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Posted by: Schwartze Katze
« on: February 17, 2024, 02:49:25 pm »

Matt Damon discusses new documentary about U2's work in Bosnia
Quote
"Kiss The Future" is a documentary that follows the siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnia War and how the Irish band U2 rallied around the people there. Matt Damon co-produced the film and spoke to CNN's Christiane Amanpour about the extraordinary story. #CNN #News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWO3wLULnoY

U2 play Sarajevo, 1997
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When Bono and his wife Ali spent New Year’s Eve 1995 in Sarajevo, Bono promised to bring the band on his next visit. Nationwide reports on U2′s visit to Sarajevo and asks the fans what is means to them.

In a special report for Nationwide Diarmuid Peavoy went to Sarajevo to see the efforts to stage a U2 concert.

Steve Iredale and John Giddings talk about the challenges in bringing Popmart to a country that is recovering from a war.

Paul McGuinness explains how the costs of the PopMart tour work and how staging the concert in Sarajevo is not done to make a profit.

Fans and Bosnia ambassador, Mohammed Sacerby tell Diarmuid Peavoy what it means to have U2 play in Sarajevo.

Bono explains why U2 were so keen to come to Sarajevo.

Guitar technician Dallas Schoo shows Diarmuid Peavoy the range of guitars used by the Edge.

The report shows U2 arriving at the airport. Bono presenting a first volume of Yeats’ poetry to President Lija Izetbegovic. Bono singing ‘Miss Sarajevo’ in the back of a car.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2MCz35Arqo

Quote
U2 concert in Sarajevo
On 23 September 1997, Irish rock band U2 performed at Koševo Stadium in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, as part of the group's PopMart Tour. They were the first major artist to hold a concert in the city after the end of the Bosnian War in 1995. Approximately 45,000 fans attended the show.

The band first became involved with Sarajevo in 1993 on their Zoo TV Tour; after being approached by aid worker Bill Carter about bringing attention to the Siege of Sarajevo, the band conducted nightly satellite transmissions with Bosnians during their shows. These link-ups were the subject of criticism from journalists for mixing entertainment with human tragedy. Although the war made it impractical for U2 to visit Sarajevo at the time, they vowed to eventually play a concert in the city. After the conflict ended in November 1995, they made arrangements to visit Sarajevo, and with help from United Nations ambassadors and peacekeeping troops, they scheduled and played the concert in 1997.

The band offered to hold a benefit concert or small show in Sarajevo, but it was requested that they stage a full PopMart concert. The performance consequently featured the tour's extravagant stage, and the band played a set list typical of the tour. The show brought together people of different ethnicities who had previously clashed during the war, and train service was temporarily resumed to allow concertgoers to attend. Among the songs played was "Miss Sarajevo", written by U2 and Brian Eno about a beauty pageant held during the war. Although the band were displeased with their performance and lead vocalist Bono had vocal difficulties, the concert was well received and was credited with improving morale among Bosnians. The members of U2 consider the show to be among their proudest moments. The concert was lauded by Bosnians.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U2_concert_in_Sarajevo
Posted by: serbia
« on: November 22, 2023, 01:39:20 am »

https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/12/bosnia-arrests-five-serb-ex-soldiers-for-srebrenica-genocide/

Bosnia Arrests Five Serb Ex-Soldiers for Srebrenica Genocide

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State Investigation and Protection Agency officers arrested five former Bosnian Serb Army officers and soldiers suspected of involvement in the genocide of Bosniaks from Srebrenica in July 1995.

The suspects were arrested in Zvornik, Sekovici, Han Pijesak, Vlasenica and Bileca.

The Bosnian state prosecution said they are suspected of participating in the capture and murder of around 70 Bosniak men and boys, as well as one woman, on July 15, 19 and 23, 1995

The suspects also arranged equipment to have the bodies of the murdered victims removed, it is alleged.

The arrested suspects will now be questioned by the prosecutor in charge of the case.




Posted by: serbia
« on: November 22, 2023, 01:36:46 am »

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/croatia-commemorates-victims-of-vukovar-massacre/3058417


Croatia commemorates victims of Vukovar massacre


Quote

Victims of the 1991 Vukovar massacre were commemorated with ceremonies on the 32nd anniversary of the massacre on Saturday.

Vukovar, close to Serbia on the River Danube, was the scene of intense fighting after Croatia's break from Yugoslavia.

