'Rathergate' Again? AP Refuses to Print
the Other Side of Kossovo Story Despite
Increasing Calls of Falsified Claims




Associated Press Commentary

The Other Side of the Story

by Stella L. Jatras


For any news media to be credible and gain the respect of its readers, its reports must first be factual and true. In the AP report of 9 April titled, "U.N. tribunal announces Srebrenica charges," a former deputy chief of security for the Bosnian Serb Army is accused of having loaded and assisted in the execution of 1,000 Bosnian Muslim males in the village of Orahovac. However, just as the accusation that 700 Albanians had been ground up into little pieces, thrown into the Trepca mine and incinerated by Serbian forces in Kosovo, a gruesome story which journalist Daniel Pearl, on 31 December 1999 in The Wall Street Journal, exposed as a hoax. Similarly, the massacre story at Orahovac was also exposed as a hoax when The Guardian of London reported on 6 August 1998, "European Union (EU) found no evidence of mass graves in the town of Orahovac, the teams' Australian leader, Walter Ebenberger, said." The Orahovac massacre was also front page news in The Washington Times giving the same gory details. However, the following day, The Washington Times carried a small, barely noticeable item hidden on page A15 (World Scene, 7 August 1998), which stated, "NATO Chief [Secretary-General Javier Solana] dismissed mass graves in Kosovo."

As for Srebrenica, Gregory Copley, Editor of Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, on 8 September 2003, gave his analysis entitled US Official Implicated With Bosnian High Representative [Paddy] Ashdown in Attempting to Force Fabricated Report on Srebrenica. Copley spelled out explicitly how Ashdown, aided by Deputy HR Amb. Donald Hayes of the US, intended to force responsibility of a fictional account of a narrow section of the Srebrenica fighting during the Bosnia-Herzegovina civil war on the Bosnian Serb (Republica Srpska) Government, effectively giving Ashdown the tool to dismiss the democratically-elected Government and President of Republica Srpska. Serbian President Cavic was known to have been told that he would be removed from office by HR Ashdown if he refused to accept the "findings" of the so-called Commission on Srebrenica which had been sponsored by Ashdown, and dominated by his appointee, the head of the Muslim dominated Commission on Missing Persona. The firing of almost 60 elected and appointed Republica Srpska Government officials on June 30-July 1, 2004, while leaving Pres. Cavic in place, obviously reinforced the fact that they would not be able to speak the truth about Srebrenica or any other issue that clashed with the view of the OHR and still retain their jobs.

Gregory Copley further writes on 18 September 2003 that the Srebrenica casualty numbers have been challened by experts as being politicized and ethnically divisive, when "On the eve of the dedication of a monument to Muslims killed at Srebrenica, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1995, a group which includes a former UN official, intelligence experts, and journalists, released a statement challenging the alleged casualty number of 7,000 victims as "vastly inflated and unsupported by evidence. They asserted that one-sided interventionist policies permitted al-Qaida forces and radical Islamists backed by the Iranian clerical government to take root during the Bosnian war, clouding the future of the region. As well, they agreed that the "memorialization" of false numbers in the monument actually appeared to be intended to perpetuate regional ethnic hatred and distrust and to deliberately punish one of the victim groups in the Bosnian civil war."

While Serbs are being hunted down and sent to The Hague, Kosovo governor Soeren Jessen-Petersen recently congratulated terrorist Agim Ceku for his good work for implementing the eighth standard outlined in the Standards for Kosovo document. If anyone belongs at The Hague, it is Agim Ceku who was commander of Operation Storm in Croatia that ethnically cleansed over 250,000 Serbs from their ancestral home in the Krajina. Ceku then went on to become Kosovo Protection Corps Commander, an offshoot of the Kosovo Liberation Army that was armed and trained by Osama bin Laden and is responsible for the eradication of Serbian culture, language, society and religion that is taking place at this moment.

Serbians have become victims of the Stockholm Syndrome with regard to Srebrenica; they have been so demoralized, so dehumanized, and so brutalized that they are willing to confess to anything and everything that is put before them hoping to get a better deal for themselves and for their families. It is obvious to this writer that The Hague's Chief Prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, must have her pound of Serbian flesh either by hook or crook, in order to justify her kangaroo court. "If you don't confess (regardless of the accusation), we will guarantee that you will receive no less than 20 years," is clearly the offer from del Ponte, who, like a jackal, has tasted blood and will not rest until she has devoured her prey.

While scant attention is paid to the barbaric acts of atrocities that have been and continue to be committed against the Serbian people by Albanian mobs, repeated hoaxes such as the Trepca mine, the Orahovac massacre, the discredited Racak massacre, Operation Horseshoe whereby a report by a retired German general who claimed that the 1999 reports showing that Belgrade planned the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo's entire Albanian population were faked, and other exaggerated reports of alleged Serbian atrocities, continue to take the headlines of influential news agencies such as the Associated Press.



About Stella Jatras

As a career military officer's wife, Stella Jatras has traveled widely and has lived in many foreign countries where she not only learned about other cultures but also became very knowledgeable regarding world affairs and world politics. Stella Jatras lived in Moscow for two years (where her husband, George, was the Senior Air Attaché), and while there, worked in the Political Section of the US Embassy. Stella has also lived in Germany, Greece and Saudi Arabia. Her travels took her to over twenty countries.

Since the advent of war in Bosnia, Mrs. Jatras has worked to overcome Western media bias and present a more accurate view of the tragic situation in the Balkans and the flaws in US Balkan policy. Her opinions have been published in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Times, Washington Post, Arizona Republic, Stars and Stripes and many other major newspapers, magazines, and websites.



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