Truth Buried in Balkan Hell Holes (Aug 15, 2001)

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TiM GW Bulletin 2001/8-2

August 15, 2001

An Essay by a Canadian Documentary Filmmaker

Truth Buried in Balkan Hell Holes

Also, "What Were We Bombed For?" - Belgrade reader says lack of evidence cited by the Hague over Milosevic's alleged Kosovo crimes, yet NATO went to war with Serbia because of them!?

Ottawa 5. “Canadian Trinity:” Ottawa to Send Only Three Soldiers to MacedoniaAug. 17, 2001

Rio de Janeiro 6. Brazilian Judge Says Hague Tribunal Is “Partial”Aug. 21, 2001

Text Box:
Garth Pritchard, in a 1995 photo

PHOENIX, Aug. 15 - Garth Pritchard is an award-winning independent Canadian documentary filmmaker. He has followed Canadian troops, his camera and reporter’s pad in hand, through all their Balkan peacekeeping missions during the last nine years. Since 1992, he has been to Bosnia, the Krajina, Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia… to mention only some of the NWO crime scenes.

“I’ve crisscrossed every nook and cranny of that country,” Pritchard told the TiM editor today, as he described some of the scenes he has seen during his seven trips to what is now known as “former Yugoslavia.”

As a result, Pritchard has seen what the New World Order hell holes look like - from the inside - the way a soldier or a victim would see them. Unlike the American public, which is being led down the garden path blindfolded by CNN’s and other NWO establishment media’s lies and distortions, at least some Canadians have had a chance to see the other side of the coin, through the stories that Pritchard’s cameras recorded and presented. His latest documentary, “Shadows of War,” for example, has received several awards, he says.

Yet even in Canada, the public at large is largely unaware of the truth. Because Pritchard’s films have been ignored by the mass media, including this country’s National Film Board, which sent Pritchard to the Balkans. The truth has been muffled. The cries of the innocent victims have been gagged. Just as in the U.S. and elsewhere in the New World Order lapdog media.

In this TiM Bulletin, however, we bring you with the author’s permission his narrative, “Truth buried in Balkan hell holes.” The article was also published in the print edition only (!) of the Toronto Sun on Aug. 12. Here’s what Pritchard said about some of the atrocities committed by the Croat army against the Serb civilians in the Krajina in 1993 and in 1995:

The dialogue was flat, almost disembodied. But the young soldiers were trying to speak to the camera. They had been asked what happened in the Medac pocket in 1993 when Croat forces attacked the Krajina, then held by Serbs.

The horrors they witnessed were close to unspeakable. The young soldier looked at the camera lens, and beyond. He remembered what he had seen: "They (the Croats) were using people from the villages to carry the belongings they had stolen. We trailed them towards the mountains, and as we got close, they started to kill people - a warning for us to stop the chase."

"We radioed what was happening and were told not to go any further. I'm sorry, sir. We really didn't know whether or not we got the right body parts in the right body bags. We tried our best, sir."

The horrors of the Medac pocket were obvious the day I arrived in the battle zone. Maybe it was the child's bicycle lying in the mud at the crossroads - run over by tanks. Or the gutted buildings. But for sure there'd been horror there. Everything was destroyed. Everything gone. All animals, even chickens, had been slaughtered. And, of course, the smell.

A Balkan hell hole. Unreported. It would be two years before the Canadian media picked up the story and explained that this was the biggest battle Canadians had been involved in since the Korean War.

Canadians, under the United Nations, had put a stop to the slaughter of Serbs by the Croats reputedly under the command of Croat Maj. Gen. Rahim Ademi (an ethnic Albanian - TiM Ed.), who on July 26, 2001, gave himself up to the Hague War Crimes Tribunal to face charges of murder, plunder, wanton destruction and crimes against humanity.

The general is quoted as saying that his conscience is clear. As a film-maker following the Canadian involvement, I have covered the Balkans extensively for years and have always tried to remain impartial. But what happened in the Medac pocket is beyond most atrocities that I've tried to record, including the killing fields in Kosovo.

My conscience is not clear. I covered the Medac pocket and allowed the National Film Board and other so-called Canadian national news agencies to turn a blind eye to what happened there.

The common thread in the Medac pocket and Krajina, is what happened to Serb civilians. For a reason I can't comprehend, the same yardstick is not being used by the Canadian media. and now The Hague, to judge Croats as is used in judging Serbs and Muslims in other parts of the Balkans.

