KOSOVO: US terrorist ally continues persecution of ethnic minorities
by Lee Jay Walker via dusan - The Seoul Times Sunday, Jul 26 2009, 12:44am
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Western forces turn blind eye as KLA killers continue brutal repression in Kosovo
The former Yugoslavia was engulfed in many conflicts, ethnic and religious differences tore away at the fabric of this nation. Like all wars, atrocities took place on all sides but the mass media chose to focus on Serbian atrocities while neglecting brutal crimes committed against the Serbian community. This certainly applies to the numerous war crimes committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
America's choice: Muslim Kosovar films his mate urinating in desecrated Christian Church
During the course of ICC investigations evidence of brutal KLA death camps and human organ harvesting has surfaced; will former KLA members be charged with war and other crimes against humanity and will evidence of international collusion in these crimes be properly dealt with and fully investigated? If not, then where does this leave Kosovo?
Before focusing on this important issue I fear a major cover-up. After all, the American version of history is that Kosovo should be independent because Albanians suffered greatly, therefore, Serbia does not have a moral right to keep Kosovo under Serbia.
Yet, if it comes to light that the KLA killed mainly Serbs, and also fellow Albanians, Roma, and other minorities, then where does this leave the American, British, and the Albanian version of events?
Remember, we are not talking about massacres taking place by opposing armies; on the contrary, we are talking about the KLA killing civilians for organs and for other brutal reasons.
Also, since the ending of the conflict it is clear that countless numbers of Christian Orthodox Churches have been destroyed and non-Albanian culture is on the wane. Added to this, thousands of people have been killed by Albanian nationalists and innocent Serbians, Roma, and others, have “been killed in silence” because it doesn’t suit the interests of America, the United Kingdom, and other nations who supported the KLA.
The BBC, a very liberal British network, highlighted the brutal deeds of the KLA during the airing of “Crossing Continents” and “Newsnight” which was broadcasted on April 9, 2009. Paul Mitchell, BBC correspondent, states that this provides “another side to the conflict which the world was not supposed to see.”
If we take this further, it also undermines the claims of America, the United Kingdom, and other nations who support the independence of Kosovo. After all, the findings show “a dirty covert war” and it raises further important questions, for example, how did the KLA develop overnight and where did they obtain their military hardware from?
However, I do not want to get bogged down by the justifications of either side in this article. Instead I want to focus on the disturbing findings of the BBC and others who hope to bring to light the past evils of the KLA.
Once more, before delving into this I wish to state that all sides in this conflict committed atrocities be they Albanian or Serbian. Also, the brutal civil wars which took place in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo, witnessed many massacres and like all wars, you have no pure side because war always leads to atrocities and often it is the civilian population which is victimized the most.
Therefore, this article is not intended to be anti any one single ethnic group and of course many Albanians in Kosovo were also victims. Each ethnic and religious group suffered pain, irrespective if Orthodox Christian or Muslim, or if Serbian or Albanian.
However, the mass media mainly gave a one sided point of view, and this point of view was anti-Serbian. Yet the findings by the BBC and others highlight a different story and one which continues to be mainly ignored. This applies to the brutal killings and torture of innocent Serbians by the KLA and others were also murdered by this terrorist organization.
Yes, I stress terrorist organization for one simple reason. Throughout all of the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia it was clear that many Muslims remained in Serbia, after all, the Muslim community in Serbia is part and parcel of this independent nation which is multi-ethnic and multi-religious.
However, did the KLA protect Serbian Orthodox Christians, Roma, and other minorities? The answer is clearly no. Instead the KLA used a reign of terror against all minorities and persecuted fellow Albanians who were deemed to be traitors. Therefore, the KLA was a terrorist organization and clearly this organization was involved in major criminality including the killing of innocents in order to sell organs.
In the article written by Paul Mitchell, a former KLA prisoner states “I’ve seen a lot, people beaten, stabbed, hit with steel pipes, left without eating for 5 or 6 days. People had bullet proof vests on and were shot to see if it was working, thrown into tombs, beaten up and killed.”
