(Updated information below.)
So who COUNTED the votes in Serbia?
We may never know for sure.
Let’s begin by looking at how much effort the US and the EU have put into manipulating the outcome of the recent election in Serbia:
Let me start by saying that I don’t care one whit who wins Serbia’s election for president. I am an American and the US is my country, not Serbia. As far as I am concerned, Serbian citizens have as much right to elect “a savior” or “an idiot” as we Americans do (and will do in the near future), and no other country (or countries) calling themselves “progressive democracies” have any right whatever to interfere in their election process.
However, this is NOT what is happening with Serbia. Western leaders, impatient with the Serbian election process, are acting like a bunch of bullies by trying to force Serbia’s citizens into electing the West’s “chosen one” candidate, Boris Tadic, and unfortunately, the Western media (both print and internet) are cooperating in this extortion.
Last week, in the Brussels Journal , the EU went after Eurovision song winner Marija Serifovic for singing & speaking at a rally for Tadic’s rival, Nikolic:
“the singer now appears to support Tomislav Nikolic, the eurosceptic nationalist candidate of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), who won the first round of the Serbian presidential elections last Sunday (20 January). Ms Serifovic participated in rallies organised by Mr Nikolic, including one in December in the Serbian town of Kragujevac and one on 15 January in Belgrade, singing her winning song, “Molitva” (Prayer).”[SerbBlog note: Marija Serifovic is also an ethnic Roma, AKA “Gypsy”, so the title “nationalist” gets put in the proper context here. The EU wants to punish Serifovic for simply supporting a candidate who is not “pro-EU”.]
Then consider the following statements & news stories in recent days on Serbia’s hot-button issue “Kosovo”:
“Senior western diplomats say the precise timing now (on Kosovo’s independence declaration) depends on whether the next Serbian president is Boris Tadic, the pro-western liberal incumbent, or Tomislav Nikolic, a pro-Russian nationalist…..If Nikolic, the conservative, gets elected, then no one in Europe will see any benefit in waiting any longer with the independence declaration….If Mr Tadic returns to power, however, diplomats say EU states would see merit in delaying Kosovo’s independence by a few weeks, seeking to flesh out an agreement on closer EU-Serbian relations”
“Kosovo will declare independence from Serbia with Western backing the weekend after the February 3 Serbian presidential election if the nationalist candidate (Nikolic) wins, political sources said on Wednesday. “If (Tomislav) Nikolic wins, it’s the 9th or 10th,” one of the sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity….If pro-Western incumbent Boris Tadic wins the closely-fought race, Kosovo Albanians would be expected to wait until the following weekend, and possibly until after a meeting of European Union foreign ministers on February 18, the source said. The West is “pushing for February,” the source added. The United States and major EU powers are trying to “coordinate” a declaration of independence by the Albanian majority province after almost two years of negotiations with Serbia ended in failure in December.”
I like that last line in the Reuters story — “after almost two years of negotiations with Serbia failed”. To anyone who has been following this story for the last “two years”, there were absolutely NO “negotiations” between Serbia and the Albanians on Kosovo. Both Condoleeza Rice and President Bush had already released statements months before these “negotiations” began, saying “Kosovo will become independent”, and they simply continued that same drumbeat through out the sham meetings between Serbia and the Kosovo Albanians . What that created was a sad display with Serbia on one side of the table, turning itself inside out to give the Albanians anything they wanted short of handing over their sovereign Serbian territory, and the Kosovo Albanians on the other side of the table, (with their US and EU backing) basically “buffing their nails” until the so-called “negotiations” were over, because the Albanians knew that the West had already committed to legitimize the theft of Kosovo. So why bother to even call it negotiations when the US & EU had already decided the outcome, beforehand? So that the uninformed, stupid or the corrupt, could believe and promote our US & EU governments’ lies when they say , “We tried, it failed, and then we had to do something”.
Now if the sham negotiations weren’t bad enough, the West isn’t even bothering to hide their extortion tactics anymore in the Serbian presidential elections. The message to Serbia’s citizens is clear, “Elect Nikolic and we will amputate Kosovo with a meat-ax soon, you will get no anesthetic and we will let the Albanians kill as many Kosovo Serbs as they want (and then blame it on you). Or elect “our man” Tadic and we might (if we feel like it) give you a couple of aspirin for the pain of amputating Kosovo from you and let a few more Serbs live.” It’s a “lose-lose” proposition for Serbia, as anyone can see — just as it is designed to be.
However, since the demise of Milosevic, all that Western intimidation of Serbia seems to have ever done is to drive Serbia closer to Russia. Russia’s support of Serbia in the UN Security Council on the Kosovo issue, and the Russian Gasprom deal signed with Serbia last week (which sunk the EU/US Nabucco plan and likely cost US State Department #3 man, Nicholas Burns, his job) has done more for Serbia than Western promises (and bombing) have done in the last 17 years. Combine this with the Serbian concept of “inat” (stubborn defiance in the face of bullies) and this all works in Nikolic’s favor, regardless of whether Nikolic is worth a damn or not.
