At the recently held History Fest, one of the panels discussed the "Final Report of the Independent International Commission for Researching the Suffering of Serbs in Sarajevo in the Period 1991-1995." years". Edin Omerčić, Merisa Karović Babić and Zilha Mastalić Košuta took part in the panel. Our portal transmits part of their presentations.
In this article, we present the presentation of Dr. Merise Karović Babić.
Almost simultaneously with the publication of the non-paper that considers the dissolution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the presentation of closing arguments in the Stanišić-Simatović case before the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Courts in The Hague, on April 13, 2021, the long-announced Final Report of the independent international commission was published for researching the suffering of Serbs in Sarajevo from 1991 to 1995. The report was completed in September 2020, but on April 13 it was publicly published in PDF format on the website of the Commission formed by the Government of Republika Srpska, so that, in the next two days after its appearance, the Report was removed from the said page. Written on 1250 pages of text, the Report explains the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian periods, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Second World War, until the 1990s. Therefore, it could be said that, with the exception of the ancient period and the medieval Bosnian state, the entire history of Bosnia and Herzegovina is covered by the Report. Since each of the mentioned periods requires a detailed interdisciplinary analysis of experts dealing with the mentioned fields, in this short review we will deal with the period of the first half of the 1990s, which should be, at least judging by the title, the main topic of the Report.
After finally reaching the period set as the time frame of the research (p. 516), the Report denies the responsibility of the VRS for the most serious crimes committed against civilians in Sarajevo, including the crime in Vase Miskina Street, Markale I and Markale II. From the perspective of "analysis of media content", the authors of the Report accuse "Western journalists" of participating in the "anti-Serbian campaign of demonization". (p. 857). Citing articles from the aforementioned newspapers, which condemn the siege of Sarajevo and the biggest crimes committed in the city, the report finds "rare exceptions" that are "alternative perspectives", and in the case of the massacre at Markale I on February 5, 1994 , give examples that "out of a total of 42 articles, only seven explicitly expressed doubt about the dominant version of events." This is how, for example, the report interprets Radovan Karadzic's published statement immediately after the massacre in Markale on February 5, 1994: "Mr. Karadzic claimed yesterday that the attack on the Sarajevo market was a 'staged hoax', stating that the corpses were people who died earlier, and plastic limbs were used to increase the number of victims." (p. 572).
The finding that it was about "plastic limbs", with which Karadžić, immediately after the massacre, tried to convince the world public that "imaginary victims" were placed in Markale, was also placed during the trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). As an "argument" for this thesis, Karadzic offered a video taken immediately after the massacre, on which you can see a leg prosthesis that belonged to one of the victims of the massacre, Camil Begić. As a Prosecution witness, in the trial against Radovan Karadžić, the son of Camil Begić appeared in court, who explained in detail the circumstances of his father's death, along with all the relevant documentation that confirms the said case. (ICTY, IT-95-5/18: Karadžić, Witness: Almir Begić, Cross examination by Mr. Karadžić, December 15 and 16, 2010; ICTY, Prosecution v. Karadžić, IT-95-5/18-T, paragraph 4230). After presenting all the material evidence related to the "disputed" leg prosthesis, the Council stated that Karadžić's claims were "completely unconvincing and inappropriate. (…) Furthermore, the Council, after re-examining the video recording made after the incident, rejected as unfounded the claim that the leg prosthesis was deliberately placed in different places in the market." (ICTY, Prosecution v. Karadžić, IT-95-5/18-T, para. 4230).
These crimes were the subject of very detailed analyzes before the Hague Tribunal, when, beyond any reasonable doubt, after the presentation of evidence by both the prosecution and the defense, as well as the testimony of witnesses and the prosecution and the defense in the Galić, Milošević, Karadžić, Mladić cases, it was established that the grenades fired from the territory under the control of the SRK. More specifically, after detailed deliberations, the Council, in the case of the massacre in Vase Miskina Street, concluded that the grenade was fired from the position of the SRK from the direction of Trebević (ICTY, Prosecution v. Mladić, par. 2079), in the case of Markal I, February 5, 1994 . from the direction of Mrković (ICTY, Prosecution v. Galić, First Instance Verdict, par. 494 and 496 and Second Instance Verdict, par. 335; Prosecution v. Karadžić, par. 4253), and in the case of Markal II from the direction of Trebević (ICTY, Prosecution v. Milošević Dragomir, First Instance Verdict, para. 724, and Second Instance Verdict, paras. 289, 291 and 335; Prosecution v. Karadžić, para. 4345, 4346).
However, the authors of the Report do not cite court judgments of the Hague Tribunal, except in a few cases (on p. 692, 695 ICTY judgments in the cases of Sefer Halilović and Radovan Karadžić are cited) because the stated conclusions do not support their pre-set theses, thus consciously ignoring the main postulates of scientific work, applying a selective approach to documents and historical sources. At the same time, the authors of the Report use only sources of knowledge and literature that support them, while skilfully bypassing the entire galaxy of documents that could in any way discredit their pre-set theses.
Throughout the Report, the tendency to show how "Muslim forces deliberately opened fire on Muslim civilians in order to create incidents for which they can blame the Serbs", (p. 482), i.e. that the non-existent "Muslim forces", under which they are probably meant the RBiH Army as "Islamic fundamentalists and terrorists", who self-shelled their own people with the aim of "obtaining the intervention of the West".
