The Criminal Race : The Demonization, Dehumanization and
Criminalization of the Serbian People.
http://www.abolishnato.com
Erin S. LaPorte - December 22, 1999
Florida State U. Student (Sr.) - Tallahassee, Florida, USA
"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."
Dr. Raju G.C. Thomas, from his essay "Dehumanizing a Nation:
The Balkans Conflict and International Reaction" (1993) p. 1.
CONTENTS
I. Introduction to Group Demonization and Dehumanization.
Here, I use the work of Sam Keen (1986) to explain the basic
sociology of enemy creation through demonizing propaganda.
II. The "subhuman Serbs" as NATO targets.
1. The role of modern mass communication in "national
interests."
2. Human deaths as "collateral damage" and other NATO
propaganda.
III. The "concentration camps" and "ethnic
cleansing" elements in anti-Serb propaganda.
1. The organized efforts to spread anti-Serb propaganda.
2. Making of the Trnopolje "concentration camp" and
those who were shamelessly fooled.
3. "Remember Srebrenica" themes and "Serb ethnic
cleansing" propaganda.
4. Elements of anti-Serb propaganda developed from the
"remember Srebrenica" theme.
IV. Denial of the Victimhood of the Serbs.
V. The Hague Tribunal : The Tribunal from Hell
1. The use of "international tribunals" to validate
labels.
2. Questionable proceedings of the Tribunal from Hell.
VI. Conclusion
VII. My Observations.
1. Racism in human rights activity in Kosovo and the
"international community."
2. Some suggestions to the Serbian people.
3. . . . and this work isn't done yet!
Footnotes and references to this paper.
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I. Introduction to Group Demonization and Dehumanization.
Most human groups and nations create an enemy to create a
sense of social solidarity and membership. The function of war
propaganda is to build social solidarity, to unite a nation or group
against "the Other, evil incarnate."
"In all propaganda, the face of the enemy is designed to
provide a focus for our hatred. He is the other. The outsider. The
alien. He is not human. If we can only kill him, we will be rid of all
within and without ourselves that is evil" (Keen 1986, p. 16).
The stuff that creates a sense of tribal loyalty and
patriotism is paranoia. Paranoia is far from being an occasional
pathology, but a normal condition. We direct hate and suspicion to
strangers and those who are unlike us. The paranoid myth of "the
threat" involves the dualistic Us versus Them, Good versus Evil, we
are good, they are bad. This paranoid myth that unites the group and
defines it, also permits the killing of the immoral, nonhuman members of
the "them," as well as the holy act of dying while killing the
"them" (Keen, 1986).
Humans normally don't kill other humans. The humans that
we intend to kill, eliminate or commit genocide against must be
dehumanized. "The enemy" must be reduced to ugly creatures that are
less than animals with ideas that must be destroyed. Propaganda of the
mass media is employed to create "the good," us and "the evil",
the them. The mass media is employed to justify the righteousness and
piety of "us" and the aggression and evilness of "the enemy."
This creates the fog of paranoia that cannot be cleared, even when
presented with the truth about the true intentions and true humanity of
"the enemy" (Keen 1986).
The propaganda that is used to demonized and dehumanize
"the enemy" often portrays "the enemy" with similar images, both
visual and written. "The enemy" is often portrayed as a beast or a
stone age throw-back with turned down lips and ruff facial features. He
is wild and animal like, engaging in behaviors and customs that are
strange to "us." In print "the enemy" has been portrayed as
dirty, crude, acting either under the influence of home-made liquor or
pure animal instincts (Stover and Peress 1998), combined with the
enemy's "strange" social customs, as in Eric Stover and Gilles
Peress book The Graves: Srebrencia and Vukovar. (1998) (1). These images
are replayed in many ways to create the negative stereotypes of "the
enemy" and only negative news about this demonized group is covered in
"the press" (Keen 1986, McCarus 1994). Speaking of the portrayal of
the enemy's "strange social customs," Sam Keen (1986) stated: He
will be portrayed as rude, crude and uncivilized. More than likely he
will be an irrational, dirty member of a horde organized at best on the
model of an ant heap (p. 43).
Once demonized and stripped of their humanity, it not only
makes it easier for the battlefield solider to kill the "faceless,
non-human enemy," it is also easier to indiscriminately kill any
member of "the enemy." Civilians in the demonized group become
targets, often unable to fight back and are easy prey for violence and
persecutions. They are easy prey for violence and harassment as a result
of knee-jurk, American- patriotic racism called jingoistic racism (2) (
Keen 1986; Burchfield 1997; McCarus 1994).
Since a group stripped of its humanity is not seen as having
human worth, they have no human rights. Such a demonized, out-group is
not deserving of the protections that other human groups are entitled
under international law and conventions. Such a development helps
powerful governments and military alliances, and their media outlets, to
justify the bombing and killing of civilians, and the ignoring of the
human rights of the demonized group ( Burchfield 1997). "They" may
have been the victims of war crimes committed against "them," but
war crimes against "them" are justified.
Lastly, according to Miller and Levin (1998), the media
project images of a "hierarchy of victims," that is, some victims
are more deserving of public attention, sympathy and out rage than other
victims. This projects the image that these "lesser victims"
lives' are of no value and are therefore less newsworthy.
Back to top.
Footnotes and references
II. The "subhuman Serbs" as NATO Targets.
1. The role of modern mass communication in "national
interests."
The media play very important roles in portraying members of
some groups as normal and others as Other. In particular, films and
television programs use the power of visual images to create and
reinforce stereotypic images of Others as scary and different (Zatz and
Mann, 1998, p.8).
While the family and education have a role to play in the
shaping and transmission of the common culture, this role is falling
more on the shoulders of the media and the government. Government is
playing more of a role in the culture, shaping and supporting the
cultural values regarding civil rights, criminal justice and so on. The
mass media are a great influence on the transmission and reinforcement
of some times heavily biased, cultural values ( Burchfield 1997, Ranney
1993). The most influential impact of mass communications in political
communication and political culture is television because of it's
visualness over radio, its visual and voice over newspapers (Ranney
1993).
Journalists will seek out governmental and military
officials when there is some perceived threat to the "national
interest." Many of these reporters rely on official sources, such as
foreign affairs offices and governmental employees. In order to
cultivate relationships with and "not offend" those "in the
know," the reporter reports "facts" he is given, even if he knows
that they are lies. The most esteemed journalists are the ones who are
the most servile. Hearsay is transformed into "the truth"
(Sadkovich, 1998). Often, however, these "facts" that military and
governmental officials put out as "truth" can be disputable and
become part of the propaganda and the process of demonization, or
re-demonization (Sadkovich 1998, Keen 1986).
There is one vivid example of this "reporting of facts"
from the NATO Alliance during it's rather questionable "Operation
Allied Force." The Paris based group, Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF)
chastised NATO for what it said was the Alliance's "distorting the
truth, attempts at misinformation" and "impossible to check
figures." RSF sited the example of the supposed wounding of
ethnic-Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, who then subsequently appeared
healthy on Serbian Television.
Air Commodore David Wilby had stated that the report of
Rugova's demise was from a "very reliable source." The "very
reliable source" that Air Commodore Wilby cited was a London -based
Kosovo Information Center, run by Kosovo exiles. Besides
(dis)information, RSF's report points out the "other features of
Western communication are approximate figures, debatable historical
references and the use of vocabulary that has the aim of making the
adversay appear monstrous. " (3)
2. Human deaths as "collateral damage" and other NATO
propaganda.
"When we know the Serbs did it, we say the Serbs did
it," said a NATO official . . .who spoke anonymously to an American
researcher. "When we don't know who did it, we say the Serbs did it.
And when we know the Serbs didn't do it, we say we don't know who
did it." (4)
Recall in Section I the ideas of both Burchfield (1997) and
Keen (1986). Once a group of humans is stripped of its humanity, such as
the Serbs, this "out group" is seen as "not worthy" of the same
protections granted to "in groups." This includes the human rights
and human worth of the demonized group. Also, according to Keen (1986),
the high tech weapons eliminate much of the demonization process and
make "the enemy" even less human : The atrocities committed from a
high altitude by bomber crews, directed from afar by technicians are not
so much inhuman as ahuman ( p.86). So long as we want to kill from a
distance with clean hands, we must refrain from imagining the
consequences of our weapons, and must completely eliminate any awareness
of the enemy as human (pp.86-87).
NATO officials in Brussels were truly conditioned by their
propaganda to kill "the Other," the "sub-human, ethnic cleansing,
Serbs," and coupled with the distance from Brussels to Belgrade, this
insulated the Alliance from the carnage in Yugoslavia, making bombing
the civil population all the more sanitary.
The results of dehumanizing propaganda and sanitary killing
of "the Other" came out of one NATO official in at least one press
briefing during "Operation Allied Force." During the April 9th press
briefing, CNN correspondent Patricia Kelly questioned Air Commodore
David Wilby's lack of concern for the civil population in and around a
Yugoslav car plant : ". . .your statement on the collateral damage to
civilian property in Kosovo seems to take no account of the fact that
there are still Serb civilians inside of Kosovo which NATO has also
pledged to protect in its early mission statements but the way you put
the information across makes it sound as if you are not particularly
bothered about their safety any longer."
In his reply to the charge, Wilby answers with a well worn
NATO statement, but then continues to describe possible Serb civilian
causalities in non-human terms:
". . .if I gave the impression that I was not concerned
about the loss of civilian life to the Serbian population, you know that
we have always said that we are not in any conflict with the Serbian
people and I am sorry if my emphasis came across slightly wrong to you."
"In terms of the car plant. . .as I have said to you, we
would look very carefully into the collateral damage or damage to
civilians before we attacked that particular plant." (5)
According to The White Book of NATO's Crimes , there were
several civilian homes hit by missiles that day, as well as the car
plant that employed 30,000, but no injuries or deaths were reported in
this publication. (6)
In yet another example that lead to protests by historical
experts was Tony Blair's (mis) use of the term "genocide" and the
characterization of Milosevic's government to that of Hitler's. (7)
The reasons for the NATO Alliance's questionable bombing campaign was
the "humanitarian disaster" of the ethnic Albanians that was created
by the "ethnic cleansing by the Serbs." The common figure being
batted around was 100,000 dead, with one mass grave in Ljubenic said to
contain 350 bodies. ("Remember Srebrenica?! Why those 'nasty, ethnic
cleansing, rapist Serbs' were back to their systematic ethnic cleansing
plans!")
What investigators found , or didn't find ( November 1999)
in Ljubenic was not 350 corpses, but seven(8) and a mine shaft said to
contain lots of corpses of massacred Albanians held none (9). Recently,
teams of forensic experts from Spain and Italy have found only about 200
graves or so with no signs of torture on those corpses the did find.(10)
People were leaving Kosovo because, like Serbia proper, it was being
attacked by NATO.(11) The NATO Alliance is starting to look very much
like an alliance of cheap, brutal war mongers, using propaganda and
outright lies as a justification for war.
However, during the NATO actions against the Yugoslav Serbs,
the West rehashed the same propaganda and old stereotypes of the Serbs
as the "butchers of the Balkans, ethnic cleansers" (Flounders 1998).
The US and NATO used these past anti-Serb propaganda and anti- Serb
stereotypes in an effort to create the social solidarity necessary to
keep the NATO countries' leaders and their publics supportive of the
Yugoslavia bombing campaign ( Keen 1986, Naslund, 1999).
These claims of the "systematic, ethnic cleansing and mass
murder plans" of the Serbs is not new. The anti-Serb propaganda
elements that were being recycled in the NATO action with regard to
Kosovo were the "remember Sreberinca" themes, which are highlighted
in the next section. There was alleged to have been 8,000 Muslim men
"systematically massacred by the Serbs" in Srebreinca, but only 460
bodies have been found (Kent 1998, Pumphrey 1998).
Some of the conscious in the West for the "bombing of
Milosevic" and the Yugoslav Serb civilian population was also
developed and maintained by sometimes concerted demonization and
dehumanization campaigns lead by American PR firms like Ruder Finn
Global Public Affairs(12) with "very important" clients, like the
Republic of Croatia.
Back to top.
Footnotes and references
III. The "concentration camps" and "ethnic
cleansing" elements in anti-Serb propaganda.
"Regrettably, that behavior (ethnic cleansing) is not
unprecedented in Balkan conflicts, and to say that it is a peculiarly
Serb behavior says more about the observer than the Balkans" (Charles
G. Boyd 1995, p.3).
Several groups have been demonized through the use of
propaganda during the 20th Century. Most notably, the Jews, Germans and
Japanese during the Second World War, the Russians during the Cold War,
the Arabs and Muslims during the 70's and the Gulf War. The newest
victims of Western, war- motivated propaganda are the Serbs (Keen 1986,
McCarus 1994, Kent 1999, Flounders 1998). There have been a few intense
media blitzes stemming "from the need to punish" the Serbs for their
insolence against the West and Washington (Kent 1999).