It appears that evidence of war crimes against Croats in the Krajina has been lost. So now, Croatian general staff officers are giving themselves up to the tribunal. Something very strange is under way here.

There is one absolute in all this: Canadians were involved, and Canadians know what happened. In 1995, Gen. Alain Forand was in charge of the UN contingent in the Krajina when the Croats swept through in a five-day blitzkrieg that displaced 185,000 Serbs. Canadians under his command know the truth and have tried to speak out. But their voices haven't been heard.

Canadian Capt. Phil Berkhoff, now retired, explained to my camera what happened in the 1995 shelling of Knin. An old lady, holding her dead husband in her arms, her eye blown out, refused to leave her husband's side as the captain pleaded with her to go before another mortar attack.

"We did the best we could," said Capt. Berkhoff. "It was horrible. These were civilians. We lifted one man to put him in a body bag, and his brain spilled on my foot.

"We moved body bags across some grass near a fence, and when we came back Croat tanks had crossed the grass deliberately and run over the body bags. We didn't know if these dead were Serb, Croat or Muslim. Neither did the people in the Croat tanks."

Gen. Forand and his small contingent of Canadians in Knin saved and protected 780 refugees for two months while the UN called them "displaced persons" and wanted them released to the street and the Croats. Forland refused. Not on his watch. Not Rwanda all over again. Not this time. (See a story in the TiM Bulletin 95-13, Oct. 10, 1995, about this, also reproduced here at the bottom of this article - TiM Ed.).

Knin was smashed. Civilians were slaughtered. Animals were castrated and shot. Farms were burned. The Krajina was ethnically cleansed of more than 185,000 human beings whose roots were there for the ages.

What occurred on the highway that led to Serbia has not been told: An old woman told me that when her farm was shelled, her son was hit and died in her arms. She turned to tell her husband that their son was dead, but he was also dead. Thousands of vehicles littered the landscape, overturned, burned, shot full of holes. (See the photo “New World Order at Work: Exodus of Serbs,” 1995, which has been posted at our web site since its inception in 1997 - TiM Ed.).

Tens of thousands of little piles of personal belongings lay in the open, some neatly stacked, others scattered - an old woman sprawled in an ancient car, her body riddled by a machine-gun; the bodies of a family of farmers, thrown down the farm's well, probably while they were still alive.

I documented much of this. The National Film Board and CBC refused any part of it.

The Canadian media? To them, the main story at the time was two trailers that caught fire at a barbecue Canadian military personnel had. Where were the stories of Canadian soldiers in flak jackets lying on top of people who had none, to protect them from bombardments going on?

What happened at Knin's main hospital? I was told the sick were thrown out of windows, the basement piled high with bodies. Were the Croats given permission by the UN and United States to attack the Krajina? Where the hell did all their tanks come from? Who trained the crews?

There are many Canadians who know the truth. One Canadian, who worked for the UN, tells of staggering amounts of money paid by him to Croats - in cash. If a UN contingent needed the Polish tanks for mine clearance, the UN received an invoice for damage to Croatian roads - again to be paid in cash.

Unbelievable amounts of money, always in cash, were paid out to billet UN soldiers in blown-out buildings. There were monthly meetings, parties, cash paid out. When UN helicopters landed at Croat airports, cash was handed over for landing rights.

Were the Croats told to clean up the evidence of war as soon as possible? For sure, they were painting the lines back on Krajina's roads within days of the five-day blitzkrieg. For sure, the UN was saying the Krajina hadn't been seriously damaged.

In fact, the main street was destroyed and most of the buildings in town had been hit by mortar artillery fire. As for the hospital that had bodies lying around it, thrown from windows - quickly cleaned up. A few days later it was actually functioning.

In Knin, as in the Medac pocket, there were unspeakable atrocities. The Canadian media chose to ignore both events, although thousands of Canadian soldiers were there. Canadian peacekeepers did not pick sides and saved thousands of lives. It now appears that all evidence of war crimes has disappeared - except in the minds of young Canadians who served there.

The National Film Board of Canada, which sent me there, did not do a documentary on the Krajina, although I was there with my camera. Instead, they chose to do a one-hour documentary on ballroom dancing in Germany.

The NFB ordered me to give my footage to the War Crimes Tribunal people who I met in Toronto. I was against this, believing that film-makers should never give unedited footage to any court without being legally obligated to do so. Otherwise, I believe we jeopardize the lives of directors and cameramen who go to the world's war zones.

To give unedited footage to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague without legal paperwork demanding it is wrong, especially if there's been a decision not to make it into a documentary for the public consumption.