But on the other hand, hope springs eternal in the human breast. For the life of them, Serbs still cannot understand why the US & EU would wish to continue punishing them and stealing their land. Serbs are Christians who speak multiple European languages and their kids want the same security & toys that other normal European kids have — and so do their parents. Based on this commonality, some Serbs believe that this torture has to stop soon — perhaps if they jump through just one more humiliating hoop then the West will see them for who they really are, perhaps if they elect just one more “pro-Western leader” then the West will recognize that Serbs ARE Europeans. This slim hope (or “wishful thinking”, depending on who you talk to) of one day maybe joining that EU “fun & goodies fraternity”, is all that Boris Tadic has to offer them. And the West knows this — which is why they had to throw in the ham-handed “club them if they don’t vote for Tadic” pressure to make the alternative even less attractive.
The big question that remains to be answered about this Western intimidation of Serbian voters to vote for Tadic in the upcoming run-off, is: “Will it work? Or will it backfire?”
Ultimately, Serbian citizens can (and should) be the ONLY ones to answer that, when they vote in the run-off election on February 3rd. It’s their fate to decide, not ours.
“It’s their fate to decide, not ours.”
Would that this were so!
According to news reports, this is what happened:
Program Director of the election monitoring agency Center for Free Elections and Democracy (CESID) Marko Blagojevic stated tonight that, based on 100 percent of the processed sample, it can be assessed that voters in Serbia entrusted Boris Tadic with another term in the office. Blagojevic stated that Tadic won some 2.6 % votes more than his rival Tomislav Nikolic and that difference is between 120.000 and 130.000 votes. Blagojevic announced that the turn-out was about 67% in the second round of presidential elections, which means some 4.5 million voters. Earlier, Executive Director of the CESID Zoran Lucic told the press conference that it can be stated that Tadic is the President of Serbia considering the big difference in the number of votes.
Radio Serbia has more.
Here’s the bottom line:
How can we possibly trust the outcome of a manipulated election?
The problem is that this election is already tainted. Once it has become so obvious that the US and the EU have an intense, vested interest in subverting an election in Serbia, how are we supposed to believe these US and EU politicians and “international observers” when they proclaim that this election is legitimate and clean?
From what was indicated by various interviews, polls, and so forth, before the runoff election, it was not at all clear that a majority of Serbs would have been willing to follow Tadic in taking the EU route.
EU membership is not worth the price
Take a good look at what’s happened in the EU lately. What with the Lisbon treaty chicanery, the bureaucratic strangulation, and the persistent sellout to jihadism, the EU is clearly turning into an ugly dictatorship itself. Maybe all of the noise that Western politicians and journalists make about Vladimir Putin supposedly being a “dictator” is only a distraction from the very real dictatorship that is taking shape in the EU.
I should be accustomed to this by now…
Like M.V. Pejakovich, I, 1389, am a US citizen, and I find it disgraceful that my own country’s government is manipulating an election somewhere else. It would be wrong no matter what the motives, but in this case, our own politicians are corrupt and they want to sell out the Balkans to petrodollar interests. It’s disgusting. But I suppose I ought to be used to it by now, considering how much vote fraud goes on in the US.
Yes, it’s very sad indeed. And although the decision is not mine to make, I would be sorry to see any more countries fall under the sway of the EU or of any organization like it.
Update:
Severing of Kosovo Province Enters the Final Stage with Boris Gump Reelected
Together with ecstatic long-winded congratulatory messages from the U.S. State Department, Javier Solana and the EU-presiding Slovenia to Boris Tadic and the “Serbian people”, after the Yellow leader barely squeezed through to get reelected as Serbian president, Serbia has received another, much more sincere, sobering message the very next day: that the illegal and unlawful EU mission to southern Serbian province of Kosovo-Metohija has been approved by the EU.
One doesn’t really need to read between the lines to realize Western leaders have breathed a huge sigh of relief certainly not because they were concerned for Serbia’s wellbeing, but simply because they understand Tadic’s razor-edge victory as a green light to proceed with the final stage of their plan of amputating Kosovo province from the rest of Serbia.
According to Tanjug, which cites its sources within the EU in Brussels, the European Union adopted on Monday, in an “urgent procedure”, a document dubbed “Joint Action” on the “legal and financial bases for sending a EU mission” to Kosovo and Metohija. Since the procedure was so urgent, one has to wonder if the EU heads were only waiting for their own candidate for Serbian presidency to declare victory, eager to push the approval of the Ahtisaari-planned EU mission through on the very same day.
Serbian news agency reports that only “a single formal step remains” until the EU mission is sent to Kosovo — a decision by the Council of Ministers on the adoption of the “Operative Plan” which gives the go-ahead for sending the mission. The mission would be dispatched only a day after the “Operative Plan” is adopted.
All this despite Serbian government’s firm opposition to sending the EU mission without an adequate UN Security Council decision, since on its own, the mission has no legal basis and it directly represents the first step of the implementation of rejected Ahtisaari plan on “supervised independence” of southern Serbian province.
But the EU now believes it doesn’t need a UN SC approval, or the approval of the Serbian government, since the man who refused to put his signature on a document that articulated unambiguous opposition to the EU mission being sent to Kosovo, offered to him by Prime Minister Kostunica in return for endorsement for the second round of elections, has been reelected anyway. And if Serbian president has no objections to the EU mission being sent to the territory of the country he’s sworn to protect, they figure that there are no obstacles to sending the mission.
“Serbian People” or Hungarian, Croat, Albanian and Muslim Citizens of Serbia?
