Playing off Albanian gangsters as victims of genocide, the US created a pretext for annihilation of Yugoslavia
A MIRACULOUS TRANSFORMATION OF WOLVES INTO SHEEP
January 15 is the tenth anniversary of the most cynical provocation of Western intelligence services that created a pretext for NATO's aggression against the United Republic of Yugoslavia.
The event of that day became known in global mass media as the "Racak massacre" – the reported extermination of forty ethnic Albanian civilians in Kosovo by the Yugoslavian military.
In fact, the village of Racak had served by that time as a base for one of the brigades of the irregular Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK), named Agim Celej-Coli. From this foothold, fighters frequently launched terrorist raids, targeting state servicemen and policemen of both Serbian and Albanian origin.
After the assassination of local police officer Svetislav Pesic, whose auto was attacked from an ambush on January 10, 1999, a special unit of Yugoslavian police undertook an anti-terrorist operation.
At that time, Belgrade tried to attract attention of international observers to UCK's terrorist activities. A team of EU representatives, as well as mass media, were informed about the planned operation in Racak. Arriving on several jeeps, the team, including Reuters and AP correspondents, stopped in several kilometers away from the village.
The armed clash between a special unit of Yugoslavian police and the UCK paramilitary lasted for sixteen (!) hours. Eventually, the policemen left the place. For some reason, the joint security cordon of police and military was suspended. Shortly after that, a team of foreigners collected the dead bodies from the area and threw them down into a ravine. On the next day, the place was visited by William Walker, head of the international observing mission. He was followed by a crowd of TV journalists. Posturing before the heap of dead bodies, Mr. Walker called General Wesley Clark, Commander of NATO forces in Europe, saying: "There was a mass murder here in Racak. I am standing here among corpses." That was the starting point for an international political campaign against Belgrade that later justified the secession of Kosovo which subsequently became the major military base of the United States in Southern Europe.
Days after Walker's TV opportunity, Washington Post published a "revealing" report of journalist Geoffrey Smith. Referring to intelligence sources, the author quoted an eavesdropped phone talk, in which Nikola Sajinovic, Deputy Prime Minister of Yugoslavia, allegedly instructed Gen. Sreten Lukic, commander of Yugoslavian police in Kosovo, to "cover up traces" of murder of civilians in Racak.
A CONVENIENT PRETEXT FOR WAR
The episode in Racak subsequently became a major argument for a new Washington's campaign against "Serbian fascism" and a brutal assault of NATO on Yugoslavia. On March 19, 1999, days before the bombings, US President Bill Clinton declared: "I have to remind about the tragic developments in Racak, where innocent people, women and children, were dragged out of their homes to a hollow, where they were forced to stand on their knees and then killed. They were exterminated not for some wrongdoings but just for their origin".
The following NATO intervention dubbed "Merciful Angel" killed thousands of Yugoslavian civilians and inflicted irreparable damage to the nation's economy. In the midst of air attacks, in May, the International Tribunal in The Hague accused Yugoslavia's President Slobodan Milosevic of organizing an "ethnic cleansing" in Racak:
"Approximately (sic) on January 15, at early morning, the Serbian military entered the village and started a search in homes. Villagers who tried to hide were killed at the place. A group of 25 men tried to hide in one of the houses but the military found and seized them. The men were beaten, and then dragged to the nearest hill and executed. In general, around 45 civilians were killed". The published list of "executed Kosovars", exterminated allegedly for their ethnic origin, included one woman and a 14-year-old teenager.
When Slobodan Milosevic was given away to the tribunal, mass media reported that a key witness would appear and testify about the phone talk between Sajinovic and Lukic. The witness never appeared.
Eventually, on October 2003, the Tribunal accused four Yugoslavian generals of military crimes in Racak. Official charges were brought against Nebojsa Pavkovic, Vladimir Lazarevic, Vlastimil Djordjevic and Sreten Lukic.
Between January and June 1999, Mr. Pavkovic commanded Yugoslavia's Third Army, Mr. Lazarevic headed the Pristina Corps, Mr. Djordjevic chaired the Ministry of Interior's Department of Public Security, while Mr. Lukic was in charge of the Interior's contingent in Kosovo, being later elevated to the post of Deputy Minister.
