A Place to Stand

Copy of a letter I sent to the Chicago Sun/Times following an article about the Srebrinica massacre, it was not published which is par for the course:

Dear Sir,
Your article on the mystery of the Srebrenica massacre omits mention of 2 particularly important unsolved questions.

Firstly what size was the garrison? When the Moslem leader first announced that a massacre had happened he said that the entire garrison was missing. At the time it was widely reported that the garrison numbered 7,500 male adults. Subsequently it turned out that large numbers of men had indeed reached Moslem lines & immediately transferred to the northern front under orders not to write to their families to say they were alive. The Tribunal now acknowlde that about 7,000 men made it to safety but that the garrison was actually 15,000.

Secondly what happened to the bodies of the Serb victims of genocide? Prior to the Serb forces moving into the town they had attempted to maintain a ceasefire. Unfortunately the Moslem forces under commander Nasir Oric had continuously carried out raids against surrounding villages. Since it was wartime most adult males were away but the population of women, children & the elderly were there. Oric's forces murdered thousands of them. This continued even after a ceasefire under which Dutch troops guaranteed to disarm Oric's forces & separate them. Officially the 4,000 bodies of adults & children recovered, all near the villages where Oric committed genocide rather than in the mass graves originally claimed by the western powers, are those of the Moslem militia, which leaves open the question of where the Serb bodies are. There is no question that Oric engaged in this genocide since he personally showed videos of him beheading civilians, taken from his extensive home video collection, to reporters from the Toronto Star & Washington Post. He is currently awaiting trial before the Tribunal on separate charges.

The Serbs, of course, have obvious answers to all these questions & it required the full power of Gauletier Ashdown to suppress their report. The fact that, for the last 10 years, no major western media outlet has even published both sides of this question is a standing indictment to the journalistic integrity of the entire western media.