The showering praises and gushing congratulatory messages that have poured from Washington, Brussels and Ljubljana when it was announced Tadic has managed to scrape a victory in Serbian presidential elections inevitably speak of “Serbian people” who have “chosen the European integrations” by giving their votes to Tadic.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told reporters he had congratulated Boris Tadic and “Serbian people” on Tadic’s reelection, while Slovenians eulogized to the “Serbian people who have confirmed their support for democratic and European path of their homeland.” Although West’s collective desire to sell the whole deal as a Serbian choice is understandable, being that they desperately need to portray Tadic’s reelection as Serbian consent to the loss of Kosovo-Metohija province, the fact remains that Tadic’s narrow victory was neither a referendum on letting go of 15% of Serbia’s historic territory, nor the expression of the wish of predominantly Serbian nationals.
Understandably, all the praises ignore the fact that Tadic has barely managed to win by less than half percent above the necessary 50%, or 2.6 percentage points more than Tomislav Nikolic, which translates to a difference of around 100,000 votes between the two candidates. More importantly, they willfully ignore Serbia’s widely diverse, multi-ethnic society in which the sizable national minorities, such as Vojvodina Hungarians and Croats, as well as Presevo Valley Albanians and Raska (Sandzak) region Muslims (who call themselves “Bosniaks”) have voted in droves during the election runoffs, with the single goal: to prevent Tomislav Nikolic from winning.
One only needs to take a look at votes cast during the first round of elections, held on January 20, to find that the Hungarian representative, Ishtvan Pastor of Hungarian Coalition party in Vojvodina, was given almost all the votes that represent a difference between Tadic and Nikolic: 93,039 votes from Serbia’s ethnic Hungarians. At the same time, an equally marginal figure, Cedomir Jovanovic, backed by the Serbia’s Albanians and other Muslims as the only Serbian politician who supports severing of Kosovo-Metohija province, gained 219,689 votes two weeks prior to Tadic’s miserable victory. Everyone who knows the first thing about Cheda the Junkie and LSD LDP fanaticism knows fully well that they would rather pour gasoline over their heads and get collectively incinerated than see Tomislav Nikolic anywhere near a presidential office.
According to the local news sources, large communities of Hungarians and Croats populating mainly north of Serbia, have been pouring into the polling stations on Sunday, February 3, with military discipline, not so much to show support for Tadic, as to make sure Nikolic gets defeated. Some local TV stations have reported that “every single Hungarian in Vojvodina” voted against Tomislav Nikolic on February 3.
Meanwhile, according to Belgrade daily Glas Javnosti, British ambassador to Serbia Stephen Wordsworth allowed himself a luxury to publicly call the Albanians and other Muslims from Presevo Valley and Raska region to step up to the plate and cast their votes in order to ensure Nikolic loses the presidential bid. Readily responding, two Muslim parties from the Raska region have bragged about their help in defeating Nikolic on the very same day, announcing in the Serbian media that all the Raska Muslims “showed unity” by unanimously voting for Tadic.
British government has also financed CESID, a parallel structure to Serbia’s RIK (Republic’s Electoral Commission) to “count” the votes in the election runoff, and Stephen Wordsworth, the uncrowned king of cynicism, was among the first to congratulate “Serbian people” on the election results.
No Confusion in Kosovo-Metohija: Nikolic Wins Resounding 73.66% of Votes
How the actual Serbs voted is most obvious in the province of Kosovo-Metohija, where Albanians pretended no election whatsoever is taking place, so none of them took part, and where Tomislav Nikolic defeated Tadic with resounding 73.66% of votes won. Therefore, if the presidential elections in Serbia were a kind of “referendum” on the fate of Kosovo-Metohija province, Kosovo residents, whose opinion should matter far more than that of Novi Sad Hungarians, have stated their view in crystal-clear terms.
Crude EU Meddling in Serbia Elections
Right after the first round of elections, when Tomislav Nikolic surged to the top with 40% of votes won among 9 candidates, it became clear that “Serbian people” are determined to vote Boris Gump out of the office and replace him with the seasoned politician who places national interests above his personal or party-interests, and who has no intention to follow the foreign diktat, or tolerate West’s extortions, blackmails and rotten carrots.
Three days later, Reuters reporter Ellie Tzortzi noted the patently obvious EU interference in Serbian presidential elections, warning that “the EU must be wary of charges it is meddling to help pro-Western President Boris Tadic defeat nationalist Tomislav Nikolic, just as Serbia’s breakaway Kosovo province prepares to declare independence with the EU’s blessing.”
In order to boost Tadic’s prospects of defeating the challenger, the EU was prepared to offer Serbia the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA)—considered the very doorstep to the full EU membership—on January 28, only few days before the scheduled runoff. Tzortzi quoted Danish Prime Minister as saying “it would be a good idea” to sign a formal agreement “before the second round of the Serbian presidential election to demonstrate the positive EU attitude,” and briefly mentions that such opinion was shared by all representatives of the EU-member states, including the EU leadership, except for Netherlands and Belgium.
When that failed, the EU heads devised a non-SAA “political agreement”, which is quite unique in the sense that no other country wishing to join the union was ever proposed anything similar and, more importantly, which offers no territorial guarantees to Serbia but, through some cosmetic, superficial benefits, such as relaxed visa regimes and trade conditions, intends to anesthetize the Serbs in order to sever their Kosovo province with less noise, mess and fuss. They announced this “offer” few days before the February 3 election runoffs, as something that will be available to Serbia for signing on February 7.