The indictment, signed by O-Gon Kwon, a judge from South Korea, laid responsibility on the four generals for the "crimes against humanity" committed in the period between January 1 and June 20, 1999. During this time, they allegedly assassinated and abducted Kosovars, forcing 800,000 of the local civilians to leave their homes in Racak, Bela Crkva, Mala Krusa, Suva Reka and other villages (in fact, most of the civilians tried to escape from NATO bombs and UCK terror).
During the trial, Milosevic exposed the lie about the so-called "massacre in Racak" that was one of the major charge counts. In March 2003, he exposed Helena Ranta, a Finnish forensic expert, of manipulating facts and presenting her personal opinion instead of official conclusions of the earlier established international expertise commission. He claimed that Ms. Ranta's evidence served as an immediate pretext for the NATO air assault on Belgrade.
A press release, published by Ms. Ranta, chair of the EU group of experts, was subsequently published as an official report of the group. The press release described the 40 persons, whose bodies were "discovered" in Racak, as peaceful civilians.
"They cannot be peaceful civilians at least for the reason that the same expert group found traces of powder on the hands of 37 of them", Milosevic said. He also indicated that 23 of the killed men wore Austrian boots that UCK was then supplied with. Milosevic added that these men, according to the forensic findings, were killed from a distance of 150-100 m, while Ms. Ranta ranted that they were killed at point-blank range.
WHO EMPLOYED HELENA RANTA?
Addressing Ms. Ranta, Slobodan Milosevic claimed that with her press release she deliberately or occasionally mislead the public and provided a pretext for an international military intervention in Yugoslavia. "The press release, expressing not more than your personal view, substantiated the war for the official purpose of protecting ethnic Albanians", he said. Ms. Ranta objected that her activity cannot be associated with the NATO operation, as Finland was not a NATO member. "This is even worse", Milosevic said.
In her memoirs published in October 2008, Helena Ranta confessed of having forged the evidence on the clash in Racak under pressure from the officials of Finland's ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as from William Walker.
In his article published in Politika daily, Belgrade, Prof. Dusan Dunic, a forensic expert who took part in the investigation of the developments in Racak, claimed that Ms. Ranta's memoirs contain only a part of truth. "I believe that our state has a right to ask Ms. Ranta who particularly pressured her – Mr. Walker, head of the so-called group of observers, or anyone else. Like in the case of the memoirs of ex-Hague Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte, the Government should establish a special investigative commission and officially demand her testimony".
According to Mr. Dunic, the cooperation of Finnish and Serbian forensic experts was successful and fruitful. Meanwhile, Ms. Ranta's manipulations could be noticed from the very beginning. She frequently made phone calls, reporting about the details of the findings to unidentified officials.
"In the Forensic Institute in Pristina, we carried out autopsy of forty dead bodies, one of them female. The conclusions of Serbian and Finnish specialists were identical. However, before the official results were going to be published, Ms. Ranta launched a press conference. Looking nervous, she emphasized that she was expressing her personal opinion. At this moment, Mr. Walker seized the mike from her hands and declared that Ms. Ranta has found the proof that the Racak case was a deliberate murder of civilians.
"Meanwhile, her Finnish colleagues had found out that the so-called civilians were equipped with warm underwear. They wore trousers upon sweat pants and underpants. That means that they had stayed for a long time outdoors, and not in homes", Dunic emphasizes.
According to Dunic, the tribunal disposed this evidence. "I've never seen their official conclusion. The fact is, however, that the materials on the Racak episode were subsequently withdrawn from the case of Milosevic, as well as from the case of Milan Milutinovic and other generals", he indicates.
A LIE CAN'T BE COVERED UP FOR EVER
Speaking to Russian TV journalist Yevgeny Baranov, expert Helena Ranta admitted that William Walker "was embarrassed with the results of the expertise". She also acquainted Russian journalists with the original conclusion of the military forensic expertise that had never been published. "Today, I am ready to speak about the results of the investigation", she says. But "today" is irreversibly late.
