Wednesday, March 21, 2007
SREBRENICA: THE COMMISSION CAN'T SAY IF THEY HAVE THE DNA OF ANY OF THE SERB VICTIMS ON FILE
This is a follow up to my previous post on the Scotsman's censorship. Following a reminder to Mr Boys he gave the reply at the bottom to which my response is immediately below. The latest Scotman report is here.:
Dear Mr Boys,
Thank you for your reply. It seems you do not know of any store of DNA of relatives of the victims of the primary massacre, that of the villagers around Srebrenica, & obviously consequently could not, even in theory, identify any of the bodies of Serb victims by relative's DNA. Or obviously say with certainty that most of the masses of bodies are Serbs.
From what you say the ICTY have not passed on the documents that Republika Srpska gave them as evidence of atrocities against Serbs. I understand this contains the names of at least 3870 identiffied individuals. I assume they also have not passed on the original report that RS made of the massacring at Srebrenica since Mr Ashdown attempted to destroy all copies. It is available on pdf here http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/smorg-sreb101604.htm . Estimable though the Serbian media may be it is clear that the ICTY could & in my view should, have provided you with much more thorough sources. Without access to Serbian sources of information about atrocities against them it is obviously impossible for your organisation to investigate properly. I suspect that the current figures of those who died in that war of between 100,000 & 40,000 may well apply to Moslem & Croat victims. The original NATO figure of 300,000 may be correct - the rest being Serbs. This would explain the otherwise inexplicable demographic reduction in B&H's Serbian population, despite the incursion of refugees from the ethnic cleansing & genocide in Croatia.
Such suppression by the ICTY is clearly a perversion of the course of justice.
I am also surprised that you are not aware of the legal definition of genocide since I would have thought it quite germane to your investigations, particularly if any of it were at any time to be used in a "court" See
1) the mental element, meaning the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such", and
2) the physical element which includes five acts described in sections a, b, c, d and e. A crime must include both elements to be called "genocide
May I also draw your attention to Bill Clinton's legal differentiation of what happened in Ruanda as not bieng "genocide" but merely "acts of genocide". In the same way 2 Albanian bodies, arguably combat casualties, found in Kosovo have been classed as genocide but 210 non-Albanians at Dragodan were counted ae 210 graves in the same place. This latter ceases to be proof of more than "acts of genocide" rather than a campaign. How you phrase your reports may therefore be of great importance, unless the ICTY rewrite them before investigating.
Clearly Oric's murder of entire villages was indeed was indeed an attempt to destroy Serbs as either a religious or ethnic groip. As such the ICTY could only possibly have failed to describe ot as genocide if they are wholly & completely corrupt. The alleged killing of the Militia of Srebrenica, even had it happened, was certainly not an attempt to destroy the whole Moslem population of Srebrenica. Indeed it is agreed by all parties that Mladic made every effort, successfully, to protect the women & general civilian population of Srebrenica. Whether it & an unfortunately numerous number of killings of combat soldiers across the world, counts as genocide or not it is undeniably the case that, as a human being, Mladic is at least thousands of time more moral than Oric & at least hundreds of times more humane than the NATO politicians & NATO funded "judges" who protected Oric.
Yours
Neil Craig
PS The previous Scotsman article claimed that you had described a body as having been killed by a Serb, using a Kalashnikov, execution style. Another commenter asked about this & I don't know if you have replied direct to him. Since you have given an assurance that you do not express an opinion as to who did any killing & there is an obvious difficulty in identifying the gun & "style" of killing without a bullet would I be correct in assuming that you did not make that statement. That it was fabricated in a way clearly likely to inspire hatred of Serbs & support of NATO's Nazi friends.
--------------------------------------
My previous correspondence to Mr Boys said:
How many of the bodies of the 3870 Serb civilians in surrounding villages murdered by the Moslem militia have been identified?
How many of their relatives DNA profiles have you on record.?
Does the deliberate murder of 3870 men women & children, non-conatants legally count as gennocide?
If so what evidence have you that Oric & his men were not involved, that would justify the failure to charge him with genocide?
---------------------
Thanks for your e-mail:
1. It would depend upon how many went missing. I am not trying to avoid the question but if someone is killed but the relatives etc know where the body is and bury that body then the individual would not be reported missing. As far as I understand, from reading reports in Serbian media, the Serb civilians and soldiers reported as killed in the area around Srebrenica were not buried in mass graves. That does not mean that I am saying that people were not killed but it does mean that our organisation would not necessarily hear about them as they would not be reported as missing. That's why the Documentation Centre may be a better port of call as they record all deaths regardless of what happened to the body after death.
2. We have about 80% of blood references for all missing persons generally. For the RS as a whole we are little bit lower than that but we have had a good response from RS politicians in trying to get the message out. Specifically, the parameters of your question are difficult to answer because - as in 1. above - it is difficult to know how many of those killed in villages around Srebrenica were not found after death. Again, if they were killed but it was known where the body lay after death then there would have been no report to ICRC or ICMP.
3. I am no lawyer and I hope that you accept that I can't speculate about a judgement that a court would make. I honestly do not know what constitutes a judgement of genocide.