But the rotten carrot and British ambassador’s crude interventions in the midst of Serbian election were far from being the only ways the Western officials have been influencing the outcome of the presidential elections in Serbia. As Neil Clark aptly noted, “the US and the EU have made […] quite clear […] the consequences which would follow if the Serbs decided to elect the Radical Party’s Tomislav Nikolic […], a man they describe as “ultra nationalist”, as their country’s new President this weekend. If Serbia does not vote the ‘right way’, the country faces ‘isolation’ and will be treated as ‘the Belarus of Europe’, western officials have warned”.
Foreign-Owned Media in Serbia Unleash Ferocious Pro-Tadic, Anti-Nikolic Campaign
Serbian media, almost entirely owned by the German, British and American corporations, has been running a similar pro-Tadic, anti-Nikolic campaign throughout, reaching the fever-pitch after the first round of elections. Serbian citizens were exposed to toxic daily fumes generated by the numerous op-eds, articles and “analysis” extolling the virtues of joining the EU, while at the same time exploiting the fears of “going back into the 1990s” — the poverty, isolation and wars, even suggesting the possibility of economic sanctions and another round of NATO bombardment (?!). The choice, as presented by the Yellow party politicians and Soros-owned media in Serbia was clear: either the bright and sunny future in the European Utopia (Boris Tadic), or return to the dark and gloomy hellhole from the time of bruising sanctions, Western aggression and merciless punishment (Tomislav Nikolic).
Apart from the unrelenting media campaign almost without exception drumming up Tadic as the only acceptable candidate, the Yellow camp showed they are not above the basest, sleaziest tricks to help them stay in power.
Yellow Camp’s Sleaze
One of the slimiest moves of Tadic’s supporters was to invent the alleged “endorsement” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as if he personally favors Tadic over Nikolic. Even though Russian leadership, in stark contrast to the Western officials, has demonstrated an admirable level of chivalry and non-interference in staying neutral all the way and allowing citizens of Serbia to vote according to their conscious, Tadic’s team understood fully well they urgently need every inch of support they can pry, so they brazenly manufactured Putin’s support.
Being that Kremlin office takes care of even the small details and niceties such as expressions of condolences, presidential birthdays, congratulatory messages and similar, and that Tadic’s birthday happens to fall on January 15, Tadic has once again received a birthday card from President Putin’s office, just like the year before and the one before that and every year since he became Serbian president in 2004. But, unlike ever before, this time around the entirely innocent, non-committal wish for a happy birthday that coincided with the election in Serbia, was fervently publicized and advertised throughout Serbia, as Putin’s personal endorsement of Boris Tadic in the presidential elections.
According to some reports, Tadic has fought tooth-and-nail to squeeze into the Serbian government delegation on the occasion of signing the agreement with Russian energy giant, Gazprom. Such an occasion, although immensely important for Serbian state, has in no way necessitated the presence of Boris Tadic, being that it was the deal worked out by the Serbian government and Prime Minister Kostunica and that members of Tadic’s party within the government were expressly against the agreement, almost ruining the whole deal if it wasn’t for direct intervention of the Serbian Premier. But, nevertheless, using and abusing every opportunity for catching some limelight and hijacking some of the credit for any positive development was a primal urge, capable of overriding any sense of common decency.
A Wretched Victory No One Would Wish
Add to all that a relentless smear campaign against Tomislav Nikolic (charged of using services of an American PR agency to “brush-up” his public appearances, a malicious lie that was quickly denied by the agency cited; accused of planning to assign a prime ministerial post to Vojislav Seselj, rotting in the Hague prison for five years while awaiting his “trial” for politically incorrect opinions and verbal offenses to start, etc.), the reports of Tadic’s supporters visiting Serbian voters in person, door-to-door, and offering paychecks in return for votes given to Tadic and payment of utility bills, or the delivery of insulting hand-out packages of flower, sugar and cooking oil given by the Yellows to the poor and disillusioned voters on the eve of the runoffs, and still, despite everything, Boris Gump has barely managed to scrape measly half percent above the margin to get reelected.
Apart from being overwhelmingly suspicious and quite questionable, Boris Tadic’s “victory” is probably the saddest, most pathetic and morally wretched feat no decent man would ever wish for himself. For who could possibly rejoice and celebrate the victory of a man widely expected to assist in cheerful dismemberment of a state he is supposed to serve and protect?
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Oppose Fascist Rock Star’s US Tour with the Truth - Part 2
by Jared Israel
Member, International Commission on Jasenovac
Editor, Emperor’s Clothes
[Nov. 6, 2007]
In Part 1 of this series, I charged that in 1991, the New York Times, blazing a trail for the rest of the Western media, completely revised its account of the Holocaust in Croatia.
Before 1991, the Times reported that the Croatian Ustashe (clerical-fascists) murdered some 800,000 people, Serbs, Jews, and Roma, as well as antifascists of all backgrounds, in the Jasenovac death camp complex.
After 1991, the Times and other media reported that some “tens of thousands” (or sometimes 80,000, or 85,000) were killed. A 90% cut. Enough to make a Holocaust denier green with envy.
At the same time, the Times radically altered its perspective.