Today, evidence of war crimes in the Krajina appears to be missing. Canadians know the truth, even if there's no documentary showing the results of the Medac pocket and Krajina. And for this I am truly angry.

Maj. Gen. Rahim Ademi, the reputed commander of the Croat troops at Medac, may claim to have a clear conscience.

TiM Ed.: So there you have it… an honest account of the truth by a conscientious reporter. A rarity these days. For, as George Orwell put it, "at a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." Which makes Pritchard a media revolutionary of sorts.

KNIN, Sep. 18, 1995 - Garth Pritchard, a director-photographer with a Canadian National Film Board, paints a touching picture of the heroics displayed by the Canadian UN peacekeeping unit, the “Van Doos,” who tried to save lives of nearly 800 Serb civilians from the threat by the would-be Croat executioners.

The Serbs were trapped in Knin when Krajina fell in August. The UN command considered these Serbs mere “displaced persons,” rather than “refugees,” and declared them ineligible for UN or Red Cross aid. But not so Gen. Alain Forand and his Canadians.

“Two cooks worked around the clock providing (food) for these 780 people,” writes Pritchard in the Sept. 18 edition of the TORONTO SUN. “And they smiled all the time knowing that what they are doing is worthwhile. I’ve never been so proud of our (Canadian) soldiers.”

BELGRADE, Aug. 11 - We received the following feedback from Radmilo Savic, a TiM reader from Serbia:

A few days ago, we (in Belgrade) have been informed, through several TV channels, that former president (Slobodan) Milosevic will be charged (before the Hague tribunal) for crimes against humanity and civilian victims and ethnic cleansing intentions - in the wars in Bosnia and Croatia (Krajina), but NOT (!) for Kosovo genocide and ethnic cleansing. The reason? Because there is not enough proof (evidence) for it against him or Yugoslavia (whose president he was)!? (according to a Hague spokesman’s comment to foreign news media).

Then, there is the question I have for any American citizen, and for any citizen of any NATO country which participated in the Kosovo war :

PHOENIX, Aug. 15 - On Aug. 15, we received a letter from a TiM reader who offered the following comment on the just-signed “peace agreement” in Macedonia:

“The government of Macedonia and someone who allegedly represents the Albanian rebels signed today the Framework Agreement for Peace. I say allegedly because the rebels were not present at the negotiating table and it is not known whether they would adhere to the agreement.” […]

“Yes, they were. The Albanian "rebels" - a.k.a. KLA (UCK) or KPC - are nothing but the New World Order mercenaries. They were represented there by no less than three officials - James Pardee (U.S.), Lord Robertson (NATO), and Javier Solana (EU, also former NATO). For what it’s worth…”

PHOENIX, Aug. 17 - Prior to the Kosovo war (1999), Hashim Thaci, a Kosovo Albanian who

emerged as the UCK (Albanian abbreviation for Kosovo Liberation Army - KLA) was a virtual nobody. A few photo-op sessions later, in which Madeleine Albright kissed the thug, and she and her spokesman, James Rubin, shook his hand and treated him as a head of state, a virtual nobody became a virtual head of state (see “Thugs of the World Are Uniting (Again),” June 21, 1999). Just like Yasser Arafat. At least that’s what an average American or Western European citizen might have concluded.

Well, the New York Times is at it again. This time, it is providing its terrorist-to-statesman PR services to an UCK offshoot in Macedonia, where a “peace farce” agreement has just been signed (see Item 1 of this TiM Bulletin). Ali Ahmeti, also a virtual nobody until the fighting in Macedonia broke out earlier this year, is an Albanian terrorist, like Thaci in service of the New World Order, whom the Times is now spinning as a future Macedonian statesman (see “Shadowy Rebel Assures Macedonia That He Seeks Peace,” Aug. 17).

The PR pattern is unmistakable. A “mysterious” and “enigmatic” figure emerges from the shadows of the rebel world (read the CIA or other spook agency’s world - the latter, of course, is never mentioned in the Times stories), to carry the torch for an ethnic minority (Albanian) cause.

Despite its biased reporting, however, the Times sometimes provides useful confirmations of our analyses and theories. Here’s, for example, what its Aug. 17 report says about Ahmeti’s dealings with the NATO brass:

“But since then, to the ire of Macedonians, Mr. Ahmeti has become a regular partner for negotiations with NATO leaders. Even today, four- wheel drive vehicles carrying NATO officials and foreign diplomats climbed a dirt road to this village, which is filled with armed guerrillas, their supplies, a hospital, a mess hall and children wearing red N.L.A. patches.