The former KLA prisoner continues by saying “What can you feel when you see those things?” he added. “It’s something that is stuck in my mind for the rest of my life. You cannot do those things to people, not even to animals.”
Another Albanian who is suffering the aftershocks of this brutal conflict also bravely speaks the truth. He highlights that he drove trucks with prisoners who were shackled and he stresses that the majority were Serbian civilians and not only this, he drove them from Kosovo to Albania. He continues by stating “I was sick. I was just waiting for it to end. It was hard. I thought we were fighting a war [of liberation] but this was something completely different.”
KLA sites of systematic torture and killings were based throughout Kosovo and also in parts of Albania. For example Kukes and Burrel in Albania were used by the KLA with regards to military training, obtaining weapons, and for other factors. This in itself raises the role of Albania and NATO nations which took part in the bombing of the former Yugoslavia.
However, getting back to Kukes and Burrel and systematic torture and killing of innocents, it becomes apparent that these sites witnessed many barbaric atrocities. The International Centre for the Red Cross obtained information about brutal murders in Burrel in 2000. This applies to being informed by KLA fighters who stated that Serbian civilians were killed in 1999 in Burrel and these killings had an economic motive because organs were removed and then sold abroad.
Of course, this information would be very troubling for both America and the United Kingdom, because both these nations had sold the war in the disguise of “good” versus “evil.” However, if the good side, the KLA, is involved in killing civilians for harvesting organs and then selling these organs on to other nations, then what does this make America and the United Kingdom?
Also, the hard sell by America, the United Kingdom, and other nations who support independence, is that independence is justified on the grounds of Serbian atrocities. Yet if the KLA was found to be involved in killing civilians for organs then “the spin machine” collapses and “democracy” rings hollow.
The role of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) is also criticized because of deeds which took place. UNMIK’s former head for Missing Persons and Forensics, Jose Pablo Baraybar, comments that “There were people that are certainly alive that were in Kukes, in that camp, as prisoners. Those people saw other people there, both Albanians and non-Albanians. There were members of the KLA leadership going through that camp. Many names were mentioned, and I would say that that is an established fact.”
More alarming, Baraybar openly admits that UNMIK was fully aware that the KLA had many detention centres and this in itself should have warranted a major investigation. Yet, claims Baraybar, “no proper investigation was ever carried out.”
Sian Jones, Amnesty International spokesperson was more scathing because Jones states that UNMIK “chose not to investigate.” Jones also adds that there were “lots of allegations, lots of victims but little true justice.”
Therefore, it is clear that important vested interests have a need to cover-up the real truth behind “this dirty war.” The United Nations, NATO, the role of Albania and major political leaders in nations like America and the United Kingdom, all come out of this in a terrible light. Also, it raises the issue of “war crime tribunals” and fairness and this terrible and tragic conflict questions the morality of major nations and institutions.
The issue of Kosovo remains because the majority of the international community does not recognize Kosovo to be an independent nation. If the truth really “came to light” and a full and major investigation took place, then clearly you would have many disturbing findings. However, world leaders from major nations do not have to worry about war crimes, and this is the problem, you still have a world of “real power” versus nations of “limited power” and we all know that the outcome is dependent on this sad reality.
The real tragedy of Kosovo, like all civil wars, is that innocents died on all sides. Yet it is clear that a major investigation is needed because killing innocents for organs is truly barbaric and you have enough evidence that this did take place. So will this disgraceful chapter come to light or will it be brushed under the carpet because of power politics?
If we judge past history then it would appear that it will be brushed under the carpet. However, when major powers want to ignore issues like this, it is truly sickening and the role of the mass media in general is also a loser because not enough was said or done at the time of this conflict. Once more the propaganda machine of “the rich and powerful won” and the real losers were the innocents on all sides.
