The Serb propaganda is the term used before, during and after the Yugoslav wars (mostly related to Bosnian war) to describe efforts made by Serbian leadership to create fear and hatred and particularly incite the Serb population against the other ethnicities (Bosniaks, Croats, , Albanians and other non-Serbs) and to describe Serb media efforts in justifying, revising or denying mass war crimes committed by Serb forces during the Yugoslav wars on Bosniaks and other non-Serbs. During the Bosnian war, it was a part of the Strategic Plan by Serb leadership, aimed at linking Serb-populated areas in Bosnia and Herzegovina together, gaining control over these areas and creating a separate Serb state, from which most non-Serbs would be permanently removed. The Serb leadership was aware that the Strategic Plan could only be implemented by the use of force and fear, thus by the commission of war crimes.
Ideology
, Serbian writer and national theorist is often referred to as "Father of the Nation". It is alleged that he shaped the Serb propaganda framework. In his novels he claims that the lie is a form of Serbian patriotism, intelligence and wisdom:
On Eastern Orthodox Christmas Eve of January 1993, Dobrica Ćosić appeared on Serbian television to warn of demands for national capitulation from the West.
These outside forces, he said, are determined to subordinate the Serbian people to Muslim hegemony.
Background
Prior to the outbreak of the armed conflict in Bosnia, the Serb authorities in Bosnia started waging a propaganda war which had a disastrous impact on the people of all ethnicities, creating mutual fear and hatred and particularly inciting the Serb population against the other ethnicities (Bosniaks, Croats and other non-Serbs). Within a short period of time, citizens who had previously lived together peacefully became enemies and many of them, in the present case mainly Serbs, became killers, influenced by a media, which by that time, was already under the control of the Serb leadership. The use of propaganda was an integral part of the implementation of the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) Strategic Plan and created a climate where people were prepared to tolerate the commission of crimes and to commit war crimes.
During the second half of 1991, the Serb leadership, including the members of the Main Board of the SDS and other members of the SDS, as well as Serb representatives of the armed forces, elaborated the Strategic Plan, aimed at linking Serb-populated areas in Bosnia together, gaining control over these areas and creating a separate Serb state, from which most non-Serbs would be permanently removed. The Serb leadership was aware that the Strategic Plan could only be implemented by the use of force and fear, thus by the commission of war crimes.
As far as the Bosanska Krajina in particular is concerned, in August 1991, a paramilitary group, known as the Wolves of Vujcak and supported by the SDS, took over the TV transmitter on Mount Kozara. The frequencies were redirected and, consequently, most municipalities in the Bosanska Krajina could no longer receive TV and radio programmes from Sarajevo, but only programmes from Belgrade and occasionally from Croatia and, from March 1992 onwards also from Banja Luka. Bosniak and Croat employees of TV and radio stations as well as of most newspapers were dismissed and replaced by the Serbs.
Beginning from that period, the tenor of the message spread by the Serb authorities through the media was that the Serbs were threatened with persecution and genocide by the Bosniaks and Croats and that they had to protect themselves. Several political figures of the SDS appeared in the media on a regular basis making discriminatory speeches, insulting and degrading Bosniaks and Croats, with the obvious aim of creating fear and hatred amongst the ethnic groups and inciting the Serbs against other ethnicities. Pictures of mutilated soldiers were published and rumours that crimes were committed against Serbs were spread. Some Serb intellectuals and members of the Serb Orthodox Church also participated in the propaganda campaign. In the late spring of 1992, propaganda became even more aggressive, suggesting that non-Serbs should move out from the Serb territory, and that only a small percentage of non-Serbs could remain in the area. Once the armed conflict had broken out, on some occasions the media openly incited people to kill non-Serbs. The propaganda campaign achieved its goals with respect to both the Serb and the non-Serb inhabitants. While influencing the Serb population to perceive and treat the non-Serb inhabitants as enemies and preparing the Serb population for the crimes that were committed later (e.g. , Srebrenica genocide etc.) it also instilled fear among the non-Serb population and created an atmosphere of terror, which contributed to the subsequent massive exodus of non-Serbs.
