"Unwavering Dutch stance on Mladić, SAA"

Sam,

Genocide? You're on a Serbian forum and you're trying to spread those lies to us?

How was recapturing a town that was a staging ground for the killing of over 3,500 Serbian CIVILIANS in surrounding villages a genocide? How is escorting all female and child residents to safety genocide? How is the killing of combat soldiers in a war zone genocide?

Funny how the death of thousands of Bosnian soldiers is deemed a genocide yet the murder of thousands of Serbian civilians by these very same soldiers is not.

We Serbs have to deal with enough duplicity from people in positions of authority.

Why does the Dutch government feel so passionately about this? What has it got to do with them? I know that The Hague hosts this NATO court, and many Dutch real estate agencies,escort girls, and catering organizations make a lot of money from this. I guess that is the only reason the Dutch government holds such a strong opinion on this matter.

Oh come off it! The Hague has lost any credibility it might have had by letting Haradinaj go free.

Surely, no self respecting Serb will hand anyone over to this institution it's proven itself incapable of delivering justice.

There should be an inquiry (by all stakeholders including the Serbs) to establish whether the Harandinaj case was mishandled this may restore it legitimacy.

As for the Dutch, they should try and keep abreat of events and understand that the Hague's legitimacy is in question. The Dutch are not upholding justice it's more a case of holding a nation to ransom.

If there was genocide at Srebrenica why are there Bosniak survivors of Srebrenica writing books about how there are many thousands of survivors of Srebrenica, and that the Bosnian authorities are trying to repress any information about them. What about Oric's crimes in Srebrenica? The Dutch have always had the position of 'good Muslims' vs. 'bad Serbs'. And of course they have their own criminal associations with the Suharto dictatorship and its genocidal crimes in East Timor that they still haven't fully acknowledged.
It's yet another hypocritical country that no longer has a single moral leg to stand on.

Nemanja:
"How is escorting all female and child residents to safety genocide? "

I would call this ethnic cleansing.
(Sam, 9 April 2008 18:36)

Really? I would call it humanitarian evacuation from a war zone. The massacred Serbian civilians in the surrounding villages of Srebrenica didn't receive that courtesy from the Bosnian soldiers.

Veki are you talking about this pictures? http://img167.imageshack.us/my.php?image=18rwyi7.jpg

July 1995, Srebrenica. Radovan Karadzic and greek paramilitaries after the massacre.

Or this one? http://img180.imageshack.us/my.php?image=27nruw5.jpg

Radovan Karadzic handing the "white eagle" medals to greek paramilitaries. These were medals that were given to the "best" soldiers in the bosnian war.

Serbian people dont be surprised that the world know everything, but aperantly serbians dont even know 1/10th of their own history. Why should they? They only fight outside their own borders. But once you are in a foreign land don't be surprised to be cought red handed.

Very well done Form Holland. The most neutral country, its no surprise its not good enough for Serbia.

How about because he committed genocide and the serbian military is hiding him ? I am sure if 7000 Serbs were massacred in 24 hr you would not be singing the same song. And when you say Serbia cant find him; wasnt he receiving his military pension until 2003 in Belgrade. It is true the Dutch feel guilty that their solders simply stood back and watched and therefore their government resigned.

Brian, of course there are many thousands of Srebrenica 'survivors'. When the Bosnian Serb forces tightened their knot around the town in July 1995 there were an estimated 60 000 refugees from surrounding areas residing in Srebrenica. Most of them fled through the surrounding mountains and forests to Federation territory while about 25-30 000 sought out the Dutch in Potocari for protection. Most of them were women and children, but about 8000 were not...

I don't know what Suharto has to do with either Srebrenica or with making Serbia hand over Mladic to The Hague.

And I don't understand why it's wrong to take the position of 'good Muslims vs bad Serbs'. Those are of course your words. A more apt description would be 'Muslim victims vs attacking Serbs', and, broadly speaking, when you consider the ridiculous imbalance in military strength between the two sides, and that the UN has established that 90% of the killings were committed against Muslims by Serbs, it's not a completely baseless description.

I'm glad the Dutch try to remind the EU that it has an enormous debt to pay for allowing the Bosnian war to happen and to drag out for so long.

Please do not praise Holland for its high moral standards. In WW II quite a number of Dutch policemen and civilians helped the Germans to send Dutch jews to concentration camps. Between 1947 and 1949 the Dutch army killed many innocent Indonesian people (some historians claim that there over 100,000 civilians slaughtered) when Indonesia proclaimed independence. No greater hypocrites than FM Maxime Verhagen, PM Jan Peter Balkenende and the rest of the Dutch government...

"when they find him"
this sounds friendly- there is no time pressure.

Spaniard-

The Dutch are ashamed about what others perceive to be their 'cowardly act' in Srebrenica.There is a picture of their General drinking buzz
with Ratko Mladic just hours before the masacre took place.
I think that is the main reason they are after him, plus of course all the reasons that you've listed.

Holland, an absolutely insignificant player on the world stage, is dictating conditions for Serbia's admission to the EU. And Dulic is groveling before these pompous irrelevant Dutch officials! Absolutely absurd!

I am not surprised that Dutch are so passionate about Hague being that there are historically very few, if any, claims to fame for the otherwise less than significant nation (the Hague, tulips, worthless windmills and funny looking shoes). Serbs on the other hand held Turks from invading Europe for 500 years only to see Europe surrender to Muslims without a shot fired.

Sam and Martin,

8000 is a media malicious figure and you know that.
the facts are saying another story:

-Out of those 8000 , 2500 Bosnian Muslim soldiers from Srebrenica, listed as missing, reappeared two days after so called massacre in a town 50 kilometers away for the army parade before Alija Izetbegovic. Well timed Alija!

-One year after Srebrenica another 1500 listed missing reappeared as voters during Bosnian election.

-International forensic teams made up of professionals from all over the world, Bosnia, Croatia , yet exclusive to the Serbian field authorities cause they were forbidden presence, have found so far until today in all surrounding area of Srebrenica close to 2400 bodies from all ethnic origins.

Sam
let me remind you that Serbian did not fight on foreign territories in Bosnia.

I'm dutch and it has nothing to do with the ICTY but it all has to do that there is no majority for EU expansion in the Netherlands, the dutch people simply don't want any new members anymore.