However, one story was told, that of the persecution of the Albanians; but the other story, the persecution of Serbians, Roma, and other minorities remains untold. Yet the story of death camps and killing innocents for organs must be told and a true investigation is needed and this applies to everything and not just minor people who took part in this brutal war.
© 2009 The Seoul Times Company
Muslim Kosovars celebrating US backed illegal secession
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David and Goliath: Bosnian Serbs Against the West
by Wanda Schindley via talya - Strategic Culture Foundation Saturday, Aug 1 2009, 11:04am
Bosnian Serbs Against the West (I)
Valentin Inzko seems determined to use the “iron fist” approach on the Bosnian Serbs and, perhaps, compete with his predecessor Paddy Ashdown to become the most unpopular occupying dictator since King Leopold in the Belgian Congo and with similar disdain for his subjects.
Paddy Ashdown, even after leaving his post as High Representative, continued to reveal his own bias and “wrong-headedness” after Karadzic’s arrest in an editorial in which he notes that Bosnia has been the “seat” of conflict “down the centuries ... where even a brief spell of wrong-headedness can quickly become the prelude to enduring tragedy. You do not need imagination to know what happens when things go wrong in Bosnia—a memory ought to be enough.” Yes. Absolutely.1
Ashdown must be remembering that Bosnia suffered tragedy under the conquest and centuries-long rule of Ottoman Turks when some Serbs converted to Islam to avoid the oppressive taxes (and to be semi-empowered, even over Christian neighbors) to create the Bosnian Muslim ethnic group—though many, if not most, of them became atheist under Tito and, forgetting that religion does not flow in the veins, became “Muslim” again during the last war when hungry young girls were paid 100 marks per month to wear a veil for television cameras so uninformed Westerners would believe Bosnia was really a “Muslim” country in spite of the majority Christian population. (That problem was solved with the Muslim-Croat alignment.)
Ashdown’s “memories” must include that in 1875 when a drought made it impossible for Christians to pay the taxes demanded from Bosnian Muslims and the Ottoman rulers, Serbs rose up against their oppressors and won. Was it “wrong-headed” for the British at the 1878 Berlin Conference to decide, since the Ottomans and their assistant Bosnian Muslims could not govern Bosnia, to give Bosnia to Austro-Hungary, Britain’s future enemy, instead of to Serbia, its future ally?
Surely, Ashdown “remembers” that it was Churchill, over Roosevelt’s objections,2 who switched support from Mihajlovich (as he was rescuing Allied pilots) to the mysterious Croat Tito (who would accept bloody-handed Croat Ustasha into the Partisans) and sacrificed the future Yugoslavia to communism (while, at the same time, willing to spill British blood to prevent communism in Greece). Was that “wrong-headed”?
Ashdown must also remember that the Habsburgs, centuries ago, gave land to Serbs with the requirement that they be armed and prepared to fight a further invasion of the Ottoman Turks into Western Europe and that the Krajina, the military zone inhabited by a 90-percent Serb population but that ended up as part of Croatia, was “ethnically cleansed” under IC-Croat bombs in 1995.
Perhaps Ashdown “remembers” that the “cleansing” of Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia began under German occupation in the World War II Independent State of Croatia when Catholic Croats and Bosnian Muslim assistants perpetrated a pre-meditated, legislated, and mandated genocide against Orthodox Christian Serbs, Jews, and Roma (Editorial Comment - the gypsies). The genocide included forced mass conversion of some 250,000 Serbs and systematic slaughter with knives, axes, and hammers of hundreds of thousands of Serbian, Jewish, and Roma men, women, children, and infants.
Post-war, those who survived the genocide, under the Croat Tito’s policy of “brotherhood and unity,” were not to remember the genocide but were less surprised than confused when many again ended up in Croat or Bosnian Muslim concentration camps in the 1990’s. Serbs (naively) thought that truth and justice would prevail but learned that, in a post-modern world, both must be bought. (Serbs did not have Saudi oil money or Vatican booty with which to buy sympathetic media coverage.)