Before 1991, the murders were described as being caused by fascism. After 1991, they were described as being caused by fascism and ‘ethnic enmity,’ as if genocidal hatred of Serbs, Jews, and Roma was the fault of both sides - the Serbs, Jews and Roma, as well as those that hated them. This supposed ‘ethnic enmity,’ along with a supposed desire of Yugoslav Communist leaders to (as the Times put it) “demonize” fascism, was now presented as explaining a supposedly long-term dispute over the victim count.
Thus the Times not only drastically minimized the extent of Ustasha crimes, but it also lied about the numbers dispute. Lied because prior to 1991 it was the Times itself that had publicized the figure of 800,000 victims, which the Times itself was now denying.
I have made a most serious accusation. Here is the evidence.
Before 1991: The Times reports 800,000 victims
First, here are the relevant parts of New York Times articles that mentioned Jasenovac before 1991.
July 12, 1948: The Times referred to Jasenovac for the first time while describing Yugoslavia’s arrest of some agents of the defeated Croatian Ustashe:
“A third [arrested Ustasha - J.I.] was Ljubo Milosh, described as commander of the Ustashi concentration camp at Jasenica [Jasenovac - J.I.], where more than 800,000 persons perished during the war.”
(My emphasis - J.I.) [10]
May 20, 1961: Covering the trial of Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann, the Times reported the testimony of Alexander Arnon, described as “wartime secretary of the Jewish Community in Zagreb”:
“Mr. Arnon said Croatian Fascists ran most of the concentration camps in Croatia and killed ‘hundreds of thousands’ of Serbian gentiles. In Jasenovac alone, 600,000 persons, including 2,000 Jews, were killed, he said.”
(My emphasis - J.I.)[11]
Mr. Arnon’s reported use of the phrase “Jasenovac alone” makes sense because Jasenovac was the name of a complex of Croatian death camps and also of the biggest site in the complex. So, Arnon was indicating that significantly more than 600,000 people were murdered in Croatian death camps as a whole.
October 1, 1972: In an article on the Yugoslav government’s response to terrorist attacks by Croatian Ustasha exiles, the Times again stated that 800,000 people were murdered in Jasenovac. This article is most helpful in understanding the Holocaust in Croatia, how it was dealt with in Communist Yugoslavia, and how the Times has, since 1991, misinformed readers.
Emperor’s Clothes has transcribed the first six paragraphs and three later paragraphs from the article. Here are the first six:
[Excerpt from 1972 New York Times starts here]
“Amid the dismal swamplands at Jasenovac, a small town southeast of the Croatian city of Zagreb a graceful concrete monument suggestive of hands raised in an appeal for mercy looks out over grass-covered mounds that neatly conceal the remains of one of the death camps of World War II.
The Jasenovac camp was operated by the Ustashi, the Fascist movement that gained power in Croatia in 1941 through collaboration with German and Italian invaders of Yugoslavia.
As many as 800,000 people - mainly Serbs, Jews and gypsies but also Croatian and other opponents of the Ustashi - are believed to have been shot, hanged clubbed to death or drowned in the nearby Sava River during the war years before the Ustashi fled from advancing Yugoslav and Soviet troops.
The transformation of the Jasenovac death camp into a memorial park, with only a small museum to give visitors some insight into the camp’s grim history, seems to symbolize an effort by the postwar Yugoslav authorities to let the wounds of wartime fratricide and atrocities heal for the sake of a united country.
Over the years, the Ustasha terrorism began to fade from memory. To avoid stirring up old resentments, the Yugoslav authorities discouraged publication of explicit writings and photographs about the atrocities. Only a few weeks ago, a court ban was imposed on a book that dealt with the Jasenovac camp.
Although the Ustashi are in exile and their young recruits have carried out occasional acts of terrorism against Yugoslav diplomats and officials abroad, the Belgrade authorities have refrained from all-out counter-attack, for they are apprehensive of offending the four and a half million people of Croatia and reluctant to risk opening old wounds between the Serbs and Croats.”
(My emphasis - J.I.) [12]
[Excerpt from 1972 New York Times ends here]
To summarize the key points:
a - The Ustashe murdered 800,000 at Jasenovac;
b - Yugoslav Communist leaders tried to suppress discussion of Jasenovac, “discourag[ing] publication of… photographs about the atrocities” and banning books;
c - Why the repression? The leaders feared discussion might “reopen old wounds”; also they feared a violent reaction from Croats, who were pro-Ustashe;
d - Even when the Ustashe, working from outside Yugoslavia, escalated their terrorist attacks, the Yugoslav government continued its policy of preventing a political counter-attack. For example, they continued banning books on Jasenovac.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was when:
“three Croatian émigrés hijacked a Scandinavian Airlines System plan Sept 15 [1972 - J.I.] and forced Sweden to release six Croatians imprisoned for terrorist attacks on Yugoslav diplomats.”[13]
In response, the Communists finally began publicly attacking the Ustashe.
What line did they take? The Times quotes the following from an editorial piece, written by a New York-based Yugoslav reporter and published in Politika, the leading Yugoslav daily, criticizing U.S. coverage of the Ustasha terror:
“For American readers and listeners, there was not a word that the Ustashi were on the side of Hitler and Mussolini, that they formally declared war against the United States, that they murdered Jews - an acute issue here [i.e., in New York City - J.I.] - and that they are sworn enemies of the concept of Western democracy.” [14]
Notice that in describing what the America media was leaving out, Politika left out the Serbian victims of genocide (and the Roma/Sinti victims as well).