Yugoslav soldiers and Serb paramilitary troops kept Vukovar under siege for 87 days until the city was captured by Serbian forces on Nov. 18, 1991, with up to 11,000 bombs being dropped in a single day.

Thousands of citizens, as well as Croatian state officials, attended the memorial service in Vukovar.

It is estimated that over 3,000 people — mostly Croats — were killed and thousands more were held in camps.

The city was virtually leveled during the siege.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) sentenced former Yugoslav army officials Mile Mrksic and Veselin Sljivancanin to 10 years and 20 years in prison, respectively, for the massacre of civilians in the city.

The Serb forces' invasion, which started after the siege, lasted until Jan. 15, 1998, while various war crimes were committed against the wounded and staff at Vukovar Hospital.

According to the Vukovar Hospital, at least 1,624 people were killed, about 7,000 were taken to concentration camps, and around 22,000 non-Serbs, mostly Croats, were deported from the city.

The bodies of around 500 people, killed in Vukovar, have yet to be reached.


https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/11/thousands-mourn-srebrenica-victims-as-tensions-mount-in-bosnia

Thousands mourn Srebrenica victims as tensions mount in Bosnia

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The remains of 30 victims of the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia and Herzegovina have been laid to rest as thousands of people commemorated its anniversary against a backdrop of surging tensions.

Twenty-eight years after they were murdered, 27 men and three teenage boys only recently identified through DNA analysis were buried at a vast and ever-expanding cemetery just outside Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia on Tuesday.

Relatives of the victims can bury only partial remains of their loved ones because they are typically found scattered over several mass graves.

History of bloodshed
The Srebrenica killings, Europe’s only acknowledged genocide since the Holocaust, were the bloody crescendo of Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war, which came after the breakup of Yugoslavia unleashed nationalist, territorial ambitions that set Bosnian Serbs against the country’s two other main ethnic populations – Croats and Bosniaks.

On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serbs overran a UN-protected safe area in Srebrenica. They separated at least 8,000 Muslim Bosniak men and boys from their wives, mothers and sisters and slaughtered them. Those who tried to escape were chased through the woods and over the mountains around the ill-fated town.

The perpetrators then ploughed their victims’ bodies into hastily made mass graves, which they later dug up with bulldozers to scatter the remains among other burial sites to hide the evidence of their war crimes.

The wartime political leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic, and his military commander, Ratko Mladic, were both convicted of genocide in Srebrenica by a special UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

However, many Serbian and Bosnian Serb officials still celebrate Karadzic and Mladic as national heroes. They continue to downplay or deny the Srebrenica killings.

the top international envoy to Bosnia, Christian Schmidt, who is tasked with overseeing the civilian aspects of the peace agreement, pledged to “ensure that legal steps are taken against all those who deny the genocide”.

The comment appeared to be a thinly disguised swipe at his chief rival in the country, Bosnian Serb President Milorad Dodik, who has repeatedly refused to call the atrocity a genocide.

Dodik signed legislation last week that targets the authority of the envoy and the constitutional court in Bosnia’s Serb entity.





Posted by: JillDando
« on: September 29, 2023, 08:52:38 pm »

Just finished watching the "Who Killed Jill Dando" documentary on Netflix last night. I cannot believe that the investigation was dropped after the suspect who was initially convicted of the crime was cleared of all charges after spending 8 years in prison. It boggles the mind that the "Serbian Hitman" theory has not been fully investigated by British police to this day as a matter of National Security, an issue the lawyer for Barry George actually raised pre-trial, and in the trial itself. Dando was clearly the victim of a professional hit:

Quote
What other theories surround Jill Dando’s death?

Serbian hitman


A prevalent theory is that Dando was murdered by a Serbian hitman following her coverage of the Serb-Kosovo war.

In the days prior to her death, Dando presented a Kosovo Crisis Appeal which had raised over £1million in 24 hours for refugees fleeing the Balkans. 

Speaking in the Netflix series, Dando’s agent, Jon Roseman, said: “We had a lot of mail, but not usually threatening. Then we received a letter that mentioned the appeal she had given earlier that month for Kosovo. It seemed to be somewhat threatening.”

The BBC’s former head of news, Tony Hall, was phoned by a man with an Eastern European accent in response to Western bombings in the Serbian region. The caller, who phoned on the day Dando was killed, is said to have threatened: “Your prime minister Blair butchered innocent young people, we butcher back.”