One more member of the forensic expertise team, Prof. Vujadin Otasevic, is not surprised with Ms. Ranta's testimony on the pressure exerted on her by William Walker, then-head of the OSCE mission in Kosovo and Metohija.
"I was sure she would repent sooner or later", he says. "When you are dealing with autopsy, you can't hide truth for ever", Otasevic said in his interview to Politika daily on October 23, 2008. A year before, this expert and his colleague Slavisa Dobricanin published a research entitled "Kosovo. The voice of the victims", describing the Racak episode in details.
"The truth about Racak is already revealed. This last repenting statement of Helena Ranta confirms that Yugoslavia's special police was slanderously accused of executing civilians in this village. Now, everybody in the world has to realize – though too late – that it was an armed clash of Albanian terrorists and the state security forces", he says.
HOW WALKER DEFRAUDED MILOSEVIC
That was already after the "judicial killing" of Slobodan Milosevic. While he was alive, he continued to resist and even successfully counterattacked.
In April 2004, during a cross-interrogation of the abovementioned forensic expert Slavisa Dobricanin, Mr. Milosevic repeatedly proved that the Albanians, killed in Racak, represented a paramilitary squad and were not at all "peaceful civilians", as Western human right advocates reported – with reference to intelligence sources.
Addressing the expert, the tribunal's judge inquired whether the only teenager, found dead among UCK fighters, was a peaceful civilian. The witness replied that in Albanian families, boys of this age are regarded as adults and use weapons. Answering the same question for the second time, the witness said, "I can't tell you anything definite except that the age, in this case, does not mean much".
During this interrogation, Mr. Milosevic provided convincing evidence that at least 30 males, whose bodies were found in Racak, were in the lists of UCK fighters.
On January 23, 2006, after a six-week break in the Tribunal's proceedings, the trial was continued. This time, Milosevic's defense attorneys invited Milan Kotur, a retired colonel of the Yugoslavian Popular Army, who commanded the ground forces of the Pristina Corps in 1998-1999, being responsible for connections with the OSCE mission in the region.
Milan Kotur testified that the Army strictly complied with the conditions of the Milosevic-Holbrooke agreement signed in October 1999: the number of the military in Kosovo was reduced to the level preceding the clashes with UCK. The fighters were defeated before the mission arrived, but after the army pulled out, the movement used this situation for reorganization, returning to its combat site.
According to Serbian philologist and journalist Irina Antanasievic, in the period between January 1 and December 31, 1998, Albanian terrorists committed 1129 attacks on servicemen and civilians in the relatively small region of Kosovo and Metohija. 115 police servicemen were killed, 216 injured, 187 wounded and 15 abducted. Among civilians, 187 persons were killed, 158 injured, 878 wounded, and 292 were missing. This dry statistics reflect hundreds of human tragedies.
In 1998, UCK occupied the town of Orahovac for several days. The same happened with the village of Opterusa. That was more than a chain of terrorist acts: that was a war against statehood of Yugoslavia. Mass media were then silent.
It is rarely mentioned, even in Serbian media, that the consolidation of Kosovars into a nation was achieved by means of coercion, blackmail, and racketeering. In case you don't pay a tax for "free Kosovo" ranging from 100 to 10,000 German marks, you are regarded a traitor and treated like a Serb. The toll of the "peaceful" year 1998 included 77 Albanians and 46 Serbs, while in 42 cases, the origin was not identified. Similarly, number of missing persons included 173 Serbs and 100 Albanians.
Asked whether the OSCE mission itself complied with the Milosevic-Holbrooke agreement, the witness said that the team "did not always behave correctly": it was spectacularly more sympathetic to UCK. He illustrated his statements with the example of Racak in January 1999. According to Kotur, the Yugoslavian army, the police and the OSCE mission had struck an agreement that forbade any comments before a joint investigation of a particular case, but William Walker and his deputy John Drevenkievic violated this agreement in the Racak case.
"They described the event in this village as a mass murder of innocent civilians, organized by the army and police. In fact, Drevenkievic just did not know what had happened. He asked me on January 15 about the developments in Racak, and I answered that it had been a counter-terrorist police operation. He told me that five or six persons were killed there, not mentioning about teenagers at all. However, on the next day he officially claimed that the murder affected women and children. "He told me about his decision to travel to Racak along with Walker in order to speak about this aloud. I tried to dissuade him from going there before the investigation publishes its judgment. But he told me that Walker was already in Racak".