When it's croatia's turn or any other balkan country we will find something to block acces.

"Serb attackers vs Muslim victims". Yeah right. Oric was a saint. So was Alija and his mujahadeen mercenaries that came to help murder Serbs. The Serbs were willing to work for peace, but Alija wanted war. Even Holbrooke who is notoriously anti-Serb said Alija blocked negotiations for peace at every turn. He wanted an Islamist state. He was given the King Faisal prize for his work on behalf of Jihad in Saudi Arabia. Alija attacked his own Bosniak forces that were pro-peace that were willing to work with the Serbs like Fikret Abdic. The UN just sat by while Oric had his way with Serb victims. Of course they'd say the Serbs committed all the violence. They've exonerated all the thugs they worked for. Oric is sitting happily in Tuzla right now.

And yes there was an imbalance, against the Serbs. Weapons were being funnelled in from all the western countries who were supposedly implementing an arms embargo against all of Bosnia. These arms went to the Croatians and Bosnians. NATO warplanes helped bomb Serb targets. Are you saying the RS army was 9 times more powerful than Bosnia's NATO henchmen?

It takes a special person to come to Serbian news forums and slander Serbia like that.

Nemanja:
"How is escorting all female and child residents to safety genocide? "

I would call this ethnic cleansing.

Martin on the contrary the one redeeming feature of the Hague was the ruling that cleared Serbia of genocide in Bosnia. That particular case had sufficient evidence and on the basis of the ‘available’ evidence was able to make a fair and just decision. In the Haradinaj case there was widespread ‘foul play’ aimed at perverting the course of justice. I’m not sure who is to blame but the whole affair brings the credibility of the Hague into question.

The Court in the Hague is a joke. How can Haradinaj be found not guilty. So that would mean Mladic & Karadzic would be innocent too right.
Serbia will never surrender these 2 guys to the Hague.The international war crimes court is a circus. I am sure that the Hague had something to do with the death of Milosevic.

Pera, by the same standards, the court should have lost its credibility already when it cleared Serbia of complicity in the Bosnian genocide. There are as many links and indices linking Serbia to that genocide as Haradinaj to the murders he is accused of.

The blame in both cases should not be pinned on the court in The Hague, which on both cases ruled on the basis of the presented evidence, but on those who failed to collect the relevant evidence. In Haradinaj's case, the blame should be placed on both UNMIK which failed to provide adequate protection to the witnesses in his trial, and on Serbia which, surprisingly, failed to provide all the relevant documents it had in its possession.

As for the Bosnian genocide, we all know about the important incriminating documents which the Serbian state was able to withhold from The Hague because Carla Del Ponte did not insist on getting them.

I think the trials in the Hague are fair, and as objective as they possibly could be (certainly more objective than if the issues of Haradinaj, Bosnia and Mladic were settled in Kosovo, Bosnian or Serbian courts. The problems are the lack of cooperation of other institutions, governments and people.

Kudos to the Netherlands for being one of only a few EU members able to show some moral spine for once. Whether this is done out of bad conscience is beside the point. At last EU members are beginning to set principle before political expediency, unlike what happened in 1991-95 and now lately over the recognition of Kosovo.

Rain, your figures don't make sense.

As I said before, the vast majority of the 60,000 refugees residing in Srebrenica before July 1995 had left before Mladic got there. Most of the town militia were among those who fled into the forests. After all, those who had participated in killing Serbs knew they wouldn't be treated gently if they were caught by the approaching forces. They were usually also young, well-trained and felt they'd stand a good chance trying to escape through the mountainous terrain. Little wonder therefore that they fled and left women, children, sick, elderly and men who felt they had less to fear from Mladic than from trying to break through the Serb lines on foot.

It is therefore no wonder that 2,500 Bosnian soldiers from Srebrenica reappeared two days after the massacre. It took a few days to run on foot from Srebrenica to Tuzla.

The fact that 1500 'missing' people re-registered themselves for the vote one year later is hardly strange either. Can you imagine the chaos in the public registers after nearly four years of war? The reason why Dayton predicated that people should choose themselves where they were residents and where they wanted to vote was partly in order to reverse the process of ethnic cleansing, but mainly because there was absolutely no reliable way to survey and register the Bosnian population after years of war, devastation and population shifts. The vote one year after the war was as much a population census as a political event.

Fact remains that 7000-8000 people from the Srebrenica refugees remain missing until this day. They can mostly be accounted for by their wives and children who were shipped to Tuzla.

No one but Mladic knows what went through his mind when he entered Srebrenica on 11 July, 1995 and found 25,000 refugees, but virtually no militia men, but probably he decided to take revenge for the suffering near-by Serbs had sustained on the only people who were available: wretched, unarmed boys and men. Separating all those who were of weapon-wielding age (from age 13), he decided to take out his wrath on anyone who might even have had the potential to take up a gun against a Serb. And as many of Mladic's forces have testified he ordered that they be taken away in buses and shot.

I've been to Srebrenica and I've seen the graves of twelve and thirteen-year old boys. There was even one of an eleven year-old boy. You might say his grave is a fabrication and a propaganda stint (a fake birth-date inscription perhaps?) but I believe a revolting and unimaginable crime took place in Srebrenica in July 1995.

I also heard the guide at the Potocari memorial centre tell me that 26 of her male relatives disappeared during these July days. None of them returned a year later to vote or to cheer for Izetbegovic.

Denying that a genocide took place in Srebrenica is to cast away your last shred of intellectual and moral dignity. No one blames you for what happened there. It was the work of Mladic and his cohorts. But by trying to deny it out of a sense of national guilt makes you complicit in the crime.

Brian,

you've got your facts wrong.

And your chronology.

Nato attacked Serb forces for the first time in 1995.

Bosnian Serb forces had about 1300 tanks at the start of the war, compared to the Federation's 36. The Federation had few or no airplanes, while the Bosnian Serbs had access to the JNA's aircraft arsenal for much of the war.

In terms of artillery, the situation was even more skewed.

In terms of hand-held weaponry there was greater equality, but rifles and AK47s are of little use against rockets, tanks and airplanes, or for breaking a siege around cities like Tuzla and Sarajevo.