Some, however, have cast doubt on the theory in the years since, with the call believed to be a hoax. Police could not trace the call...
Entire article: https://www.nme.com/news/tv/who-killed-jill-dando-key-theories-behind-netflix-series-3505138#:~:text=Has%20anyone%20been%20convicted%20for%20Jill%20Dando%27s%20murder%3F&text=Barry%20George%2C%20a%20convicted%20sex,months%20after%20she%20was%20killed.

If I had been a police officer on the Dando case and came across evidence of a possible Serbian connection that is the first thing I would have thoroughly investigated because:

Serbia unveils monument to WWI assassin
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Serbia has unveiled a monument to the man who sparked the chain of events leading to World War I. Gavrilo Princip, who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 has a divisive legacy in the Balkans.

Serbia on Sunday inaugurated a monument to the man whose assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand ignited World War I.

Gavrilo Princip, whose two-meter bronze likeness was unveiled before a crowd of hundreds in central Belgrade still fuels controversy in the ethnically-divided Balkans.

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic described Princip as a freedom fighter and a hero.

"Today, we are not afraid of the truth," Nikolic said. "Gavrilo Princip was a hero, a symbol of the idea of freedom, the assassin of tyrants and the carrier of the European idea of liberation from slavery," Nikolic told the crowd...
https://www.dw.com/en/gavrilo-princip-assassin-who-sparked-wwi-gets-statue-in-belgrade/a-18546305

Side note: Jill Dando reminded alot of people of Princess Diana apparently:

Posted by: rp
« on: September 29, 2023, 05:44:01 pm »

The usual suspects:
https://twitter.com/JaydaBF/status/1707832239029993719
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Jayda Fransen
@JaydaBF
To all the haters sending death threats, I just want you to know that no matter what you say to me, you’ll never change my mind that Kosovo is Serbia! 🇷🇸
Z

Posted by: guest55
« on: April 02, 2022, 02:51:28 pm »

NATO & Russia Nearly Went to War - Kosovo 1999
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In 1999, NATO and Russia came close to war over the issue of Kosovo, a tiny Balkans nation that NATO intervened in to restore peace. When a British general was ordered by his American superior to forcibly eject Russian soldiers from an airport, an extraordinary confrontation occurred between the two Allies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvETrbNELe8
Posted by: guest55
« on: March 26, 2022, 04:46:53 pm »

Why won’t Serbia condemn Putin’s war? | Focus on Europe
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Right-wing extremists [useful idiots] in Serbia are celebrating Putin’s war in Ukraine. They see NATO as the enemy because of its bombing campaign during the Kosovo War. Many Serbs have not forgotten.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc1MRpTNMpM
Posted by: 90sRetroFan
« on: February 09, 2022, 11:14:08 pm »

Posted by: 90sRetroFan
« on: February 04, 2022, 08:55:52 pm »

https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-troops-needed-prevent-return-174935816.html

Quote
U.S. troops needed to prevent return to war, Bosnia defense chief says

Sarajevo - Just three decades ago, the country today known as Bosnia and Herzegovina was the center of Europe's bloodiest conflict since World War II. The war that erupted between the country's Muslim Bosniaks, Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats left about 100,000 people dead and displaced millions more.

The landmark moment in the bloodshed was the massacre in Srebrenica in July 1995, when some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were murdered by Bosnian Serbs. NATO intervened, and finally, after more than three years of bloodshed, the United States was able to broker a ceasefire later that year.
...
Christian Schmidt is the high representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina, a job created as part of the peace accord. His mission is to oversee the implementation of the Dayton Accords that have kept the peace for 30 years, and he told CBS News that he sees a creeping dismantlement of the country from within.
...
Ohran told CBS News there's still a lot of hostility toward the Muslim community in Bosnia, and she believes Dodik is fueling it, very deliberately.

"In many interviews, Dodik degrades the Muslim community, denies that the Srebrenica genocide happened," she said. "In my opinion, he is voting for a cultural war here in Bosnia."

Abdi, who lives in the capital Sarajevo, echoed Ohran's concerns: "We can't afford the luxury to think we won't have another conflict. That's what we thought in 1992, and we were wrong."

The most immediate concern is the possibility that Dodik will withdraw Republika Srpska from the Bosnian armed forces, which could leave him with some revived iteration of an ethnic Serb army.

That is of particular concern to Sifet Podzic, Bosnia and Herzegovina's minister of defense.