A GOLD MEDALLION FOR A PROVOCATION
Meanwhile, the tenth anniversary of the clash in Racak was celebrated in the independent Kosovo in its own style. On January 15, President Fatmir Seidiu and Prime Minister Hasim Taci declared that Kosovo "will never forget the massacre in Racak". Officials reiterated the version of a mass murder of civilians. "The Serbian military made Kosovo a scorched land, destroying over 130,000 homes, a lot of mosques, and killed 13,000 peaceful Albanians".
In his turn, Hasim Taci, the former chieftain of separatist fighters, claimed that "the Racak massacre accelerated the diplomatic and military measures against the Milosevic regime". Thus, he actually admitted that the alleged massacre was in fact a bloody performance staged after an armed clash by Western intelligence services that backed UCK. This masquerade was utilized for the destruction of Yugoslavia that still continues. Clinton's cronies, invited to the new US Democratic administration by Barack Obama, are likely to leave nothing of Serbia except reference in textbooks of history.
The commemoration ceremony in Pristina that looked rather like a holiday of the subject of the event that opened the road to the half-NATO, half-gangster quasi-independence, was concluded with Taci's expression of gratitude to William Walker, who "had chosen the side of truth", as Mr. Taci put it. Mr. Walker, the real hero of the event, received a special award, the "Gold Medallion of Humanism" from Taci's hands.
Source:RPMonitior
10 комментариев:
Theres a good reasons its called the Balkans and the word "balkanization" has entered English and other languages.
While the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and other small subethnic groups had external and non Slavic rule, they had a common purpose and that was getting out from under the yoke of the Austro Hungarian monarchy, in the western area of the Balkans, and the Ottoman Empire in the east. The post World War I solution of creating a union of Southern Slavs was doomed to failure, basically because it was artificially imposed from the start.
On the other side, the idea of creating nation states that are smaller than a good sized city in some places makes little sense.
The entire set of events in the Balkans is a testiment to how otherwise normal individuals behave during rather non-normal conditions.
Neighbors who in peacetime became best of friends, become mortal enemies. For what. A line on a map.
Strange to say, I live in an area that many Bosnians have moved to as a result of the warfare in the Balkans. Even stranger is that many seem to have prefered the unified Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito, than anything that occured after the breakup of Yugoslavia. I found this a bit of a surprise, but after thinking about, it became quite understandable. Those who wanted to break up the modern state of Yugoslavia really didnt have much support among the general citizenry,outside of Slovenia, but those who did happened to have the weapons.
Though Tito was of Croat and Slovenian descent, he had little tolerance for the nationalism exhibited by Croats in Yugoslavia. This was rooted in the sort of pan slavism among southern slavs he supported.
In 1980, when he died, I completely anticipated the events that were to follow, and the final breakup of that nation. Tito held it together by sheer force of will, and political cunning. None of the leaders who followed had the same abilities.
Like in the former ex-USSR those (three persons in Belovezhskaya pushcha)who want to break up it, also didn't have support among the population (80% voted against this decision), but they have power and possibility to do it, and strong will to became a kind of apanage prince and to encrich themselves...Halifes for an hour...
People need and like stability no matter where they live.
I have a friend of mine from Kosovska Mitrovitsa in my russian blog, I heard terrible things from her.I watched a lot of documentaries about Kosovo.
This manipulations with facts, lies, infowars didn't surprize me, West always has it's own interests in Balkans.
A lot of terrible thing have occured in the ex-Yugoslavia. There are no groups that can claim innocence.
The Croatian author, Slavenka Drakulic has had to become an exile from her own country because she chose to write about the excesses of all of the parties to attrocities during the 1990's that occured in this region, rather than simply write about the Serbs.
As If I Am Not There is about crimes against women in the Bosnian War, while They Would Never Hurt a Fly is a book in which she also analyzed her experience overseeing the proceedings and the inmates of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague. Both books touch on the same issues that caused her wartime emigration from the home country.