1. The organized efforts to spread anti- Serb propaganda.
Unlike the cartoons and posters of the previous wars, the
"media war" against the Serbs, as many have put it, is a sometimes
concerted, high tech one, incorporating mass communication technology
and public relations firms to demonize and dehumanize and the entire
ethnic group. The current concerted propaganda campaign against the
Serbs began back in the early '90's when the Western world media
heated up it's anti- Serb campaign with its portrayal of Serbs as
barbarians, drunken bandits and murders, even Nazi fascists. Current
political cartoons portray the Serbs as pigs, hyenas and neo-Nazi
monsters. (Thomas 1993, Flounders 1998, Deichmann 1998, Kent 1999).
There is now even an anti-Serb propaganda book, Stover and Peress' The
Graves , being use in the classroom of Florida State University in a
course on "human rights investigations" and this author is finding
that anti-Serb propaganda books with the "remember Srebrenica" theme
are becoming common place.
The current Western/NATO propaganda against the Serbs is an
organized one, involving public relations firms. Charly Reese of the
Orlando Sentinel wrote, ". . .the Serbs were and are up against
powerful American public relations firms, western intelligence agencies
and biased or incompetent Western reporters." Reese cited an interview
by French Two Television of James Harff of Ruder Finn Global Affairs,
the public relations firm that was representing the Muslim side. Harff,
who is Ruder Finn's director, boasted of getting the American Jews on
the side of Muslims after the Bosnian concentration camps hoax (Also
Deichmann, 1998, Flounders 1998). The public relations firm capitalized
on the high emotional content of the ITN "concentration camp" hoax
for the benefit of its clients, the Republic of Croatia, the Republic of
Bosnia-Herzegovina and the parliamentary oppsition in Kosovo. The
Washington based firm shows how the corporate media engages in a modern
propaganda campaign and demonstrates one of the concerted efforts to
demonize the Serbs :
Speed is vital. . .it is the first assertion that really
counts. All denial are ineffective. In a single move we were able to
present a simple story of good guys and bad guys which would hereafter
play itself. We won by targeting the Jewish audience. Almost immediately
there was a clear change of the lanague in the press, with use of words
with high emotional content such as 'ethnic cleansing, concertration
camps, etc., which evoke images of Nazi Germany and the gas chambers of
Auschwitz. No one could go against it without being accused of
revisionism. We really batted a thousand in full" (qtd. in Flounders
1998, pp.54, 55).
2. Making of the Trnopolje "concentration camp" and
those who were shamelessly fooled.
In his essay "The Picture that Fooled the World" (1998)
Thomas Deichman describes the "concentration camp" hoax in detail.
The now famous picture came from a video shot by Penny Marshall of ITN
of a refugee camp in Trnopolje on August 5th, 1992. In fact, Deichmann
has looked at the rest of the footage Marshall and her team shot that
contained the picture. What was used in the Marshell report - and what
wasn't - is revealing. What wasn't in the report was the openness of
the camp, the holes in the fences that Marshell and her crew went
through and that the refugees were free to leave anytime they wanted
(Dechmann, 1998).
What became the picture that Mike Jeremy of ITN pegged
"one of the key images of the war in the former Yugoslavia," (qtd.
in Deichmann, p. 170) was, in fact, presented as to the Western world as
something it was not, a concentration camp. The focus was on Fikret
Alic, who's protruding rib cage behind a fence conjured up images of
Nazi death camps. This "death camp" was a crude, sick lie and Fikret
Alic, who survived the war, was disturbed about the use of his image.
Through the use of camera angles, editing and the focus on
one rather emaciated fellow, the images of a "concentration camp"
were constructed for Western, anti-Serb propaganda consumption,
especially to the delight of the Ruder Finn PR firm (Deichmann 1998,
Flounders 1998).
James Harff of Ruder Finn shows his more of his "pride"
in getting the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish organizations on
the side of Muslims using the "concentration camp " hoax:
"At the beginning of July 1992, New York Newsday came out
with the article on Serb camps. We jumped at the opportunity
immediately. We outwitted three big Jewish organizations - the B'nai
B'rith Anti-Defamation League, The American Jewish Committee and the
American Jewish Congress. In August, we suggested that they publish an
advertisement in the New York Times and organize demonstrations outside
the United Nations.
That was a tremendous coup. When the Jewish organizations
entered the game on the side of the [Muslim] Bosnians, we could promptly
equate the Serbs with the Nazis in the public mind. Nobody understood
what was happening in Yugoslavia. The great majority of Americans were
probably asking themselves in which African country Bosnia was
situated" (qtd. in Flounders 1998, p.55).
Those that were duped- and continue to be duped - are the
American Jewish groups, such as the Anti- Defamation League that,
according Thomas (1993) : "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" (
p. 2)
Thomas points out strongly that the American Jewish
community is actually participating in the genocide of Serbs. Promoting
dehumanizing anti-Serb propaganda is a horrible step by most victimized
ethnic group of the 20th Century- the Jews- to promote violence against
another ethnic group- the Serbs.
3. "Remember Srebrenica" themes and "Serb ethnic
cleansing" propaganda.
"Srebrenica provides an unexpected way precisely what is
wrong with both the media and the constant spreading of hate against the
Serbs" (Kent 1999, p.9).
"Ethnic cleansing" is more often, and falsely,
attributed to Serbs, while at the same time Serb victims of ethnic
cleansing, including at Srebrenica, are forgotten. Serb victims of
ethnic cleansing are either misidentified as another ethnicity or not
identified by an ethnicity. Often the fact that Serbs are also victims
of ethnic cleansing is downplayed or never reported. ( Kent 1999,
Dragnich 1995, Boyd 1995, Rohde 1997, Thomas 1993). Section IV
extensively covers denial of the victimhood of the Serbs by Western
governments and media.
Editors often suppress "pro-Serb" stories, but allow a
few favorable words to be said to give the appearance of "fair play"
(Kent 1999). These stories are often hidden or near the bottom, but then
it is accompanied by demonizing, anti-Serb text ( Kent 1999).
The "Serbophobes," as Kent (1999) calls them, not only
portray the Serbs as dirty, drunken, neo-Nazi monsters, but suppressed
stories defending the Serbs, including false charges and grand
exaggerations of alleged "genocide" (Kent 1999, Thomas 1993, ).
Western reporters and the Eric Stover types, according to Thomas (1993),
go into a frenzy over alleged "genocide" by Serbs and numbers of
Muslims or Croats killed are often inflated and amount to lies. The same
ilk could care less when the victims of ethnic cleansing and mass murder
are Serbs. What the Western propaganda machine drags up constantly are
the alleged atrocities by Serbs in the town of Srebernica (Kent 1999).
This is one of the towns in Eric Stover and Gillies Peress' The Graves
: Srebernica and Vukovar (1998) .
In this book, the Serbs are not only portrayed as a race of
dirty, drunken, animal, ethnic cleansers, but the mainly
photojournalistic work hides the victimization of the Serbs, as well as
portrays the Serbs as drunken, animalistic killers. Stover writes, " .
. . the shelling of towns and villages, mass deportations of Muslims and
Croats and the systematic destruction of their cultural property. . .
what the Serb leaders were intending to accomplish in Bosnia" (p.
137).
However, a good - and shorter than an entire book - example
of this method of anti-Serb stereotype reinforcement is also in the
March 25th, 1996 issue of the New York Times article by Alan Cowell.
Cowell's story was regarding the indictments by the International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) of three Bosinan
Muslims and a Bosnian Croat for involvement in a alleged "rape camp"
in which Serbs were the victims. One would not know that this is an
article about Serb victims and indictments issued for crimes committed
against Serbs by reading the article:
These are the first individuals indicted for crimes against
Bosnian Serb victims," the tribunal's spokesman, Christian Chartier
said. The indictment was "the first of its kind," it said.
The tribunal's investigations have been dominated by
inquires against Serbs, who investigators say pursued a systematic drive
to purge entire regions of Muslims and Croats, using murder and rape as
weapons in this process of 'ethnic cleansing.'
The tribunal has charged that many of the Serbian atrocities
reflected deliberate policies of the Bosnian Serb leadership, as opposed
to being crimes by rouge individuals . . . "
Even as today's indictments against the Serbs'
adversaries were made known, the United States' chief delegate to the
United Nations, Madeleine Albright, was visiting the site of suspected
mass graves near the central town of Srebrenica, where thousands of
Muslims are believed to have been massacred by Serbs last July." (13)
Was Cowell's story really about the ICTY indictments of
non-Serbs, or was the purpose of Cowell's article really about
something else - like anti-Serb stereotype reinforcement?!
4. Elements of anti-Serb propaganda developed from the
"remember Srebrenica" theme.
In Faces of the Enemy (1986) , on page 46, Sam Keen has
eight elements of decivilizing rhetoric he identified as being used by
former President Ronald Reagan to paint the image "Soviet savagery." I
have noted that much of the "remember Srebrenica" theme was, and
still is, being used as elements of anti-Serb propaganda. Borrowing on
Keen's idea of identifying elements of decivilizing rhetoric, and Eric
Stover's Serb bashing text in The Graves as a main sources, I have
created a list of elements in anti-Serb propaganda :
a.. The Serbs are not victims of "ethnic cleansing"
( p.137, implied).
b.. The Serbs break agreements (p. 121).
c.. The Serbs are rapists of Muslim women (p. 115) .
d.. The Serbs are "dirty, animalistic killers" ( pp.
105, 108, 103, 144, 156).
e.. The Serbs are usually drunk on brandy ( pp.105,
106,).
f.. The Serbs are "cold, cruel occupiers" (
pp.111-112, 130, 140 ).
g.. The Serbs have "strange, animal- like habits" (
pp.83-87, 122).
h.. The Serbs are the only perpetrators of "ethnic
cleansing and mass murder." Stover and Gilles' entire book portrays
this fallacy, but especially on pages 131, 137, 108.
What is also clear from Stover and Gilles' book is that
Bosnian Muslims are human beings, with human traits of concern for
family, have feelings of love and anger, suffer hunger and cold.
Contrast that to the animalistic Serbs who, in this obviously propaganda
book, are cold, cruel, unfeeling, and unmoved by the tears and fears of
the Bosnian Muslim human beings . The Serbs, as a group of human beings,
have their humanity ripped and stripped from then in The Graves. Eric
Stover and Gillies Pervess' The Graves : Sreberinca and Vukovar is an
excellent book for those who want get a good taste of what anti-Serb
propaganda and dehumanization is all about.
Closely related to the "remember Srebrenica" spin of
anti-Serb propaganda is the denial of the victimhood of the Serbs,
including and especially in Srebrenica, at the hands of Eric Stover's
"charismatic - 25 year old leader," Naser Oric.
Back to top.
Footnotes and references
IV. Denial of the victimhood of the Serbs.
"Massacres committed by Serbs are genocide, but not
massacres committed on Serbs. Ethnic cleansing by the Serbs is genocide,
but not that committed by the other side against Serbs" ( Thomas 1993,
p. 5).
Part of the demonization and dehumanization of the Serbs is
not only labels created through propaganda against them, but also the
removal of their victimhood. The funeral of a Serb girl was reported as
that of a Muslim and the rape of a Serb woman was reported as that of a
Muslim (Kent 1999, Thomas 1993).
"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" ( Thomas 1993, p. 2 ).
Or the fact that the Serbs have also been victims of ethnic
cleansing is often never reported in Western media. According to Raymond
Kent, "For almost a year before the Serbs took Srebrenica. . . its
Bosnian (Muslim) government forces routinely raided the rural Serbs in
the surrounding countryside, committing all kinds of war crimes without
any fear that the T.V. screens of the outside world could be even a
silent witness" (p. 9 ).
On thing is for certain is that journalist and forensic
anthropologist Eric Stover and photojournalist Gilles Peress were not
there. In fact on page 117 of The Graves , Stover treats Naser Oric, the
local Bosnian Muslin leader suspected of burning over 200 Serbs villages
and brutally and beastly murdering Serbs in raids around Srebrenica
(Kent 1999, Rohde 1997) as a "charismatic, twenty - five year old
policeman" and the brutal, murderous raids as "the success of these
local raids." In the book Endgame (1997) David Rohde paints a picture
of Srebrenica's Serbs living in fear :
Srebrenica's Muslims and Naser Oric had played the United
Nations beautifully in 1993. When the Serbs were on the verge of taking
the town, they had tricked the West into saving them. The safe area was
a joke. For two years, the UN had fed the Muslims, sold them weapons and
done nothing as Naser Oric launched raids from a town that was supposed
to be "demilitarized." Serb villagers within 30 miles of Srebrenica
lived in constant fear, waiting to hear the voices in the night and then
smell smoke. Dozens of civilians had been burned alive in their homes by
Oric's men (p.15).
