The Media and Their Atrocities
Michael Parenti
For the better part of a decade the US public has
been bombarded with a media campaign to demonize the Serbian people
and their elected leaders. During that time, the US government
has pursued a goal of breaking up Yugoslavia into a cluster of
small, weak, dependent, free-market principalities. Yugoslavia
was the only country in Eastern Europe that would not dismantle
its welfare state and public sector economy. It was the only one
that did not beg for entry into NATO. It was-and what's left of
it, still is-charting an independent course not in keeping with
the New World Order.
Targeting the Serbs
Of the various Yugoslav peoples, the Serbs
were targeted for demonization because they were the largest nationality
and the one most opposed to the breakup of Yugoslavia. But what
of the atrocities they committed? All sides committed atrocities
in the fighting that has been encouraged by the Western powers
over the last decade, but the reporting has been consistently
one-sided. Grisly incidents of Croat and Muslim atrocities against
the Serbs rarely made it into the US press, and when they did
they were accorded only passing mention.[1]
Meanwhile, Serb atrocities were played up
and sometimes even fabricated, as we shall see. Recently, three
Croatian generals were indicted by the Hague War Crimes Tribunal
for the bombardment and deaths of Serbs in Krajina and elsewhere.
Where were the US television crews when these war crimes were
being committed? John Ranz, chair of Survivors of the Buchenwald
Concentration Camp, USA, asks: Where were the TV cameras when
hundreds of Serbs were slaughtered by Muslims near Srebrenica?[2]
The official line, faithfully parroted in the US media, is that
Bosnian Serb forces committed all the atrocities at Srebrenica.
Are we to trust US leaders and the corporate-owned
news media when they dish out atrocity stories? Recall the 500
premature babies whom Iraqi soldiers laughingly ripped from incubators
in Kuwait-a story repeated and believed until exposed as a total
fabrication years later. During the Bosnian war in 1993, the Serbs
were accused of pursuing an official policy of rape. "Go forth
and rape," a Bosnian Serb commander supposedly publicly instructed
his troops. The source of that story never could be traced. The
commander's name was never produced. As far as we know, no such
utterance was ever made. Even the New York Times belatedly ran
a tiny retraction, coyly allowing that, "[T]he existence of 'a
systematic rape policy' by the Serbs remains to be proved."[3]
Bosnian Serb forces supposedly raped anywhere
from 25,000 to 100,000 Muslim women, according to various stories.
The Bosnian Serb army numbered not more than 30,000 or so, many
of whom were involved in desperate military engagements. A representative
from Helsinki Watch noted that stories of massive Serbian rapes
originated with the Bosnian Muslim and Croatian governments and
had no credible supporting evidence. Common sense would dictate
that these stories be treated with the utmost skepticism-and not
be used as an excuse for an aggressive and punitive policy against
Yugoslavia.
The "mass rape" propaganda theme was resuscitated
in 1999 to justify the continued NATO slaughter of Yugoslavia.
A headline in the San Francisco Examiner (April 26, 1999) tells
us: “Serb Tactic Is Organized Rape, Kosovo Refugees Say.” No evidence
or testimony is given to support the charge of organized rape.
Only at the bottom of the story, in the nineteenth paragraph,
do we read that reports gathered by the Kosovo mission of the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe found no such
organized rape policy. The actual number of rapes were in the
dozens, "and not many dozens," according to the OSCE spokesperson.
This same story did note in passing that the UN War Crimes Tribunal
sentenced a Bosnian Croat military commander to ten years in prison
for failing to stop his troops from raping Muslim women in 1993-an
atrocity we heard little about when it was happening.
A few-dozen rapes is a few-dozen too many.
But can it serve as one of the justifications for a massive war?
If Mr. Clinton wanted to stop rapes, he could have begun a little
closer to home in Washington DC, where dozens of rapes occur every
month. Indeed, he might be able to alert us to how women are sexually
mistreated on Capitol Hill and in the White House itself.
Endnotes
1.For instance, Bonner, Raymond. (1999). "War crimes panel finds
Croat troops 'cleansed' the Serbs." New York Times, March 21,
a revealing report that has been ignored in the relentless propaganda
campaign against the Serbs. 2. John Ranz in his paid advertisement
in the New York Times, April 29, 1993.
3. Anonymous (1993). "Correction: Report on rape in Bosnia." New
York Times, October 23.
this article copyright 2000 Michael Parenti
You Are Being Lied To copyright 2001
The Disinformation Company, Ltd.