These books created such threats against her life, that she was forced to emigrate. She never places blame on one ethnic group in the area, or another, but simply points out that there was blood on every ethic groups hands.
Most critical was that she chose to not separate those who perpetrated these acts out as monsters, but as humans, and that some humans are capable of horrific acts. Because she chose not to label them by their ethnicity and noted that there were guilty persons on all sides, she was considered a traitor to Croatia, and her life was continually under threat.
An unsigned article in the Croation periodical Globus, named Drakulic and five other women as witches who were raping Croatia, by indentifying the events of the war as the actions of "unidentified males" against women. Drakulic and the others soon started receiving death threats and left their homes.
I was here in the U.S. during the events which led to western involvement. After the previous president got the U.S. involved in the peacekeeping less than three weeks before Clinton took office, there was little taste in the U.S. for getting involved in any peacekeeping missions anywhere. if anything, the United Nations decision to get involved created conditions that resulted in Clinton being put into a position he really didnt want to get into.
Milosovic's speeches, rather than sooth non Serbians about how they would be treated in a New Yugoslavia stoked fear,in a "Greater Serbia" first in Slovenia, then Croatia, then Bosnia. Particularly in areas that had no historical connection with Serbia at all. The attempts to include area that were not originally Serbian, but where ethnic Serbs had moved into during the post World War II period is largely responsible for the decisions of Croatian nationalists to move towards the idea of creation of a separate Croatian state. When Milosovic said "wherever there is a Serb, there is Serbia" most of these other states decided that breaking up was the best thing to do. Until 1990, most of the member regions of Yugoslavia had no problem with remaining within a confederation. There were many within the area of Serbia itself who had no problem with keeping the state the same sort of confederation that existed under Tito, when there was at least some semblence of regional autonomy. The Socialist Party of Yugoslavia was more supportive of keeping a Yugoslav State, and this position was completely acceptable to most Croatians and Bosnians. It was the call to create a "Greater Serbia" by Milosovic in his bid for power which created these fears in the other states. The idea of a Yugoslavia did not seem to be the problem. In the bid for power, Milosevic appealed to a Serb nationalism that had no appeal to the other ethnicities of Yugoslavia.
It is often said that there is a long history of hate between the various groups in this region when in fact, it is a rather recent phenomenon, which started in the late 19th Century and accelerated during the 1940's.
Had the ethnic, nationalistic elements been kept out of the discussions, I think a single Yugoslavia might still exist. The more moderate Serbs had no problem with a confederation, and the Croats and Slovenians concurred. Those who put forth the idea of a strong federation with Serbia retaining control of the other areas was not acceptable to them. Milosevic unfortunately was the proponent of a strong Serbia under which the other ethnic groups would have little regional autonomy and this led to what is now considered the most violent war of the 20th Century.
Until 1990, the people the Republics were totally deadlocked over the idea of splitting off from Yugoslavia.
When a Croatian was elected to the presidency of Yugoslavia in 1991 blocked the accession of the Croatian representative to his seat (the presidency rotated between ethnic groups to keep the peace) and the Serbian would not allow him to take his position as president of Yugoslavia, as the legal situation called for at the time, the state of Yugoslavia, defacto, no longer existed.
Again had the legalities with regard to the sucession to the presidency been followed, it is likely that the state of Yugislavia would still exist. The idea of rotating the presidency among the various ethnicities was about the only thing that held the nation together after the death of Tito, an ethic Croat/Slovenian. Because of Tito's almost complete disregard of ethnicity, Serbs served in many high government positions, which was not looked on kindly by Croats. Yugoslavia was an idea that could only exist if the office of head of state was rotated in this way, and preventing the Croatian president from taking his seat after the prior Serbian president had completed his term in office effectively kicked off the entire period of "ethnic cleansing"
I read fragments from the book of Avro Manhatan-"The Vatican's genocide" about the usatsha and Rome politics in Balkans during WW2,I know that serbs also wasn't united, there were chetniks.I'm not accusing only one ethnic groupe.
I just cann't acceppt the western politic of infowar like it happened, for example, in August 2008 during the Georia-Ossetian conflict and double standarts.