While I am not condoning any actions that may have been
perpetrated by the Bosinan Serb side, the marked difference between
Naser Oric and Ratko Mladic is that the latter has never been indicted
by the ICTY (Kent 1999) . On of the most grave injustices of Stover and
Gilles' The Graves is that it hides and denies Srebrenica's other
victims, the Bosnian Serbs, and implies that a "politically correct"
war criminal is a hero.
Currently, much of the coverage of "humanitarian
efforts" in Kosovo are often one-side, almost flat out ignorance the
human rights and war crimes violations by the Kosovo Albanian
population, especially the KLA ( the Kosovo, so-called "Liberation
Army ") against the Kosovo Serbs. The ICTY is doing little to
investigate and indict KLA and other Kosovo Albanians for their war
crimes and ethnic cleansing against the Kosovo Serbs and other
minorities(14). In the fashion of "remember Srebrenica" there were
accusations of "Serbian ethnic cleansing" that are now, once again,
turning out to be false(15). Also, as in Bosnia, when Serbs are the
victims, who cares.
As stated by Miller and Levin (1998) the mass media project
a "hierarchy of victims" in which some victims are more deserving of
attention and public outrage than others. The Serbs are quite noticeably
at the bottom of this hierarchy, if they are even on the chart at all.
When a mass grave is made up of Muslims and non-Serbs, the Western mass
media flock to it like vultures(16). When the mass grave is made up of
Serbs - who cares. When the Serbs are victims of ethnic cleansing - who
cares. The Serbs are subhumans - so who cares (Thomas 1993).
The above is commonly called "racism" and those involved
are commonly called "racists."
Denial of victimhood of the Serbs and treating war crimes
against them as if they are less deserving of investigation and
international attention is reflective of racism in the "international
community," the ICTY and the "human rights Serbophobes" (Kent
1999, p.8). The cameras were out and rolling to catch Ratko Mladic - but
not Naser Oric (Kent 1999). Being very concerned with the human rights
and humanitarian needs of one ethnic group, while flat out ignoring the
human rights violations against and the basic human needs of the other,
as is current in Kosovo, is RACIST, to say the least.
Back to top.
Footnotes and references
V. The Hague Tribunal : The Tribunal from Hell.
1. The use of "international tribunals" to validate
labels.
"A problematic individual or group is classified as an
instance of human refuse; the validity of the label is tested and
confirmed in public hearings or tribunals conducted by experts certified
in making defamatory pronouncements: legends are then woven by
mythmakers to 'explain' the necessity for the evil party being as it
is : these legends are passed on . . . as ontological truths, and
received by an audience which, not present during the initial steps, is
unable to fathom the fabricated nature of the evil; finally, the truth
of the myth is recognized (re-known) through its ritual dramatization in
armed engagements, domestic and foreign, against the evil object" (Aho
1994, pp.114-115).
In his book, This Thing of Darkness (1994), James Aho
discusses how this "evil" is created through imagery, validated and
made the stuff of myth and "common knowledge about 'the them.' "
In this way, the "evil" is socially constructed. This is how
criminality, delinquency, and even "war crimes" and "crimes
against humanity" are brought to life, made reality and confirmed.
The first step is naming or labeling. "Persons, acts or
situations are neither good nor evil. They come to be seen as such when.
. .they are so defined" (Aho 1994, p.28). The labels of "ethnic
cleansers" and "genocidal" are attributed to Serbs almost
exclusively by Western media (Thomas 1993, Kent 1999, Flounders 1998),
including by both NATO and the ICTY. However, the label of "ethnic
revenge" and not "ethnic cleansing" is fixed to Kosovo Albanians
engaging in similar acts of violence and ethnic cleansing that the Serbs
are almost exclusively accused of by NATO and the West. In this way, the
Western media can have its label of "ethnic cleansers" to safely
affix to the Serbs to once again demonize them at sometime in the
future.
The next step that Aho (1994) discusses that is of interest
here is the legitimization of the labels : "It is one thing to malign
others; it is another for such labels to 'stick.' If labels are to
adhere to the intended party, they must be validated. One vehicle for
effecting this is the public degradation ceremony. This is a formal
hearing, trial, inquisition or tribunal . . ." ( p. 29). The purpose
of the ICTY Tribunal from Hell - it's "official hearings,
investigators and panels of experts" - the mindlessly, bloody Richard
Goldstone ilk- is not justice, not in the least bit, but as stated by
James Aho (1994), to make the labels of "ethnic cleansers, war
criminals and mass murders" stick to the Serbian people.
2. Questionable proceedings of the Tribunal from Hell.
. When NATO and the Bosnian Muslims kidnapped Djordje Djukic
and another Yugoslav army officer, and spirited them to the Hague, it
was not about "justice." It was not about "justice" to
interrogate this seriously ill man, who was being denied basic medical
care for cancer, for up to 20 hours a day. It was not about
"justice" when the tribunal's judges laughed at the profession of
innocence from Djordje. The cruel and indifferent treatment of Djordje
at the hands of the ICTY Tribunal from Hell, was not about "justice"
(Cavoski 1997, Rubin 1996, Kent 1999).
Djordje Djukich was a non-combat, logistics officer and most
likely innocent of "crimes against humanity." The "trial" of
him, as a Bosnian Serb, was actually a trial of all people of Serb
descent. The "derogation ceremony" served to validate Western mass
media propaganda labels of the Bosnian Serbs as "genocidal, ethnic
cleansers and mass murders" (Kent 1999, Rubin 1996, Aho 1994,
Flounders 1998).
James Aho (1994) demonstrated how labels against
"problematic groups" are validated through a "derogation
ceremony," that is courts, trials, public hearings - or - in this case
- an international tribunal. The ICTY Tribunal from Hell performs this
function. According to Kent (1999) and Thomas (1993), who wrote his
essay as the ICTY was being formed:
What is being set up is nothing more than an 'Ad Hoc
International Kangaroo Court' decked with the frills of respectability
to pacify the historical and revengeful demands of an American-lead,
Western lynch mob. There appears to be no higher court of appeal for the
Serbs. In the minds of the Western and especially American media, Serbs
have already been tried and found guilty. They will accept no other
verdict. The international 'legal process' is a FORMALITY (p. 4).
The Western mass media, the Eric Stovers and Gillies Pervess
of the world, are rather selective about the mass graves they cover,(17)
much in the way the ICTY indicts "war criminals." That is, the ICTY
investigators essentially work for the prosecution looking to indict and
convict persons of a single ethnicity. This "court" issues almost
daily accusations to the world mass media against leaders of one
ethnicity and religion in a civil war with three sides. (Thomas 1993,
Kent 1999). The ICTY seems to depend on the mass media and anti-Serb
propaganda to feed and validate its existence, and the example below is
strong evidence of this dependency.
On one night of drunkenness, reporter and author Nebojsa
Jevric was asked by an American reporter who he would nominate as the
worst rapist of Muslim women. Jevric nominated Gruban of Bijelo Polje.
The American counterpart then forwarded Gruban's name to the "right
places." Soon, the world was flooded with wanted posters of "Serbian
war criminals" with the names of Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and
Gruban. Gruban al>
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Transfer interrupted!
ge : unknown - nationality : unknown - description : unknown
- address : unknown.
With no description, how then were NATO's troops going to
find this notorious Serb war criminal who had raped so many Muslim
women? They weren't. Gruban of Bijelo Polje was actually a character
from the famous novel, "Hero on a Donkey," by Miodrag Bulatovic.(18)
With lots of egg on its face, the ICTY withdrew the
indictment against Gruban.(19)
Another questionable act of the ICTY that served to validate
the Serbs as a "evil, genocidal people" was the issuance of an
indictment for "war crimes and genocide" against Slobodan Milosevic,
President of Yugoslavia, during NATO's "Operation Allied Force."
(20) This indictment- and the timing of it - served to validate - once
again - the Serbs as an "evil people." It derogated the Serbian
people as an ethnic group in need of "collective punishment" by NATO
bombs (Naslund 1999). The current revelations now coming out of Kosovo
are that there was no "systematic policy of mass murder or
genocide." (21)
The ICTY Tribunal from Hell is really is part of the
portrayal of "the Other," the Serbs, as the "evil, human
refuse." It is not only the demonstration of the "justness" of the
cause of NATO and the West, but serves to validate anti-Serb propaganda.
The ICTY, it's derogation ceremonies aimed almost exclusively at
Serbs, serves the function of validating the "evilness" of the Serbs
as a subhuman group and the "need" for Western/NATO intervention (
Keen 1986, Kent 1999, Thomas 1993, Binder 1996).
Some unfortunate Serbs, like Djordje Djukich, are kidnapped
and turned over to NATO's troops to be "processed to the Hague."
(22) (Of the people indicted by this "court" 46 are Serbs, 8 Croats and
one a Muslim.(23) ) "Even if innocent, the accused is contaminated -
his guilt, insanity, addiction, subversives, or apostasy 'confirmed in
the eyes of the masses' " (Aho 1994, p.29). The ICTY is the
"legitimization" process whereby the interest is not justice -
hardly - but the validation of damning labels (Aho 1994).
These unearned labels of Serbs as "genocidal murderers"
have now become "common knowledge" of modern society (Aho 1994) and
it has now been woven and accepted as fact are that the Serbs are
"Nazi-like, ethnic cleansing, rapist, mass murders" (Flounders
1998).
The Serbs that are now, have been, and will be in the
future, subjected to this Tribunal from Hell , the ICTY, have been
relegated to this cruel and inhuman role for the sake of validating
Western propaganda and demonizing labels by going through the James
Aho's (1994) "legitimization" process.
Back to top.
Footnotes and references.
VI. Conclusion
"When Milosevic gets up in the morning, he is counting his
losses. . ." (24)
No, Jamie Shea, actually it is the civil population of
Yugoslavia that is counting its losses, including the losses of friends,
family and co-workers (Naslund 1999, International Action Center 1999).
In the minds of NATO officials, like Jamie Shea and Air Commodore Wilby,
they truly were "bombing Milosevic." The process of demonization of
the Serb population to a deserving mass of "subhuman, rapist, ethnic
cleansers" was easy for the NATO Alliance, for these push button
warriors painted the face of Slobodan Milosevic, an "indicted war
criminal," on the face of every person living in Yugoslavia.
Therefore, the entire population of Yugoslavia stood indicted in mass as
"war criminals and ethnic cleansers of Kosovo," having been indicted
along with the FRY President by that instrument of label validation and
Serb derogation - the ICTY Tribunal from Hell.
Any support for the current Western/NATO Balkans missions is
built and maintained through the use of anti-Serb propaganda. As the
Western propaganda spin goes, the West has a "holy mission," (an
ethnocentric one), to bring "the bad" in line with "the good ,"
and doing what where it desires in the name of "democracy, peace and
security." To accomplish this, the main strategy of Western propaganda
was "good vs evil," and "aggressor vs. aggrieved" (Kent 1999;
Boyd 1995). Much of the motivation for NATO's attack on Yugoslavia was
to stop "the evil aggressors" in the name of "higher moral
standards," even if it ment playing dirty (Naslund 1999). These
self-righteous hypocrites the demonized an entire ethnic group,
attempted to force them to sign a "non- negotiable agreement," (25)
labeled its leaders as "war criminals," and then set out on a
criminal campaign of "collective punishment" by bombing an innocent,
civil population "back into the Stone Age" ( Keen 1986, Naslund
1999).
In the opening pages of this essay I demonstrated the basic
sociology of how a human group like the Serbs can be dehumanized through
the use of demonizing propaganda. I used authors James Aho (1994) and
Sam Keen and his classic Faces of the Enemy: Reflection of the Hostile
Imagination (1986) to demonstrate how one human group defines "the
Other" and paints "the Other" as with sub-human qualities through
the used of negative images: propaganda. Using the work of Sara
Flounders and Thomas Deichmann I demonstrated how the anti-Serb
propaganda campaign is a concerted one directed by chiefly the American
public relations firm Ruder Finn Global Affairs. Ruder Finn jumped on
Penny Marshell's and ITN's "concentration camp" hoax and is
quite boastful of fooling American Jewish Organizations, like the Anti-
Defamation League.