4. I have no evidence either way as that sort of thing is not something we look for in any situation. As I said, we don't look at cause and manner of death. We just try to identify the missing regardless of ethnic group.
With best wishes
Adam Boys
Dear Mr Boys,
Thank you for your reply. It seems you do not know of any store of DNA of relatives of the victims of the primary massacre, that of the villagers around Srebrenica, & obviously consequently could not, even in theory, identify any of the bodies of Serb victims by relative's DNA. Or obviously say with certainty that most of the masses of bodies are Serbs.
From what you say the ICTY have not passed on the documents that Republika Srpska gave them as evidence of atrocities against Serbs. I understand this contains the names of at least 3870 identiffied individuals. I assume they also have not passed on the original report that RS made of the massacring at Srebrenica since Mr Ashdown attempted to destroy all copies. It is available on pdf here http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/smorg-sreb101604.htm . Estimable though the Serbian media may be it is clear that the ICTY could & in my view should, have provided you with much more thorough sources. Without access to Serbian sources of information about atrocities against them it is obviously impossible for your organisation to investigate properly. I suspect that the current figures of those who died in that war of between 100,000 & 40,000 may well apply to Moslem & Croat victims. The original NATO figure of 300,000 may be correct - the rest being Serbs. This would explain the otherwise inexplicable demographic reduction in B&H's Serbian population, despite the incursion of refugees from the ethnic cleansing & genocide in Croatia.
Such suppression by the ICTY is clearly a perversion of the course of justice.
I am also surprised that you are not aware of the legal definition of genocide since I would have thought it quite germane to your investigations, particularly if any of it were at any time to be used in a "court" See
1) the mental element, meaning the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such", and
2) the physical element which includes five acts described in sections a, b, c, d and e. A crime must include both elements to be called "genocide
May I also draw your attention to Bill Clinton's legal differentiation of what happened in Ruanda as not bieng "genocide" but merely "acts of genocide". In the same way 2 Albanian bodies, arguably combat casualties, found in Kosovo have been classed as genocide but 210 non-Albanians at Dragodan were counted ae 210 graves in the same place. This latter ceases to be proof of more than "acts of genocide" rather than a campaign. How you phrase your reports may therefore be of great importance, unless the ICTY rewrite them before investigating.
Clearly Oric's murder of entire villages was indeed was indeed an attempt to destroy Serbs as either a religious or ethnic groip. As such the ICTY could only possibly have failed to describe ot as genocide if they are wholly & completely corrupt. The alleged killing of the Militia of Srebrenica, even had it happened, was certainly not an attempt to destroy the whole Moslem population of Srebrenica. Indeed it is agreed by all parties that Mladic made every effort, successfully, to protect the women & general civilian population of Srebrenica. Whether it & an unfortunately numerous number of killings of combat soldiers across the world, counts as genocide or not it is undeniably the case that, as a human being, Mladic is at least thousands of time more moral than Oric & at least hundreds of times more humane than the NATO politicians & NATO funded "judges" who protected Oric.
Yours
Neil Craig
PS The previous Scotsman article claimed that you had described a body as having been killed by a Serb, using a Kalashnikov, execution style. Another commenter asked about this & I don't know if you have replied direct to him. Since you have given an assurance that you do not express an opinion as to who did any killing & there is an obvious difficulty in identifying the gun & "style" of killing without a bullet would I be correct in assuming that you did not make that statement. That it was fabricated in a way clearly likely to inspire hatred of Serbs & support of NATO's Nazi friends.
--------------------------------------
My previous correspondence to Mr Boys said:
How many of the bodies of the 3870 Serb civilians in surrounding villages murdered by the Moslem militia have been identified?
How many of their relatives DNA profiles have you on record.?
Does the deliberate murder of 3870 men women & children, non-conatants legally count as gennocide?
If so what evidence have you that Oric & his men were not involved, that would justify the failure to charge him with genocide?
---------------------
Thanks for your e-mail:
1. It would depend upon how many went missing. I am not trying to avoid the question but if someone is killed but the relatives etc know where the body is and bury that body then the individual would not be reported missing. As far as I understand, from reading reports in Serbian media, the Serb civilians and soldiers reported as killed in the area around Srebrenica were not buried in mass graves. That does not mean that I am saying that people were not killed but it does mean that our organisation would not necessarily hear about them as they would not be reported as missing. That's why the Documentation Centre may be a better port of call as they record all deaths regardless of what happened to the body after death.
2. We have about 80% of blood references for all missing persons generally. For the RS as a whole we are little bit lower than that but we have had a good response from RS politicians in trying to get the message out. Specifically, the parameters of your question are difficult to answer because - as in 1. above - it is difficult to know how many of those killed in villages around Srebrenica were not found after death. Again, if they were killed but it was known where the body lay after death then there would have been no report to ICRC or ICMP.
3. I am no lawyer and I hope that you accept that I can't speculate about a judgement that a court would make. I honestly do not know what constitutes a judgement of genocide.
4. I have no evidence either way as that sort of thing is not something we look for in any situation. As I said, we don't look at cause and manner of death. We just try to identify the missing regardless of ethnic group.
With best wishes
Adam Boys