To add insult to injury, at the end of the war, the Germans and Austrians Bosnian Serbs had fought in World Wars I and II once again put their boots on the ground as part of the UN and, later, EU military occupation. What happened to the Serbs’ British and American allies of World Wars I and II? Why were they, not to mention the rest of the West, suddenly on the side of the former (and some neo-) fascist Croats, Bosnian Muslim groups? Perhaps all that history was just “wrong-headedness” that served as “the prelude to enduring tragedy,” to use Ashdown’s words, but it was not, as Ashdown implies, Serbian “wrong-headedness.”
Ashdown laments that RS Premier Milorad Dodik “is now aggressively reversing a decade of reforms” to make the RS more “centralist, while its institutions are more and more subject to serious accusations of corruption.” Is Ashdown suggesting that the RS is more “centralist” and has more “accusations of corruption” than Sarajevo? Surely not. Ashdown notes that Dodik’s “aim is certainly complete autonomy and, probably, ultimate secession.” Is Ashdown suggesting that the Serbs in the RS, desperate not to live under Sarajevo control (with its Islamic education in public schools and calls for Sharia law) might do as Kosovo Albanians have done with the blessings of many in the IC?
Ashdown fears the EU will lose face if the “bust-up” happens and admits that the carrot of EU membership now “takes second place to the preservation of corrupt fiefdoms.” (So, which “fiefdom” is more corrupt—Bosnian Muslims’, Croats’, Serbs’, or, perhaps, the EU’s?) For Ashdown, a divided Bosnia would be disastrous for Muslims. He wonders, “What happens to the Muslim populations who have moved back to the Republika Srpska, even to Srebrenica, if they are handed back to an exclusively Serb-dominated regime?” Considering that tens of thousands of Muslims, Croats, and Kosovo Albanians fled to Serb-dominated Belgrade during the 1990s wars, Ashdown’s question might be more appropriately phrased, “What happens to Serbs now who dare to returned to their homes in the Federation (or Kosovo or Croatia, for that matter)?” But Ashdown does not stop with that question. He continues with the dire scenario of the RS and Herzegovina breaking away to leave “only central Bosnia as a home for its Muslims” and what it would “say to the Islamic world if, having once failed to protect Bosnia’s Muslims from annihilation, we now fail to stand up for their right to live as part (the largest part, incidentally) of a democratic, multi-ethnic state” and allow them to be “reduced to a rump pocket of Islam...” Ashdown’s concern is telling. Rather than concern for the Serbs who fled Krajina under IC-Croatian bombs or fled the Federation under mujahideen knives and Muslim threats or fled Kosovo ahead of Albanian mobs, to live in the RS, Ashdown is worried about what the “Islamic world” would think. Clearly, Ashdown is willing, like King Leopold, to destroy Serb lives and liberties, not for diamonds in this case, but for the “Muslim world’s” black gold.
Ashdown noted the difficulty of “preservation of multi-ethnic spaces and resist[ing] the creation of mono-ethnic ones,” apparently oblivious to the irony that Bosnia, in fact, Yugoslavia, was multi-ethnic before the IC meddling and intervention that created mono-ethnic “spaces.” Then Ashdown insists that Belgrade, with that dangling EU carrot, be made again to betray the Bosnian Serbs in supporting “the Bosnian state,” sacrificing lives and liberties of Serbs so that the EU can curry the favor of the Muslim world for black gold.