I would like to say- most strongly to those American Jewish
groups(26) that allowed themselves to be duped- and who continue to be
duped - by the likes of the Ruder Finn PR firm and are supportive of the
dehumanizing and violence against the Serbian ethnic group, SHAME ON YOU
- SHAME ON YOU- SHAME ON YOU! (To say this does not make me
anti-Semitic, but places blame where blame is due!)
Besides PR firms and major newspapers, there are now books
pushing anti-Serb propaganda. They often have "remember Srebrenica"
themes. One such book that does a fairly good job of painting the Serbs
as subhuman, smelly, drunken, ethnic cleansing animals is Eric Stover
and Gillies Peress' The Graves : Srebrenica and Vukovar (1998). I use
this book as a model of anti-Serb propaganda throughout this essay.
I also used James Aho's work This Thing of Darkness : A
Sociology of the Enemy (1994), along with that of Raymond Kent (1999),
Raju G.C. Thomas (1993), Kosta Cavoski (1997) Alfed Rubin (1996), and
Maria Naslund (1999) to demonstrate the true purpose of the
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) : Serb
demonization and the validation of anti-Serb labels and Western/NATO
mass media propaganda through the use of this "official court in the
Hague" as a "derogation ceremony" against the Serbs.
At the ICTY in the Hague - the Tribunal from Hell - justice
is the last thing this judicial devil is seeking. It is set up to solely
seek out and indict Serbs for the purpose of validating anti-Serb
stereotypes and labels like "ethnic cleaners." The cruel treatment
of individual Serbs indicted by this Tribunal from Hell and kidnapped by
NATO is to indict and "put on trial" ALL persons of Serb descent.
NATO carried out the "collective punishment" of the
Serbs, rehashing "remember Srebrenica" elements of anti-Serb
propaganda, as well outright lies of "ethnic cleansing in Kosovo" to
bomb the Yugoslavian population. The "collective punishment" of the
Serbs now continues in Kosovo through the excuse of Kosovo Albanian
"ethnic revenge" against the Kosovo Serbs. The Kosovo Serbs and
other minorities are now the victims of Kosovo "Liberation Army"
ethnic cleansing, and the NATO and the ICTY could care less because the
victims of this "ethnic cleansing" are the deserving Serbs.
Lastly, please remember Srebrenica! Srebrencia is the
birthplace and hometown of many of the elements of current anti-Serb
propaganda. The propaganda elements of the Serbs as "ethnic cleansing,
mass murders and drunken, genocidal animals" were born in Srebrenica.
Please remember Srebrenica, as this is where, according to Kent (1999)
and others, the "Big Lie" about "Serb ethnic cleansing" was
born.(27) Also remember that there are Serb victims at Srebrenica, and
elsewhere, that the Western mass media, NATO, the ICTY and the rest of
the Serbophobic world ignores in a racist manner.
Back to top.
Footnotes and references.
VII. My Observations
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal
and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the
foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. Preamble,
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).
It is startling how much this does not apply to the Serbs.
According to Maria Naslund (1999) of the Transnational Foundation for
Peace and Future Research, there is an increasingly "politically
correct" human rights activism unfolding in the "international
community." Currently there is more attention placed on the returning
ethnic -Albanians to Kosovo than on the future of the 11 million people
inside Serbia. More people may have died under NATO bombs than were
killed by Yugoslavian and KLA units (Naslund 1999).
1. Racism in human rights activity in Kosovo and in the
"international community."
What I find the most offensive and anger provoking aspect of
anti-Serb propaganda, its resulting dehumanization, including the shady
activity of the ICTY , is the devaluing of the human rights of the Serbs
as compared to other Balkans ethnic groups, especially Muslims. The
Serbs are also the "less deserving victims" in Miller and Levin's
(1998) "hierarchy of victims," whose lives and suffering are less
deserving of outrage and public outcry when war crimes and ethnic
cleaning are committed against them by the Kosovo Albanians and the KLA.
What I have noted from the websites of "humanitarian"
and "human rights" organizations currently active in Kosovo is an
almost complete lack of equal value for the human rights of Kosovo Serbs
and other minorities as compared to that of Kosovo Albanians. Little is
currently being discussed with regard to this anti-Serb racism in the
human rights community, but Raymond Kent (1999) called these
"concerned human rights activists" working in the Balkans,
especially in concert with the ICTY, "human rights Serbophobes" (p.
8).
Also noteworthy from these "human rights" web sites are
the descriptions of "Serb atrocities" as compared to atrocities
committed on the Serbs. Recall that I demonstrated that there is a
denial of the vicitimhood of the Serbs as being on the receiving end of
ethnic cleansings and a concerted effort to portray the Serbs as having
a monopoly on "ethnic cleansing." However, descriptions and accounts
of alleged Serb violence on other ethnic groups highlights the ethnic
labels of all the groups involved, with "Serb atrocities" on other
groups being described in intricate detail.
On Doctors Without Boarders' web site
(www.dwb.org/missions/kosovo.htm). There are lots of stories related to
DWB's work with Kosovo Albanian refugees, including a study on the
Kosovo Albanian refugees, but little about the plight of Kosovo Serbs.
The Doctors Without Boarders' Kosovo webpage presents a good
example of this one sided concern for all humans in Kosovo in a
statement by an Austian physician in June 1999 who seemed to really not
know, or care, about the plight of the Kosovo Serbs and other minorities
from THEIR homes: "After working for months with Kosovar refugees and
knowing how much they have suffered, it the best feeling that you can
have to see them coming back to their country."
This racist tendency to place more concern on the
humanitarian needs and more value on the human rights of one ethnic
group over another is highly offensive. I have noted that on the web
sites of these "human groups" in the "international community"
there are more stories, regarding the return of Kosovo ethnic-Albanians
than to the ethnic cleansing and murder of Kosovo Serbs and other Kosovo
minorities. There is an obvious value by the "international
community" with the human rights of Kosovo Albanians, but there is not
the same value being placed on the human rights of the Serb population.
As in Stover and Gillies' The Graves , the Serbs are non- humans and
not worthy of the same human rights as Bosnian Muslims. Being concerned
with the human rights of Bosinan Muslims, Croats and Kosovo Albanians,
while ignoring the human rights of the Serbs is RACIST, plain and
simple!
Recall the ideas of Miller and Levin (1998). Mass media
project the image of a "hierarchy of victims," whereby some victims
are seen as being "more deserving" of outrage and public attention
than other, "lesser victims." Crimes against "lesser victims"
are deemed less newsworthy and the lives of "lesser victims," in
this case the Serbs, are not valued as much as Bosnian Muslims and
Kosovo Albanians. I have noted a tendency to explain the violence of
Kosovo Albanians on their Serb neighbors as "ethnic revenge" for
"Serbian ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo.
This "ethnic revenge" is also used to explain attacks on
Serb elderly and children, non- combatants who probably had nothing to
do with any Serb on Albanian violence in Kosovo during NATO's bombing
campaign. How could an elderly Serb couple murdered in their apartment
in Prizren - during KFOR occupation of Kosovo - have anything to do with
an alleged policy of Slobodan Milosevic? This racist devaluing of the
human rights of Kosovo Serbs and the acceptance of "ethnic revenge"
against ALL Kosovo Serbs is clear evidence of the racist "collective
punishment" aspect of NATO and the West's policy toward the Serbian
ethnic group that Maria Nasland touched upon in one of her two papers on
NATO intervention (28).
What I strongly suggest that those of us concerned with
racism in "the international community, human rights and humanitarian
groups," is to use the principle of "equal concern for the human rights
and human needs of ALL groups equally" as a measuring rod to weed out
those practicing racism. With this, we will find the human rights and
humanitarian hypocrites!
I strongly believe that the making of anti-Serb propaganda,
demonization and dehumanization by Western PR firms had, and still has,
a lot to do with the anti-Serb racism in "humanitarian aid and human
rights" and neglect of the human rights of the Serbs. As an American I
am ashamed and highly offended that my government is allowing foreign
governments to hire American PR firms like Ruder Finn to make and spread
the hate of an ethnic group. What if the Ku Klux Klan decided to hire
Ruder Finn Global Public Affairs to spread its message through out the
world?! Something needs to be done, perhaps legislatively, about
allowing groups and governments to hire American PR firms to create
ethnic hate through dehumanizing propaganda. This concerted spreading of
anti-Serb demonization, which lead to the dehumanization of the Serbian
ethnic group, had a strong part to play in the acceptance of the bombing
of the Yugoslav civil population, especially described as "the
Serbs" and "bombing Milosevic," in Washington, London and
Brussels.
2. Some suggestions to the Serbian people. First of all, the
Serbian people need to realizing that they are fighting a concerted
effort to demonize them and dehumanize them. They need to be prepared to
mount a counter- concerted efforts against this hate propaganda, but
there are also things the individual Serb living here in the West can
do. Some of the following was also done by Arab-American groups in the
face of anti-Arab propaganda.
A. Get into the classrooms and get involved in schools and
colleges! Find out just what kind of books and materials are being used
in classes on "human rights, world affairs, international studies and
ethnic conflicts." This also includes the reading and use of newspaper
articles, since Western newspapers are the biggest spreader of anti-Serb
propaganda.
Read the materials and ask : "What kind of image is being
painted about my people in this book?" Look very close at how the
material is worded and how much attention is given to various
situations. If a book, such as the anti-Serb propaganda book The Graves:
Srebreinca and Vukovar , is being used in a classroom as required
reading, as at Florida State University, this gives this book
legitimacy, including the images of Serbs as drunken, smelly, mass-
murdering animals. (29)
B. Get into the libraries and find out what is there and
donate Serbian cultural materials. This allows people in the community
to be able to have the chance to learn positive aspects of the Serbian
culture. Donate books on Serbian epic poetry, history and culture and
food. Put up websites devoted to educating people about the Serbian
culture.
C. Start an international Serbian Student Union. This will
help combat the use of books such as The Graves in classrooms. It will
help bring Serbian culture studies and Slavic studies into more
prominence on college campuses. It will encourage more Serbs into higher
education.
D. Start defining the unequal valuing of human rights of
Serbs by the "international community" as what it really is :
RACISM. It is racist to place an unequal value of the human rights of
one ethnic group over another. Here in America, we refer to the
devaluing of the constitutional rights of minority - Americans as
compared to white - Americans as "racism." The devaluing of one
ethnic group's human rights over another on the international level
ALSO needs to be called just what it is : RACISM! Human rights are for
ALL humans! Human rights are not "granted" by ANY government or
military alliance and are not for sale!
E. Start an organization for human rights for Serbs. We need
to form an organization that will speak up for the human rights of the
Serbian people. It would not only address the lack of concern for the
human rights of the Serbian people, but address racism in "human
rights activism" and the "international community."
This type of organization would demand that the
"international community" address its anti-Serb racism and demand
that the human rights of the Serbian people be valued just as much as
the rights of Bosnian Muslims and Kosovo Albanians.
3. . . .and this work isn't done yet!
After all these pages of bring together authors and scholars
in this research project, this labor of love, to expose the offensive
and outright inhuman anti-Serb propaganda working of the West, NATO and
the US, this is only the beginning! There are separate papers and books
that can and have been written on the Tribunal from Hell's role in
anti-Serb label validation, the "remember Srebrenica" theme to
anti-Serb propaganda, the denial of the victimhood of the Serbs, and
propaganda in NATO's Balkan missions.
There will be future additions to this work (and maybe
someday a book, God willing) when I find and add still more sources,
authors, scholars and writers. This is only a start in exposing the
rather extensive and organized efforts to demonize, dehumanized and
lessen the human rights of the Serbian people.
To be addressed later in next additions :
1. The exportation of Western ideas, and I don't mean
democracy! I mean the idea of some groups' human rights being of less
value than other groups. Yes - NATO has exported the ideas of ethnic
inequality and racism to the Balkans! Why is it that the human rights of
Kosovo Serbs are of less value than Kosovo Albanians? Well, I will be
addressing this in the future.
2. The idea of a "hierarchy of victims" and the Serbs as
being "less deserving" victims than other groups, namely Muslims. It
is OK for Muslims to kill Serbs, but not OK for Serbs to kill
Muslims.(30) While Miller and Levin (1998) was speaking of American
minorities, namely African-Americans, the "hierarchy of victims" can
be applied to the Serbs as being "less deserving" victims than
Muslims.
3. The notion of "ethnic revenge" being used to describe
the Kosovo Albanian's ethnic cleaning and their communities of their
Serb neighbors. "Ethnic revenge" is a Kosovo Albanian policy that is
of racist manner, as it is against ANY Serb, including children and
elderly, not just those who might been part of police and army units.
