no Gorin...these are the people

Julia Gorin on her quest to label Kosovo as the epicenter of Islamic extremism posts photos of injured Serbs, old men and women and notes that I would label them the murderers and rapists of the Kosovars.

No Julia, these are the people I would call that:

UK Guardian

Video footage shows six Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica being shot dead in the Bosnian village of Trnovo in July 1995.

The victims were among the thousands murdered during the final stages of the 1992-1995 ethnic conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The Scorpions commander, Slobodan Medic, and a fellow paramilitary were each sentenced to 20 years in prison. Pero Petrasevic, the only defendant who admitted shooting the victims, was sentenced to 13 years.

Another Scorpions member, accused of being an accomplice, was sentenced to five years in jail, while a fifth was cleared.

The murders - which happened in the UN "safe haven" - were Europe's worst single atrocity since the second world war. Around 100,000 people were killed in the three-year conflict.

Footage of the Trnovo killings shocked many in Serbia, where some had publicly expressed doubts over whether the Srebrenica massacre took place.

Article continues

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And I could fill this post with similar revelations, but I think we all get the point.

The fact is that the Serbian government was committing atrocities against the Muslim Kosovars and the majority of the Serb people didn't even realize it. Of course this doesn't excuse violence such as the bombing of those old men and women, but if we are going to toss around blame perhaps we should consider Europe's worst single atrocity since WWII in the equation...eh Gorin?

Also from the BBC:

Comments

[peshkatari]

Ray,

Of course, I'm sure you remember when the Trnovo massacre was revealed, La Gorin and her hubby Lev wrote an article for Front Page where they did not try to deny the veracity of what was shown on the tape, or even that it was evil (and amazingly, considering the times she's tried to deny or spin it, she even fesses up to the fact that 7,000 civilian males were massacred at Srebrenica), but instead admitted it, then went on to do what she usually does....spin it off into one of her patented usual unrelated-to-the-matter-at-hand-except-by-the-barest-of -threads screeds that basically boils down to "Well, maybe the Serbs did this, but look at what's been done to them first!" As if even if that were true (and as I'm sure you know, usually it hasn't been the actual case, and isn't now, as actual OBJECTIVE historians like Noel Malcolm have pointed out), that it somehow or another justifies that sort of atrocious behavoir and atrocities.

Then there are other times when she tries to justify such atrocities by the fact that the victims were *Muslim*, and hence a priori enemies of the west, jihadis, etc., regardless of any other circumstances and/or facts that contradict her ideologically based assertions (which of course, she believes to be objective "facts"). Doesn't matter what sort of Muslim the person might be, or how that individual does/did or does/did not practice that faith in their own life; to her, they're all the same, whether Wahabi or Salafi on one end, or Bekteshi or Ismaili on the other.

Keep up the good work though, Ray! We need more voices, regardless of where they sit on the political spectrum, speaking up for the REAL TRUTH on
Kosovo and the rest of the Balkans!

http://albanianrealitycheck.blogspot.com

[Marko]

Should you edit the following comment out again, it will show exactly how much free speech means to you:
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RR says: Marko, free speech doesn't mean free to insult me on my own blog....I have no problem acknowledging that the fighting in Kosovo and Bosnia went both ways and would be happy to leave the rest of your comments if you can find a way to do it without insulting me.

[Marko]

Posted again for your perusal, with ironic reference removed:

I remember seeing a video of Croat troops killing Krajina Serbs trying to escape from the largest single act of 'ethnic cleansing' of the entire conflict - that from the supposedly United Nations Protected Area of the Krajina, in August 1995 (12th anniversary just gone unnoticed).
Sadly that operation was supported in every sense by the US, whose then policy-makers immediately span the forced expulsion (and for 2,000 people, extermination) of 355,000 people as a great opportunity for peace(!).
(Later it would transpire that staged events in Kosovo, eg Racak, would get rather more condemnation than such mass murder in Krajina)

Re. Srebrenica
Difficult to know where to start on this one. A grisly and controversial ending is usually presented as the story in toto (7000? Civilian males?). Most able-bodied males in Srebrenica belonged to the 28th Division of the Bosnian Army, led in the region by Naser Oric. Their mission was to internationalise the conflict by provoking the Serbs to attack a 'safe area'. Their method: To make it anything but safe. To this end these charming 'men and boys' as they are referred to set out on a campaign of mass murder and massacre over a period of years. Their targets: any and every civilian man, woman, boy they could find in the outlying Serbian-inhabited rural areas. Figures of the massacred victims of this genuine genocide vary from 1000 to 3000. Whatever the figure, what is certain is that the 'men and boys' who killed them were a bunch of wilfully murderous cut-throats intent on extermination. Their leader, Oric, even proudly displayed videos of his murdered victims to Western journalists (who by their silence brought deeper disgrace to their already devoutly anti-serbist profession).
Perhaps it was inevitable that the surrender of the 28th would therefore not be accepted. Which was why they in the main didn't even try to surrender, but feverishly fought their way back to Muslim lines. The overall leader of the Army, Rasim Delic, proudly told the 'Bosnian Parliament' that 'the bulk of the 28th Division and the civilians accompanying them have escaped safely'. The Red Cross complained that thousands of the 28th were then being hidden without even their families being informed, ie to inflate the figures of dead or missing. Many of these alleged dead appear to have successfully voted in the OSCE-organised elections a year later. But whatever the number killed in battle or executed, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that they died in a conflict they provoked through their criminal actions.

One more point to put the above in depressing context:
In Afghanistan, some years later, following a rebellion of Taliban POW's in a prison there, 3000 other surrendered Taliban troops who had separately surrendered at Kunduz were herded into sealed trains by the (anti-Taliban) Northern Alliance in the presence of numerous US military advisers. Machine-guns were fired into the trains to provide some "ventilation" as the sealed trains headed off on a journey to nowhere in 100-degree heat with no food or water. Some two days later, all 3000 were disgorged dead into the desert.

So from Krajina to Kunduz, when might the media start to mention massive massacres for which Uncle Sam bears his own responsibility?