Yes, Bosnia did get weapons underhand from abroad, mostly from countries of the Islamic world who were willing to transgress the arms embargo. In 1995 the US also started funnelling arms and other equipment to the Bosnians through the Croats, but as you might know the war had gone on for three years by then and the Bosnian Serbs were in control of 70 per cent of the territory. Further, until the American involvement the smuggled-in weapons were only hand-held arms (or can you imagine someone trying to smuggle in a tank to a government in a land-locked country that was surrounded by hostile Serbs and Croats for most of the war?

As I said, the imbalance was reversed in 1995 thanks to American involvement (at last!). This is not just my view. Vladimir Matic at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Yugoslavia said the same thing in 1996, citing the American intervention as the factor 'that made Dayton possible'.

http://www.commongroundradio.org/shows/96/9615.html

But you seem to be approaching these issues objectively and without getting emotionally involved so you're probably right. The Serbs probably did have fewer arms and no access at all to the JNA's stockpiles. With virtually bare hands they managed to gain control over 70 per cent of the Bosnian territory by the end of 1992. It was an impressive feat but by no means unrealistic...

Genocide: the systematic killing of all the people from a national, ethnic, or religious group, or an attempt to do this. If one thinks that the killings in Srebrenica do not fit this definition then one is soooo biased and blind that there is no help for them.

I personally am sure that Mladic and Karadzic at least attempted to a systematic killing of all the people from a particular ethnic or religious background.

Now, if you serbs think that they are innocent, then give them the opportunity to defend themselves in court. Someone authorized to kill all those thousands of people in Srebrenica, which included children and women (not all soldiers as claimed by some people here, but civilians!!!). It was a very well organized killing machine. If Mladic and Karadzic are innocent, then they shouldn’t be afraid of the trial and should surrender themselves voluntarily. The fact that they are hiding is perceived as a sense of guilt.

“Surely, no self respecting Serb will hand anyone over to this institution it's proven itself incapable of delivering justice.”

“8000 is a media malicious figure and you know that.
the facts are saying another story”

8000 — better saying, at least around 8300 — is not a mere “media figure”. It’s the number of dead people according to the UN and the most respected international forensic specialists!

That’s just another proof that sadly many Orthodox Serbians still regard Radovam Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and Zeljko Arkan Raznatovic as “Serb folk heroes”.

If the SAA contained a guarantee of Serbian territory, I think by all means, Mladic should turn himself in. Regardless of innocence or guilt, sometimes soldiers are called upon to make sacrifices for their country. Now is that time.

Martin, you are incorrect, the deal with the documents was that Carla could view them and use them, but not share them with others. I’m sure that if they were as incriminating as you think they are, we would have been hearing about it in her new book.

I do feel that Srebenica was a horrible fate for anyone. However, I personally do not feel it was comparable to something like what the Jews suffered in WWII, a true systematic attempt to completely destroy a helpless and defenseless people. You must understand, that according to the Oric ruling in the ICTY, these same masses of civilians from Srebenica were uncontrollably attacking Serbian civilians for years, destroying villages and killing thousands. Oric could not contain them, and they followed him around in the thousands. It was pretty obviously petty revenge by the local Serbians who felt they had been treated in a similar fashion. I do not believe that Belgrade ordered it, there’s plenty of evidence that there was a breakdown in Belgrade’s control over the situation in Bosnia by then. Most certainly those types of crimes do need to be strongly condemned, but we must not forget this is the Balkans, nothing is ever completely Black & White, and it has a tradition of terrible brutality.

"The Serbs were willing to work for peace, but Alija wanted war. Even Holbrooke who is notoriously anti-Serb said Alija blocked negotiations for peace at every turn."

Of course the Serbs wanted peace - on their terms. And Izetbegovic also wanted peace on his terms. The Serbs were not happy with the Carrington plan, nor were they happy with the Vance-Owen plan (which would have formalised their war gains and, effectively, ethnic cleansing in eastern Bosnia).

Nor did Izetbegovic help the process along 'at every turn'. But he did accept the Vance-Owen plan. You can't really blame him for rejecting the Owen-Stoltenberg plan, which would effectively partitioned Bosnia.

I'm not a great fan of Izetbegovic and I regret that the he should have been president during the war. His currying of Islamistic groups was quite revolting. Then again, when the entire world imposes an arms embargo on his fledgling state and sits idly by while a people is raped, what would you do? Wouldn't you turn to the only people who are willing to offer help?

But Izetbegovic was one actor in a larger game. And that game centred on Bosnian Serb nationalists wanting to carve out the 'Serbian homeland' of the national myths from the rotting corpse of the Yugoslav federation. They played on fears of Jihad and Muslim fundamentalism to turn the Serbs against the Federation government (which, for your information, the referendum shows was supported by virtually every Bosniak AND Bosnian-Croat).

Even Biljana Plavsic admitted the Bosnian-Serbs conducted a strategy of ethnic cleansing. It is beyond doubt. It's a fact. A historical truth. It doesn't detract from the evils which Oric did (and it's abdominable that he is able to run a disco peacefully in Tuzla), but when all concerned international institutions, including the UN and the secretary-general Kofi Annan, show who was the main perpetrator, I would rather take their word for it than that of someone posting stuff on a newspaper forum.

No, Pera, not all documents on the Bosnian case were presented to The Hague. Carla Del Ponte struck a deal with Belgrade allowing Serbia to withhold material stamped 'top secret' if she was given other material. This was done for reasons of time, and because the prosecution knew it would be politically impossible to procure all the documents.

Could you imagine Serbia freely handing over documents incriminating it with genocide? I can't.

The trial was impracticable from the start. It set out to prove that Serbia had been complicit in the Bosnian genocide. But the vast majority of documents that would be needed to assess this were, for obvious reasons, found in Serbia.

You cannot criticse The Hague for the Haradinaj verdict but commend it for its ruling in the Bosnian case. Both trials operated on faulty evidence.

I do agree with you that the whole business of the Haradinaj trial (just as much as the Bosnian trial) cast the workability of the tribunal into doubt.

@Martin:

It couldn't have been better said! I completely agree!

Other EU countries must object Serbia's entry into EU too, we simply don't want you guys in here. I saw recently a movie of how Serbian red berets killing civilians in Bosnia, it actually was recorded by a member of red beret, I just can't erase those pictures.

May truth always prevail.

“‘Serb attackers vs Muslim victims’. Yeah right. Oric was a saint. So was Alija and his mujahadeen mercenaries that came to help murder Serbs.”