"Unfortunately, the situation is very grave. Since the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, this is the most difficult year," he told CBS News. "We have a specific situation here: In case of an internal conflict, the armed forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina have no mission whatsoever to deal with an internal conflict."

As the country's own forces cannot be deployed to fight any part of the fragile alliance that splits off – and the Bosnia and Herzegovina military would cease to exist in its current form anyway, should Dodik make good on his threat – Podzic told CBS News that U.S. or NATO forces are needed in the country, once again, to keep the peace.

Majda Ruge, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations thinktank, said Dodik's recent words and actions are part of a well-established pattern of provocation by the Serb leader.

"This is now an escalation of a process that has been ongoing since 2006, really since he assumed power in Republika Srpska," she told CBS News. "He has been repeatedly assaulting the authority of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and threatening the maximalist scenario of secession to negotiate kind of concessions and weaken the authority of the state."
...
With memories of the Bosnia War fading, it's far from clear that the U.S. and its European allies are willing to do what it takes to ensure that the state they fought to hold together in the 1990s remains intact.

Will the US learn how to be America again?

Posted by: 90sRetroFan
« on: December 30, 2021, 08:08:31 pm »

https://www.yahoo.com/news/nine-serbs-indicted-killing-around-121009314.html

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SARAJEVO (Reuters) - A Bosnian war crimes prosecutor has indicted nine Bosnian Serbs for the killing of around 100 Muslim Bosniaks, including seven entire families, early in the 1992-95 war, the prosecutor's office said in a statement on Wednesday.

Twenty-six years after the end of its devastating war between Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniaks in which about 100,000 people had died, Bosnia is still searching for people who went missing and seeking justice against the suspected perpetrators.

At the same time, the Balkan country is going through its worst post-war political crisis, with Bosnian Serb leaders' threat of pulling out of Bosnia's national institutions, including the joint armed forces, raising fears of a new conflict.

The nine men, the former members and commanders of the Bosnian Serb wartime army, are accused of killing the Bosniak civilians from the area around the southeastern Bosnian town of Nevesinje, including dozens of women, elderly people and small children.

The prosecutor's office said seven families were among those killed in the summer of 1992. The remains of 49 people have been found while 47 people are still unaccounted for.

If they killed 100 of us and we only kill 9 of them, they still won. What is so difficult to understand about this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbs

Quote
Total population
c. 10 million*

This is the correct number of Serbs to kill, or at the very least (if they surrender unconditionally) prohibit from reproducing.
Posted by: 90sRetroFan
« on: December 16, 2021, 09:10:24 pm »

https://www.yahoo.com/news/bosnia-police-jail-8-war-100520834.html

Quote
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Bosnian police on Thursday arrested eight former Bosnian Serb army commanders and soldiers in the 1992 wartime killing of about 100 Bosniaks, including women, children and older people, authorities said.

The eight are facing charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes against war prisoners, Bosnian security agency SIPA said.

A statement from the Bosnian prosecutor’s office said the arrests relate to the 1992 killings in the southern Bosnian region of Nevesinje of around 100 Bosniaks, who are mostly Muslims.

The victims included babies and small children from 15 days old to 2 years old, as well as dozens of women and older people. Entire families were killed, along with other victims, the prosecutor's statement said.

The remains of 49 people have been recovered so far while the search is underway for the remains of at least 47 more, the statement added.

Thursday's arrests came after similar actions were conducted in previous weeks also targeting suspected war criminals.

More than 100,000 people were killed during the war in Bosnia between the country’s Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats. The war erupted after Bosnian Serbs rebelled against the country's independence from the former Yugoslavia and took hold of large swaths of land, killing and expelling Bosniaks and Croats.

The conflict ended in a U.S.-brokered peace agreement in 1995, but Bosnia is still struggling to recover amid lingering ethnic tensions.

Bosnia will not recover until all Serb bloodlines have been eliminated from existence.
Posted by: Zea_mays
« on: July 23, 2021, 01:15:36 pm »

The importance of placing duty and mission above bureaucracy:

Quote
These Swedish troops, coming from a nation that had not experienced war for almost 200 years, faced a rigid UN bureaucracy, an unclear mandate, and the UN-imposed rules of engagement bordered on the absurd.[2] However, the Swedes had one thing the others didn't: a culture of mission command that had grown and developed for decades.