This was quite an omission. To give you a sense of the scale of the genocide in fascist Croatia, here is an excerpt from a piece the New York Times published in Oct. 1941, five months after the invading Nazis installed the Ustashe clerical-fascists in power:
[Excerpt from “Massacres Laid to Croat[ian] Ustashi” starts here]
“The Croatian revolutionary Ustashi have killed between 300,000 and 340,000 Serbs and pro-Yugoslav Croats since last May [i.e., tens of thousands a month! - J.I.], according to figures compiled by intelligence experts from agents operating in Croatia and Bosnia and released to this correspondent here today.
While some of the executions have been carried out by German Elite Guard units, the Gestapo and regular German Army officers and by Italians in Western Croatia, the bulk of the killings have been done by the Ustashi, according to this report.” [15]
[Excerpt from “Massacres Laid to Croat[ian] Ustashi” ends here]
300,000 to 340,000 Serbs (and pro-Yugoslav Croats) killed between May and October of 1941. 60,000 to 68,000 Serbs a month.
Here is a final excerpt from the 1972 Times article. It is most revealing:
“One result of the anti-Ustashi campaign here [in Yugoslavia - J.I.] since the hijacking is that even schoolchildren in Belgrade, who had not heard of the Ustashi, are beginning to raise questions and are learning of the torments inflicted by Yugoslavs on Yugoslavs during the war.”
(My emphasis - J.I.) [16]
So, while Belgrade school children were learning for the first time that the Ustashe had existed, it was only if and when they “[began] to raise questions” that they also learned what the Ustashe had done during the war.
The Communists were (finally) publicly attacking the Ustashe for supporting Nazi Germany, for opposing democracy, for killing Jews, and for current acts of terror - but not for their genocide against Serbs and Roma, hence the children’s need to “raise questions.”
Consider the effect of this policy of suppressing discussion, both on Croats and on the main surviving victim population, the Serbs.
Communist Yugoslavia declared that most Croats had opposed the Ustashe. But this was manifestly untrue. How could the Ustashe, a tiny group of exiles, have returned to Croatia in April, 1941, and immediately launched a campaign of mass murder against ‘foreign elements,’ meaning Serbs, Jews and Roma - how could they have done this in the face of opposition from both ‘foreign elements’ and most ethnic Croats? They needed massive support from Croats from the start, which in turn required that ordinary Croats were already indoctrinated in the basics of Ustasha ideology: hatred of ‘foreign elements’ and Catholic fanaticism.
Looked at in one way, the Communist-perpetrated myth of Croatian antifascism was of great practical use to Croatia, since it allowed Croats to hold onto the vast properties stolen from murdered Serbs, Jews and Roma, rather than losing it and paying restitution to boot.[17] It allowed the perhaps tens of thousand of Croats who had committed overt fascist-criminal acts, and the much larger number who had in various ways supported those acts, to escape unscathed. It allowed the Catholic church, “many” of whose priests had, as the Encyclopedia of the Holocauststates, directly participated in the killing, to mainly escape punishment.
Looked at in another way, this was a terrible abuse of Croatian children, who were therefore raised in a double-talk fascist society, whose pro-Ustasha sub-culture thrived beneath a veneer of Communist rhetoric. There were things you did not - could not - for now - say in public, but you were of course to believe them and act on them as soon and as much as possible, things about the need to purify Croatia from ‘foreign elements,’whose presence polluted the Croatian national being.
This policy rewarded the behavior of the chameleon, as exemplified by current Croatian Stjepan Mesic, who boasted in a videotaped speech, delivered around 1992, apparently to the Croatian community in Australia, that the great strength of Croatia was its ability to deceive:
“‘You see, in the Second World War, the Croats won twice and we have no reason to apologise to anyone. What they ask of the Croats the whole time, ‘Go kneel in Jasenovac, kneel here…’ We don’t have to kneel in front of anyone for anything! We won twice and all the others only once. We won on 10 April [1941 - J.I.] when the Axis Powers recognized Croatia as a state and we won because we sat after the war, again with the winners, at the winning table.’” [18]
This same glib doubletalk is manifested today in the claim, made in tones of outraged dignity, by Croatian organizations in the US and Canada, and by Marko Perkovic Thompson himself, that the Thompson band is not fascist. How dare anyone say such a thing!
And consider the effect on the surviving victims - mainly Serbs, since all but a few Roma and Jews had been killed. If they wanted a Yugoslavia, which they did, they had to pay with a terrible silence, a silence enforced by the state. Even their children must not be told what had happened to perhaps a million of their relatives.
It is a grim irony that, during most of the existence of Communist Yugoslavia - with the exception of a few years immediately after World War II, when there were some trials of prominent Ustashe - the officially approved slogan of ‘brotherhood and unity’ meant in practice toleration of clerical-fascist beliefs and freedom for many clerical-fascists criminals in the republics of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
October 7, 1984: There was no mention of Jasenovac from 1972 until 1984, when, in a piece discussing a proposed but much-postponed trip to Croatia by the pope, the Times wrote:
“Another question is whether the Pope will visit the site of the Jasenovac concentration camp, 60 miles southeast of Zagreb. Among the displays at a museum on the site is a photograph of Cardinal Stepinac being received by leaders of the Ustachi, the Croatian collaborators of the Nazis and Italian Fascists.” [19]
Now we come to the watershed year: 1991.