The islamic fighters just came to Bosnia because the almost absolute helplessness of the Bosnian people to the massive sieges, massacres, expulsions and killings of the pro-Belgrade forces. Practically everyone in the world with a TV set could watch the terrible suffering in the “Sniper Alley” of Sarajevo, among other barbarities.

Naser Oric may not be a saint, but that doesn't make Maldic a “tragic hero”…

“Alija blocked negotiations for peace at every turn. He wanted an Islamist state.”

That’s wrong. First of all, Bosnia since its peaceful independence (trough a referendum where even 15% of the Orthodox people vote for) never had Iran or Saudi-style sharia law (well, as far as we all know most of Bosnians don't wear beard or turbans and all women don't use hijab, can drive, vote and wear mini-skirts and jeans pants). And second, as far as we know all the Sarajevo government at that time wanted was independence from Yugoslavia and unification of the all Bosnian country.

i have to say that i must compliment b92 in ONE area -- thanks to them, you always know what the serb nationalists are thinking and saying, no matter how morally corrupt and repulsive.

and thank god for holland, as i have argued before. a lone and rare voice of sanity in the world. yes, it is true, the dutch forces were guilty of a sickening acquiescence to the genocide, the mass murder and torture of civilians; all the more reason to try to take back the moral high ground.

and please! i will not lower myself to fighting with the nationalists over those numbers, nor should anyone else -- it is exactly like fighting with holocaust deniers. it is beneath my dignity and should be beneath the dignity of all others w any moral sense. the civilized world knows what happened -- if certain people choose to deny it, more is the pity for them!

keep up your integrity, holland, and never give in when you know that we are in the right.

robert-0 from frisco

Brian, how dare you imply that I'm anti-Serb?

I've got many Serbian friends and I've spent a lot of time in Serbia, a country that I love. It's a beautiful country.

If I condemn acts perpetrated by Serbs, I'm not indicting the nation as such - I'm condemning those actions and the people who carried them out and allowed them to be carried out.

That doesn't make me or anyone else on this forum anti-Serb.

Please don't mix politics and people. That's what people did in the Balkans in the nineties.

If you can't debate except with cheap rhetoric and bluster you better not debate at all.

As for your points about the military imbalance favouring the Bosniaks, the Bosniaks carrying out more atrocities than the Serbs, the Bosniak leadership being allied with Islamists, it's a lot of strong words but as far as I can gather you don't give us any facts.

Calling the Western media, the 'Nato media' tells us more about yourself than about respected news outlets like the BBC. Or has your imagination conceived that the BBC is also ruled by Nato?

@Spaniard
Sorry but i don't think that the problems are real estate agents or escort girls...
Do you think that the position of the Dutch is really "solitaire" ?
Are you young don't you know the usual tricks of Diplomacy ?
For me there are other states that are againstin EU but ..as it was with Russia and the "polish meat"...they let only one to say no but they support his decision BEHIND CLOSE DOORS...
The usual way of doing things...
I remain of the same opinion there is already a majority of countries in EU that have given lost Serbia so now they have to ASSEST THINGS....

DJKrstic

While indeed the Serbs, Armenians, Greeks, Albanians, Bulgarians and others fought hard to try and stem the Ottoman invasion of Europe, read about a man called Jan Sobieski III and what it really meant to stop the Ottoman invasion of Europe.

I don't understand why Dutch government feel so passionately about this either, I mean the Dutch soldiers helped serbs separate males from females in Srebrenica effectively helping the massacre go more smothely. Furthermore Eu countries coined the phrase " no muslim states in Europe" allowing the wars to go on and even today apologists use that to minimize serbs massacres and rapes around balkans.

DJKrstic - I'm sorry to have to inform you of a basic fact of history: the Serbs did not keep the Turks from invading Europe "for 500 years." (as you claim). All Christian nations (Albanians, Croatians, Hungarians - you name 'em) struggled against the Ottomans for centuries. And all were overwhelmed in the end. None of them did it "for Europe." All fought to save their own skins (though they did use the slogan "to defend Christendom").

Not only were the Serbs (and the rest) unable to prevent the Ottomans from taking their own lands, they were unable to stop them from reaching much, much deeper into Europe.

And, for your information, like members of all the lands the Ottomans conquered, some Serbs fought on the Turkish side during those centuries of Ottoman expansion (some also converted to Islam, in case you have forgotten).

Since you need the reminder: The Turks got all the way to Vienna. There, in the end, they were stopped, in part due to the defence of the Austrians and, finally, thanks to an army led by a Pole.

The anti-Serb posters on this forum are still caught up in the myth that the Bosnian Army was weak and defenseless, and all the other propaganda that the NATO media forcefeeds you. Next thing you know these people will tell us, despite the absolute zero evidence, Serbs had rape camps, when there is documented proof that more Serbian women were raped by the "victim" Bosniaks. They'll tell us still that Serbs committed the Sarajevo market massacre, when it was the "victims", the Bosniaks. As far as people "knowing" what the Serbs did based on their tv sets, we've seen admission after admission of these tv shots being proven to be complete fabrications.
As for this hullabaloo about such a military disparity between the Serbs and the innocent Muslims, the fact is the RS army had only 30,000 people. The Bosnian Army was openly preparing for war before their "democratic peaceful" rump referendum which was announced on the anniversary of Nazi Germany's invasion/bombing of Yugoslavia in 1941 (the Bosniak's great ally during WWII. If the Serbs had a policy of cleansing, it sure is odd that Bosniak refugees fled to the country supposedly supporting this genocide, Serbia. Serbia took in tens of thousands of Muslim refugees.
If Alija wasn't an Islamist, he was just campaigning as one (with his Islamic Declaration when was campaigning to be head of Bosnia), he allowed Bosnia to become a base for al-Qaeda and Iran, and mujihadeen are still living large there. 10s of thousands of people show up to protest any deportation of Mujihadeen in Bosnia. Money that could be used for job investment and infrastructure is being used to build new mosque after new mosque. If Alija wasn't an Islamist and that wasn't his party's aim, it sure is curious that he so easily recruited cutthroat religious mercenaries to his cause. He also threatened (and his successors still threaten) to abolish the Republika Srpska at every turn. Temic recently publicly claimed all of Bosnia for his (the Bosniak) people, which was widely condemned.