To the surprise of many, even in Sweden, Nordbat 2 quickly established a reputation as one of the most trigger-happy UN units in Bosnia. The troops and officers from some of the least belligerent nations in the world turned out to be quite adept at both using force and playing the odds in a high-stakes political game. This article outlines how a well-entrenched culture of mission command enabled Nordbat 2 to take on completely new and unexpected situations with remarkable results. While this culture of mission command turned out to be a potent force multiplier and an exceptionally effective strategic asset, it also had another side: Nordbat 2 on multiple occasions utterly disregarded orders from its highest political authorities, to the frustration of the Swedish government.
[...]
The culture of mission command in Sweden dates back to 1943, when senior Swedish army officers were taking note of the tactical superiority of German troops fighting Soviets on the Eastern Front.
[...]
The Swedish Armed Forces were consequently trained to respond to a massive Soviet invasion force [...] The Swedish Army estimated that a breakdown of command and control was a likely scenario as the Soviets would inevitably disrupt communications, destroy command centers, and seize territory, thereby isolating segments  of the Swedish Army. In order to cope with this contingency, all units were trained to engage in what was known as "the free war," (i.e. autonomous operations against local targets, without centralized command).
[...]
Considering that all Swedish Army units were expected to be able to operate autonomously, the culture of mission command completely permeated the entire organization. The officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs), all the way down to the lowest-ranking enlisted men, were taught that the only truly mortal sin was to hesitate. To seize the initiative and act was the primary imperative. There was no priority higher than that of achieving the mission objectives at hand. Orders could be disobeyed, rules could be broken—as long as the mission was successful.
[...]
This caused some consternation among the political elites in the country at the time, who insisted that the deployment would be a peacekeeping mission with no more than a minimum risk. They most certainly did not expect any significant confrontations between Nordbat 2 and the parties to the conflict. Henricsson, however, had his own set of expectations. He let the media know he would personally ensure Nordbat 2 brought body bags and that everyone who served under him would be ordered to write their wills before departing. When asked by the media, Henricsson made it clear that his interpretation of the mission objectives (which he had developed himself on the basis of the original UN mandate, rather than taking clues from his political superiors) was that protection of the civilian population was the highest priority. In order to achieve this, Henricsson expected that force might be used, and that losses were a real possibility.
[...]
Shortly after it had been deployed to Bosnia in December 1993, Nordbat 2 found itself in its first serious hostile encounter.
[...]
Then they issued an ultimatum: hand over the three Muslim nurses, and we will leave you alone. The Swedish platoon leader, Captain Stewe Simson, radioed battalion command, and was told that it was his call to make, since he was the one in charge at the location. Captain Simson refused to hand over the nurses and instead ordered his men to prepare for combat.

Vastly outnumbered and outgunned, Captain Simson realized that it was unrealistic to expect that his unit would survive a full-out assault. Nevertheless, he was determined not to give in. The Croats started to fire mortar rounds, but the Swedes held their positions. After a few hours, the Croats issued a new ultimatum: the nurses could stay if the Croats were granted free passage to the compound. Again, Captain Simson refused. The situation remained tense throughout the night, with the Swedes maintaining full combat readiness. In the morning, the Croats negotiated with the Swedes and eventually left, quietly dropping their ultimatums. Nordbat 2 had shown resolve even in the face of hopeless odds, achieving a strategically important victory as a result of a decision made by a platoon commander.

Other incidents followed. When fired at, Nordbat 2 often shot back, frequently disregarding the UN rules of engagement. Colonel Henricsson made it clear that he would not respect rules and regulations that threatened to prevent him from achieving his mission objectives. When his own government tried to rein him in, he simply told his radio operator to pretend that the link was down until he had a fait accompli to present to Stockholm.
[...]
In several other incidents, Nordbat 2 personnel intervened to protect refugees and took action to prevent the cover-up of ethnic cleansing operations. On several occasions this took the form of forcing passage through roadblocks. During one such event, the battalion commander himself forced a sentry to remove the anti-tank mines used to block passage by threatening to blow the sentry's head off with a heavy machine gun.
[...]
This can be contrasted with the Dutch peacekeepers who were deployed in Srebrenica. The Dutch unit and Nordbat 2 operated under the same regional command, in the same general area. The Dutch peacekeepers, representing a professional elite airborne unit, were more or less helpless for more than a year inside the Srebrenica enclave because they were unwilling to initiate any confrontations with the parties to the conflict, and because they were willing to be micromanaged by their home government. Nordbat 2, on the other hand, was something of a loose cannon, and earned a reputation as a force to be reckoned with. It even became known as "Shootbat" for its tendency to return fire, regardless of the formal rules of engagement.