Propaganda The Serb leadership
was the key political figure of the Serbs in the Bosanska Krajina region during the Bosnian war. After the war he was sentenced by the ICTY to 30 years in prison for crimes against humanity and war crimes on Bosniaks and Croats.
The ICTY Trial Chamber identified Radoslav BrÄ‘anin as one the main contributor to the Serb propaganda campaign against Bosnian Muslims. The Trial Chamber concluded that Radoslav BrÄ‘anin intentionally and systematically made inflammatory statements on the radio, television and print, using the media as a tool to further the implementation of the Strategic Plan. By virtue of his positions of authority, he had access to the media. Among the leaders at the regional level, he was the one who appeared in the media most often. Due to his position of authority, his public statements were attributed more weight in the eyes of both the Serbs and the non-Serbs. Although he was not the only Serb authorities exponent to use inflammatory and derogatory language during this period, he was singled out as holding and expressing the most extremist views amongst the Serb leaders in the Bosanska Krajina. By his public statements he created fear and hatred between Serbs on the one hand and Bosniaks and Croats on the other hand, inciting the ethnic groups against each other. He repeatedly used derogatory language to refer to non-Serbs, calling them vermin, scum, infidel and second rate people. He used to refer to Bosniaks as Dirty Muslims (Serbina:balije), Croats as Ustasha, and Albanians as Šiptari (the pejorative term for Albanians in Serbian language).
Radoslav Brđanin, in unambiguous terms and in a frightening manner, also called upon the non-Serb population to leave the Bosanska Krajina region. He indicated repeatedly that only a small percentage of non-Serbs would be allowed to stay in the new Serb state. According to Radoslav Brđanian, the tiny number that remained would be used for menial work and to perform physical labour generally. The ICTY Trial Chamber is satisfied that these statements were at the very heart of the Radoslav Brđanin's propaganda campaign and that he made these statements at the same time when he publicly advocated the dismissals of non-Serbs from employment, thus from early April 1992 onwards, until the end of 1992 when the process of dismissals was practically complete. He spoke openly against marriages between different ethnicities and on one occasion went as far as to suggest that children of mixed marriages could be thrown into the Vrbas River and those who swam out would be Serbian children. Moreover, he publicly suggested a campaign of retaliatory ethnicity-based murder, declaring that two Bosnian Muslims would be killed in Banja Luka for every Serb killed in Sarajevo. His public statements had a disastrous impact on people of all ethnicities. They incited the Serb population to commit crimes against Bosnian Muslims and Croats. According to the ICTY verdict he intentionally made a substantial contribution towards creating a climate where people were prepared to tolerate the commission of crimes and to commit crimes, and where well meaning Serbs felt dissuaded from extending any kind of assistance to non-Serbs.
Croatian war
Escalation of the conflict in Croatia brought the escalation of propaganda. While Serb army was destroying Croatia, Serb propaganda was inciting the Serb population against Croats fabricating stories about massacres committed by Croats on Serbs in Croatia.
Allegations of a Massacre in Pakrac
Serbian Newspaper "VeÄ?ernje Novosti" reported that 40 Serb civilians were killed in Pakrac on March 2, 1991. The propaganda was supported by some Serbian Orthodox priests and by some ministers in Serbian government (e.g. Dragutin Zelenović claims about alleged attacks against Serbs by Croatian forces).Few days later Serbian TV admitted that the story was false.
Vukovar massacre
On the day (execution of 264 Croatian POW's and civilians), Serbian media released the news of 40 Serbian babies being slaughterd in Vukovar. Dr. Vesna Bosanac (the head of Vukovar hospital from which the Croatian POW's and civilians were taken) said she believed the story of slaughtered babies was released intentionally to make Serb nationalists more angry thus inciting them execute Croats.
