostilities the EU countries and the United States would not stop bombarding it with?