How about because he committed genocide and the serbian military is hiding him ? I am sure if 7000 Serbs were massacred in 24 hr you would not be singing the same song. And when you say Serbia cant find him; wasnt he receiving his military pension until 2003 in Belgrade. It is true the Dutch feel guilty that their solders simply stood back and watched and therefore their government resigned.

Veki are you talking about this pictures? http://img167.imageshack.us/my.php?image=18rwyi7.jpg

July 1995, Srebrenica. Radovan Karadzic and greek paramilitaries after the massacre.

Or this one? http://img180.imageshack.us/my.php?image=27nruw5.jpg

Radovan Karadzic handing the "white eagle" medals to greek paramilitaries. These were medals that were given to the "best" soldiers in the bosnian war.

Serbian people dont be surprised that the world know everything, but aperantly serbians dont even know 1/10th of their own history. Why should they? They only fight outside their own borders. But once you are in a foreign land don't be surprised to be cought red handed.

Very well done Form Holland. The most neutral country, its no surprise its not good enough for Serbia.

Pera, by the same standards, the court should have lost its credibility already when it cleared Serbia of complicity in the Bosnian genocide. There are as many links and indices linking Serbia to that genocide as Haradinaj to the murders he is accused of.

The blame in both cases should not be pinned on the court in The Hague, which on both cases ruled on the basis of the presented evidence, but on those who failed to collect the relevant evidence. In Haradinaj's case, the blame should be placed on both UNMIK which failed to provide adequate protection to the witnesses in his trial, and on Serbia which, surprisingly, failed to provide all the relevant documents it had in its possession.

As for the Bosnian genocide, we all know about the important incriminating documents which the Serbian state was able to withhold from The Hague because Carla Del Ponte did not insist on getting them.

I think the trials in the Hague are fair, and as objective as they possibly could be (certainly more objective than if the issues of Haradinaj, Bosnia and Mladic were settled in Kosovo, Bosnian or Serbian courts. The problems are the lack of cooperation of other institutions, governments and people.

Kudos to the Netherlands for being one of only a few EU members able to show some moral spine for once. Whether this is done out of bad conscience is beside the point. At last EU members are beginning to set principle before political expediency, unlike what happened in 1991-95 and now lately over the recognition of Kosovo.

@Martin:

It couldn't have been better said! I completely agree!

Other EU countries must object Serbia's entry into EU too, we simply don't want you guys in here. I saw recently a movie of how Serbian red berets killing civilians in Bosnia, it actually was recorded by a member of red beret, I just can't erase those pictures.

May truth always prevail.

i have to say that i must compliment b92 in ONE area -- thanks to them, you always know what the serb nationalists are thinking and saying, no matter how morally corrupt and repulsive.

and thank god for holland, as i have argued before. a lone and rare voice of sanity in the world. yes, it is true, the dutch forces were guilty of a sickening acquiescence to the genocide, the mass murder and torture of civilians; all the more reason to try to take back the moral high ground.

and please! i will not lower myself to fighting with the nationalists over those numbers, nor should anyone else -- it is exactly like fighting with holocaust deniers. it is beneath my dignity and should be beneath the dignity of all others w any moral sense. the civilized world knows what happened -- if certain people choose to deny it, more is the pity for them!

keep up your integrity, holland, and never give in when you know that we are in the right.

robert-0 from frisco

@Spaniard
Sorry but i don't think that the problems are real estate agents or escort girls...
Do you think that the position of the Dutch is really "solitaire" ?
Are you young don't you know the usual tricks of Diplomacy ?
For me there are other states that are againstin EU but ..as it was with Russia and the "polish meat"...they let only one to say no but they support his decision BEHIND CLOSE DOORS...
The usual way of doing things...
I remain of the same opinion there is already a majority of countries in EU that have given lost Serbia so now they have to ASSEST THINGS....

Nemanja:
"How is escorting all female and child residents to safety genocide? "

I would call this ethnic cleansing.

Brian, of course there are many thousands of Srebrenica 'survivors'. When the Bosnian Serb forces tightened their knot around the town in July 1995 there were an estimated 60 000 refugees from surrounding areas residing in Srebrenica. Most of them fled through the surrounding mountains and forests to Federation territory while about 25-30 000 sought out the Dutch in Potocari for protection. Most of them were women and children, but about 8000 were not...

I don't know what Suharto has to do with either Srebrenica or with making Serbia hand over Mladic to The Hague.

And I don't understand why it's wrong to take the position of 'good Muslims vs bad Serbs'. Those are of course your words. A more apt description would be 'Muslim victims vs attacking Serbs', and, broadly speaking, when you consider the ridiculous imbalance in military strength between the two sides, and that the UN has established that 90% of the killings were committed against Muslims by Serbs, it's not a completely baseless description.

I'm glad the Dutch try to remind the EU that it has an enormous debt to pay for allowing the Bosnian war to happen and to drag out for so long.

“Surely, no self respecting Serb will hand anyone over to this institution it's proven itself incapable of delivering justice.”

“8000 is a media malicious figure and you know that.
the facts are saying another story”

8000 — better saying, at least around 8300 — is not a mere “media figure”. It’s the number of dead people according to the UN and the most respected international forensic specialists!

That’s just another proof that sadly many Orthodox Serbians still regard Radovam Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and Zeljko Arkan Raznatovic as “Serb folk heroes”.

"when they find him"
this sounds friendly- there is no time pressure.

Spaniard-

The Dutch are ashamed about what others perceive to be their 'cowardly act' in Srebrenica.There is a picture of their General drinking buzz
with Ratko Mladic just hours before the masacre took place.
I think that is the main reason they are after him, plus of course all the reasons that you've listed.

No, Pera, not all documents on the Bosnian case were presented to The Hague. Carla Del Ponte struck a deal with Belgrade allowing Serbia to withhold material stamped 'top secret' if she was given other material. This was done for reasons of time, and because the prosecution knew it would be politically impossible to procure all the documents.

Could you imagine Serbia freely handing over documents incriminating it with genocide? I can't.

The trial was impracticable from the start. It set out to prove that Serbia had been complicit in the Bosnian genocide. But the vast majority of documents that would be needed to assess this were, for obvious reasons, found in Serbia.