Citing numerous examples of denial of responsibility for the most serious crimes in Sarajevo, the authors deny the facts established by the court and return to the war propaganda from the first half of the 90s. years of the last century. We believe that the examples mentioned represent an insult to the dignity of the victims, killed and wounded in the mentioned massacres, as well as their family members, whose lives were forever changed and marked by these crimes.
In addition to Sarajevo, and all with the aim of shaking the current views on "demonizing the Serbs", the authors of the Report also engage in a whole series of other analyses, in order to offer a "different perspective", for example on the camps in Prijedor, in an effort to convince the readers that the picture of Fikret Alić, a camp inmate from Trnopolje, was only a "representative case of media distortion of facts and misuse of photographs".
For this purpose, the authors of the report claim that Fikret Alić was a "sick man", that the barbed wire was not barbed wire, but that it was just placed as it was, and that behind it was an "innocent mesh fence for sheep". For these claims, the authors found "their own" sources, citing the Archive of the Government of the Republic of Srpska (Questionnaire 2020), and the text published by a certain German journalist in Novo magazine in 1997, analyzing photographs taken by British and American journalists. five years earlier, ie at the end of July and beginning of August 1992. The barbed wire and the "Bosnian youth whose starved condition was emphasized by his sunken cheeks and prominent thighs" were maliciously depicted by Western journalists with the aim of demonizing the Serbs, accusing them of malicious spin against the Serbian people, this Report claims.
Finally, from page 657, the Report begins with the specific topic of research set out in the title, stating the number of around 3,000 Serbs who died in Sarajevo, without mentioning the identity of the victims. The first part of this chapter talks about the artillery-infantry attacks of the First Corps of the ARBiH on parts that were under the control of the SRK, and in that chapter the identity of 44 victims is stated. The second part of this chapter talks about Serbian victims during the siege of the city - and mentions the identity of 49 victims. By summing up the victims in the parts under the control of the SRK and the parts of the city that were under the control of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, we arrive at a total of 93 victims whose identities were published in the Report. This short section, which specifically refers to crimes against Serbs, contains only 71 pages of text. (pp. 657 – 728). In this part of the report, it is stated that in December 1994, the Sarajevo magazine Dani published an article that talked about the crimes in Kazan, and explained in detail the verdicts that were pronounced against 14 people for the crimes in this locality. The authors of the report qualified this critical review of journalists, judicial authorities and state institutions in the part of the city that was under siege with the following sentence: "The crimes committed against the Serbs in Sarajevo were public." (p. 693). The Report also states that "in December 1992, the first exhumation took place, and the human remains of 29 people were discovered in the Kazan mass grave". (p. 711). Based on the documentation that was available to us for research on the topic "Mass murders of civilians in Sarajevo during the siege of 1992-1995", we can state that none of the stated statements are correct. The on-site investigation at the site of the Kazani pit was carried out in the period from November 9 to 12, 1993, after which the burial of these victims was carried out on November 19, 1993 under the marking NN at the site of the Stadion cemetery. In 1994, the remains of two victims found in Kazan were exhumed and identified from this cemetery (Ranko Frankić and Branislav Radosavljević). After the exhumation at the Stadion cemetery in 1998, 11 victims from the locality of Kazan were identified: Nevenka (Spasoje) Bošković, Marko (Simo) Bošković, Dragomir (Mihajlo) Ćeranić, Mileva (Branko) Drašković, Duško (Vojo) Jovanović, Ana (Mihajlo) Lavriv, Vasilj (Stefan) Lavriv, Novka (Neđo) Lemez, Predrag (Momcilo) Shalipur, Ago (Lutvo) Šta and Stojan (Jefto) Žuža. At the site of the Kazani pit, exhumations were carried out on two more occasions (2000 and 2001), when the remains of two victims were found: Marina Komljenac (Ilija) and an unknown person. The search for the remains of Radoslav (Adam) Komljenac, Ergin (Nikol) Nikolić and Zoran (Dobrivoja) Vučurović is still ongoing. (see: Merisa Karović-Babić, 2014, 243-249). So, it is a total of 18 victims killed in the Kazan locality, among which 14 persons were of Serbian nationality, two persons were Ukrainian, one Bosniak and one unknown person.
The report did not even mention the crimes against Serb civilians who were killed as a result of shelling or infantry action around the city. For example, simultaneously with the investigation in Kazan, on November 9 and 10, as a result of the shelling of the Alipašino Polje and Otoka settlements, three massacres were committed, when 17 civilians were killed, including three victims of Serbian nationality. Although the names of those victims were also found on the previous lists of Serb victims in Sarajevo, without explaining the circumstances of their murder, this was not the case in this Report. (Regarding the preliminary lists of Serbian victims with the aim of equating Sarajevo and Srebrenica, see also several other examples, including the example of the Đorem family in: M. Karović-Babić, 2014, 249-250).
Then, in the sixth chapter entitled "Physical and psychological aspects of suffering", the Spanish Civil War, the genocide of Roma and Serbs in the NDH, the genocide in Cambodia, the genocide in Rwanda, and other topics that cannot be linked to the crimes in Sarajevo during the war (pp. 751-818). In the same chapter, smaller parts are dedicated to Sarajevo 1992-1993; Sarajevo in 1994-1995, and in Sarajevo after the Dayton Agreement (pp. 819-860).
In the end, we can state that the report was purposefully written in such a comprehensive, narrative-narrative style, with an insistence on marginal events, with the intention of avoiding essential questions specifically related to the topic raised in the title of the Report.
dr. Merisa Karović Babić
21.06.2021