Yugoslavia was destroyed by NATO war crims w usual impunity

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Propaganda in the War on Yugoslavia
By Swiss Propaganda Research
19 December 2019
https://www.globalresearch.ca/propaganda-war-yugoslavia/5698036

The war on Yugoslavia in the 1990s was a classic imperial war to reorder South Eastern Europe. To achieve its goals, the US even deployed the “jihadist” mercenaries with which it had previously fought the USSR in Afghanistan and which it would later call Al Qaeda.

The political and media propaganda regarding the Yugoslavia war has been well researched. Interestingly, however, numerous media outlets and commentators are still trying to hold on to the official portrayal of the time, in contrast to the later war in Iraq, for example.

There may be various reasons for this. On the one hand, the propaganda in question dates back to the early days of the Internet and is therefore generally less well known to the public. On the other hand, the implications especially for Europe are particularly far-reaching in this case.

From today’s perspective, it is of course a trivial statement that certain media supported NATO’s war on Yugoslavia, but at the time even critics believed in a media „failure“, especially since the decisive foreign policy media structures were not yet broadly known.

The following sections provide an overview of the most important propaganda cases of the Yugoslavia war as well as references to further literature and documentation.

1. The Serbian “Death Camp” (1992)

One of the most notorious propaganda cases of the Yugoslavia war is the alleged Serbian death camp of Trnopolje in Bosnia. The story began in August 1992, when three British journalists visited a refugee camp whose inmates stressed that they were being treated very well (see below).

The journalists, however, went to a fenced off transformer area right next to the refugee camp and filmed the men through a barbed wire fence, making it appear as if the men were imprisoned. The journalists then asked a man emaciated from illness or war-related malnutrition to take off his tee.

The resulting photograph – carefully cut to size – landed on the front pages of most Western media as „proof“ of Serbian „death camps“, which in turn served as justification for NATO’s subsequent intervention in Bosnia, starting with a no-fly zone.

The German journalist who exposed the Trnopolje death camp deception in 1997 got sued by the British journalists for libel and eventually lost the case because he coulnd’t prove their intent.

The head of an American PR agency that had spread the false death camp reports later explained: „We are professionals. We had a job to do and we did it. We are not paid to be moral.“







Source: Yugoslavia: The Pictures that Fooled the World (2000)



TV screenshot, press headlines and site map of the Trnopolje refugee camp

2.




The Sarajevo Marketplace Massacres (1992-1995)

Another well-known case of propaganda consists of the marketplace massacres in Sarajevo, including in particular the so-called bread line massacre of May 1992 and the two Markale massacres of February 1994 and August 1995.

These massacres took place by grenade fire or bomb explosions and often happened shortly before important political consultations of the UN or EU. They ultimately led to direct military intervention by NATO and thus to a turnaround in the Bosnian war.

In the cases mentioned above as well as some others, investigations by officers of the UN Protection Mission came to the conclusion that these massacres had probably been perpetrated by the Bosnian side on its own population (so-called false flag attacks).

The relevant UN reports, however, were kept secret. Instead, American media — especially CNN — and the US government usually claimed within a few hours that the respective attack had presumably been carried out by the Serbian side.

In the following you will find the most important articles from that time by journalists who were able to study the secret UN reports or talk about them with those involved:

Bosnia bread queue massacre was propaganda ploy, UN told (Independent, 1992)
Dateline Yugoslavia: The Partisan Press (Peter Brock, Foreign Policy, 1994, archived)
Anatomy of a Massacre (David Binder, Foreign Policy, 1994, archived)
Bosnia’s Bombers (David Binder, The Nation, 1995, archived)
Senior official admits to secret U.N. report on Sarajevo massacre (DPA, 1996, archived)
Twenty years later, the Bosnian Markale massacres of 1994/95 were recalled when poison gas attacks during the Syrian war turned out to be staged and the results of UN and OPCW investigations were again suppressed to justify military strikes by NATO countries.



The 1994 Markale massacre (Source: BBC, The Death of Yugoslavia, 1995)

3. The “Genocide of Srebrenica” (1995)

The „Genocide of Srebrenica“ in July 1995 is regarded as the sad climax of the Bosnian war. According to western sources, more than 8000 Bosnian civilians were killed.

In this case too, however, the actual evidence points to a more complex situation and a somewhat different context. The late political scientist Edward Herman and the former CIA officer Robert Baer, who was then operating in Yugoslavia, even spoke of a „fraud“ in this regard.

For further details, please refer to the following articles and books:

The Politics of the Srebrenica Massacre (Edward S. Herman, Global Research, 2005)
Srebrenica Revisited (Diana Johnstone, Essay, Counterpunch, 2005)
Srebrenica: A Town Betrayed (Norwegian documentation, 60 minutes, 2010)
The Srebrenica Massacre: Evidence, Context, Politics (Edward S. Herman, book, 2011)
In general, even events with very high reported victim numbers must sometimes be critically examined. This was shown, for example, by the „Timisoara Massacre“ of 1989 with allegedly 4630 dead, which later turned out to be a psychological operation to launch the Romanian revolution.



Srebrenica: A Town Betrayed (Norwegian documentary, 60m, 2010, Wikipedia)

4. Kosovo: “Operation Horseshoe”, Račak and Rogovo, and more (1999)

After the separation of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia, the US and NATO started another war in 1999 against the remaining Yugoslavia or Serbia to additionally separate the province of Kosovo. This war again had to be justified by propaganda and disinformation.

In particular, politicians and the media mentioned alleged expulsion plans, concentration camps and massacres, which later turned out to be invented or questionable. Examples include the alleged „Operation Horseshoe“ (to expulse Albanians) and the incidents at Račak and Rogovo.

For further details, the German documentary „It Began with a Lie“ from 2001 will be shown below (English subtitles available). The documentary shows how Western politicians and military men deliberately published false information in order to legitimize the war.


Kosovo War: It Began with a Lie (WDR, 2001)

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The original source of this article is Swiss Propaganda Research
Copyright © Swiss Propaganda Research, Swiss Propaganda Research, 2019
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