Attack on Dubrovnik
After so many years of domination and with no competition, Serbian Television has been outstandingly successful in its mission to create a pliant population. People here still don't believe that Dubrovnik was shelled, said Veran Matic, the founder of B-92, then only independent radio network in Serbia. When the Yugoslav army attacked the Croatian port town in 1991, Belgrade TV showed Dubrovnik with columns of smoke and then said that it was caused by the local people burning tires.
Operation Opera Orientalis
Opera Orientalis, otherwise referred to as Operation Opera, was an intelligence operation carried out during the Yugoslav wars. In August, 1991, the Jewish cemetery and Jewish Community Center in Zagreb, Croatia were bombed. The individuals responsible for the bombing were later found to be members of the Serb-controlled Yugoslav Air Force intelligence service. Operation Opera was an attempt to turn the opinions of the western powers against Croatia, and ostensibly to detract from the validity of Croatia's demands for independence. This action was coordinated with flood of false accusations launched from pro-Serb worldwide lobbies and media, in which independent Croatia was connected with WWII, Nazism and anti-Judaism. Within several days of the bombing, however, tens of thousands of people, among them government and religious officials, poured into the streets of Zagreb to express their support for the Jewish community. Damages from the bombing were quickly repaired with the help of the Croatian government..
Bosnian war
Mujahideen
During the war, Bosnia-Herzegovina received humanitarian aid from Islamic countries as well as from the West, because of intensive and widespread war crimes committed by Serb and Croat forces. The main targets were Bosnian Muslim civilians. The concluded that these crimes, committed during the 1992-1995 war, were crimes against humanity and genocide (dolus specialis) regarding Srebrenica region according to the Genocide Convention.
Following such massacres, a few hundreds of Arab volunteers came across Croatia into Bosnia to help the Bosnian Army protect the Bosnian Muslim civilian population. The number of the volunteers is still disputed, from around 300 to 1,500. These caused particular controversy: foreign fighters, styling themselves mujahiddin, turned up in Bosnia around 1993 with Croatian identity documents, passports and IDs. Serb propaganda saw them as an opportunity to justify war crimes committed by Serb forces, in the light of the anti-terror campaign in the West. Serb media fabricated much bigger numbers of the volunteers who came in Bosnia and their connection to terrorist groups presenting them as a huge threat to Europe. According to , a notable Italian and Croatian modern prosaist who analyzed the situation, the number of Arab volunteers who came to help the Bosnian Muslims, was much smaller than the number presented by Serb and Croat propaganda. Although Serb and Croat media created much controversy about alleged war crimes committed by them, no indictment was issued by ICTY against any of these foreign volunteers. According to the conclusion in Amir Kubura case, the evidence shows that foreign volunteers arrived in central Bosnia in the second half of 1992 with the aim of helping their Muslim brothers against the Serbian aggressors. Mostly they came from North Africa, the Near East and the Middle East. The foreign volunteers differed considerably from the local population, not only because of their physical appearance and the language they spoke, but also because of their fighting methods. Initially, the foreign volunteers gave food and other basic necessities to the local Muslim population. Once hostilities broke out between the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the HVO (Croat forces), they also participated in battles against the HVO alongside Army of BiH units.
According to the ICTY verdicts, Serb propaganda was very active, constantly propagated false information about the foreign fighters even before their arrival in order to inflame anti-Muslim hatred among Serbs. After the takeover of Prijedor by Serb forces in 1992, Radio Prijedor propagated Serb nationalistic ideas characterising prominent non-Serbs as criminals and extremists who should be punished for their behaviour. One example of such propaganda was the derogatory language used for referring to non-Serbs such as mujahedin, Ustasa or Green Berets, although at the time there were no foreign volunteers in Bosnia.