Nordbat 2's willingness to bend or even break the rules, and disregard direct orders from both UN command and its own government, enabled it to achieve its mission objectives as defined by the first battalion commander: protect the civilians at all cost. However, this also poses a challenge to the traditional civil-military dilemma: on several occasions Nordbat 2 did not accept the control of its civilian leadership. Accustomed to mission command, Nordbat 2 acted as it had been taught: rules can be broken as long as it is done to achieve the mission objectives.
[...]
The most essential component of mission command is trust. As long as political leaders can trust the local commander to make the right choices, mission command can be an incredibly powerful force multiplier. Even though Nordbat 2's first battalion commanders were very unpopular with the Swedish government for their refusal to take orders from home, they were nevertheless greeted as heroes upon their return and remain viewed so to this day. This meant the Swedish government did not have to deal with the political fallout of the otherwise failed UN mission. The Dutch government, for example, was hard-pressed by public opinion after the massacre at Srebrenica in the summer of 1995. In 2002, the entire Dutch government was forced to resign over Srebrenica, after a detailed report blaming the government for the failure was released to the public.
https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2017/9/20/trigger-happy-autonomous-and-disobedient-nordbat-2-and-mission-command-in-bosnia
Posted by: 90sRetroFan
« on: July 10, 2021, 11:48:56 pm »

https://www.yahoo.com/news/survivors-bosnia-massacre-grapple-horrors-061651251.html

Quote
SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Through tears and in between fraught silences, Devla Ajsic refuses to remain quiet any longer.

Ajsic was 21 years old and three months pregnant in July 1995 when she was repeatedly sexually assaulted in Srebrenica while her fiance and thousands of other mostly Muslim men and boys were taken away and executed in Europe’s only acknowledged genocide since World War II.

For decades, Ajsic did not talk openly about the horrors she endured after Bosnian Serb forces stormed the eastern Bosnian town in the waning months of the Balkan country’s 1992-95 war.

“I locked it all inside for 26 years and suffered in silence. I had no one to confide in, no one to share my pain with. ... I cannot take it any longer,” said the now 47-year-old Ajsic, steeling herself as she finally spoke publicly of her ordeal on the eve of the 26th anniversary of the massacre Sunday.

When Bosnian Serb forces captured Srebrenica, which had been declared a U.N. “safe haven” for civilians in 1993, about 30,000 of its terrified Muslim residents rushed to the U.N. compound at the entrance to town in the hope that the Dutch U.N. peacekeepers there would protect them.

However, the outgunned and outnumbered peacekeepers watched helplessly as Serb troops took some 2,000 men and boys from the compound for execution, **** the women and girls, and then bused the women, children and elderly to Bosniak Muslim-held territory.

Ajsic said she was sexually assaulted and tortured for three days before departing Srebrenica in one of the last buses packed with refugees.

“The things they did to me, they tied me to a desk, my neck and my chest were blue from bruises, I was sprawled naked on that table,” she recounted, sobbing. The Associated Press typically doesn’t name sex abuse victims except in cases where they opt to speak publicly.

Ajsic said the Serb soldiers drugged her, clouding her mind, but even so she was acutely aware she was not the only woman kept bound and subject to horrific abuse in a hangar of the then-U.N. compound.

There are no words to describe their “screaming, their cries for help," she said of the women. “What could we do when (the soldiers) came through that door unzipping their pants and walked toward us? We were like lambs, like sacrificial lambs waiting for a knife to slaughter us.”

What else did you expect from Orthodox Church followers?

Quote
And yet, she believes her personal nightmare, including the loss of the fetus she had to abort after fleeing Srebrenica, is dwarfed by the weeklong Bosnian Serb killing spree in which over 8,000 mostly Muslim men and boys from the town perished.

Most of the victims were hunted down and summarily executed as they tried to flee into nearby forest. Their bodies were plowed into hastily dug mass graves and then later excavated with bulldozers and scattered among other burial sites to hide evidence of the crime.

Many wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of those killed in Srebrenica have dedicated their lives to fighting for the truth about what happened to their men and searching for their remains. And yet, in over a quarter-century, only a handful have publicly spoken of the sexual abuse they suffered during the fall of Srebrenica.

The women stubbornly stood their ground when confronted with political opposition to their request to set up a memorial cemetery across from the former Dutch U.N. base, where on every July 11 since 2002 they have reburied the remains of their loved ones.

