5 June 2011

The Washington Times may be hesitant to publish a letter critical of one of their own, but in my opinion, Mr. Kuhner's "Ethnic cleansing ghosts, despite Mladic's arrest, the quest for a greater Serbia lives," of May 31, can only be described as a further attempt to incite hatred of the Serbian people, collectively.

Mr. Kuhner writes about Srebrenica's being a "safe haven," but ignores the fact that the Serbian attack on Srebrenica was in response to on-going attacks by Muslim forces from Srebrenica on surrounding Serbian villages. Yasushi Akashi, former UN Representative in Bosnia, admitted in The Washington Times of 1 November 1995, "that it is a fact that the Bosnian government forces have used the 'safe areas' [that were supposed to be demilitarized] of not only Srebrenica, but Sarajevo, Tuzla, Bihac, Gorazde for training, recuperation and refurbishing their troops." In other words, the so-called safe areas were used as military posts to train mujahedin fighters from the entire Islamic world, free to attack Serbian villages and return to the safety of the city while their UN protectors conveniently looked the other way.

These "Holy Warriors of Islam," who were led by warlord Nasir Oric and described by Bill Schiller of the Toronto Star in 1996, "as blood-thirsty a warrior as ever crossed a battlefield," attacked 42 surrounding Serbian villages. Thousands of Serbians villagers were brutally slaughtered without fear of being reprimanded or punished by the UN, yet, when Serbs were provoked to retaliate against the Muslim assaults from these so-called "safe areas," they were condemned by the entire world.

As for Mr. Kuhner's accusation that on Mladic's orders "Serbian troops separated and then executed about 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in front of freshly dug mass graves," that unproven claim is in the same category as the unforgettable image of then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's waving a CIA satellite photo of a mass grave, proof positive, she claimed of the genocide of Bosnian Muslims, a claim debunked when journalists from all over the world went to Bosnia to look for bodies and found - nothing.

However, Madame Secretary's accusation did serve a purpose: It grabbed all the headlines and overshadowed Croatia's brutal killings of 14,000 Serbian men, women and children in Operation Storm and their ethnic cleansing from the Krajina region of Croatia, a war crime act which Mr. Kuhner has yet to condemn.

The Germans have a saying, "God save us from the Plague, Hunger and the Croats."

Stella L. Jatras

For your information: The Croatian Serbs: http://frmilovan.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/anniversary-of-operation-storm/