Byzantine Blog

Why Haven’t You Heard of Bratunac?

Have you ever heard of Bratunac? How about any of the non-Serbs you know? Ask them. I’ll bet you nobody has. Now ask those same people if they have heard of Srebrenica.

And there you have it: the accomplishment of 20 years of unrelenting media cleansing and the most brutal propaganda assault since the end of the cold war, designed to emblazon the mind of every single Westerner with the firm belief that Serbs are subhuman villains, deviant monsters who have committed The Holocaust over the European Muslims 50 years after the WWII.

A Very Simple Script

It is a very simple script: archaically nationalistic primitive Serbs [version 1], or mighty powerful SS-like Serbian Borg armada [version 2], led by their own Hitler (Slobodan Milosevic), suddenly decided to replace Yugoslavia with the Greater Serbia, so they launched multiple aggressions on few randomly chosen Yugoslav republics — Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and their own province of Kosovo-Metohija, in order to ethnically cleanse them of all non-Serbs. Thankfully, the “international community,” led by the US and UK, has gotten involved in time to prevent the genocides Serbs would have committed over Slovenes, Croats, Bosnian and Albanian Muslims. The “international community” has, inexplicably, failed in one small place only, the town of Srebrenica, where the Serbian army (controlled by Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic) massacred [version 1] or executed in cold blood [version 2] up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys, after, for unspecified reasons, sending their elderly, women and children to safety.

As with every badly written story, the motivations are murky and sketchy, the characters are cartoonishly two-dimensional, there is no context that would help explain any of the alleged events and the inevitable happy-end is resoundingly triumphant: the good guys win and get to punish the bad guys many times over, in a number of ways (sanctions, bombardments, “reversed ethnic cleansing,” “revenge killings,” “revenge destructions” of the churches and monasteries, seizure of the territories, the “International Tribunal” One and the International Tribunal Two, among others). As in every poorly written script, facts, logic, history and laws of gravitation are suspended and even the unresolved problem of no bodies to support the crux of the story — the alleged genocide of 7 or 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men in Srebrenica is glossed over, so as not to confuse the audience.

Atrocious fiction is as abundant in our world as certain type of spores that suffocate trees — one has to wonder why no one has launched an environmental campaign of saving the Rain Forest by prohibiting printing thousands of tons of garbage every year, for decades, that has so far destroyed at least one continent of forests and polluted the untold number of minds.

But there is another problem with this particular script: the propaganda authors are not writing merely another bad story, but the history.

Feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul

Eastern Orthodox Church today celebrates Saints Peter and Paul, Chiefs of the Holy Apostles recognized as pillars of the Church, both martyred by the Roman emperor Nero, a macabre madman and cruel Christian enemy.

Fifteen years ago on the Feast of Ss Peter and Paul, Bosnian mujahedeens based in Srebrenica and led by Naser Oric stormed Serbian villages of Zalazje, Biljaca, Sada and Zagoni in Srebrenica region, massacring and killing 69 Serbian civilians and soldiers, wounding more than 70 men, women and children, while 19 Serbs from these villages are still listed as missing. On the 1992 Feast of Ss Peter and Paul, during the day’s bloody orgy, Bosnian Muslim army has pillaged, destroyed and burned all four Serbian villages. Village Zalazje still hasn’t been rebuilt and, fifteen years later, its sole inhabitants are a frail old Serbian couple, left without electricity and with no means to communicate with the outside world.

During 1992 and 1993 Bosnian mujahedeens under the command of Naser Oric have used Srebrenica “safe haven” to kill in the unimaginably monstrous ways (thus far positively identified) 3,282 Serbian civilians in the region of Srebrenica, Bratunac and Podrinje. Unlike the fictional 8,000 Srebrenica Muslims allegedly executed few years later, in July of 1995, Serbian Srebrenica victims have been identified through the DNA matched with their closest family members, and each has the first and last name, dates of birth and death, physical remains and cause of death determined by an official autopsy.

Unlike the fictional 8,000 Srebrenica Muslims, Srebrenica-Bratunac Serbs are remembered and commemorated by the Serbs alone, in a quiet ceremony neither Western media representatives, nor the “international community” officials have attended.

Like every year, Bosnian Serbs have marked the 15th anniversary of the crimes committed against Serbs, after the entire world joined the commemoration of the fictional 8,000 Srebrenica Muslims with all the pomp, pathos and righteous speeches. Serbs have gathered at the Bratunac Memorial, held a Service, laid their wreaths and flowers and remembered their dead silently, in the shadow of a massively advertised Main Event.

Then again, the Serbs have probably deserved that too.