The Croat propaganda also used Mujahideen as one of the main agenda. The example of such propaganda is presented in the ICTY Kordić and ÄŚerkez verdict for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia leadership on Bosniak civilians. Gornji Vakuf was attacked by Croatian Army (HV) and Croatian Defence Forces (HVO) in January 1993 during the Lašva Valley ethnic cleansing followed by heavy shelling of the town by Croat artillery. During cease-fire negotiations at the Britbat HQ in Gornji Vakuf, colonel Andrić, representing the HVO, demanded that the Bosnian forces lay down their arms and accept HVO control of the town, threatening that if they did not agree he would flatten Gornji Vakuf to the ground. The HVO demands were not accepted by the Bosnian Army and the attack continued, followed by massacres on Bosnian Muslim civilians in the neighbouring villages of Bistrica, UzriÄ?je, Duša, Ždrimci and Hrasnica. The shelling campaign and the attacks during the war resulted in hundreds of injured and killed, mostly Bosnian Muslim civilians. Although Croats often cited it as a major reason for the attack on Gornji Vakuf in order to justify attacks and massacres on civilians, the commander of the British Britbat company claimed that there were no Muslim holy warriors in Gornji Vakuf and that his soldiers did not see any.
Following the end of the Bosnian War and, especially, after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Serbian propaganda started to fabricate the links between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Al Qaeda, in order to move the focus from the genocide committed by Serb forces in Bosnia to more interesting topic such as terrorism in the War on terror era. According to Radio Free Europe produced research by Vlado Azinovid about alleged links between Bosnia and Al Qaeda "Al Qaeda in Bosnia: Myth Or Present Danger", the claims about the alleged presence of Al Qaeda in Bosnia are unverified and mostly fabricated. The presence of Wahhabism and of the remaining Muslim fighters do not qualify Bosnia as a particular threat to international security, according to the Azinovic's conclusion. Furthermore, Azinovic quotes Evan F. Kohlmann:
Srebrenica genocide
The Srebrenica Genocide, was the July 1995 killing of an estimated 8,000 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) boys and men, in the region of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina by units of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) and a paramilitary unit from Serbia known as the "Scorpions" under the command of General during the Bosnian War.
From approximately August 1, 1995 to November 1, 1995, there was an organized effort by Serb authorities to remove the bodies from primary mass gravesites and transport them to secondary and tertiary gravesites. In the ICTY court case "Prosecutor v. Blagojevic and Jokic", the Trial chamber found that this reburial effort was an attempt to conceal evidence of the mass murders.The Trial chamber found that the cover up operation was ordered by the Serb army Main Staff and subsequently carried out by members of the Bratunac and Zvornik Brigades.
On September 20, 2003, former President Bill Clinton honored the dead and condemned the genocidal madness. American historian of Serbian descent Carl Savich wrote that Clinton attended a memorial for dead mujahedeen troops in Bosnia.
Serb casualties
It is agreed by all sides that Serbs suffered a number of casualties during operations led by . The controversy over the nature and number of the casualties came to a head in 2005, the 10th anniversary of the massacre. According to Human Rights Watch, the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party "launched an aggressive campaign to prove that Muslims had committed crimes against thousands of Serbs in the area" which "was intended to diminish the significance of the July 1995 crime." The briefing cited previous accounts:
*The Republika Srpska's Commission for War Crimes gave the number of Serb victims in the municipalities of Bratunac, Srebrenica and Skelani as 995; 520 in Bratunac and 475 in Srebrenica. *The Chronicle of Our Graves by Milivoje Ivanisevic, president of the Belgrade Center for Investigating Crimes Committed against the Serbs, estimates the number of people killed at around 1200. *For the Honorable Cross and Golden Freedom, a book published by the RS Ministry of Interior, referred to 641 Serb victims in the Bratunac-Srebrenica-Skelani region.