When fighting flared to the edge of full-blown civil war, NATO leaders regularly visited him and urged him to pull back his troops. And, given the limits of heading what one diplomatic official today called a "disparate" guerrilla group, officials say he has generally kept his word.”

See that “NATO leaders regularly visited him”-line? Now go back and reread our Foreword, written a couple of days ago.

For now, Ahmeti is still donning his (German/NATO-made) military garb (see the photos). In the next phase, however, stand by for a shirt-and-tie image, just like Thaci’s. Ahmeti will then be posing for pictures surrounded by adoring children (“Just like his Marxist idols, Thaci hugs children by day while murdering by night,” read our caption of his June 25, 1999 photo).

As with most things, however, you get what you pay for. While the New York Times PR service Text Box:
Ali Ahmeti - as shown at the New York Times web site (left), and in its print edition (right) - Aug. 17, 2001

Text Box:
Ali Ahmeti - as shown at the New York Times web site (left), and in its print edition (right) - Aug. 17, 2001

appears to be free and voluntary, it is not necessarily very good. In fact, it is quite sloppy at times...

Take a look at the two Ahmeti images here. In the one on the left, Ahmeti is shown at the Times web site with the Albanian double-headed eagle crest on the wall behind him. The photo on the right, however, which was carried only in the print edition, clearly shows the UCK letters above the crest.

In other words, the Albanian NWO mercenaries in Macedonia don’t even bother to hide the Kosovo insignia under which they exterminated the Serbs from that Serbian province. Is that why the letters UCK have been cropped from the Times’ web edition photo?

A coincidence? Only for the uninitiated. Check out “The New York Times Lies and Distorts - Again and Again…” (Feb. 5, 2000). This TiM Bulletin provides two additional examples of image and truth manipulation by the Times. This included switching the identity of victims (from Serbs to Croats), such as in a 1993 example provided in that last year’s TiM Bulletin.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 17 - Just in case you may have thought that the New York Times went out on a limb with its today’s pro-Albanian terrorists media campaign, take a look at the front page story in today’s Washington Post, the Times’ ideological globalist/liberal brethren. Headlined “U.S. to Fund Macedonia Media Blitz,” the Post article clearly illustrates how the New World Order media carry out the brainwashing of both domestic and overseas masses. Here’s an excerpt:

“The U.S. government is planning to finance an extensive political advertising and lobbying campaign here in the next 45 days to secure parliamentary passage of a peace deal that would expand the rights of the ethnic Albanian minority, but is regarded with skepticism by Macedonian political parties and the public, according to sources here and in Washington.

The United States could spend up to $250,000 -- a significant amount of money for a media campaign in this country of 2 million people (Macedonia) -- buying radio, television and newspaper advertisements. U.S. officials are also considering direct mailings to every household, which would be the first such effort in this Balkan country.

The campaign, which could be launched in the next few days with radio spots, will be coordinated with the office of Macedonia's president, Boris Trajkovski. His advisers will work with Western strategists to fashion a message that could change week to week, as in an election campaign. Local advertising agencies will be hired to translate the strategy into a viable media campaign. Trajkovski's involvement is regarded as critical, because U.S. officials say they are nervous that the project will be construed as interference.” […]

TiM Ed.: Fancy that! U.S. officials are “nervous” because the truth may come out?

“The International Republican Institute (IRI), a Washington-based nonprofit group that is partially funded by the U.S. government, has commissioned a nationwide voter survey with 35 questions, mostly about the peace agreement. The results of the survey, expected in the next few days, will allow Western consultants and presidential advisers to tailor what they are calling "public service announcements" to legislators and the public.

IRI was heavily involved with the media campaign of Otpor, the Serbian student movement that helped defeat Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia's presidential elections last year.” […] (TiM Ed.: Check out "How Washington Bought Yugoslav Presidency," Dec. 12, 2000).

The United States is also considering flying members of parliament, particularly members who are hostile to the accord or uncertain about how they will vote, to some American states, possibly California or Texas, to see how bilingualism works in those places; one of the most controversial aspects of the agreement is the elevation of Albanian to the status of a second official language.

A secondary motivation for the effort, sources said, is to restore the domestic standing of Trajkovski, a Western ally who was elected with cross-community support, but whose approval rating has plummeted in both the Macedonian Slav and ethnic Albanian communities. Macedonians blame him for not forcefully pursuing a military option and stamping out the rebels; ethnic Albanians blame him for the military force that was employed.”

