Synopsis
David Rohde is an American journalist who won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the worst massacre in Europe since the Second World War. He describes how he discovered the mass graves of Muslim men near the Bosnian town of Srebrenica.
The BBC has been running a programme on Srebrenica in the “witness” series, centring on David Rohde. The above “synopsis” is how they introduce this latest addition to the “Big Lie”!
If you want to listen it is on their website
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p008grpr
I have begun to transcribe this from tape which aired on BBC this morning (being transmitted around the world on the powerful World Service) and will complete the job later. I feel that it is important that this material become known. Naturally as we have said so often on this website the whole story of the “Srebrenica Massacre” was a Big Lie.
The Witness format is very short, just 10 minutes or so, inserted into other material not connected with the Balkans. Being so short is useful for the Big Lie technique, because the process of generalization takes over, and becomes a perfect vehicle for lies.
If you are reading this I hope it is obvious that I have placed comments in upper case, and that there is a narrator, and that I have placed the actual words of David Rohde in italics (the box outline)
Thousands of refugees are Fleeing towards Potocari
In the next few weeks reports of male refugees gone missing and reports started to emerge of Bosnian Serbs hunted them down.
NOTE THE USE OF THE TERMS LIKE “REPORTS OF”…THE BBC STARTS TO BUILD UP ITS LYING FEATURE
The US Secretary of State went to the United Nations to denounce their actions.
THE BBC BRINGS IN THE BIGGEST SINGLE LIAR OF THE WHOLE EPISODE AND PERIOD…MADELEINE ALBRIGHT
“There is a compelling case that there were wide scale atrocities committed in the area against defenceless civilians away from the battlefield area”
“THERE IS A COMPELLING CASE” THIS IS THE LANGUAGE OF A LIAR. THAT WAS HER CLAIM. THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE PRODUCED AT THAT UN MEETING
Secretary Albright showed satellite images if what appeared to be mass graves near Srebrenica. Those pictures attracted the attention of the young American reporter David Rohde.
OH REALLY! SATELLITE IMAGES! WHAT BECAME OF THOSE SATELLITE IMAGES AND IF THEY WERE SO REAL, SO AUTHENTIC, WHY HAVE NONE OF US EVER SEEN THEM SINCE. WHY HAVE WE AND THE WHOLE WORLD NOT BEEN BOMBARDED WITH THIS VISUAL PROOF EVERY DAY OF EVERY WEEK SINCE. THE REASON IS SIMPLE. THE PICTURES OF ALBRIGHT WERE PHONEY.
Rohde speaks
“They are sort of before and after pictures of a soccer field that has no disturbed earth and then after the fall of Srebrenica there´s what appears to be large mass graves that have been dug in an area around these soccer fields in a village called Nova Kosiga”
What was driving you at that point?
I´d missed the fall of Srebrenica and I think part of not being there for the fall of the town was what motivated me to be aggressive in doing up the follow up work
So he headed for Nova Kasaba (?) and the soccer field
There were basically 4 slots of fresh digging in
There were 2 empty ammunition boxes
I found a piece of paper with some writing on it and it was actually notes from a town meeting in Srebrenica before the town fell
I also found an elementary school diploma that had a Muslim name on it
And the final thing and the most decisive evidence at this first site right in an area where there was fresh diggings
I could see jutting out of the ground part of the decomposing human leg
That must have turned your stomach
I was shocked and at one point a truck load of Bosnian soldiers had driven past. Myself and the Serbian journalist had waved at them to not look suspicious
They had continued driving along. It all did not seem real or these could not actually be mass graves
So when I saw the leg I was sort of stunned and it became instantly real
David Rohde published a report about his evidence of a mass grave site. His editors at the Christian Science Monitor then allowed him to stick with the story and he headed to a refugee camp where male survivors from Srebrenica had gathered
As he interviewed these witnesses David Rohde realized that there might be more mass graves
“The numbers that the survivors were giving me added up to in the thousands and I found that hard to believe. I thought that maybe hundreds it couldn’t be just as large as they say
But what was so troubling was that it was 9 different several of whom talked about executions. In separate interviews they gave different descriptions of the same site
The testimony of two men particularly stood out.
Described an execution that they had survived, first they were brought to a school and then the groups of men were loaded into the back of a pickup truck about a dozen at a time and then they were driven for about a mile and taken out of the truck. They were blindfolded or partially blindfolded and essentially lined up and executed and both of them had described as lying under bodies at a time and having ants crawl across them. Mevlutin had hidden under his cousin´s corpse playing dead and at night time they had gotten up and emerged from this pile of corpses and together made their way out of the area and they talked about crossing a railroad tracks so I was personally interested in getting to that site to see if were telling the truth.
He then got help from a Western intelligence Official who marked up a map for him with possible further mass grave sites
More determined than ever to get the story David Rohde headed back alone to the Srebrenica area. He wanted to find the location mentioned by Mevlutin Oric and Hiriam Ciliac
(check on spelling of these names)
It took me quite a while to find it and it was on the other side of railroad tracks and I found this very large swathe of freshly turned earth. Dotted across it there were some berets and some shoes, Bosnian Muslim men tend to wear berets and by searching the woods near that area of fresh digging and found a pile of clothes and there were 3 canes in that pile and that seemed to collaborate what I had been told that older men had been killed and there were also jackets that belonged to civilians so it would appear that between the fresh digging itself and the clothes and the canes that civilians had been killed at that execution site. As I was driving out I saw that on the other side of the road was a school and essentially everything they had described to me was exactly true
I then set out for the second site which was an earthen dam go there and I saw bones and I was taking out my camera…
(he was arrested)
And so on…to be continued
7 july 2010
I will continue transcribing this interview with Rohde which I recorded from radio onto tape this morning from the BBC World Service.
There can be no going back on these lies about Srebrenica by the ruling class.
The Racak lie led on to the bombing of Serbia and Kosovo, and that bombing lies at the very heart of the whole of the NATO lie
This has got very big implications for everybody involved in politics today. We on 4international will never let this go, and we will measure everybody we meet by where they stand on these issues
It is that important to us!
4international 