You cannot criticse The Hague for the Haradinaj verdict but commend it for its ruling in the Bosnian case. Both trials operated on faulty evidence.

I do agree with you that the whole business of the Haradinaj trial (just as much as the Bosnian trial) cast the workability of the tribunal into doubt.

Genocide: the systematic killing of all the people from a national, ethnic, or religious group, or an attempt to do this. If one thinks that the killings in Srebrenica do not fit this definition then one is soooo biased and blind that there is no help for them.

I personally am sure that Mladic and Karadzic at least attempted to a systematic killing of all the people from a particular ethnic or religious background.

Now, if you serbs think that they are innocent, then give them the opportunity to defend themselves in court. Someone authorized to kill all those thousands of people in Srebrenica, which included children and women (not all soldiers as claimed by some people here, but civilians!!!). It was a very well organized killing machine. If Mladic and Karadzic are innocent, then they shouldn’t be afraid of the trial and should surrender themselves voluntarily. The fact that they are hiding is perceived as a sense of guilt.

Sam,

Genocide? You're on a Serbian forum and you're trying to spread those lies to us?

How was recapturing a town that was a staging ground for the killing of over 3,500 Serbian CIVILIANS in surrounding villages a genocide? How is escorting all female and child residents to safety genocide? How is the killing of combat soldiers in a war zone genocide?

Funny how the death of thousands of Bosnian soldiers is deemed a genocide yet the murder of thousands of Serbian civilians by these very same soldiers is not.

We Serbs have to deal with enough duplicity from people in positions of authority.

Rain, your figures don't make sense.

As I said before, the vast majority of the 60,000 refugees residing in Srebrenica before July 1995 had left before Mladic got there. Most of the town militia were among those who fled into the forests. After all, those who had participated in killing Serbs knew they wouldn't be treated gently if they were caught by the approaching forces. They were usually also young, well-trained and felt they'd stand a good chance trying to escape through the mountainous terrain. Little wonder therefore that they fled and left women, children, sick, elderly and men who felt they had less to fear from Mladic than from trying to break through the Serb lines on foot.

It is therefore no wonder that 2,500 Bosnian soldiers from Srebrenica reappeared two days after the massacre. It took a few days to run on foot from Srebrenica to Tuzla.

The fact that 1500 'missing' people re-registered themselves for the vote one year later is hardly strange either. Can you imagine the chaos in the public registers after nearly four years of war? The reason why Dayton predicated that people should choose themselves where they were residents and where they wanted to vote was partly in order to reverse the process of ethnic cleansing, but mainly because there was absolutely no reliable way to survey and register the Bosnian population after years of war, devastation and population shifts. The vote one year after the war was as much a population census as a political event.

Fact remains that 7000-8000 people from the Srebrenica refugees remain missing until this day. They can mostly be accounted for by their wives and children who were shipped to Tuzla.

No one but Mladic knows what went through his mind when he entered Srebrenica on 11 July, 1995 and found 25,000 refugees, but virtually no militia men, but probably he decided to take revenge for the suffering near-by Serbs had sustained on the only people who were available: wretched, unarmed boys and men. Separating all those who were of weapon-wielding age (from age 13), he decided to take out his wrath on anyone who might even have had the potential to take up a gun against a Serb. And as many of Mladic's forces have testified he ordered that they be taken away in buses and shot.

I've been to Srebrenica and I've seen the graves of twelve and thirteen-year old boys. There was even one of an eleven year-old boy. You might say his grave is a fabrication and a propaganda stint (a fake birth-date inscription perhaps?) but I believe a revolting and unimaginable crime took place in Srebrenica in July 1995.

I also heard the guide at the Potocari memorial centre tell me that 26 of her male relatives disappeared during these July days. None of them returned a year later to vote or to cheer for Izetbegovic.

Denying that a genocide took place in Srebrenica is to cast away your last shred of intellectual and moral dignity. No one blames you for what happened there. It was the work of Mladic and his cohorts. But by trying to deny it out of a sense of national guilt makes you complicit in the crime.

I don't understand why Dutch government feel so passionately about this either, I mean the Dutch soldiers helped serbs separate males from females in Srebrenica effectively helping the massacre go more smothely. Furthermore Eu countries coined the phrase " no muslim states in Europe" allowing the wars to go on and even today apologists use that to minimize serbs massacres and rapes around balkans.

Brian,

you've got your facts wrong.

And your chronology.

Nato attacked Serb forces for the first time in 1995.

Bosnian Serb forces had about 1300 tanks at the start of the war, compared to the Federation's 36. The Federation had few or no airplanes, while the Bosnian Serbs had access to the JNA's aircraft arsenal for much of the war.

In terms of artillery, the situation was even more skewed.

In terms of hand-held weaponry there was greater equality, but rifles and AK47s are of little use against rockets, tanks and airplanes, or for breaking a siege around cities like Tuzla and Sarajevo.

Yes, Bosnia did get weapons underhand from abroad, mostly from countries of the Islamic world who were willing to transgress the arms embargo. In 1995 the US also started funnelling arms and other equipment to the Bosnians through the Croats, but as you might know the war had gone on for three years by then and the Bosnian Serbs were in control of 70 per cent of the territory. Further, until the American involvement the smuggled-in weapons were only hand-held arms (or can you imagine someone trying to smuggle in a tank to a government in a land-locked country that was surrounded by hostile Serbs and Croats for most of the war?

As I said, the imbalance was reversed in 1995 thanks to American involvement (at last!). This is not just my view. Vladimir Matic at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Yugoslavia said the same thing in 1996, citing the American intervention as the factor 'that made Dayton possible'.

http://www.commongroundradio.org/shows/96/9615.html

But you seem to be approaching these issues objectively and without getting emotionally involved so you're probably right. The Serbs probably did have fewer arms and no access at all to the JNA's stockpiles. With virtually bare hands they managed to gain control over 70 per cent of the Bosnian territory by the end of 1992. It was an impressive feat but by no means unrealistic...

"The Serbs were willing to work for peace, but Alija wanted war. Even Holbrooke who is notoriously anti-Serb said Alija blocked negotiations for peace at every turn."

Of course the Serbs wanted peace - on their terms. And Izetbegovic also wanted peace on his terms. The Serbs were not happy with the Carrington plan, nor were they happy with the Vance-Owen plan (which would have formalised their war gains and, effectively, ethnic cleansing in eastern Bosnia).