5. “Canadian Trinity:” Ottawa to Send Only Three Soldiers to MacedoniaAug. 17, 2001

OTTAWA, Aug. 17 - Giving a whole new meaning to the word “trinity,” Canadian government is to send only three soldiers as NATO “peacekeepers” to Macedonia, according to an Aug. 17 Reuters news report, also carried by the Canadian CTV network. Canada said it’s only sending three people because that’s all that NATO requested.

“Canada is providing staff officers with considerable experience and the right qualifications for this NATO operation,” Minister of National Defense, Art Eggleton, said in a statement.

The “Canadian trinity” contingent is expected to arrive in Skopje on Monday (Aug. 20). But NATO said today (Friday) it would defer deciding when to deploy the 3,500 troops to the Balkans until next week. It said recent clashes, in which a Macedonian police officer was killed by the Albanian rebels on Thursday (Aug. 16) in Tetovo, “threaten a delicate ceasefire which it said must be in place before NATO troops can be sent.”

NATO announced earlier this week it would send in an advance team of 400 British soldiers ahead of a planned 3,500-troop incursion.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug. 21 - A Brazilian judge, who sits on the bench of The Hague International Court of Justice, termed The Hague War Crimes Tribunal's handling of the Serbs accused of war crimes as “partial,” in an interview with the Rio de Janeiro’s newspaper O Globo, published on Monday, Aug. 20. Judge Francisco Rezek also said that the Yugoslav Tribunal costs 10 times more than the International Court of Justice, and that most of its expenses are paid by the United States.

The interview, conducted by O Globo's reporter Trajano de Medeiros, was translated for TiM by a Brazilian reader who wishes to remain anonymous, but whose identity is known to TiM. This reader also told us that Judge Rezek was Justice at the Brazilian Supreme Court, from 1893 to 1990, then Minister for External Affairs (Foreign Minister), 1990-1992, Chief Justice, and appointed to the International Court of Justice, at The Hague, in 1997. Here’s the interview:

“O GLOBO: Mr. Slobodan Milosevic's imprisonment at The Hague, the condemnation of a Serb-Bosnian general for genocide, and the imprisonment of Bosnian Muslim officers, are those facts an irreversible sign of globalization of Justice?

REZEK: It is one step for the universal Justice for grave crimes, crimes defined by International Law, crimes against Mankind and war crimes.

O GLOBO: Do you believe that Milosevic's judgment will be a peaceful (fair?) one?

REZEK: Milosevic asserts that the Court was created only to judge the Serbs; that certain countries wanted that way - to judge certain persons from the Serb side, in the context of the ex-Yugoslavia civil war.

REZEK: The Tribunal is juristically legitimate as the UN Security Council, which has power to create any transitional organ, created it. (But) for establishment of a permanent (judicial) organ, only the (UN) General Assembly (is entitled to do it). Nevertheless, the Security Council accomplished in the beginning of the 90's to create the Tribunal. Even though, France was more active than the US, the US government pays the largest part of the bill.

REZEK: It is quite a high bill. The Criminal Tribunal for the ex-Yugoslavia costs to the UN approximately 10 times more (!) than the cost of the International Court of Justice that judges litigation between nations. (emphasis added by TiM).

REZEK: It is composed of competent jurists, and it judges people accused of very serious crimes. However, it is somewhat partial, which causes bad feelings among observers and specialists. One does not need to leave Europe to find other contexts of civil war in which people want to see others accused. If we leave Europe to go to Asia and Africa, we will see situations, which will call for an international court.

REZEK: It is not only the Serbs who say so in Belgrade. Many specialists around the whole world think that those things cannot be made in such a way, in a partial way, in an incomplete way. Why a court for Yugoslavia, and another for Rwanda, if they are not the only contexts where you may identify crimes against Mankind?

REZEK: This will take us to the Treaty of Rome, of three years ago. The happenings in Yugoslavia may take the countries responsible for the creation of this specific court to support the creation of the tribunal conceived by the Treaty of Rome. We all know that we cannot deny the validity of some criticism made about these specific tribunals, created to judge criminals, but they are one-sided. Those courts are not an example because of the lack of universality.”

TiM Ed.: So there you have it… straight from the mouth of a judge at The Hague. The only thing missing in Judge Rezek’s criticism of the Tribunal was the attribute we gave this “judicial” venue years ago - “kangaroo court.”