The accuracy of these numbers is challenged: the OTP noted that although Ivanisevic's book estimated that around 1200 Serbs were killed, personal details were only available for 624 victims. This is in line with the nature of the conflict—Serb casualties died in raids by Bosniak forces on outlying villages used as military outposts for attacks on Srebrenica (many of which had been ethnically cleansed of their Bosniak majority population in 1992). For example the village of Kravica was attacked by Bosniak forces on Orthodox Christmas Day, 7 January 1993. Some Serb sources such as Ivanisevic allege that the village's 353 inhabitants were "virtually completely destroyed". while the ICTY Prosecutor's Office's investigation of casualties on 7 and 8 January in Kravica and the surrounding villages found that 43 people were killed, of whom 13 were obviously civilians. Nevertheless the event continues to be cited by Serb sources as the key example of heinous crimes committed by Bosniak forces around Srebrenica.
The most up-to-date analysis of Serb casualties in the region comes from the Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation Center, a non-partisan institution with a multiethnic staff, whose data have been collected, processed, checked, compared and evaluated by international team of experts. The RDC's extensive review of casualty data found that Serb casualties in the Bratunac municipality amounted to 119 civilians and 424 soldiers. It also established that although the 383 Serb victims buried in the Bratunac military cemetery are presented as casualties of ARBiH units from Srebrenica, 139 (more than one third of the total) had fought and died elsewhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This view is echoed by international sources including the 2002 report commissioned by the Dutch government on events leading to the fall of Srebrenica (the NIOD report). However these sources also cite misleading figures for the number of Serb casualties in the region. The NIOD report, for instance, repeats the erroneous claim that the raid on Kravica resulted in the total annihilation of its population. Many consider these efforts to explain the motivation behind the Srebrenica massacre are merely revisionist attempts to justify the genocide. To quote the report to the UN Secretary-General on the Fall of Srebrenica:
Even though this accusation is often repeated by international sources, there is no credible evidence to support it… The Serbs repeatedly exaggerated the extent of the raids out of Srebrenica as a pretext for the prosecution of a central war aim: to create a geographically contiguous and ethnically pure territory along the Drina, while freeing their troops to fight in other parts of the country. The extent to which this pretext was accepted at face value by international actors and observers reflected the prism of 'moral equivalency' through which the conflict in Bosnia was viewed by too many for too long.
Serb Apologist and Srebrenica Massacre denier Jared Israel of Emperor’s Clothes "figured out" that Srebrenica Execution Video is a hoax. The same website produced a short film where they "expose" the non-existence of Bosnian-Serb Death Camps.
Prijedor massacres
According to the ICTY just before the massacres in Prijedor on Bosniak and Croat civilians by the Serbs, both the printed and broadcast media also spread what can be only considered as blatant lies about non-Serb doctors: Dr. Mirsad Mujadžić of the Bosniak politicians was accused of injecting drugs into Serb women making them incapable of giving birth to male children and Dr. Željko Sikora, a Croat, referred to as the Monster Doctor, was accused of making Serb women abort if they were pregnant with male children and of castrating the male babies of Serbian parents. Moreover, in a "Kozarski Vjesnik" article dated June 10, 1992, Dr. Osman Mahmuljin was accused of deliberately having provided incorrect medical care to his Serb colleague Dr. Živko Dukić, who had a heart attack. Dr. Dukić’s life was saved only because Dr. Radojka Elenkov discontinued the therapy allegedly initiated by Dr. Mahmuljin. The appeals were broadcast aimed at the Serbs to lynch the non-Serbs. Moreover, forged biographies of prominent non-Serbs, including Prof. Muhamed Ćehajić, Mr. Crnalić, Dr. Eso Sadiković and Dr. Osman Mahmuljin, were broadcast. According to ICTY conclusion in verdict Mile Mutić, the director of Kozarski Vjesnik and the journalist Rade Mutić regularly attended meetings of Serb politicians (local authorities) in order to get informed about next steps of spreading propaganda.