Nor did Izetbegovic help the process along 'at every turn'. But he did accept the Vance-Owen plan. You can't really blame him for rejecting the Owen-Stoltenberg plan, which would effectively partitioned Bosnia.

I'm not a great fan of Izetbegovic and I regret that the he should have been president during the war. His currying of Islamistic groups was quite revolting. Then again, when the entire world imposes an arms embargo on his fledgling state and sits idly by while a people is raped, what would you do? Wouldn't you turn to the only people who are willing to offer help?

But Izetbegovic was one actor in a larger game. And that game centred on Bosnian Serb nationalists wanting to carve out the 'Serbian homeland' of the national myths from the rotting corpse of the Yugoslav federation. They played on fears of Jihad and Muslim fundamentalism to turn the Serbs against the Federation government (which, for your information, the referendum shows was supported by virtually every Bosniak AND Bosnian-Croat).

Even Biljana Plavsic admitted the Bosnian-Serbs conducted a strategy of ethnic cleansing. It is beyond doubt. It's a fact. A historical truth. It doesn't detract from the evils which Oric did (and it's abdominable that he is able to run a disco peacefully in Tuzla), but when all concerned international institutions, including the UN and the secretary-general Kofi Annan, show who was the main perpetrator, I would rather take their word for it than that of someone posting stuff on a newspaper forum.

If there was genocide at Srebrenica why are there Bosniak survivors of Srebrenica writing books about how there are many thousands of survivors of Srebrenica, and that the Bosnian authorities are trying to repress any information about them. What about Oric's crimes in Srebrenica? The Dutch have always had the position of 'good Muslims' vs. 'bad Serbs'. And of course they have their own criminal associations with the Suharto dictatorship and its genocidal crimes in East Timor that they still haven't fully acknowledged.
It's yet another hypocritical country that no longer has a single moral leg to stand on.

Nemanja:
"How is escorting all female and child residents to safety genocide? "

I would call this ethnic cleansing.
(Sam, 9 April 2008 18:36)

Really? I would call it humanitarian evacuation from a war zone. The massacred Serbian civilians in the surrounding villages of Srebrenica didn't receive that courtesy from the Bosnian soldiers.

Sam and Martin,

8000 is a media malicious figure and you know that.
the facts are saying another story:

-Out of those 8000 , 2500 Bosnian Muslim soldiers from Srebrenica, listed as missing, reappeared two days after so called massacre in a town 50 kilometers away for the army parade before Alija Izetbegovic. Well timed Alija!

-One year after Srebrenica another 1500 listed missing reappeared as voters during Bosnian election.

-International forensic teams made up of professionals from all over the world, Bosnia, Croatia , yet exclusive to the Serbian field authorities cause they were forbidden presence, have found so far until today in all surrounding area of Srebrenica close to 2400 bodies from all ethnic origins.

Sam
let me remind you that Serbian did not fight on foreign territories in Bosnia.

Holland, an absolutely insignificant player on the world stage, is dictating conditions for Serbia's admission to the EU. And Dulic is groveling before these pompous irrelevant Dutch officials! Absolutely absurd!

Why does the Dutch government feel so passionately about this? What has it got to do with them? I know that The Hague hosts this NATO court, and many Dutch real estate agencies,escort girls, and catering organizations make a lot of money from this. I guess that is the only reason the Dutch government holds such a strong opinion on this matter.

Oh come off it! The Hague has lost any credibility it might have had by letting Haradinaj go free.

Surely, no self respecting Serb will hand anyone over to this institution it's proven itself incapable of delivering justice.

There should be an inquiry (by all stakeholders including the Serbs) to establish whether the Harandinaj case was mishandled this may restore it legitimacy.

As for the Dutch, they should try and keep abreat of events and understand that the Hague's legitimacy is in question. The Dutch are not upholding justice it's more a case of holding a nation to ransom.

I'm dutch and it has nothing to do with the ICTY but it all has to do that there is no majority for EU expansion in the Netherlands, the dutch people simply don't want any new members anymore.

When it's croatia's turn or any other balkan country we will find something to block acces.

Martin on the contrary the one redeeming feature of the Hague was the ruling that cleared Serbia of genocide in Bosnia. That particular case had sufficient evidence and on the basis of the ‘available’ evidence was able to make a fair and just decision. In the Haradinaj case there was widespread ‘foul play’ aimed at perverting the course of justice. I’m not sure who is to blame but the whole affair brings the credibility of the Hague into question.

The Court in the Hague is a joke. How can Haradinaj be found not guilty. So that would mean Mladic & Karadzic would be innocent too right.
Serbia will never surrender these 2 guys to the Hague.The international war crimes court is a circus. I am sure that the Hague had something to do with the death of Milosevic.

I am not surprised that Dutch are so passionate about Hague being that there are historically very few, if any, claims to fame for the otherwise less than significant nation (the Hague, tulips, worthless windmills and funny looking shoes). Serbs on the other hand held Turks from invading Europe for 500 years only to see Europe surrender to Muslims without a shot fired.

If the SAA contained a guarantee of Serbian territory, I think by all means, Mladic should turn himself in. Regardless of innocence or guilt, sometimes soldiers are called upon to make sacrifices for their country. Now is that time.

Martin, you are incorrect, the deal with the documents was that Carla could view them and use them, but not share them with others. I’m sure that if they were as incriminating as you think they are, we would have been hearing about it in her new book.

I do feel that Srebenica was a horrible fate for anyone. However, I personally do not feel it was comparable to something like what the Jews suffered in WWII, a true systematic attempt to completely destroy a helpless and defenseless people. You must understand, that according to the Oric ruling in the ICTY, these same masses of civilians from Srebenica were uncontrollably attacking Serbian civilians for years, destroying villages and killing thousands. Oric could not contain them, and they followed him around in the thousands. It was pretty obviously petty revenge by the local Serbians who felt they had been treated in a similar fashion. I do not believe that Belgrade ordered it, there’s plenty of evidence that there was a breakdown in Belgrade’s control over the situation in Bosnia by then. Most certainly those types of crimes do need to be strongly condemned, but we must not forget this is the Balkans, nothing is ever completely Black & White, and it has a tradition of terrible brutality.