So far, the remains of more than 6,600 people have been exhumed from mass graves, identified by forensic analysis and reburied at the site. The remains of 19 more victims will be laid to rest there Sunday.

Srebrenica’s Bosniak women were also key to cases brought against the United Nations and the Netherlands over the failure of the Dutch U.N. troops to protect the town’s civilians in 1995, and the adoption of a European Parliament resolution commemorating July 11 as the Day of Remembrance of the Srebrenica genocide.

Among them was Munira Subasic, who lost her husband, a son and 22 other male relatives in the massacre.

She, along with dozens of others testified before a special U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague to prosecute the crimes committed during the 1990s Balkan wars that followed the dissolution of former Yugoslavia, helping put behind bars Bosnian Serb war-time political and military leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, both convicted of genocide and war crimes and jailed for life.

Although the Srebrenica massacre was branded genocide by international and national courts, Serbian and Bosnian Serb officials still downplay or deny the crime. For many Srebrenica women setting the historical record straight about what happened to their men has become their life’s purpose.

“We have to keep fighting for truth and justice in order to prevent the young generations (in the Balkans) from being infected by hate, from seeking revenge,” Subasic said.

WRONG. We fight for truth and justice in order to set alight the young generations with hate and determination for seeking revenge against Serbia. Only after Serbia ceases to exist and all Serb bloodlines are permanently eliminated can we rest.

Quote
Bosnian Serb political leaders have consistently prevented the country from adopting a law that would ban genocide denial, with the Serb member of Bosnia’s presidency, Milorad Dodik, even publicly describing the Srebrenica slaughter as a “fabricated myth.”

What Bosniak Muslim women like Subasic are up against is “active, institutional and institutionalized genocide denial” by Serbian and Bosnian Serb officials, said Emir Suljagic, the director of the Srebrenica Memorial Centre.

“The people who took part in genocide are still alive and the political class which is deeply invested in (the war crimes) of the 1990s is still in power,” Suljagic said, noting that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic was a former ultranationalist government minister who, in July 1995, threatened to kill 100 Muslim Bosniaks for every Serb killed if the international community intervened to stop the Srebrenica slaughter.

If we kill every Serb, which Serbs will be left to kill Muslims? This is how we need to think about the problem.

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Vucic has now rebranded himself as a pro-European Union reformer, but it did not stop him from condemning as “an act of betrayal" resolutions passed recently by Montenegro and Kosovo condemning the Srebrenica genocide and banning its denial.

Having returned a year ago to Srebrenica with her 24-year-old son and his family after living for decades in a region of central Bosnia, Ajsic no longer believes a normal life is possible after the horrors she endured.

Her late husband banned her from talking publicly about the abuse because of the stigma still surrounding the ****, but with his death she felt free to unload a little of her trauma now.

She says she is afraid to walk the streets of Srebrenica, a town now shared between massacre survivors and massacre deniers, because she never knows if the people she encounters consider the genocide a fabrication or even took part in it.

“I came back to live in Srebrenica, but I am terrified to walk on the streets here because I don’t know who the people driving in the cars around me are, what kind of people they are,” she said.

Your terror will only cease when no Serbs remain in the world. Do you want your terror to cease or not?
Posted by: 90sRetroFan
« on: June 30, 2021, 10:47:10 pm »

https://www.yahoo.com/news/top-serbian-security-officials-convicted-170616591.html

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A United Nations court on Wednesday convicted two wartime Serbian State Security officials for aiding and abetting war crimes committed by Serbian paramilitaries during Bosnia and Herzegovina's 1992–95 war, AP reports.

Why it matters: This is the final UN trial at The Hague for crimes committed during the breakup of Yugoslavia. It's the first time that high-ranking wartime Serbian government officials have been convicted for crimes committed in Bosnia, per the New York Times.

But the sentence is absurd:

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State of play: Jovica Stanisic, the former head of Serbian State Security, and Franko Simatovic, his former deputy, were each sentenced to 12 years in prison for helping to ethnically cleanse non-Serbs from the Bosnian town of Bosanski Samac.

12 years?! It's OK to be Serbian?

And no mention of giving back the town to Bosnia? This is why the UN is useless and only using WMDs on Serbia will work.
Posted by: rp
« on: June 13, 2021, 09:45:59 pm »

Genocide conviction upheld for Mladic:
https://youtu.be/PQxlXUDaV_E