Sarajevo siege
The first Markale Incident
The first massacre occurred between 12:10 and 12:15 PM, when a 120 millimeter mortar shell landed in the center of the crowded marketplace. Rescue workers and United Nations (UN) personnel rushed to help the numerous civilian casualties, while footage of the event soon made news reports across the world. Controversy over the event started when an initial UNPROFOR report claimed that the shell was fired from Bosnian government positions. General Michael Rose, the British head of UNPROFOR, revealed in his memoirs that three days after the blast he told General Jovan Divjak, the deputy commander of Bosnian Army forces, that the shell had been fired from Bosnian positions. The Serb propaganda supported the claim. However, a later and more in-depth UNPROFOR report noted a calculation error in the original findings. With the error fixed, the United Nations concluded that it was impossible to determine which side had fired the shell. In January 2003, the ICTY Trial Chamber in the trial against , a Serb general in the siege of Sarajevo, concluded that the massacre was committed by Serb forces around Sarajevo. General Galić was sentenced to life imprisonment for the crimes against humanity during the Siege of Sarajevo.
The second Markale Incident
The second massacre occurred in August of the following year at about 11:00 AM, with five shells being fired but a smaller number of casualties. Serb authorities, as they did following the 1994 incident, denied all responsibility and accused the Bosnian government of bombarding its own people to incite international outrage and possible intervention. A 1999 report to the United Nations General Assembly, UNPROFOR considered the evidence clear: a confidential report from shortly after the event concluded that all five rounds had been fired by the Army of Republika Srpska. As soon as technical and weather conditions allowed, and the safety of UN personnel traveling through Serb territory was secured, Operation Deliberate Force commenced.
However, Russian colonel Andrei Demurenko asserted that UNPROFOR's research was flawed, as it began from the conclusion that the shells were fired from Serbian positions and didn't test any other hypothesis; and that he, immediately visiting supposed mortar locations found that neither of them could be used to fire the shells. He concludes that Serbian forces were falsely blamed for the attack in order to give justification for NATO attacks on Serbs.
David Harland, former head of UN Civil Affairs in Bosnia, claimed at the trial of General in ICTY that he was responsible for the creation of the myth that UNPROFOR was unable to determine who had fired the mortar shells that caused the Markale 2 massacre. The myth that has survived for more than ten years, Harland said was created because of a “neutral statement” made by General Rupert Smith, the UNPROFOR commander. On the day when the second attack on Markale happened, General Smith stated “it is unclear who fired the shells, although at that time he already had the technical report of UNPROFOR intelligence section, determining beyond reasonable doubt that they were fired from VRS positions at Lukavica”. Harland’s responsibility lies in the fact that he himself advised General Smith to make “a neutral statement in order not to alarm the Serbs who would be alerted to the impending NATO air strikes against their positions had he pointed a finger at them”. That would have jeopardized the safety of UN troops in the territory under VRS control or on positions where they might have been vulnerable to retaliatory attacks by Serb forces. In 2007, a Serb general, , former commander of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps, was found guilty of the shelling and sniper terror campaign against Sarajevo and its citizens from August 1994 to late 1995. Milošević was sentenced to 33 years in prison. The Trial Chamber concluded that the Markale town market was hit on August 28, 1995 by a 120mm mortar shell fired from the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps positions.
Kosovo war
NATO intervention during the Yugoslav wars
During the Yugoslav wars, Serbian TV propaganda described NATO forces which intervened against Serb forces attacking non-Serb civilians as the Nazi troops invading Serb lands. President Bill Clinton was portrayed as Adolf Hitler. For its part, NATO compared 's policies to those of Nazi Germany.
Serb military and political authorities tried to present NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999 as an act of aggression planned by Vatican and Western countries. During the Kosovo war, NATO lost two aircrafts, unlike Serb claims about huge NATO losses including 61 aircraft, 7 helicopters and many other weapons. Information regarding aircraft shot down by the Serbian 1st Army was provided by General Ninoslav Krstić in his interview for the "Vojska" magazine on May 24, 1999.
Quotes
During the Operation Allied Force Serbian propaganda produced, among other things, these statements about NATO:
The Scorpions aren't so tough anymore, are they? HA! I challenge every member of this chicken shit outfit to a fight! They are no so tough without the guns and overnumbering their innocent victims.