"Serb attackers vs Muslim victims". Yeah right. Oric was a saint. So was Alija and his mujahadeen mercenaries that came to help murder Serbs. The Serbs were willing to work for peace, but Alija wanted war. Even Holbrooke who is notoriously anti-Serb said Alija blocked negotiations for peace at every turn. He wanted an Islamist state. He was given the King Faisal prize for his work on behalf of Jihad in Saudi Arabia. Alija attacked his own Bosniak forces that were pro-peace that were willing to work with the Serbs like Fikret Abdic. The UN just sat by while Oric had his way with Serb victims. Of course they'd say the Serbs committed all the violence. They've exonerated all the thugs they worked for. Oric is sitting happily in Tuzla right now.

And yes there was an imbalance, against the Serbs. Weapons were being funnelled in from all the western countries who were supposedly implementing an arms embargo against all of Bosnia. These arms went to the Croatians and Bosnians. NATO warplanes helped bomb Serb targets. Are you saying the RS army was 9 times more powerful than Bosnia's NATO henchmen?

It takes a special person to come to Serbian news forums and slander Serbia like that.

Please do not praise Holland for its high moral standards. In WW II quite a number of Dutch policemen and civilians helped the Germans to send Dutch jews to concentration camps. Between 1947 and 1949 the Dutch army killed many innocent Indonesian people (some historians claim that there over 100,000 civilians slaughtered) when Indonesia proclaimed independence. No greater hypocrites than FM Maxime Verhagen, PM Jan Peter Balkenende and the rest of the Dutch government...

“‘Serb attackers vs Muslim victims’. Yeah right. Oric was a saint. So was Alija and his mujahadeen mercenaries that came to help murder Serbs.”

The islamic fighters just came to Bosnia because the almost absolute helplessness of the Bosnian people to the massive sieges, massacres, expulsions and killings of the pro-Belgrade forces. Practically everyone in the world with a TV set could watch the terrible suffering in the “Sniper Alley” of Sarajevo, among other barbarities.

Naser Oric may not be a saint, but that doesn't make Maldic a “tragic hero”…

“Alija blocked negotiations for peace at every turn. He wanted an Islamist state.”

That’s wrong. First of all, Bosnia since its peaceful independence (trough a referendum where even 15% of the Orthodox people vote for) never had Iran or Saudi-style sharia law (well, as far as we all know most of Bosnians don't wear beard or turbans and all women don't use hijab, can drive, vote and wear mini-skirts and jeans pants). And second, as far as we know all the Sarajevo government at that time wanted was independence from Yugoslavia and unification of the all Bosnian country.

DJKrstic - I'm sorry to have to inform you of a basic fact of history: the Serbs did not keep the Turks from invading Europe "for 500 years." (as you claim). All Christian nations (Albanians, Croatians, Hungarians - you name 'em) struggled against the Ottomans for centuries. And all were overwhelmed in the end. None of them did it "for Europe." All fought to save their own skins (though they did use the slogan "to defend Christendom").

Not only were the Serbs (and the rest) unable to prevent the Ottomans from taking their own lands, they were unable to stop them from reaching much, much deeper into Europe.

And, for your information, like members of all the lands the Ottomans conquered, some Serbs fought on the Turkish side during those centuries of Ottoman expansion (some also converted to Islam, in case you have forgotten).

Since you need the reminder: The Turks got all the way to Vienna. There, in the end, they were stopped, in part due to the defence of the Austrians and, finally, thanks to an army led by a Pole.

DJKrstic

While indeed the Serbs, Armenians, Greeks, Albanians, Bulgarians and others fought hard to try and stem the Ottoman invasion of Europe, read about a man called Jan Sobieski III and what it really meant to stop the Ottoman invasion of Europe.

The anti-Serb posters on this forum are still caught up in the myth that the Bosnian Army was weak and defenseless, and all the other propaganda that the NATO media forcefeeds you. Next thing you know these people will tell us, despite the absolute zero evidence, Serbs had rape camps, when there is documented proof that more Serbian women were raped by the "victim" Bosniaks. They'll tell us still that Serbs committed the Sarajevo market massacre, when it was the "victims", the Bosniaks. As far as people "knowing" what the Serbs did based on their tv sets, we've seen admission after admission of these tv shots being proven to be complete fabrications.
As for this hullabaloo about such a military disparity between the Serbs and the innocent Muslims, the fact is the RS army had only 30,000 people. The Bosnian Army was openly preparing for war before their "democratic peaceful" rump referendum which was announced on the anniversary of Nazi Germany's invasion/bombing of Yugoslavia in 1941 (the Bosniak's great ally during WWII. If the Serbs had a policy of cleansing, it sure is odd that Bosniak refugees fled to the country supposedly supporting this genocide, Serbia. Serbia took in tens of thousands of Muslim refugees.
If Alija wasn't an Islamist, he was just campaigning as one (with his Islamic Declaration when was campaigning to be head of Bosnia), he allowed Bosnia to become a base for al-Qaeda and Iran, and mujihadeen are still living large there. 10s of thousands of people show up to protest any deportation of Mujihadeen in Bosnia. Money that could be used for job investment and infrastructure is being used to build new mosque after new mosque. If Alija wasn't an Islamist and that wasn't his party's aim, it sure is curious that he so easily recruited cutthroat religious mercenaries to his cause. He also threatened (and his successors still threaten) to abolish the Republika Srpska at every turn. Temic recently publicly claimed all of Bosnia for his (the Bosniak) people, which was widely condemned.

Brian, how dare you imply that I'm anti-Serb?

I've got many Serbian friends and I've spent a lot of time in Serbia, a country that I love. It's a beautiful country.

If I condemn acts perpetrated by Serbs, I'm not indicting the nation as such - I'm condemning those actions and the people who carried them out and allowed them to be carried out.

That doesn't make me or anyone else on this forum anti-Serb.

Please don't mix politics and people. That's what people did in the Balkans in the nineties.

If you can't debate except with cheap rhetoric and bluster you better not debate at all.

As for your points about the military imbalance favouring the Bosniaks, the Bosniaks carrying out more atrocities than the Serbs, the Bosniak leadership being allied with Islamists, it's a lot of strong words but as far as I can gather you don't give us any facts.

Calling the Western media, the 'Nato media' tells us more about yourself than about respected news outlets like the BBC. Or has your imagination conceived that the BBC is also ruled by Nato?