Back to top.
Footnotes and references.
Criminalization of the Serbian People.
http://www.abolishnato.com
Erin S. LaPorte - December 22, 1999
Florida State U. Student (Sr.) - Tallahassee, Florida, USA
"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."
Dr. Raju G.C. Thomas, from his essay "Dehumanizing a Nation:
The Balkans Conflict and International Reaction" (1993) p. 1.
CONTENTS
I. Introduction to Group Demonization and Dehumanization.
Here, I use the work of Sam Keen (1986) to explain the basic
sociology of enemy creation through demonizing propaganda.
II. The "subhuman Serbs" as NATO targets.
1. The role of modern mass communication in "national
interests."
2. Human deaths as "collateral damage" and other NATO
propaganda.
III. The "concentration camps" and "ethnic
cleansing" elements in anti-Serb propaganda.
1. The organized efforts to spread anti-Serb propaganda.
2. Making of the Trnopolje "concentration camp" and
those who were shamelessly fooled.
3. "Remember Srebrenica" themes and "Serb ethnic
cleansing" propaganda.
4. Elements of anti-Serb propaganda developed from the
"remember Srebrenica" theme.
IV. Denial of the Victimhood of the Serbs.
V. The Hague Tribunal : The Tribunal from Hell
1. The use of "international tribunals" to validate
labels.
2. Questionable proceedings of the Tribunal from Hell.
VI. Conclusion
VII. My Observations.
1. Racism in human rights activity in Kosovo and the
"international community."
2. Some suggestions to the Serbian people.
3. . . . and this work isn't done yet!
Footnotes and references to this paper.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I. Introduction to Group Demonization and Dehumanization.
Most human groups and nations create an enemy to create a
sense of social solidarity and membership. The function of war
propaganda is to build social solidarity, to unite a nation or group
against "the Other, evil incarnate."
"In all propaganda, the face of the enemy is designed to
provide a focus for our hatred. He is the other. The outsider. The
alien. He is not human. If we can only kill him, we will be rid of all
within and without ourselves that is evil" (Keen 1986, p. 16).
The stuff that creates a sense of tribal loyalty and
patriotism is paranoia. Paranoia is far from being an occasional
pathology, but a normal condition. We direct hate and suspicion to
strangers and those who are unlike us. The paranoid myth of "the
threat" involves the dualistic Us versus Them, Good versus Evil, we
are good, they are bad. This paranoid myth that unites the group and
defines it, also permits the killing of the immoral, nonhuman members of
the "them," as well as the holy act of dying while killing the
"them" (Keen, 1986).
Humans normally don't kill other humans. The humans that
we intend to kill, eliminate or commit genocide against must be
dehumanized. "The enemy" must be reduced to ugly creatures that are
less than animals with ideas that must be destroyed. Propaganda of the
mass media is employed to create "the good," us and "the evil",
the them. The mass media is employed to justify the righteousness and
piety of "us" and the aggression and evilness of "the enemy."
This creates the fog of paranoia that cannot be cleared, even when
presented with the truth about the true intentions and true humanity of
"the enemy" (Keen 1986).
The propaganda that is used to demonized and dehumanize
"the enemy" often portrays "the enemy" with similar images, both
visual and written. "The enemy" is often portrayed as a beast or a
stone age throw-back with turned down lips and ruff facial features. He
is wild and animal like, engaging in behaviors and customs that are
strange to "us." In print "the enemy" has been portrayed as
dirty, crude, acting either under the influence of home-made liquor or
pure animal instincts (Stover and Peress 1998), combined with the
enemy's "strange" social customs, as in Eric Stover and Gilles
Peress book The Graves: Srebrencia and Vukovar. (1998) (1). These images
are replayed in many ways to create the negative stereotypes of "the
enemy" and only negative news about this demonized group is covered in
"the press" (Keen 1986, McCarus 1994). Speaking of the portrayal of
the enemy's "strange social customs," Sam Keen (1986) stated: He
will be portrayed as rude, crude and uncivilized. More than likely he
will be an irrational, dirty member of a horde organized at best on the
model of an ant heap (p. 43).
Once demonized and stripped of their humanity, it not only
makes it easier for the battlefield solider to kill the "faceless,
non-human enemy," it is also easier to indiscriminately kill any
member of "the enemy." Civilians in the demonized group become
targets, often unable to fight back and are easy prey for violence and
persecutions. They are easy prey for violence and harassment as a result
of knee-jurk, American- patriotic racism called jingoistic racism (2) (
Keen 1986; Burchfield 1997; McCarus 1994).
Since a group stripped of its humanity is not seen as having
human worth, they have no human rights. Such a demonized, out-group is
not deserving of the protections that other human groups are entitled
under international law and conventions. Such a development helps
powerful governments and military alliances, and their media outlets, to
justify the bombing and killing of civilians, and the ignoring of the
human rights of the demonized group ( Burchfield 1997). "They" may
have been the victims of war crimes committed against "them," but
war crimes against "them" are justified.
Lastly, according to Miller and Levin (1998), the media
project images of a "hierarchy of victims," that is, some victims
are more deserving of public attention, sympathy and out rage than other
victims. This projects the image that these "lesser victims"
lives' are of no value and are therefore less newsworthy.
Back to top.
Footnotes and references
II. The "subhuman Serbs" as NATO Targets.
1. The role of modern mass communication in "national
interests."
The media play very important roles in portraying members of
some groups as normal and others as Other. In particular, films and
television programs use the power of visual images to create and
reinforce stereotypic images of Others as scary and different (Zatz and
Mann, 1998, p.8).
While the family and education have a role to play in the
shaping and transmission of the common culture, this role is falling
more on the shoulders of the media and the government. Government is
playing more of a role in the culture, shaping and supporting the
cultural values regarding civil rights, criminal justice and so on. The
mass media are a great influence on the transmission and reinforcement
of some times heavily biased, cultural values ( Burchfield 1997, Ranney
1993). The most influential impact of mass communications in political
communication and political culture is television because of it's
visualness over radio, its visual and voice over newspapers (Ranney
1993).
Journalists will seek out governmental and military
officials when there is some perceived threat to the "national
interest." Many of these reporters rely on official sources, such as
foreign affairs offices and governmental employees. In order to
cultivate relationships with and "not offend" those "in the
know," the reporter reports "facts" he is given, even if he knows
that they are lies. The most esteemed journalists are the ones who are
the most servile. Hearsay is transformed into "the truth"
(Sadkovich, 1998). Often, however, these "facts" that military and
governmental officials put out as "truth" can be disputable and
become part of the propaganda and the process of demonization, or
re-demonization (Sadkovich 1998, Keen 1986).
There is one vivid example of this "reporting of facts"
from the NATO Alliance during it's rather questionable "Operation
Allied Force." The Paris based group, Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF)
chastised NATO for what it said was the Alliance's "distorting the
truth, attempts at misinformation" and "impossible to check
figures." RSF sited the example of the supposed wounding of
ethnic-Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, who then subsequently appeared
healthy on Serbian Television.
Air Commodore David Wilby had stated that the report of
Rugova's demise was from a "very reliable source." The "very
reliable source" that Air Commodore Wilby cited was a London -based
Kosovo Information Center, run by Kosovo exiles. Besides
(dis)information, RSF's report points out the "other features of
Western communication are approximate figures, debatable historical
references and the use of vocabulary that has the aim of making the
adversay appear monstrous. " (3)
2. Human deaths as "collateral damage" and other NATO
propaganda.
"When we know the Serbs did it, we say the Serbs did
it," said a NATO official . . .who spoke anonymously to an American
researcher. "When we don't know who did it, we say the Serbs did it.
And when we know the Serbs didn't do it, we say we don't know who
did it." (4)
Recall in Section I the ideas of both Burchfield (1997) and
Keen (1986). Once a group of humans is stripped of its humanity, such as
the Serbs, this "out group" is seen as "not worthy" of the same
protections granted to "in groups." This includes the human rights
and human worth of the demonized group. Also, according to Keen (1986),
the high tech weapons eliminate much of the demonization process and
make "the enemy" even less human : The atrocities committed from a
high altitude by bomber crews, directed from afar by technicians are not
so much inhuman as ahuman ( p.86). So long as we want to kill from a
distance with clean hands, we must refrain from imagining the
consequences of our weapons, and must completely eliminate any awareness
of the enemy as human (pp.86-87).
NATO officials in Brussels were truly conditioned by their
propaganda to kill "the Other," the "sub-human, ethnic cleansing,
Serbs," and coupled with the distance from Brussels to Belgrade, this
insulated the Alliance from the carnage in Yugoslavia, making bombing
the civil population all the more sanitary.
The results of dehumanizing propaganda and sanitary killing
of "the Other" came out of one NATO official in at least one press
briefing during "Operation Allied Force." During the April 9th press
briefing, CNN correspondent Patricia Kelly questioned Air Commodore
David Wilby's lack of concern for the civil population in and around a
Yugoslav car plant : ". . .your statement on the collateral damage to
civilian property in Kosovo seems to take no account of the fact that
there are still Serb civilians inside of Kosovo which NATO has also
pledged to protect in its early mission statements but the way you put
the information across makes it sound as if you are not particularly
bothered about their safety any longer."
In his reply to the charge, Wilby answers with a well worn
NATO statement, but then continues to describe possible Serb civilian
causalities in non-human terms:
". . .if I gave the impression that I was not concerned
about the loss of civilian life to the Serbian population, you know that
we have always said that we are not in any conflict with the Serbian
people and I am sorry if my emphasis came across slightly wrong to you."
"In terms of the car plant. . .as I have said to you, we
would look very carefully into the collateral damage or damage to
civilians before we attacked that particular plant." (5)
According to The White Book of NATO's Crimes , there were
several civilian homes hit by missiles that day, as well as the car
plant that employed 30,000, but no injuries or deaths were reported in
this publication. (6)
In yet another example that lead to protests by historical
experts was Tony Blair's (mis) use of the term "genocide" and the
characterization of Milosevic's government to that of Hitler's. (7)
The reasons for the NATO Alliance's questionable bombing campaign was
the "humanitarian disaster" of the ethnic Albanians that was created
by the "ethnic cleansing by the Serbs." The common figure being
batted around was 100,000 dead, with one mass grave in Ljubenic said to
contain 350 bodies. ("Remember Srebrenica?! Why those 'nasty, ethnic
cleansing, rapist Serbs' were back to their systematic ethnic cleansing
plans!")
What investigators found , or didn't find ( November 1999)
in Ljubenic was not 350 corpses, but seven(8) and a mine shaft said to
contain lots of corpses of massacred Albanians held none (9). Recently,
teams of forensic experts from Spain and Italy have found only about 200
graves or so with no signs of torture on those corpses the did find.(10)
People were leaving Kosovo because, like Serbia proper, it was being
attacked by NATO.(11) The NATO Alliance is starting to look very much
like an alliance of cheap, brutal war mongers, using propaganda and
outright lies as a justification for war.
However, during the NATO actions against the Yugoslav Serbs,
the West rehashed the same propaganda and old stereotypes of the Serbs
as the "butchers of the Balkans, ethnic cleansers" (Flounders 1998).
The US and NATO used these past anti-Serb propaganda and anti- Serb
stereotypes in an effort to create the social solidarity necessary to
keep the NATO countries' leaders and their publics supportive of the
Yugoslavia bombing campaign ( Keen 1986, Naslund, 1999).
These claims of the "systematic, ethnic cleansing and mass
murder plans" of the Serbs is not new. The anti-Serb propaganda
elements that were being recycled in the NATO action with regard to
Kosovo were the "remember Sreberinca" themes, which are highlighted
in the next section. There was alleged to have been 8,000 Muslim men
"systematically massacred by the Serbs" in Srebreinca, but only 460
bodies have been found (Kent 1998, Pumphrey 1998).
Some of the conscious in the West for the "bombing of
Milosevic" and the Yugoslav Serb civilian population was also
developed and maintained by sometimes concerted demonization and
dehumanization campaigns lead by American PR firms like Ruder Finn
Global Public Affairs(12) with "very important" clients, like the
Republic of Croatia.
Back to top.
Footnotes and references
III. The "concentration camps" and "ethnic
cleansing" elements in anti-Serb propaganda.
"Regrettably, that behavior (ethnic cleansing) is not
unprecedented in Balkan conflicts, and to say that it is a peculiarly
Serb behavior says more about the observer than the Balkans" (Charles
G. Boyd 1995, p.3).
Several groups have been demonized through the use of
propaganda during the 20th Century. Most notably, the Jews, Germans and
Japanese during the Second World War, the Russians during the Cold War,
the Arabs and Muslims during the 70's and the Gulf War. The newest
victims of Western, war- motivated propaganda are the Serbs (Keen 1986,
McCarus 1994, Kent 1999, Flounders 1998). There have been a few intense
media blitzes stemming "from the need to punish" the Serbs for their
insolence against the West and Washington (Kent 1999).