You will get no disagreements with me on the national aspirations of the South Ossetians. One of the primary doctrines of the United Nations at its creation was the issue of self determination. There is no difference between the desire of the Kosavar Albanians to form a separate nation and that of the South Ossetians. There has to a consistancy when it comes to such situations, or the issue of self determination is useless.
Then again, the policies of the previous administration in the U.S. are really not the same as the new administration. This is always a problem here, because of the continual switching from one party to the other. Both have decidedly different ideas about these things.
I agree with you on this issue completely. I also agree with the Serbians in the northern part of Kosovo. If there are regions that are contiguous with the Republic of Serbia that have a large Serbian majority who wish to be part of Serbia, rather than Kosovo, this also should be respected.
If there is a large majority of non Georgians in South Ossetia who do not want to be part of Georgia, but to form their own nation, there is no difference between this and what the Kosovar Albanians wanted. But in the small area, north of the River Ibar the population is something like 95 percent Serbian. Clinging to ancient borders for some, but creating totally artificial nations for others is simply hypocritical, and North Kossovo, being largely Serb, with a clear geographical feature like a river defining a clear border makes the it perfectly reasonable for the Serbs of North Kosovo to have the right to decide they would rather be a part of Serbia than a part of Kosovo.
There was no consistant position in the western press with regard to this, because with regard to the situation in South Ossetia, I read in a number of western sources that it was the Georgians who attacked first, and that the Russians in Georgia simply took up defensive positions, and did not fire back at the Georgian troops, but simply took positions where they would not be harmed by Georgian fire. Then they took reasonable steps to get the Georgians out of South Ossetia. As soon as an agreement was brokered, Russia removed its troops and withdrew to a defensive buffer zone between Georgia and South Ossetia, and Georgia and Abkhazia. I think the Russia government has shown considerable restraint. But I expect that the Georgians will break the current agreement eventually.
I heard very early on in the western press that the Georgians launched an air attack on the capital city of South Ossetia. Tskhinvali, and that Russia responded to protect both South Ossetians and Russian populations in this country.
Also that it has been Georgia that has been continually violating agreements. So the infowar in the west is not all that one sided, regardless of the political positions taken by the previous administration, which is already being very vocal in attacking some of the policies of the new president here in overturning some of their most strongly held political positions with regard on many things.
I found out all of what I know about the Georgian attacks on South Ossetia from the western media, primarily because my ability to read Russian and South Ossetian is well, no where near as good as your English.
But I was made aware of both sides of the issues by the western press, and was able to draw my own conclusions this way. So the infowar in the western press is not completely one sided. The news media here provided a fairly balance picture of both sides of the issue, and while the previous presidential administration took a rather pro-Georgia position, the press was not very biased about it. Had it been, I dont think I could have formed the opinion I have of the situation.
I am rather completely supportive of the South Ossetian desire for their own national autonomy.
This bloody conflict happened because Saakashvivli is a really crazy nationalist.He felt support from US ex-administration and Nato, he was true democratic "ally", like Yuschenko in Ukraine.These organizations practically didn't do anything to prevent this terrible tragedy.
If other countries didn't supply his regime with weapons it could never happen. And they started to rearm georgian troops soon after the conflict.I don't see any difference between the nationalist Miloshevish or any other and Saakashvili.He's not at Hague court, he is still the president of Georgia...
I have felt the same about most of the "color" revolutions that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union. Except that those in several places have become more extreme than others.
I was never comfortable with Saakashvili, and I expected an anti Russian nationalism would be involved, because Russia relationship with Georgia goes back quite a long time. Most of the politicians in the states bordering Russia have used an anti Russian nationalism to cement their own bid for power.
You see this happening in the Ukraine, where pretty much a handful of politicians move in and out of office, with no real improvement in the situation in that nation.
Either he will not last very long, as other parties in Georgia are beginging to quesion his increasing the powers of the presidency, and he has offered to reduce them in a bid to keep power, but I anticipate that this will eventually blow up in another internal revolution. I do not suppose it will be much different in its anti Russia sentiment, but the change might be a better one.
Отправить комментарий