1991: The Times invents a kinder Jasenovac
March 4, 1991: With Croatia on the verge of secession, the Times wrote about Jasenovac for the first time in seven years:
“The enmity between Serbs and Croats, who make up the largest of Yugoslavia’s six republics, has deep roots. About 30 miles from Pakrac, at the Jasenovac concentration camp, tens of thousands of Serbs, gypsies and Jews were killed when it was run by the fascist puppet government of Croatia during World War II.”
(My emphasis - J.I.) [20]
From a Ustasha death machine that killed “as many as 800,000 people” (see N.Y. Times, 1972), Jasenovac was now, somehow, a consequence of ethnic “enmity” (suggesting fault on both sides) where “tens of thousands…were killed.” An ugly place, but not part of the organized and systematic machinery of genocide, known as the Holocaust.
With few exceptions, throughout the 1990s and until now, Times articles have either bluntly stated that “tens of thousands” (or 80-85,000) died; or, alternatively, they have stated that the casualty figures are disputed, with the correct figures being somewhere in the “tens of thousands” (or 80-85,000).
May 19, 1996: Chris Hedges of the Times reported that:
“[Croatia’s then-reigning] President Tudjman, seeking to defuse criticism of the wartime [Ustasha] government, says 28,000 people were killed at Jasenovac. [Late Yugoslav Communist president] Tito, eager to demonize his fascist rivals, said 700,000 people died. Both figures are dismissed as unrealistic by independent scholars in the United States, who estimate that about 80,000 people were killed here.”
(Bracketed text is mine - J.I.) [21]
A few points.
First, the above is an early example of the ‘disputed-figures’ approach. As you can see, it renders the Times‘ desired figure - 80,000 - both more believable and also easier for readers to remember by associating it in our minds with a supposed dispute. (We pay more attention when there is a dispute.) So the ‘disputed figures’ approach is a learning aid.
It also enhances the Times‘ already-existing aura of impartiality, since the writer is championing supposedly honest mediation against supposed eternally feuding Balkans factions.
For Hedges, the honest mediators are some “independent scholars in the United States.”
It is a great story line, but here’s the rub: In order to mediate a real struggle, the mediators must exist. Searching in both the Lexis-Nexis and the New York Times archives, I found that no New York Times article ever identified Hedges’ “independent scholars.” Are they so independent they have no names? Are they living incognito, perhaps wanted for a felony? Did the Times interview them in the realm of Pure Spirit?
Since I can see no reason for not identifying American scholars - we are not talking about Salman Rushdie here - and since, given the importance of the question of whether some hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Roma were or were not murdered, I can see every reason for identifying the supposed scholars - I can only conclude that said scholars were imaginary.
Second, this made me wonder, apropos the claim that imaginary scholars had rejected both sides in the supposed dispute over numbers, ‘Do imaginary scholars have the right to reject things?’ But then I answered myself: ‘Why not, just as long as the things they are rejecting are also nonexistent.’
Which was definitely the case in this instance. Because there never was a dispute over numbers between Franjo Tudjman, on the one side, and former Yugoslav communist leader Tito, on the other.
Because just as before 1991 it was the New York Times that informed the world that “as many as 800,000 people” were murdered in Jasenovac, so the Times had also reported that Yugoslav Communist leaders banned books and discouraged pictures dealing with Jasenovac.
In other words, the two sides in this dispute were not Tudjman and Tito, they were the New York Times before and after 1991.
And finally, notice that Hedges made the remarkable claim that Tito tried to “demonize his fascist rivals.” Aside from the fact that Tito had no serious fascist rivals - the Partisans, with Soviet help, had thoroughly defeated the Ustashe - aside from that, the claim is remarkable because, while ‘demonize’ has the meaning of ‘portray as evil,’ it also has the connotation of deception - ‘falsely portray as evil.’ Is Hedges trying to plant the thought that fascism was unfairly maligned?
Nov 2, 1998: For reasons whose explanation lies beyond the scope of this essay, for a number of months before the start of Croatia’s 1999 trial of Jasenovac camp official Dinko Sakic, the Western media published some almost-accurate articles about Jasenovac.
Case in point: the Reuters dispatch below. To be sure, the Times buried it on page 13, but at least they published it.
[Excerpt from Reuters dispatch, as published in the New York Times, starts here]
“Thousands of Serbs, Gypsies, Jews and anti-fascist Croats died in the camps. It is estimated in Croatia that 85,000 people died in Jasenovac, though Jewish groups put the toll much higher.”
(My emphasis - J.I.) [22]
[Excerpt from Reuters dispatch, as published in the New York Times, ends here]
Two points about this.
First, notice that the Times has admitted that Jewish groups (not former Yugoslav leaders, and not only Serbs) were defending a “much higher” count than Croatia’s. The Times did not inform readers of the number being put forward by Jewish groups, which, according to the London-based Financial Times, was 600,000. [23]By withholding this information, the Times prevented people from seeing the stark contrast - 600,000 vs. 85,000 - which might have caused them to wonder if Croatia was engaged in Holocaust denial. Nevertheless, the Times had made a major admission. The “much higher” count was not a propaganda creation.