Ultimately, Ashdown’s willingness to sacrifice lives and liberties to please the Muslim world does not end with lives and liberties of Serbs. Apparently, he is not concerned about the lives and liberties of Europeans who are beginning to wake up in the wake of terrorist bombings and an ever-encroaching and demanding Muslim population. For instance, Ashdown’s own London is in the cross-hairs as Hizb ut-Tahrir conventioneers call for caliphate in London.3
Ashdown, in a 2003 interview with David Frost,4 blames the crime in Europe on Bosnia when he says, “[I]f you want to fight crime on the streets of Manchester, if you want to fight prostitution, drugs, cigarette smuggling—now an issue for today—arms smuggling, on the streets of Manchester, London, Berlin and Paris, you start here in Sarajevo. This is the front line.... [of the] evil products of criminality, which come not from here but through here, into the streets of our cities.” Notwithstanding the “Bosnian connection” of successful terrorists, Ashdown could well have added to drugs and arms smuggling “mujahidin smuggling” in acknowledgement of the some 50,000 young Muslim men per year who arrived then at the Sarajevo airport and disappeared throughout Europe. Was it “wrong-headed” to insist on a first (and now a second—Kosovo) Muslim country in Europe? What price will the West pay for its “wrong-headed” determination to displace Orthodox Christian Serbs, who had been the “guardians at the gate” against Muslim invasion into Western Europe for hundreds of years?
In the West, fighting for national interests is called “patriotism”; for Bosnian Serbs it is pejorative “nationalism.” Republika Srpska Prime Minister Dodik and others who resist the dictates of the IC (and Serbs’ demise) are called “nationalist,” and the IC expresses its “disappointment” that Serbia’s President Boris Tadic met with Dodik and appeared to be supportive (although Dodik must remember the IC’s demands on Serbia to help with the One Bosnia solution). The West must be more than a little nervous that pushing too far could result in a Kosovo Albanian-style unilateral declaration of independence and/or that the tiny RS will seek allies outside the hostile West. High Representative Inzko might do well to review the Dayton Peace Accords (viewed by some as a mechanism to buy time for the IC to rip off Bosnia’s resources and the Muslims to build more mosques and buy more property in the RS) and remember that he did not come to Bosnia with either royal blood or an election and that “wrong-headedness can quickly become the prelude to enduring tragedy,” as Ashdown says.
Notes:
1 Paddy Ashdown’s “Europe needs a wake-up call. Bosnia is on the edge again.” The Observer. UK, 27 July 2008.
2 See Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence. Eds. Loewenheim, Langley, and Jonas. New York, Dutton, 1973.
3 “Muslim Extremists Call for Caliphate in London,” Ed West. http://www.aina.org/news/20090728084119.htm
4 Interview: Paddy Ashdown, IC High Representative in BiH: “BBC Breakfast With Frost.” 14 Jan. 2003.
Bosnian Serbs Against the West (II)
On June 20th the High Representative for Bosnia, Austrian Valentin Inzko, annulled legislation passed by the Bosnian Serb, Republika Srpska (RS), parliament that would reclaim some of the powers of “semi-autonomy” that were promised to it in the constitution but that have been stripped away incrementally by International Community (IC) High Representatives under the so-called Bonn powers. Inzko, the latest of seven High Representatives under the direction of Javier Solana, was offended that the Bosnian Serbs did not capitulate under the threat of “consequences” and withdraw the legislation on their own. Offering to negotiate and amend some things in the legislation was not satisfactory to High Representative Inzko, who has dictatorial powers over occupied Bosnia.
Inzko saw the RS legislation to reclaim some of the constitutional powers stripped away by openly pro-Muslim High Representative Paddy Ashdown ten years after Dayton as “regressive.” Until less than four years ago, the Bosnian Serbs had their own police force, army (even though they were pretty much stripped of armaments), courts, and so forth. But each new edict of the High Representative raised the bar and further stripped Bosnian Serbs of their institutions and constitutional “rights.” Each mandate to expand the role of the central government in Sarajevo was movement toward the ultimate goal of a united One Bosnia—abolishment of the Serb entity set up at Dayton and the Dayton agreement signed (under threat of further bombardment) by Serbs and, apparently, with disappearing ink by the IC.
