Why Hague Tribunal matters to Holland

It matters to Holland because its a pathetic instrument to whitewash their own responsibility in the murder of over 3,000 innocent Serbian civilians in the villages surrounding Srebrenica by fanatical muslim forces led by Naser Oric.

The Dutch "peacekeepers" knew exactly what was going on. . .they either supported or turned a blind eye to the muslims using a de-militarized zone as a launching pad for heinious crimes against Serb civilians.

They knew why the Serbian Army came. . .their guilt prevented them from taking any action.

why doesn't the Hague go after the Bosnian Muslims and Croats and why did they let go of oric. that shows how 1 sided the Hague really is. we should not have given up karadzic

The UN Security Council declared Srebrenica a "safe area" in April 1993. On 13 April 1993, the first group of UNPROFOR troops arrived in Srebrenica.

The Dutch battalion of UNPROFOR was stationed in Srebrenica from February 1994 until July 1995, when Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) troops under the command of Gen. Ratko Mladic overran the UN-protected "safe area".

What happened next is unfortunately all too well known and documented. And we know who was responsible for that.

But the same cannot be said for the claims that the Dutch peacekeepers were allegedly responsible for "the murder of over 3,000 innocent Serbian civilians in the villages surrounding Srebrenica by fanatical muslim forces led by Naser Oric."

Before you repeat those unsourced allegations, first read the following, and take note of the facts, the dates, and the numbers.

"[The] accusation levelled at the Bosniak defenders of Srebrenica is that they provoked the Serb offensive by attacking out of that safe area. Even though this accusation is often repeated by international sources, there is no credible evidence to support it. Dutchbat personnel on the ground at the time assessed that the few "raids" the Bosniaks mounted out of Srebrenica were of little or no military significance. These raids were often organized in order to gather food, as the Serbs had refused access for humanitarian convoys into the enclave. Even Serb sources approached in the context of this report acknowledged that the Bosniak forces in Srebrenica posed no significant military threat to them. The biggest attack the Bosniaks launched out of Srebrenica during the more than two years during which it was designated a safe area appears to have been the raid on the village of Visnjica, on 26 June 1995, in which several houses were burned, up to four Serbs were killed and approximately 100 sheep were stolen. In contrast, the Serbs overran the enclave two weeks later, driving tens of thousands from their homes, and summarily executing thousands of men and boys. The Serbs repeatedly exaggerated the extent of the raids out of Srebrenica as a pretext for the prosecution of a central war aim: to create a geographically contiguous and ethnically pure territory along the Drina, while freeing their troops to fight in other parts of the country. The extent to which this pretext was accepted at face value by international actors and observers reflected the prism of 'moral equivalency' through which the conflict in Bosnia was viewed by too many for too long."

SOURCE: United Nations. General Assembly. Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly resolution 53/35 - The Fall of Srebrenica," paragraph 479. -- http://www.domovina.net/srebrenica/page_005.php

Jovane,

Serbs were killed in Bosnia. Your countrymen - innocent women and children - were massacred in the most vile ways by muslim forces led by Oric.

". . .unsourced allegations?"

How's this?


The Toronto Star
July 16, 1995, Sunday, Sunday Second Edition
Section: NEWS; Pg. A1
Length: 816 Words
Headline: Fearsome Muslim warlord eludes Bosnian Serb forces
Byline: Bill Schiller Toronto Star
Dateline: Belgrade, Yugoslavia

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - When Bosnian Serb commander Gen. Ratko Mladic swept triumphantly into Srebrenica last week, he not only wanted to sweep Srebrenica clean of Muslims - he wanted Nasir Oric.

In Mladic's view, the powerfully built Muslim commander had made life too difficult and too deadly for Serb communities nearby.

Even though the Serbs had Srebrenica surrounded, Oric was still mounting commando raids by night against Serb targets.

Oric, as blood-thirsty a warrior as ever crossed a battlefield, escaped Srebrenica before it fell. Some believe he may be leading the Bosnian Muslim forces in the nearby enclaves of Zepa and Gorazde. Last night these forces seized armored personnel carriers and other weapons from U.N. peacekeepers in order to better protect themselves.

Oric is a fearsome man, and proud of it.

I met him in January, 1994, in his own home in Serb-surrounded Srebrenica.

On a cold and snowy night, I sat in his living room watching a shocking video version of what might have been called Nasir Oric's Greatest Hits.

There were burning houses, dead bodies, severed heads, and people fleeing.

Oric grinned throughout, admiring his handiwork.

"We ambushed them," he said when a number of dead Serbs appeared on the screen.

The next sequence of dead bodies had been done in by explosives: "We launched those guys to the moon," he boasted.

When footage of a bullet-marked ghost town appeared without any visible bodies, Oric hastened to announce: "We killed 114 Serbs there."

Later there were celebrations, with singers with wobbly voices chanting his praises.

These video reminiscences, apparently, were from what Muslims regard as Oric's glory days. That was before most of eastern Bosnia fell and Srebrenica became a "safe zone" with U.N. peacekeepers inside - and Serbs on the outside.

Lately, however, Oric increased his hit-and-run attacks at night. And in Mladic's view, it was far too successful for a community that was supposed to be suppressed.

The Serbs regard Oric, once Serb President Slobodan Milosevic's personal bodyguard, as a war criminal.

But they don't want to send him to the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. They want to track him down and kill him.

The only songs they want sung of Nasir Oric are funeral dirges.

But that hasn't happened.

Srebrenica, surrounded by 3,000 armed Serbs as it was then, was a strange town. It held a desperate kind of life - a life in suspended animation.

People talked about what they used to do, or used to be. Or about what they would do or would become once they were free again.

Sleeping beneath the sheltering sky near Tuzla as Srebrenica's surviving residents did last week - after having been driven from their homes - was not in their catalogue of expectations.

I remember steep streets lined with snow and, everywhere, firewood.

Srebrenica, an old silver mining town, was built to hold 4,500 residents, but was then crammed with 22,500. And the overall pocket, some 14 kilometres wide by 16 kilometres long, had swelled to 46,000 in all.

It had the look and feel of an overcrowded, somewhat dilapidated, ski resort town.

But it was anything but.

Still, people were friendly. The face of an outsider, an unexplained newcomer, came as a pleasant surprise to them and I was welcomed into their homes, served tea brewed on makeshift firewood stoves, and treated with kindness.

There was, even then, some tension in the air about our Canadian peacekeepers there. But they were still doing a good job - even an excellent one - despite extraordinarily high expectations.

I got into Srebrenica by convincing Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic that the time was right for a journalist to visit. None had been allowed for more than 100 days. People were wondering what was going on behind the curtain.

In the end, another journalist asked to come along. He had a vehicle, and I didn't. It was a good trade-off.

But what we smelled there, besides the smoke of a thousand and one cooking fires, was the slow death of hope.

No one wanted to admit it was a hopeless situation. They wanted to believe that someone, something, perhaps some extraordinary act of fate, was going to save them and their town.

They just didn't know what it was. And that not knowing ate away at them, just as their thinning food supplies, having been choked off by the Serbs, did.

At the very end of the only real street that led all the way down into the town and became, in effect, main street, I'll always remember dozens of kids taking turns whizzing across a pool of sheer ice, their bottoms protected by worn pieces of thin cardboard.

We don't use the word "glee" anymore. But that's what it was then. Glee on Main Street, Downtown Srebrenica.

A bit of laughter against the cold. A bit of glee in the face of inevitable doom.

http://www.srebrenica-report.com/Oric.htm

SREBRENICA, Bosnia: Nasir Oric's war trophies don't line the wall of his comfortable apartment-- one of the few with electricity in this besieged Muslim enclave stuck in the forbidding mountains of eastern Bosnia. They're on a videocassette tape: burned Serb houses and headless Serb men, their bodies crumpled in a pathetic heap.

"We had to use cold weapons that night," Oric explains as scenes of dead men sliced by knives roll over his 21-inch Sony. "This is the house of a Serb named Ratso," he offers as the camera cuts to a burned-out ruin. "He killed two of my men, so we torched it. Tough luck."

Reclining on an overstuffed couch, clothed head to toe in camouflage fatigues, a U.S. Army patch proudly displayed over his heart, Oric gives the impression of a lion in his den. For sure, the Muslim commander is the toughest guy in this town, which the U.N. Security Council has declared a protected "safe area."

http://www.srebrenica-report.com/Oric2.htm

On a cold and snowy night, I sat in his living room watching a shocking video version of what might have been called Nasir Oric's Greatest Hits.

There were burning houses, dead bodies, severed heads, and people fleeing.

Oric grinned throughout, admiring his handiwork.

"We ambushed them," he said when a number of dead Serbs appeared on the screen.

The next sequence of dead bodies had been done in by explosives: "We launched those guys to the moon," he boasted.

When footage of a bullet-marked ghost town appeared without any visible bodies, Oric hastened to announce: "We killed 114 Serbs there."

Later there were celebrations, with singers with wobbly voices chanting his praises.

These video reminiscences, apparently, were from what Muslims regard as Oric's glory days. That was before most of eastern Bosnia fell and Srebrenica became a "safe zone" with U.N. peacekeepers inside - and Serbs on the outside.

Lately, however, Oric increased his hit-and-run attacks at night. And in Mladic's view, it was far too successful for a community that was supposed to be suppressed.

why doesn't the Hague go after the Bosnian Muslims and Croats and why did they let go of oric. that shows how 1 sided the Hague really is. we should not have given up karadzic

It matters to Holland because its a pathetic instrument to whitewash their own responsibility in the murder of over 3,000 innocent Serbian civilians in the villages surrounding Srebrenica by fanatical muslim forces led by Naser Oric.

The Dutch "peacekeepers" knew exactly what was going on. . .they either supported or turned a blind eye to the muslims using a de-militarized zone as a launching pad for heinious crimes against Serb civilians.

They knew why the Serbian Army came. . .their guilt prevented them from taking any action.

The UN Security Council declared Srebrenica a "safe area" in April 1993. On 13 April 1993, the first group of UNPROFOR troops arrived in Srebrenica.

The Dutch battalion of UNPROFOR was stationed in Srebrenica from February 1994 until July 1995, when Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) troops under the command of Gen. Ratko Mladic overran the UN-protected "safe area".

What happened next is unfortunately all too well known and documented. And we know who was responsible for that.

But the same cannot be said for the claims that the Dutch peacekeepers were allegedly responsible for "the murder of over 3,000 innocent Serbian civilians in the villages surrounding Srebrenica by fanatical muslim forces led by Naser Oric."

Before you repeat those unsourced allegations, first read the following, and take note of the facts, the dates, and the numbers.

"[The] accusation levelled at the Bosniak defenders of Srebrenica is that they provoked the Serb offensive by attacking out of that safe area. Even though this accusation is often repeated by international sources, there is no credible evidence to support it. Dutchbat personnel on the ground at the time assessed that the few "raids" the Bosniaks mounted out of Srebrenica were of little or no military significance. These raids were often organized in order to gather food, as the Serbs had refused access for humanitarian convoys into the enclave. Even Serb sources approached in the context of this report acknowledged that the Bosniak forces in Srebrenica posed no significant military threat to them. The biggest attack the Bosniaks launched out of Srebrenica during the more than two years during which it was designated a safe area appears to have been the raid on the village of Visnjica, on 26 June 1995, in which several houses were burned, up to four Serbs were killed and approximately 100 sheep were stolen. In contrast, the Serbs overran the enclave two weeks later, driving tens of thousands from their homes, and summarily executing thousands of men and boys. The Serbs repeatedly exaggerated the extent of the raids out of Srebrenica as a pretext for the prosecution of a central war aim: to create a geographically contiguous and ethnically pure territory along the Drina, while freeing their troops to fight in other parts of the country. The extent to which this pretext was accepted at face value by international actors and observers reflected the prism of 'moral equivalency' through which the conflict in Bosnia was viewed by too many for too long."

SOURCE: United Nations. General Assembly. Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly resolution 53/35 - The Fall of Srebrenica," paragraph 479. -- http://www.domovina.net/srebrenica/page_005.php

Jovane,

Serbs were killed in Bosnia. Your countrymen - innocent women and children - were massacred in the most vile ways by muslim forces led by Oric.

". . .unsourced allegations?"

How's this?


The Toronto Star
July 16, 1995, Sunday, Sunday Second Edition
Section: NEWS; Pg. A1
Length: 816 Words
Headline: Fearsome Muslim warlord eludes Bosnian Serb forces
Byline: Bill Schiller Toronto Star
Dateline: Belgrade, Yugoslavia

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - When Bosnian Serb commander Gen. Ratko Mladic swept triumphantly into Srebrenica last week, he not only wanted to sweep Srebrenica clean of Muslims - he wanted Nasir Oric.

In Mladic's view, the powerfully built Muslim commander had made life too difficult and too deadly for Serb communities nearby.

Even though the Serbs had Srebrenica surrounded, Oric was still mounting commando raids by night against Serb targets.

Oric, as blood-thirsty a warrior as ever crossed a battlefield, escaped Srebrenica before it fell. Some believe he may be leading the Bosnian Muslim forces in the nearby enclaves of Zepa and Gorazde. Last night these forces seized armored personnel carriers and other weapons from U.N. peacekeepers in order to better protect themselves.

Oric is a fearsome man, and proud of it.

I met him in January, 1994, in his own home in Serb-surrounded Srebrenica.

On a cold and snowy night, I sat in his living room watching a shocking video version of what might have been called Nasir Oric's Greatest Hits.

There were burning houses, dead bodies, severed heads, and people fleeing.

Oric grinned throughout, admiring his handiwork.

"We ambushed them," he said when a number of dead Serbs appeared on the screen.

The next sequence of dead bodies had been done in by explosives: "We launched those guys to the moon," he boasted.

When footage of a bullet-marked ghost town appeared without any visible bodies, Oric hastened to announce: "We killed 114 Serbs there."

Later there were celebrations, with singers with wobbly voices chanting his praises.

These video reminiscences, apparently, were from what Muslims regard as Oric's glory days. That was before most of eastern Bosnia fell and Srebrenica became a "safe zone" with U.N. peacekeepers inside - and Serbs on the outside.

Lately, however, Oric increased his hit-and-run attacks at night. And in Mladic's view, it was far too successful for a community that was supposed to be suppressed.

The Serbs regard Oric, once Serb President Slobodan Milosevic's personal bodyguard, as a war criminal.

But they don't want to send him to the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. They want to track him down and kill him.

The only songs they want sung of Nasir Oric are funeral dirges.

But that hasn't happened.

Srebrenica, surrounded by 3,000 armed Serbs as it was then, was a strange town. It held a desperate kind of life - a life in suspended animation.

People talked about what they used to do, or used to be. Or about what they would do or would become once they were free again.

Sleeping beneath the sheltering sky near Tuzla as Srebrenica's surviving residents did last week - after having been driven from their homes - was not in their catalogue of expectations.

I remember steep streets lined with snow and, everywhere, firewood.

Srebrenica, an old silver mining town, was built to hold 4,500 residents, but was then crammed with 22,500. And the overall pocket, some 14 kilometres wide by 16 kilometres long, had swelled to 46,000 in all.

It had the look and feel of an overcrowded, somewhat dilapidated, ski resort town.

But it was anything but.

Still, people were friendly. The face of an outsider, an unexplained newcomer, came as a pleasant surprise to them and I was welcomed into their homes, served tea brewed on makeshift firewood stoves, and treated with kindness.

There was, even then, some tension in the air about our Canadian peacekeepers there. But they were still doing a good job - even an excellent one - despite extraordinarily high expectations.

I got into Srebrenica by convincing Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic that the time was right for a journalist to visit. None had been allowed for more than 100 days. People were wondering what was going on behind the curtain.

In the end, another journalist asked to come along. He had a vehicle, and I didn't. It was a good trade-off.

But what we smelled there, besides the smoke of a thousand and one cooking fires, was the slow death of hope.

No one wanted to admit it was a hopeless situation. They wanted to believe that someone, something, perhaps some extraordinary act of fate, was going to save them and their town.

They just didn't know what it was. And that not knowing ate away at them, just as their thinning food supplies, having been choked off by the Serbs, did.

At the very end of the only real street that led all the way down into the town and became, in effect, main street, I'll always remember dozens of kids taking turns whizzing across a pool of sheer ice, their bottoms protected by worn pieces of thin cardboard.

We don't use the word "glee" anymore. But that's what it was then. Glee on Main Street, Downtown Srebrenica.

A bit of laughter against the cold. A bit of glee in the face of inevitable doom.

http://www.srebrenica-report.com/Oric.htm

SREBRENICA, Bosnia: Nasir Oric's war trophies don't line the wall of his comfortable apartment-- one of the few with electricity in this besieged Muslim enclave stuck in the forbidding mountains of eastern Bosnia. They're on a videocassette tape: burned Serb houses and headless Serb men, their bodies crumpled in a pathetic heap.

"We had to use cold weapons that night," Oric explains as scenes of dead men sliced by knives roll over his 21-inch Sony. "This is the house of a Serb named Ratso," he offers as the camera cuts to a burned-out ruin. "He killed two of my men, so we torched it. Tough luck."

Reclining on an overstuffed couch, clothed head to toe in camouflage fatigues, a U.S. Army patch proudly displayed over his heart, Oric gives the impression of a lion in his den. For sure, the Muslim commander is the toughest guy in this town, which the U.N. Security Council has declared a protected "safe area."

http://www.srebrenica-report.com/Oric2.htm

On a cold and snowy night, I sat in his living room watching a shocking video version of what might have been called Nasir Oric's Greatest Hits.

There were burning houses, dead bodies, severed heads, and people fleeing.

Oric grinned throughout, admiring his handiwork.

"We ambushed them," he said when a number of dead Serbs appeared on the screen.

The next sequence of dead bodies had been done in by explosives: "We launched those guys to the moon," he boasted.

When footage of a bullet-marked ghost town appeared without any visible bodies, Oric hastened to announce: "We killed 114 Serbs there."

Later there were celebrations, with singers with wobbly voices chanting his praises.

These video reminiscences, apparently, were from what Muslims regard as Oric's glory days. That was before most of eastern Bosnia fell and Srebrenica became a "safe zone" with U.N. peacekeepers inside - and Serbs on the outside.

Lately, however, Oric increased his hit-and-run attacks at night. And in Mladic's view, it was far too successful for a community that was supposed to be suppressed.