1. The organized efforts to spread anti- Serb propaganda.
Unlike the cartoons and posters of the previous wars, the
"media war" against the Serbs, as many have put it, is a sometimes
concerted, high tech one, incorporating mass communication technology
and public relations firms to demonize and dehumanize and the entire
ethnic group. The current concerted propaganda campaign against the
Serbs began back in the early '90's when the Western world media
heated up it's anti- Serb campaign with its portrayal of Serbs as
barbarians, drunken bandits and murders, even Nazi fascists. Current
political cartoons portray the Serbs as pigs, hyenas and neo-Nazi
monsters. (Thomas 1993, Flounders 1998, Deichmann 1998, Kent 1999).
There is now even an anti-Serb propaganda book, Stover and Peress' The
Graves , being use in the classroom of Florida State University in a
course on "human rights investigations" and this author is finding
that anti-Serb propaganda books with the "remember Srebrenica" theme
are becoming common place.
The current Western/NATO propaganda against the Serbs is an
organized one, involving public relations firms. Charly Reese of the
Orlando Sentinel wrote, ". . .the Serbs were and are up against
powerful American public relations firms, western intelligence agencies
and biased or incompetent Western reporters." Reese cited an interview
by French Two Television of James Harff of Ruder Finn Global Affairs,
the public relations firm that was representing the Muslim side. Harff,
who is Ruder Finn's director, boasted of getting the American Jews on
the side of Muslims after the Bosnian concentration camps hoax (Also
Deichmann, 1998, Flounders 1998). The public relations firm capitalized
on the high emotional content of the ITN "concentration camp" hoax
for the benefit of its clients, the Republic of Croatia, the Republic of
Bosnia-Herzegovina and the parliamentary oppsition in Kosovo. The
Washington based firm shows how the corporate media engages in a modern
propaganda campaign and demonstrates one of the concerted efforts to
demonize the Serbs :
Speed is vital. . .it is the first assertion that really
counts. All denial are ineffective. In a single move we were able to
present a simple story of good guys and bad guys which would hereafter
play itself. We won by targeting the Jewish audience. Almost immediately
there was a clear change of the lanague in the press, with use of words
with high emotional content such as 'ethnic cleansing, concertration
camps, etc., which evoke images of Nazi Germany and the gas chambers of
Auschwitz. No one could go against it without being accused of
revisionism. We really batted a thousand in full" (qtd. in Flounders
1998, pp.54, 55).
2. Making of the Trnopolje "concentration camp" and
those who were shamelessly fooled.
In his essay "The Picture that Fooled the World" (1998)
Thomas Deichman describes the "concentration camp" hoax in detail.
The now famous picture came from a video shot by Penny Marshall of ITN
of a refugee camp in Trnopolje on August 5th, 1992. In fact, Deichmann
has looked at the rest of the footage Marshall and her team shot that
contained the picture. What was used in the Marshell report - and what
wasn't - is revealing. What wasn't in the report was the openness of
the camp, the holes in the fences that Marshell and her crew went
through and that the refugees were free to leave anytime they wanted
(Dechmann, 1998).
What became the picture that Mike Jeremy of ITN pegged
"one of the key images of the war in the former Yugoslavia," (qtd.
in Deichmann, p. 170) was, in fact, presented as to the Western world as
something it was not, a concentration camp. The focus was on Fikret
Alic, who's protruding rib cage behind a fence conjured up images of
Nazi death camps. This "death camp" was a crude, sick lie and Fikret
Alic, who survived the war, was disturbed about the use of his image.
Through the use of camera angles, editing and the focus on
one rather emaciated fellow, the images of a "concentration camp"
were constructed for Western, anti-Serb propaganda consumption,
especially to the delight of the Ruder Finn PR firm (Deichmann 1998,
Flounders 1998).
James Harff of Ruder Finn shows his more of his "pride"
in getting the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish organizations on
the side of Muslims using the "concentration camp " hoax:
"At the beginning of July 1992, New York Newsday came out
with the article on Serb camps. We jumped at the opportunity
immediately. We outwitted three big Jewish organizations - the B'nai
B'rith Anti-Defamation League, The American Jewish Committee and the
American Jewish Congress. In August, we suggested that they publish an
advertisement in the New York Times and organize demonstrations outside
the United Nations.
That was a tremendous coup. When the Jewish organizations
entered the game on the side of the [Muslim] Bosnians, we could promptly
equate the Serbs with the Nazis in the public mind. Nobody understood
what was happening in Yugoslavia. The great majority of Americans were
probably asking themselves in which African country Bosnia was
situated" (qtd. in Flounders 1998, p.55).
Those that were duped- and continue to be duped - are the
American Jewish groups, such as the Anti- Defamation League that,
according Thomas (1993) : "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" (
p. 2)
Thomas points out strongly that the American Jewish
community is actually participating in the genocide of Serbs. Promoting
dehumanizing anti-Serb propaganda is a horrible step by most victimized
ethnic group of the 20th Century- the Jews- to promote violence against
another ethnic group- the Serbs.
3. "Remember Srebrenica" themes and "Serb ethnic
cleansing" propaganda.
"Srebrenica provides an unexpected way precisely what is
wrong with both the media and the constant spreading of hate against the
Serbs" (Kent 1999, p.9).
"Ethnic cleansing" is more often, and falsely,
attributed to Serbs, while at the same time Serb victims of ethnic
cleansing, including at Srebrenica, are forgotten. Serb victims of
ethnic cleansing are either misidentified as another ethnicity or not
identified by an ethnicity. Often the fact that Serbs are also victims
of ethnic cleansing is downplayed or never reported. ( Kent 1999,
Dragnich 1995, Boyd 1995, Rohde 1997, Thomas 1993). Section IV
extensively covers denial of the victimhood of the Serbs by Western
governments and media.
Editors often suppress "pro-Serb" stories, but allow a
few favorable words to be said to give the appearance of "fair play"
(Kent 1999). These stories are often hidden or near the bottom, but then
it is accompanied by demonizing, anti-Serb text ( Kent 1999).
The "Serbophobes," as Kent (1999) calls them, not only
portray the Serbs as dirty, drunken, neo-Nazi monsters, but suppressed
stories defending the Serbs, including false charges and grand
exaggerations of alleged "genocide" (Kent 1999, Thomas 1993, ).
Western reporters and the Eric Stover types, according to Thomas (1993),
go into a frenzy over alleged "genocide" by Serbs and numbers of
Muslims or Croats killed are often inflated and amount to lies. The same
ilk could care less when the victims of ethnic cleansing and mass murder
are Serbs. What the Western propaganda machine drags up constantly are
the alleged atrocities by Serbs in the town of Srebernica (Kent 1999).
This is one of the towns in Eric Stover and Gillies Peress' The Graves
: Srebernica and Vukovar (1998) .
In this book, the Serbs are not only portrayed as a race of
dirty, drunken, animal, ethnic cleansers, but the mainly
photojournalistic work hides the victimization of the Serbs, as well as
portrays the Serbs as drunken, animalistic killers. Stover writes, " .
. . the shelling of towns and villages, mass deportations of Muslims and
Croats and the systematic destruction of their cultural property. . .
what the Serb leaders were intending to accomplish in Bosnia" (p.
137).
However, a good - and shorter than an entire book - example
of this method of anti-Serb stereotype reinforcement is also in the
March 25th, 1996 issue of the New York Times article by Alan Cowell.
Cowell's story was regarding the indictments by the International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) of three Bosinan
Muslims and a Bosnian Croat for involvement in a alleged "rape camp"
in which Serbs were the victims. One would not know that this is an
article about Serb victims and indictments issued for crimes committed
against Serbs by reading the article:
These are the first individuals indicted for crimes against
Bosnian Serb victims," the tribunal's spokesman, Christian Chartier
said. The indictment was "the first of its kind," it said.
The tribunal's investigations have been dominated by
inquires against Serbs, who investigators say pursued a systematic drive
to purge entire regions of Muslims and Croats, using murder and rape as
weapons in this process of 'ethnic cleansing.'
The tribunal has charged that many of the Serbian atrocities
reflected deliberate policies of the Bosnian Serb leadership, as opposed
to being crimes by rouge individuals . . . "
Even as today's indictments against the Serbs'
adversaries were made known, the United States' chief delegate to the
United Nations, Madeleine Albright, was visiting the site of suspected
mass graves near the central town of Srebrenica, where thousands of
Muslims are believed to have been massacred by Serbs last July." (13)
Was Cowell's story really about the ICTY indictments of
non-Serbs, or was the purpose of Cowell's article really about
something else - like anti-Serb stereotype reinforcement?!
4. Elements of anti-Serb propaganda developed from the
"remember Srebrenica" theme.
In Faces of the Enemy (1986) , on page 46, Sam Keen has
eight elements of decivilizing rhetoric he identified as being used by
former President Ronald Reagan to paint the image "Soviet savagery." I
have noted that much of the "remember Srebrenica" theme was, and
still is, being used as elements of anti-Serb propaganda. Borrowing on
Keen's idea of identifying elements of decivilizing rhetoric, and Eric
Stover's Serb bashing text in The Graves as a main sources, I have
created a list of elements in anti-Serb propaganda :
a.. The Serbs are not victims of "ethnic cleansing"
( p.137, implied).
b.. The Serbs break agreements (p. 121).
c.. The Serbs are rapists of Muslim women (p. 115) .
d.. The Serbs are "dirty, animalistic killers" ( pp.
105, 108, 103, 144, 156).
e.. The Serbs are usually drunk on brandy ( pp.105,
106,).
f.. The Serbs are "cold, cruel occupiers" (
pp.111-112, 130, 140 ).
g.. The Serbs have "strange, animal- like habits" (
pp.83-87, 122).
h.. The Serbs are the only perpetrators of "ethnic
cleansing and mass murder." Stover and Gilles' entire book portrays
this fallacy, but especially on pages 131, 137, 108.
What is also clear from Stover and Gilles' book is that
Bosnian Muslims are human beings, with human traits of concern for
family, have feelings of love and anger, suffer hunger and cold.
Contrast that to the animalistic Serbs who, in this obviously propaganda
book, are cold, cruel, unfeeling, and unmoved by the tears and fears of
the Bosnian Muslim human beings . The Serbs, as a group of human beings,
have their humanity ripped and stripped from then in The Graves. Eric
Stover and Gillies Pervess' The Graves : Sreberinca and Vukovar is an
excellent book for those who want get a good taste of what anti-Serb
propaganda and dehumanization is all about.
Closely related to the "remember Srebrenica" spin of
anti-Serb propaganda is the denial of the victimhood of the Serbs,
including and especially in Srebrenica, at the hands of Eric Stover's
"charismatic - 25 year old leader," Naser Oric.
Back to top.
Footnotes and references
IV. Denial of the victimhood of the Serbs.
"Massacres committed by Serbs are genocide, but not
massacres committed on Serbs. Ethnic cleansing by the Serbs is genocide,
but not that committed by the other side against Serbs" ( Thomas 1993,
p. 5).
Part of the demonization and dehumanization of the Serbs is
not only labels created through propaganda against them, but also the
removal of their victimhood. The funeral of a Serb girl was reported as
that of a Muslim and the rape of a Serb woman was reported as that of a
Muslim (Kent 1999, Thomas 1993).
"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" ( Thomas 1993, p. 2 ).
Or the fact that the Serbs have also been victims of ethnic
cleansing is often never reported in Western media. According to Raymond
Kent, "For almost a year before the Serbs took Srebrenica. . . its
Bosnian (Muslim) government forces routinely raided the rural Serbs in
the surrounding countryside, committing all kinds of war crimes without
any fear that the T.V. screens of the outside world could be even a
silent witness" (p. 9 ).
On thing is for certain is that journalist and forensic
anthropologist Eric Stover and photojournalist Gilles Peress were not
there. In fact on page 117 of The Graves , Stover treats Naser Oric, the
local Bosnian Muslin leader suspected of burning over 200 Serbs villages
and brutally and beastly murdering Serbs in raids around Srebrenica
(Kent 1999, Rohde 1997) as a "charismatic, twenty - five year old
policeman" and the brutal, murderous raids as "the success of these
local raids." In the book Endgame (1997) David Rohde paints a picture
of Srebrenica's Serbs living in fear :
Srebrenica's Muslims and Naser Oric had played the United
Nations beautifully in 1993. When the Serbs were on the verge of taking
the town, they had tricked the West into saving them. The safe area was
a joke. For two years, the UN had fed the Muslims, sold them weapons and
done nothing as Naser Oric launched raids from a town that was supposed
to be "demilitarized." Serb villagers within 30 miles of Srebrenica
lived in constant fear, waiting to hear the voices in the night and then
smell smoke. Dozens of civilians had been burned alive in their homes by
Oric's men (p.15).
While I am not condoning any actions that may have been
perpetrated by the Bosinan Serb side, the marked difference between
Naser Oric and Ratko Mladic is that the latter has never been indicted
by the ICTY (Kent 1999) . On of the most grave injustices of Stover and
Gilles' The Graves is that it hides and denies Srebrenica's other
victims, the Bosnian Serbs, and implies that a "politically correct"
war criminal is a hero.
Currently, much of the coverage of "humanitarian
efforts" in Kosovo are often one-side, almost flat out ignorance the
human rights and war crimes violations by the Kosovo Albanian
population, especially the KLA ( the Kosovo, so-called "Liberation
Army ") against the Kosovo Serbs. The ICTY is doing little to
investigate and indict KLA and other Kosovo Albanians for their war
crimes and ethnic cleansing against the Kosovo Serbs and other
minorities(14). In the fashion of "remember Srebrenica" there were
accusations of "Serbian ethnic cleansing" that are now, once again,
turning out to be false(15). Also, as in Bosnia, when Serbs are the
victims, who cares.
As stated by Miller and Levin (1998) the mass media project
a "hierarchy of victims" in which some victims are more deserving of
attention and public outrage than others. The Serbs are quite noticeably
at the bottom of this hierarchy, if they are even on the chart at all.
When a mass grave is made up of Muslims and non-Serbs, the Western mass
media flock to it like vultures(16). When the mass grave is made up of
Serbs - who cares. When the Serbs are victims of ethnic cleansing - who
cares. The Serbs are subhumans - so who cares (Thomas 1993).
The above is commonly called "racism" and those involved
are commonly called "racists."
Denial of victimhood of the Serbs and treating war crimes
against them as if they are less deserving of investigation and
international attention is reflective of racism in the "international
community," the ICTY and the "human rights Serbophobes" (Kent
1999, p.8). The cameras were out and rolling to catch Ratko Mladic - but
not Naser Oric (Kent 1999). Being very concerned with the human rights
and humanitarian needs of one ethnic group, while flat out ignoring the
human rights violations against and the basic human needs of the other,
as is current in Kosovo, is RACIST, to say the least.
Back to top.
Footnotes and references
V. The Hague Tribunal : The Tribunal from Hell.
1. The use of "international tribunals" to validate
labels.
"A problematic individual or group is classified as an
instance of human refuse; the validity of the label is tested and
confirmed in public hearings or tribunals conducted by experts certified
in making defamatory pronouncements: legends are then woven by
mythmakers to 'explain' the necessity for the evil party being as it
is : these legends are passed on . . . as ontological truths, and
received by an audience which, not present during the initial steps, is
unable to fathom the fabricated nature of the evil; finally, the truth
of the myth is recognized (re-known) through its ritual dramatization in
armed engagements, domestic and foreign, against the evil object" (Aho
1994, pp.114-115).
In his book, This Thing of Darkness (1994), James Aho
discusses how this "evil" is created through imagery, validated and
made the stuff of myth and "common knowledge about 'the them.' "
In this way, the "evil" is socially constructed. This is how
criminality, delinquency, and even "war crimes" and "crimes
against humanity" are brought to life, made reality and confirmed.
The first step is naming or labeling. "Persons, acts or
situations are neither good nor evil. They come to be seen as such when.
. .they are so defined" (Aho 1994, p.28). The labels of "ethnic
cleansers" and "genocidal" are attributed to Serbs almost
exclusively by Western media (Thomas 1993, Kent 1999, Flounders 1998),
including by both NATO and the ICTY. However, the label of "ethnic
revenge" and not "ethnic cleansing" is fixed to Kosovo Albanians
engaging in similar acts of violence and ethnic cleansing that the Serbs
are almost exclusively accused of by NATO and the West. In this way, the
Western media can have its label of "ethnic cleansers" to safely
affix to the Serbs to once again demonize them at sometime in the
future.
The next step that Aho (1994) discusses that is of interest
here is the legitimization of the labels : "It is one thing to malign
others; it is another for such labels to 'stick.' If labels are to
adhere to the intended party, they must be validated. One vehicle for
effecting this is the public degradation ceremony. This is a formal
hearing, trial, inquisition or tribunal . . ." ( p. 29). The purpose
of the ICTY Tribunal from Hell - it's "official hearings,
investigators and panels of experts" - the mindlessly, bloody Richard
Goldstone ilk- is not justice, not in the least bit, but as stated by
James Aho (1994), to make the labels of "ethnic cleansers, war
criminals and mass murders" stick to the Serbian people.
2. Questionable proceedings of the Tribunal from Hell.
. When NATO and the Bosnian Muslims kidnapped Djordje Djukic
and another Yugoslav army officer, and spirited them to the Hague, it
was not about "justice." It was not about "justice" to
interrogate this seriously ill man, who was being denied basic medical
care for cancer, for up to 20 hours a day. It was not about
"justice" when the tribunal's judges laughed at the profession of
innocence from Djordje. The cruel and indifferent treatment of Djordje
at the hands of the ICTY Tribunal from Hell, was not about "justice"
(Cavoski 1997, Rubin 1996, Kent 1999).
Djordje Djukich was a non-combat, logistics officer and most
likely innocent of "crimes against humanity." The "trial" of
him, as a Bosnian Serb, was actually a trial of all people of Serb
descent. The "derogation ceremony" served to validate Western mass
media propaganda labels of the Bosnian Serbs as "genocidal, ethnic
cleansers and mass murders" (Kent 1999, Rubin 1996, Aho 1994,
Flounders 1998).
James Aho (1994) demonstrated how labels against
"problematic groups" are validated through a "derogation
ceremony," that is courts, trials, public hearings - or - in this case
- an international tribunal. The ICTY Tribunal from Hell performs this
function. According to Kent (1999) and Thomas (1993), who wrote his
essay as the ICTY was being formed:
What is being set up is nothing more than an 'Ad Hoc
International Kangaroo Court' decked with the frills of respectability
to pacify the historical and revengeful demands of an American-lead,
Western lynch mob. There appears to be no higher court of appeal for the
Serbs. In the minds of the Western and especially American media, Serbs
have already been tried and found guilty. They will accept no other
verdict. The international 'legal process' is a FORMALITY (p. 4).
The Western mass media, the Eric Stovers and Gillies Pervess
of the world, are rather selective about the mass graves they cover,(17)
much in the way the ICTY indicts "war criminals." That is, the ICTY
investigators essentially work for the prosecution looking to indict and
convict persons of a single ethnicity. This "court" issues almost
daily accusations to the world mass media against leaders of one
ethnicity and religion in a civil war with three sides. (Thomas 1993,
Kent 1999). The ICTY seems to depend on the mass media and anti-Serb
propaganda to feed and validate its existence, and the example below is
strong evidence of this dependency.
On one night of drunkenness, reporter and author Nebojsa
Jevric was asked by an American reporter who he would nominate as the
worst rapist of Muslim women. Jevric nominated Gruban of Bijelo Polje.
The American counterpart then forwarded Gruban's name to the "right
places." Soon, the world was flooded with wanted posters of "Serbian
war criminals" with the names of Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and
Gruban. Gruban al>
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Transfer interrupted!
ge : unknown - nationality : unknown - description : unknown
- address : unknown.
With no description, how then were NATO's troops going to
find this notorious Serb war criminal who had raped so many Muslim
women? They weren't. Gruban of Bijelo Polje was actually a character
from the famous novel, "Hero on a Donkey," by Miodrag Bulatovic.(18)
With lots of egg on its face, the ICTY withdrew the
indictment against Gruban.(19)
Another questionable act of the ICTY that served to validate
the Serbs as a "evil, genocidal people" was the issuance of an
indictment for "war crimes and genocide" against Slobodan Milosevic,
President of Yugoslavia, during NATO's "Operation Allied Force."
(20) This indictment- and the timing of it - served to validate - once
again - the Serbs as an "evil people." It derogated the Serbian
people as an ethnic group in need of "collective punishment" by NATO
bombs (Naslund 1999). The current revelations now coming out of Kosovo
are that there was no "systematic policy of mass murder or
genocide." (21)
The ICTY Tribunal from Hell is really is part of the
portrayal of "the Other," the Serbs, as the "evil, human
refuse." It is not only the demonstration of the "justness" of the
cause of NATO and the West, but serves to validate anti-Serb propaganda.
The ICTY, it's derogation ceremonies aimed almost exclusively at
Serbs, serves the function of validating the "evilness" of the Serbs
as a subhuman group and the "need" for Western/NATO intervention (
Keen 1986, Kent 1999, Thomas 1993, Binder 1996).
Some unfortunate Serbs, like Djordje Djukich, are kidnapped
and turned over to NATO's troops to be "processed to the Hague."
(22) (Of the people indicted by this "court" 46 are Serbs, 8 Croats and
one a Muslim.(23) ) "Even if innocent, the accused is contaminated -
his guilt, insanity, addiction, subversives, or apostasy 'confirmed in
the eyes of the masses' " (Aho 1994, p.29). The ICTY is the
"legitimization" process whereby the interest is not justice -
hardly - but the validation of damning labels (Aho 1994).
These unearned labels of Serbs as "genocidal murderers"
have now become "common knowledge" of modern society (Aho 1994) and
it has now been woven and accepted as fact are that the Serbs are
"Nazi-like, ethnic cleansing, rapist, mass murders" (Flounders
1998).
The Serbs that are now, have been, and will be in the
future, subjected to this Tribunal from Hell , the ICTY, have been
relegated to this cruel and inhuman role for the sake of validating
Western propaganda and demonizing labels by going through the James
Aho's (1994) "legitimization" process.
Back to top.
Footnotes and references.
VI. Conclusion
"When Milosevic gets up in the morning, he is counting his
losses. . ." (24)
No, Jamie Shea, actually it is the civil population of
Yugoslavia that is counting its losses, including the losses of friends,
family and co-workers (Naslund 1999, International Action Center 1999).
In the minds of NATO officials, like Jamie Shea and Air Commodore Wilby,
they truly were "bombing Milosevic." The process of demonization of
the Serb population to a deserving mass of "subhuman, rapist, ethnic
cleansers" was easy for the NATO Alliance, for these push button
warriors painted the face of Slobodan Milosevic, an "indicted war
criminal," on the face of every person living in Yugoslavia.
Therefore, the entire population of Yugoslavia stood indicted in mass as
"war criminals and ethnic cleansers of Kosovo," having been indicted
along with the FRY President by that instrument of label validation and
Serb derogation - the ICTY Tribunal from Hell.
Any support for the current Western/NATO Balkans missions is
built and maintained through the use of anti-Serb propaganda. As the
Western propaganda spin goes, the West has a "holy mission," (an
ethnocentric one), to bring "the bad" in line with "the good ,"
and doing what where it desires in the name of "democracy, peace and
security." To accomplish this, the main strategy of Western propaganda
was "good vs evil," and "aggressor vs. aggrieved" (Kent 1999;
Boyd 1995). Much of the motivation for NATO's attack on Yugoslavia was
to stop "the evil aggressors" in the name of "higher moral
standards," even if it ment playing dirty (Naslund 1999). These
self-righteous hypocrites the demonized an entire ethnic group,
attempted to force them to sign a "non- negotiable agreement," (25)
labeled its leaders as "war criminals," and then set out on a
criminal campaign of "collective punishment" by bombing an innocent,
civil population "back into the Stone Age" ( Keen 1986, Naslund
1999).
In the opening pages of this essay I demonstrated the basic
sociology of how a human group like the Serbs can be dehumanized through
the use of demonizing propaganda. I used authors James Aho (1994) and
Sam Keen and his classic Faces of the Enemy: Reflection of the Hostile
Imagination (1986) to demonstrate how one human group defines "the
Other" and paints "the Other" as with sub-human qualities through
the used of negative images: propaganda. Using the work of Sara
Flounders and Thomas Deichmann I demonstrated how the anti-Serb
propaganda campaign is a concerted one directed by chiefly the American
public relations firm Ruder Finn Global Affairs. Ruder Finn jumped on
Penny Marshell's and ITN's "concentration camp" hoax and is
quite boastful of fooling American Jewish Organizations, like the Anti-
Defamation League.
I would like to say- most strongly to those American Jewish
groups(26) that allowed themselves to be duped- and who continue to be
duped - by the likes of the Ruder Finn PR firm and are supportive of the
dehumanizing and violence against the Serbian ethnic group, SHAME ON YOU
- SHAME ON YOU- SHAME ON YOU! (To say this does not make me
anti-Semitic, but places blame where blame is due!)
Besides PR firms and major newspapers, there are now books
pushing anti-Serb propaganda. They often have "remember Srebrenica"
themes. One such book that does a fairly good job of painting the Serbs
as subhuman, smelly, drunken, ethnic cleansing animals is Eric Stover
and Gillies Peress' The Graves : Srebrenica and Vukovar (1998). I use
this book as a model of anti-Serb propaganda throughout this essay.
I also used James Aho's work This Thing of Darkness : A
Sociology of the Enemy (1994), along with that of Raymond Kent (1999),
Raju G.C. Thomas (1993), Kosta Cavoski (1997) Alfed Rubin (1996), and
Maria Naslund (1999) to demonstrate the true purpose of the
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) : Serb
demonization and the validation of anti-Serb labels and Western/NATO
mass media propaganda through the use of this "official court in the
Hague" as a "derogation ceremony" against the Serbs.
At the ICTY in the Hague - the Tribunal from Hell - justice
is the last thing this judicial devil is seeking. It is set up to solely
seek out and indict Serbs for the purpose of validating anti-Serb
stereotypes and labels like "ethnic cleaners." The cruel treatment
of individual Serbs indicted by this Tribunal from Hell and kidnapped by
NATO is to indict and "put on trial" ALL persons of Serb descent.
NATO carried out the "collective punishment" of the
Serbs, rehashing "remember Srebrenica" elements of anti-Serb
propaganda, as well outright lies of "ethnic cleansing in Kosovo" to
bomb the Yugoslavian population. The "collective punishment" of the
Serbs now continues in Kosovo through the excuse of Kosovo Albanian
"ethnic revenge" against the Kosovo Serbs. The Kosovo Serbs and
other minorities are now the victims of Kosovo "Liberation Army"
ethnic cleansing, and the NATO and the ICTY could care less because the
victims of this "ethnic cleansing" are the deserving Serbs.
Lastly, please remember Srebrenica! Srebrencia is the
birthplace and hometown of many of the elements of current anti-Serb
propaganda. The propaganda elements of the Serbs as "ethnic cleansing,
mass murders and drunken, genocidal animals" were born in Srebrenica.
Please remember Srebrenica, as this is where, according to Kent (1999)
and others, the "Big Lie" about "Serb ethnic cleansing" was
born.(27) Also remember that there are Serb victims at Srebrenica, and
elsewhere, that the Western mass media, NATO, the ICTY and the rest of
the Serbophobic world ignores in a racist manner.
Back to top.
Footnotes and references.
VII. My Observations
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal
and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the
foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. Preamble,
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).
It is startling how much this does not apply to the Serbs.
According to Maria Naslund (1999) of the Transnational Foundation for
Peace and Future Research, there is an increasingly "politically
correct" human rights activism unfolding in the "international
community." Currently there is more attention placed on the returning
ethnic -Albanians to Kosovo than on the future of the 11 million people
inside Serbia. More people may have died under NATO bombs than were
killed by Yugoslavian and KLA units (Naslund 1999).
1. Racism in human rights activity in Kosovo and in the
"international community."
What I find the most offensive and anger provoking aspect of
anti-Serb propaganda, its resulting dehumanization, including the shady
activity of the ICTY , is the devaluing of the human rights of the Serbs
as compared to other Balkans ethnic groups, especially Muslims. The
Serbs are also the "less deserving victims" in Miller and Levin's
(1998) "hierarchy of victims," whose lives and suffering are less
deserving of outrage and public outcry when war crimes and ethnic
cleaning are committed against them by the Kosovo Albanians and the KLA.
What I have noted from the websites of "humanitarian"
and "human rights" organizations currently active in Kosovo is an
almost complete lack of equal value for the human rights of Kosovo Serbs
and other minorities as compared to that of Kosovo Albanians. Little is
currently being discussed with regard to this anti-Serb racism in the
human rights community, but Raymond Kent (1999) called these
"concerned human rights activists" working in the Balkans,
especially in concert with the ICTY, "human rights Serbophobes" (p.
8).
Also noteworthy from these "human rights" web sites are
the descriptions of "Serb atrocities" as compared to atrocities
committed on the Serbs. Recall that I demonstrated that there is a
denial of the vicitimhood of the Serbs as being on the receiving end of
ethnic cleansings and a concerted effort to portray the Serbs as having
a monopoly on "ethnic cleansing." However, descriptions and accounts
of alleged Serb violence on other ethnic groups highlights the ethnic
labels of all the groups involved, with "Serb atrocities" on other
groups being described in intricate detail.
On Doctors Without Boarders' web site
(www.dwb.org/missions/kosovo.htm). There are lots of stories related to
DWB's work with Kosovo Albanian refugees, including a study on the
Kosovo Albanian refugees, but little about the plight of Kosovo Serbs.
The Doctors Without Boarders' Kosovo webpage presents a good
example of this one sided concern for all humans in Kosovo in a
statement by an Austian physician in June 1999 who seemed to really not
know, or care, about the plight of the Kosovo Serbs and other minorities
from THEIR homes: "After working for months with Kosovar refugees and
knowing how much they have suffered, it the best feeling that you can
have to see them coming back to their country."
This racist tendency to place more concern on the
humanitarian needs and more value on the human rights of one ethnic
group over another is highly offensive. I have noted that on the web
sites of these "human groups" in the "international community"
there are more stories, regarding the return of Kosovo ethnic-Albanians
than to the ethnic cleansing and murder of Kosovo Serbs and other Kosovo
minorities. There is an obvious value by the "international
community" with the human rights of Kosovo Albanians, but there is not
the same value being placed on the human rights of the Serb population.
As in Stover and Gillies' The Graves , the Serbs are non- humans and
not worthy of the same human rights as Bosnian Muslims. Being concerned
with the human rights of Bosinan Muslims, Croats and Kosovo Albanians,
while ignoring the human rights of the Serbs is RACIST, plain and
simple!
Recall the ideas of Miller and Levin (1998). Mass media
project the image of a "hierarchy of victims," whereby some victims
are seen as being "more deserving" of outrage and public attention
than other, "lesser victims." Crimes against "lesser victims"
are deemed less newsworthy and the lives of "lesser victims," in
this case the Serbs, are not valued as much as Bosnian Muslims and
Kosovo Albanians. I have noted a tendency to explain the violence of
Kosovo Albanians on their Serb neighbors as "ethnic revenge" for
"Serbian ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo.
This "ethnic revenge" is also used to explain attacks on
Serb elderly and children, non- combatants who probably had nothing to
do with any Serb on Albanian violence in Kosovo during NATO's bombing
campaign. How could an elderly Serb couple murdered in their apartment
in Prizren - during KFOR occupation of Kosovo - have anything to do with
an alleged policy of Slobodan Milosevic? This racist devaluing of the
human rights of Kosovo Serbs and the acceptance of "ethnic revenge"
against ALL Kosovo Serbs is clear evidence of the racist "collective
punishment" aspect of NATO and the West's policy toward the Serbian
ethnic group that Maria Nasland touched upon in one of her two papers on
NATO intervention (28).
What I strongly suggest that those of us concerned with
racism in "the international community, human rights and humanitarian
groups," is to use the principle of "equal concern for the human rights
and human needs of ALL groups equally" as a measuring rod to weed out
those practicing racism. With this, we will find the human rights and
humanitarian hypocrites!
I strongly believe that the making of anti-Serb propaganda,
demonization and dehumanization by Western PR firms had, and still has,
a lot to do with the anti-Serb racism in "humanitarian aid and human
rights" and neglect of the human rights of the Serbs. As an American I
am ashamed and highly offended that my government is allowing foreign
governments to hire American PR firms like Ruder Finn to make and spread
the hate of an ethnic group. What if the Ku Klux Klan decided to hire
Ruder Finn Global Public Affairs to spread its message through out the
world?! Something needs to be done, perhaps legislatively, about
allowing groups and governments to hire American PR firms to create
ethnic hate through dehumanizing propaganda. This concerted spreading of
anti-Serb demonization, which lead to the dehumanization of the Serbian
ethnic group, had a strong part to play in the acceptance of the bombing
of the Yugoslav civil population, especially described as "the
Serbs" and "bombing Milosevic," in Washington, London and
Brussels.
2. Some suggestions to the Serbian people. First of all, the
Serbian people need to realizing that they are fighting a concerted
effort to demonize them and dehumanize them. They need to be prepared to
mount a counter- concerted efforts against this hate propaganda, but
there are also things the individual Serb living here in the West can
do. Some of the following was also done by Arab-American groups in the
face of anti-Arab propaganda.
A. Get into the classrooms and get involved in schools and
colleges! Find out just what kind of books and materials are being used
in classes on "human rights, world affairs, international studies and
ethnic conflicts." This also includes the reading and use of newspaper
articles, since Western newspapers are the biggest spreader of anti-Serb
propaganda.
Read the materials and ask : "What kind of image is being
painted about my people in this book?" Look very close at how the
material is worded and how much attention is given to various
situations. If a book, such as the anti-Serb propaganda book The Graves:
Srebreinca and Vukovar , is being used in a classroom as required
reading, as at Florida State University, this gives this book
legitimacy, including the images of Serbs as drunken, smelly, mass-
murdering animals. (29)
B. Get into the libraries and find out what is there and
donate Serbian cultural materials. This allows people in the community
to be able to have the chance to learn positive aspects of the Serbian
culture. Donate books on Serbian epic poetry, history and culture and
food. Put up websites devoted to educating people about the Serbian
culture.
C. Start an international Serbian Student Union. This will
help combat the use of books such as The Graves in classrooms. It will
help bring Serbian culture studies and Slavic studies into more
prominence on college campuses. It will encourage more Serbs into higher
education.
D. Start defining the unequal valuing of human rights of
Serbs by the "international community" as what it really is :
RACISM. It is racist to place an unequal value of the human rights of
one ethnic group over another. Here in America, we refer to the
devaluing of the constitutional rights of minority - Americans as
compared to white - Americans as "racism." The devaluing of one
ethnic group's human rights over another on the international level
ALSO needs to be called just what it is : RACISM! Human rights are for
ALL humans! Human rights are not "granted" by ANY government or
military alliance and are not for sale!
E. Start an organization for human rights for Serbs. We need
to form an organization that will speak up for the human rights of the
Serbian people. It would not only address the lack of concern for the
human rights of the Serbian people, but address racism in "human
rights activism" and the "international community."
This type of organization would demand that the
"international community" address its anti-Serb racism and demand
that the human rights of the Serbian people be valued just as much as
the rights of Bosnian Muslims and Kosovo Albanians.
3. . . .and this work isn't done yet!
After all these pages of bring together authors and scholars
in this research project, this labor of love, to expose the offensive
and outright inhuman anti-Serb propaganda working of the West, NATO and
the US, this is only the beginning! There are separate papers and books
that can and have been written on the Tribunal from Hell's role in
anti-Serb label validation, the "remember Srebrenica" theme to
anti-Serb propaganda, the denial of the victimhood of the Serbs, and
propaganda in NATO's Balkan missions.
There will be future additions to this work (and maybe
someday a book, God willing) when I find and add still more sources,
authors, scholars and writers. This is only a start in exposing the
rather extensive and organized efforts to demonize, dehumanized and
lessen the human rights of the Serbian people.
To be addressed later in next additions :
1. The exportation of Western ideas, and I don't mean
democracy! I mean the idea of some groups' human rights being of less
value than other groups. Yes - NATO has exported the ideas of ethnic
inequality and racism to the Balkans! Why is it that the human rights of
Kosovo Serbs are of less value than Kosovo Albanians? Well, I will be
addressing this in the future.
2. The idea of a "hierarchy of victims" and the Serbs as
being "less deserving" victims than other groups, namely Muslims. It
is OK for Muslims to kill Serbs, but not OK for Serbs to kill
Muslims.(30) While Miller and Levin (1998) was speaking of American
minorities, namely African-Americans, the "hierarchy of victims" can
be applied to the Serbs as being "less deserving" victims than
Muslims.
3. The notion of "ethnic revenge" being used to describe
the Kosovo Albanian's ethnic cleaning and their communities of their
Serb neighbors. "Ethnic revenge" is a Kosovo Albanian policy that is
of racist manner, as it is against ANY Serb, including children and
elderly, not just those who might been part of police and army units.
Back to top.
Footnotes and references.