While the UN occupation was biased toward Muslims and against Serbs as demonstrated, for instance, in the rules for and rate of reclaiming property by the two groups, the EU occupation appears even more intent on strangling the RS out of existence and humiliating Serbs into capitulating to a centralized government in Sarajevo, which for Serbs is really “regressive” to the some 400 years of Serb suffering under the occupation of the “Turks” of the Ottoman Empire. But Turkey is not the only country now meddling in the affairs of Bosnia and supporting the Islamic take-over of the entire country: Saudi Arabia is still a primary funder of Bosnian Muslims and the mosque-building (in some areas, one every few kilometers) that makes the country appear to be a real Muslim country (even though it is majority Christian); Iran supplied weapons to Bosnian Muslims during the war; and mujahideen fighters came from the Muslim world to fight Christians in their own back yards.
Not only are Serbs in the RS expected to submit to the Islamists in Sarajevo (see the Bosnian Grand Mufti’s defense of, for instance, Islamic education in public schools1), they also are being asked, in fact, demanded, to give up any thread of independence and, eventually, their Orthodox Christian religion, along with their democratic institutions. (Those who do not understand that “Islamic democracy” is an oxymoron should read Alija Izetbegovic’s 1970 Islamic Declaration and study Sarajevo Chief Imam Nezim Halilovic Muderris’ radical intolerance and calls for institutionalization of Sharia law in Bosnia.2)
The Bosnian Court, for instance, of the “centralized” government has demonstrated its bias and inability to deal with the crimes committed against Serbs. The focus has been on convicting Serbs who, in spite of being dubbed by international media as “aggressors,” were often fighting against foreign Islamic fighters from their own back yards to protect their families and property. Yet, the courts of Bosnia’s central government have sentenced Serbs to 1,118 total years in jail, Croats to 140 years, and Bosnian Muslims to only 42 years in jail in spite of the realities of the civil war and atrocities committed by the foreign mujahidin and Bosnian Muslims.3 On 23 June, the Bosnian “central” government refused to extradite Croat war criminal Branimir Glavas, who was convicted and sentenced last month to 10 years in prison for torturing and killing Serbian civilians during the war. Yet, Serbs are held responsible for finding and depositing at The Hague even the un-convicted as the West repeats ad nauseam the unsubstantiated 40,000-rape hoax. (Even if it were true, the West has a higher per capita incident of rape under peaceful circumstances.)
It is not as though Serbs, who produced Nikola Tesla, Mileva Maric (physicist wife of Albert Einstein who contributed to his famous theories), Mihajlo Pupin (Columbia’s Pupin Hall named after him for his work on x-rays, long-distance telephone service), etc. are too stupid to take lessons from not only the historical but also the recent past. For instance, Serbs know that the IC’s demands for “privatization” mean “rape” of their resources by the IC:
(1.) Examples are replete in Serbia. For instance, in Pancevo, the successful glass factory, electric bulb factory, chemical factory, and beer factory (since 1722) are now closed after being “privatized” and bought, perhaps by George Soros, who is to many people the biggest “capitalist pig” on the planet but supported by the anti-capitalist left (which is supported by Soros).
(2.) Croatia, after seceding with the bank in which all Yugoslavs had deposited, sold cheaply the Adriatic hotels (to which Croatia, historically a small province around Zagreb, did not have claim until all that was changed, first by Hitler when Italy capitulated in 1943 and then by the Croat Tito), mostly to Germans.
(3.) In the RS, many factory workers went to work for years without pay as crooked “directors,” supported by the IC, drove BMWs and as ancient forests were stripped, a la Brazil and then Haiti, and irreplaceable resources transported to Western Europe.
