DID YOU KNOW?  -- Three years before the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide, Serbs torched Bosniak villages and killed at least 3,166 Bosniaks around Srebrenica. In 1993, the UN described the besieged situation in Srebrenica as a "slow-motion process of genocide." In July 1995, Serbs forcibly expelled 25,000 Bosniaks, brutally raped many women and girls, and systematically killed 8,000+ men and boys (DNA confirmed).

29 June, 2008

JAMES BISSETT - SREBRENICA GENOCIDE DENIER

Updated Version: July 2nd, 2008.
Rebuttal to James Bissett's Denial of Srebrenica genocide...


PHOTO CAPTION: James Bissett, Canadian conspiracy theorist and discredited Srebrenica genocide denier. He is a former Canadian ambassador to Belgrade, close friend of a late Serbian dictator Slobodan Miloseivc, and a long time pro-Serbian war crimes apologist...
James Bissett Publicly Denies Genocide in Canadian Daily Ottawa Citizen

On June 27 2008, former ambassador to Yugoslavia and a personal friend of late Slobodan Milosevic, James Bissett, published a commentary in Ottawa Citizen titled: "Don't forget all the victims of Srebrenica." In his commentary, he reduced himself to a pathetic Srebrenica genocide denier by claiming that, "This is acknowledged to be a serious war crime but it is not genocide."

James Bissett doesn't seem to realize that Srebrenica genocide is a judicial fact recognized by the two highest U.N. World Courts.
Srebrenica genocide is not a matter of his opinion or anybody's opinion. Opinion is cheap, everybody has it. Srebrenica genocide is a fact.

In Order to Justify Srebrenica Genocide, James Bissett Repeats Grossly Inflated and Discredited Numbers of Serb Casualties Around Srebrenica...

Furthermore, James Bissett attempted to equalize the horrific crime of genocide against the Bosniaks, with individual war crimes against the Serbs, by repeating a grossly inflated figure of "over 3,000 Bosnian Serb" victims around Srebrenica - a figure discredited by the International Criminal Tribunal, Serbia's Human Right Watch, and Bosnia's State-level Research and Documentation Center. In fact, about 151 Serb civilians died around Srebrenica during the war. The figure of "3,000 Serb civilians," which Srebrenica genocide justifiers constantly cite, was originally propagated by another Srebrenica genocide denier, Milivoje Ivanisevic from Belgrade. Ivanisevic himself contributed to the horrific massacres by supplying Serb Army with bogus lists of the so called "war criminals from Srebrenica" in 1995. This was Ivanisevic's contribution to horrific genocide and ethnic cleansing of tens of thousands of Bosniaks from Srebrenica; Canadian conspiracy theorist, James Bissett, is no different. He is openly pro-Serbian war crimes apologist. James Bissett is just another sad case of a Srebrenica genocide denier whose lack of reasoning is guided by one-sided politics of hatred.

James Bissett and Surrounding Serb Villages (which Serb Army Used as Military Bases to Attack Srebrenica and Commit Genocide)

James Bissett claims that, "...in 1992, the city was used as a base by Muslim forces to raid surrounding Serbian villages." In fact, surrounding Serb villages were used as military bases to attack Srebrenica, as already concluded by the International Criminal Tribunal.

Many of these so called 'Serb' villages were pre-war Muslim villages, from which Muslims were ethnically cleansed. Serbs from surrounding villages blocked humanitarian convoys and bombarded Srebrenica civilians. Furthermore, Serbs around Srebrenica never demilitarized. Instead, Serb military and paramilitary troops continued using surrounding Serb villages as a base for attacks on (and brutal siege of) Srebrenica. The genocide justifiers have consistently ignored the strong VRS (Serb) military presence in Bosnian Serb villages around Srebrenica. For example, the village of Fakovici was used as a military outpost through which Bosnian Serb forces launched massive attacks on Srebrenica civilians.

James Bissett Plagiarizing Other Srebrenica Genocide Denial Sources... Here are some facts about Srebrenica Genocide victims that he doesn't want to know...

Whenever Srebrenica genocide deniers write about Serb casualties, they label them as innocent civilians, but whenever they write about Bosniak genocide victims, they label them as soldiers. Not surprisingly, James Bissett goes on to claim another ridiculous lie, endlessly repeated by thousands of Srebrenica genocide denial web sites, quote: "Some of these [victims] were civilians but most were Bosnian Muslim troops killed as they retreated across Bosnian Serb territory to Tuzla, the nearest Muslim stronghold."

James Bissett is distorting the facts. While some survivors had requested that their family members be buried as soldiers, for various reasons although they died as civilians or as soldiers away from front lines, the most common reason for these requests was access to social support for families of killed soldiers. Such practices lead to over-reporting of soldiers and under-reporting of civilians. In reality, a very small number of Srebrenica genocide victims were soldiers. Those who carried guns, carried them to protect their families from Serb offensive. Most importantly, Srebrenica genocide POWs were victims of summary executions in violation of Geneva Convention.

James Bissett uses outdated Red Cross data of 7,079 Bosniak victims of genocide. In fact, on June 5, 2005 Federal Commission for Missing Persons issued a list of the names, parents' names, dates of birth, and unique citizen's registration numbers of 8,106 Bosniak Muslim individuals who have been reliably established, from multiple independent sources, to have been killed in and around Srebrenica in the summer of 1995. Here is a copy of this list in PDF format. Two years later, on June 21 2007, the Research and Documentation Center released the results of the three year study compiling the largest database on Bosnian war victims in existence - the Bosnia's Book of the Dead (covering period 1992-95). An international team of experts evaluated the findings before they were released. The team worked for three years with thousands of sources, collecting 21 facts about each victim, including names, nationality, time and place of birth and death, circumstances of death and other data. The commission established that 8,460 Bosniaks died in Srebrenica.

James Bissett's Diatribe About Naser Oric and One of Favorite Serbian Propaganda Quotes

James Bissett claims that Naser Oric
"proudly displayed to western journalists videos of his forces decapitating Serb civilians." First of all, those were not Serb civilians, and second of all, Bill Schiller - the Toronto Star journalist who allegedly met Srebrenica defender in 1994 - hadn't even referred to them as "civilians" in his '95 Toronto Star story.

As Schiller claimed in 1995, "There were burning houses, dead bodies, severed heads, and people fleeing." Nothing unusual for a war zone.
So we have dead Serb soldiers and severed heads from grenade shrapnels, but no word that many of those so called 'Serb villages' were filled with Muslim mass graves; and many of those so called 'Serb villages' where in fact villages from which Muslims were ethnically cleansed earlier in 1992? It seems to us that 'the West,' and journalists like Schiller, as well as pro-Serbian propagandists such as James Bisset, hoped that the Bosniaks in Srebrenica would sit silent without responding to deadly Serb attacks. So according to this reasoning, Serbs were okay to bombard Srebrenica enclave and cut off humanitarian aid, but Bosniaks were wrong to defend themselves? Naser Oric had every right to attack and recapture those 'Serb villages," which were used as a base for attacks on Srebrenica. Schiller failed to focus on a bigger picture, and write a story or two about the human catastrophe facing starving Bosniak population of Srebrenica. