Dehumanizing A Nation

[By Dr. Raju G.C. Thomas. Professor of Political

Science at Marquette University.]

[Excerpts from a report by Dr. Thomas and his

fact-finding mission to Yugoslavia in April 1993]

General Observations

A whole nation and ethnic group-men, women and children-appear to be

incarcerated in a giant prison. Western policy and the media campaign is

such that ALL Serbs are being economically and psychologically

destroyed. The word "SERBS" has been made synonymous with the word

"EVIL." Even the Jewish Anti-Defamation League has become caught up in

propagating a vicious campaign of defamation against the Serbs on behalf

of Franjo Tudjman. Using the Jewish Holocaust as their exclusive domain

and forgetting the holocaust of the Serbs, the American Jewish Congress

has gone overboard in their calls to bomb the Serbs. (This is in contrast

to the sense of reason and sanity provided by other Jewish figures such

as Simon Wiesenthal, A. M. Rosenthal, Nora Beloff, Henry Kissinger, and

others). Serbs everywhere see themselves being dehumanized, demonized and

punished severely for events over which they have little control.

The problem is not "self-pity" among the Serbs, as the Westem media has

claimed repeatedly in several articles amd commentaries. The underlying

problem is the zealous self-righteousness, moral hypocrisy, and political

arrogance that now permeates the Western media in the unipolar post-Cold

War era.

Through clever manipulation by the Western, and especially US media, all

pro-Serbian views have been shut out or are presented in weak form so that

they may be demolished later. Pictures and images presented are selective

and deliberately provocative to whip up mass public emotion to justify

"bombing the Serbs."

When pictures of Serbian victims are shown, their ethnicity is not

identified so as to give the impression that these are Muslims or Croats.

One American newspaper even took the picture of a Serbian rape victim

clearly identified in a caption in a Canadian newspaper, then reprinted

that picture under a caption identifying her as a Muslim victim.

This American media strategy of dehumanizing the Serbs-all Serbs-is to

make bombing the Serbs more palatable to the American public. Selectivity

of images to be conveyed to the American and global public is the key to

this strategy. All the crimes committed against the Serbs are deliberately

played down or passed off as Serbian atrocities through acts of omission.

In April, 1993, entire Muslim families and the razing of homes and villages

in Central Bosnia were portrayed on television channels in Milwaukee and

Minneapolis showing the horrific pictures of charred bodies of Muslims

without mentioning that the perpetrators of these crimes were Croatian

soldiers. The following clip then showed Serbian activities in Eastern

Bosnia around Srebenica, further crystalling the impression that atrocities

in Central Bosnia were committed by Serbs.

In a press conference that took place soon thereafter, President Clinton

described these atrocities committed by Croats against Muslims in April,

1993, as "qualitatively different" from those committed by the Serbs.

How much more "qualitatively different" could atrocities be than the

deliberate burning alive of whole families, or throwing grenades into

homes of innocent civilian families and then shooting them dead as they

run out of their homes m terror to escape the blasts?

There are no words such as "anti-semitism" or "racism" to describe this

attitude of total insensitivity towards all Serbs that is beginning to

permeate American Society from the president of the United States down.

Bill Clinton is obviously president of all of the United States, except

for the one million whole or part Serb-Americans. This generalized hate

and contempt for all Serbs that is being absorbed by most Americans is the

artful and manipulative work of the American media led by the New York

Times and the Washington Post.

War Crimes Issues

We questioned Nikola Koljevic, vice president of the "Serbian Republic" of

Bosnia about Western allegations of genocide and mass rape. He alleged

that in Sarajevo the Bosnian government was forcibly putting Serb

"recruits" to the Bosnian army in the front line of Serb artillery causing

large-scale deaths. These Serbs were then being buried alongside Muslim

soldiers in mass graves to demonstrate massacres to Western reporters.

[My impression is that this practice has occurred elsewhere in Bosnia. It

amounts to the virtual execution of Serbian men in Bosnian military

uniform in Muslim controlled territory].

Dr. Milan Bulajic, an eminent authority on international law and author of

"International Law and Development", is recognized for his documentation

and four-volume dissertation on the Ustasha crimes of genocide in WWII. He

is considered an expert on genocide. In an interview at the Yugoslav

equivalent of the "State Department," he said: "A crime is a crime and

should be punished, especially when committed against women and children."

But the general feeling in Yugoslavia is that Serbs are being singled out

for punishment-while the west not only ignore the war crimes committed

against Serbs in this war, but also more atrocious crimes committed

elsewhere in the world in the past. Especially troubling is the creation of

an ad hoc International War Crimes Tribunal to try Serbs alone. Both Milan

Bulajic and Nikola Koljevic indicated that Yugoslavia would have no

objection to a permanent war crimes tribunal that would examine all the

crimes committed during the current war as well as crimes committed elsewhere

in the past and likely to be committed in the future. There was a question

as to why an ad hoc tribunal was necessary, since the accusation of war

crimes against Serbia has already been submitted to the International Court

of Justice.

It was observed that the international investigators looking into war

crimes are essentially working for the prosecution; thy are only looking

for evidence to convict, not to acquit. Thus, the prosecutors appear also

to be the judges. There appears to be no higher court of appeal for the

Serbs. In the minds of the Western and especiallv American media, Serbs

have already been tried and found guilty. They will accept no other

verdict. The international legal process is a formality.

My impression of the intended international war crimes tribunal was that

it violated every principle of justice and fair play. The system and

process would be thrown out as a cruel farce in any domestic Western

democratic society.

What is being set up is nothing more than an "Ad Hoc International Kangaroo

Court" decked with the frills of respectability to pacify the hysterical

and revengeful demands of an American-led Western lynch mob. There has been

for some time an array of deeply prejudiced Western news to reporters

collecting evidence against the Serbs who have committed war crimes. Few

of them are interested in listening to (let alone discovering) war crimes

committed against the Serbs.

The Question of Ethnic Cleansing & Genocide

Much has been made about Serbian "ethnic cleansing." It has been equated

with genocide. Actually, it is no more so than "Zionism is Racism." The

Jews were the victims of that Arab hate propaganda. The Serbs are now the

on victims of this new American-Jewish hate propaganda, despite protests

by Simon Wiesenthal who insists that the two conditions are not the same

thing. If it were, the creation of Israel must also have been a case of

genocide, since 800,000 Palestinians were "cleansed" out of in Palestine

to make room for the settlement of European Jews from another continent.

Some of the loudest voices protesting the

"genocide" by the Serbs in the Balkan

conflict are those of the Turks, Germans

and Croatians. Ironically, members of

these three nationalities were responsible

for the worst genocides in the 20th century.

There is almost a craving to discover genocide by the Serbs on the part of

the American media and American Jews. Massacres committed by Serbs are

genocide, but not massacres committed aginst the Serbs. Ethnic cleansing

by the Serbs is genocide, but not that committed by the other slde against

Serbs. Figures of Muslims and Croats killed are not just inflated but

amount to lies. The American media is not going to be cheated out of their

"genocide." The projected figures of the number of people who died in

Croatia and Bosnia are deliberately intended to mislead. Of the 10,000 or

16,000 who died during the war in Croatia (the figure fluctuates), at

least 40 percent were Serbs. The number of Muslim civilians who died in

Bosnia was first projected at 17,000 in late fall, 1992. By early January

1993, this figure was increased to 20,000 dead. But suddenly the figure

ranged between 150,000 to 500,000 under a new category of "dead or

missing." This missing did not imply "presumed dead" but is deliberately

intended to convey that impression to substantiate claims of genocide.

Indeed, without any evidence, the "missing" have all now been converted to

"dead" by respectable newspapers such as the Christian Science Monitor.

Thus, "dead" Muslim civilians increased in a matter of weeks from 18,000

to 150,000.

Inter-ethnic strife everywhere in the world invariably leads to "ethnic

cleansing" of greater or lesser degree. When Pakistan was created in

1947, 8 million Hindus and Sikhs from West Punjab and Sindh fled to

India, and 5 million Muslims from East Punjab fled-to Pakistan. The Muslim

uprising in Kashmir has led to the "ethnic cleansing of all the 300,000

Kashmir Hindu Pundits of the Valley that had lived there since 1,000 B.C.

Jews in Israel are not anxious to live next door to Palestinian Muslims,

especially when both sides still hate and kill each other Bombing the Serbs

will not make Serbs want to live peacefully with Croats and Muslims after

all this violence and bloodshed. The solution to inner city crime or racial

strife in the U.S. would not be to impose sanctions agarnst all Blacks and

Hispanics, or to bomb the inner cities of America. There can only be

political and social solutions to such problerns, not military ones.

Senator Biden claims that Europeans would have acted differently if the

Muslims were Christians instead. As a matter of fact, Biden's deep concern

for Bosnian Muslims is not because they are Muslims. It is because they

are Whites. The greatest victimization of Asian or African Muslims would

not have raised the same level of concern. Senator Robert Dole, who always

carried a personal pathological hate for the Serbs long before this crisis

erupted, has called for bombing the Serbs and for lifting the arms embargo

on the Muslims. He fears the "annihilation of the Albanians" otherwise.

The deaths of innocents are the usual casualties of war, and bombing will

not reduce the level of killing of innocents. According to the New England

Journal of Medicine, the American strategic bombing of Iraq may have led

to the direct or indirect deaths of about 47,000 Iraqi children under the

age of five. The American bomb dropped on a shelter where American

intelligence thought Saddam Hussein was hiding killed 400 Iraqi women and

children. There were no American cameras to record the tragedy, and there

was no American grief or remorse for their deaths.

Israeli bombings of Palestinian terrorist hideouts in the Palestinian

refugee camps in Lebanon have always led to the deaths of many more

innocents than that inflicted by Palestinian terrorists on Israelis.

However, killing many more innocent civilians with bombs from American

and Israeli war planes appears to be moral so long as the targets are

strategic even if the bombers know in advance that many innocent civilians

will be killed.

You cannot bomb ethnic groups who now hate each other so much into living

together in tolerance and goodwill.

Since it was a German-led Europe that

decided that Croatians, Slovenians and

Muslims could not and must not live in

a Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia ... the

Serbs have every right now to refuse to

live in a Croatian-dominated Croatia or

a Muslim-dominated Bosnia.

Photo: A photo mosaic of Serb children, victims of

extermination by Muslims and Croats.

Photo caption:

More than 100,000 Serbian children under the

age of 10 were exterminated by Muslims and

Croats in 1941 as "ENEMIES OF THE STATE"

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