The “Bonn powers,” which allow High Representatives (called “viceroys” in another time) to fire elected officials and make or nullify laws, have been used mostly against Serbs. In spite of its efforts to comply with the Dayton Accords, the 49% of Bosnia included in the Republika Srpska remains the “bastard child” of Dayton, notwithstanding that the only major ethnic violence since the war has been between Bosnian Muslims and Croats who were unhappy in their “shotgun” marriage and that the Bosnian Muslims have been in violation of Dayton since January 1, 1996 when they were supposed to have sent home the foreign Islamic fighters who were imported to fight the Christian Serbs and, sometimes, Croats.4
Serbs stand alone against an IC which (along with the Vatican), during the 1990’s wars, supported Croats, knowing that Croat leader Franjo Tudjman’s goal was to have an “ethnically pure” Catholic Croatia, and Bosnian Muslims, knowing that Alija Izetbegovic had made clear in his 1970 Islamic Declaration that his idea of “democracy” was an “Islamic democracy.” And now, almost 14 years after the end of the war, Serbs are blamed for the lack of progress toward a “modern multi-ethnic” state. Leaving aside the fact that before the orchestrated break-up of Yugoslavia Bosnia was a modern multi-ethnic republic, Bosnia has still not regained the economy, employment, technology, industry, and infrastructure it enjoyed before the war.
The blame can easily be placed on Bosnian Serbs because they have not sufficiently cooperated in their own annihilation to make way for a One Bosnia, a Muslim-controlled Bosnia, in order to move toward “Euro-Atlantic integration,” now framed as (eventual) membership in the EU. Bosnian Serbs are accused of being distrustful of and of misjudging the IC. Yet, any Serb distrust of the IC is rational considering the IC’s involvement in the bombing of Serbs in Bosnia, Croatia (Slavonia and Krajina), Kosovo, and Serbia proper and the IC cheerleaders’ continuing anti-Serb bias. Even those Serbs who sell out to the West are subject to being thrown overboard if they step out of line. But saying that trouble in Bosnia results from “misjudgment of the international community,” as former High Representative Paddy Ashdown claimed last year in his editorial from Sarajevo after the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, is more than simplistic.5 It is wrong.
Bosnian Serbs know very well that the intention of the IC is to “reform” the constitution and discard Dayton to make One Bosnia, and they have witnessed first-hand the unequal treatment under the UN and the EU. To many Serbs, submission to Sarajevo for the dangling carrot of EU membership is not attractive. (Rumor has it, for instance, that even Slovenians are complaining about giving up their liberty to spank their children, make domestic cheese and brandy, and butcher a pig at Christmas.) It is a future without the small protections of “semi-autonomy” in the RS and being once again under the yoke of Muslims and being once again under Germany, which has shown little sympathy for non-Catholic Slavs through the German-dominated EU.6 Already there is concern that the Dayton agreement was simply a way to buy time for Saudi-backed Muslims to continue building mosques and buying property from desperate Serbs to gain control through stealth as the IC slurps up Bosnia’s resources. IC lies might fool the uninformed Western public but not the Bosnian Serbs who have lived through the intervention and years of IC dictatorship. Mr. Inzko should reconsider his approach.
Notes:
1 Interview: Bosnia's Grand Mufti Defends Religious Freedom
2 See, for instance, http://de-construct.net/e-zine/?p=6690
3 The Hague court has been similarly biased against Serbs, meting out 904 years of sentences to Serbs, 171 years to Croats, 39 to Bosnian Muslims, and 19 to Kosovo Albanians. Figures from an interview with Dr. Elena Guskova on RTRS TV in Banja Luka, Republika Srpska.
4 Instead, the “moderate” Bosnian Muslim government gave the foreign mujahidin citizenship and failed to notice connections between those same fighters and major international terror attacks and has since banned Santa Claus. Also see the June 24th New York Times article “Documents Back Saudi Link to Extremists” (and Bosnia)
5 See Paddy Ashdown’s “Europe needs a wake-up call. Bosnia is on the edge again.” The Observer. UK, 27 July 2008.
6 Of the seven High Representatives to date, two were Austrian (Petritsch and Inzko), one German (Schwarz-Schilling), one Spanish (Westendorf), one English (Ashdown), one Swede (Carl Bildt) and one Slovak (Lajcak). Those who are from Catholic-dominated countries are joined by Ashdown, the Catholic Englishman.
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