Second, notice that the Times admitted that the Croatian establishment, not some nameless “independent scholars,” was behind the 85,000 figure. Meaning, the Times‘ own previous coverage was a lie.
The Western media used the trial of Sakic, a Jasenovac commander, to create the spectacle of a Croatia that was supposedly struggling with the painful truth about its past and deserved to be welcomed into the family of nations. To reinforce that impression, after Sakic’s conviction, in October 1999, the media quoted a few people, perceived as representing Serbs and Jews, who said they approved the conduct of the trial and praised Croatia.
With Croatia now presented to the world as having transformed itself - a falsification, in my opinion - the Times and other media ended their brief flirtation with semi-accurate reporting.
Thus, the day the trial ended, the Times published another Reuters dispatch, the relevant part of which is posted below.
While the almost-accurate pre-trial dispatch was buried on page 13, the post-trial dispatch got top billing: column 1, page 3. The Times uses that space for leading foreign news.
“Mr. Sakic, 78, did not flinch as the seven-member panel of judges pronounced him guilty of war crimes against civilians for his role as commander of the Jasenovac camp, where up to 85,000 inmates died at the hands of the Nazi-allied Ustashi regime in 1941-45.” [24]
Before the start of the trial, the 85,000 figure was Croatia’s view, sharply disputed by Jewish groups. Now, along with Croatia, the 85,000 figure had been miraculously transformed: it was now the upper limit of the number of victims of clerical-fascist terror at Jasenovac.
The year was 1999, but it wasn’t really 1999. It was 1984 plus fifteen.
Jared Israel
Editor, Emperor’s Clothes
[continued in Part 3]
Footnotes and Further Reading
[10] “Yugoslav Officers Studying In Russia Back Tito Fully,” The New York Times, July 12, 1948, by M.S. Handler
[11] “Eichmann Trial Witness Shows How He Escaped Nazis’ Wrath,” The New York Times, May 20, 1961, by Homer Bigart
[12] “Yugoslavs Assail Croat Dissidents,” The New York Times, October 1, 1972, by Raymond H. Anderson.
Scanned image of entire article is at http://tenc.net/a/times72.htm
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] “Massacres Laid to Croat[ian] Ustashi,” The New York Times, October 11, 1941, Special Broadcast to THE NEW YORK TIMES, Page 3, 415 words
[16] “Yugoslavs Assail Croat Dissidents,” The New York Times, October 1, 1972, by Raymond H. Anderson
[17] As regards ‘only’ the “expropriation drive” against the Jewish citizens of NDH (Nezavisna Dr¾ava Hrvatska, or Independent State of Croatia), the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust writes:
“Overnight, a pseudolegal expropriation drive was launched, which before long turned into an unbridled countrywide campaign of plunder and pillage in which everyone who stood to profit took part - trade unions, youth organizations, sports clubs, the armed forces, and government officials of all ranks. Ordinary citizens also took part in this campaign wherever they could; indeed, the share of “private” elements in the plunder was enormous - at least half of the property of which the Jews were robbed apparently never reached the state treasury but remained in the hands of individual Croatians. According to an estimate by the Ministry of Finance published in 1944, the value of the Jewish property it acquired was 25 billion dinars ($50 million, according to the prewar rate of exchange). Presenting the state budget for the 1942-1943 fiscal year, the minister of finance, Vladimir Kosak, said that the deficit would be covered by proceeds from the sale of Jewish property.”
– From Menachem Shelah, “Croatia,” in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, published in Hebrew and English, by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, Jerusalem, 1990; English edition, New York/London, Macmillan, 1990, p. 324.
See http://emperors-clothes.com/croatia/encr.htm#base
To read the complete transcription of the article “Croatia” of the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, go to
http://emperors-clothes.com/croatia/encr.htm
To access the PDF file of the “Croatia” article scanned from the Encyclopedia, go to http://emperor.vwh.net/croatia/encr.pdf
[18] “Croatian leader’s alleged speech glorifying WW2 pro-Nazi state widely condemned,” Text of report in English by Croatian news agency HINA, BBC Monitoring Europe - Political Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring, December 10, 2006 Sunday, 498 words
A Windows Media Video of Mesic’s speech in the original Serbo-Croatian can be viewed at http://emperor.vwh.net/croatia/MesicVideo.wmv
[19] “Four Years Later, Croatia Still Awaits Papal Visit,” The New York Times, October 7, 1984, by Michael T. Kaufman, Marija Bistrica, Yugoslavia
[20] “Serb-Croat Showdown in One Village Square,” The New York Times, March 4, 1991, by Stephen Engelberg
[21] “Croatian War-Shrine Plan Revives Pain,” The New York Times, May 19, 1996, by Chris Hedges
[22] “Argentina Extradites War Crimes Suspect,” The New York Times, Nov 2, 1998, Byline: Reuters
[23] “Dinko Sakic History’s Shadow,” Financial Times (London, England), July 7, 1998, Tuesday, SURVEY EDITION 1, SURVEY - CROATIA 98, by Guy Dinmore
[24] “Croat Convicted of Crimes at World War II Camp,” The New York Times, October 5, 1999, Page 3; Column 1; Foreign Desk, BYLINE:: Reuters
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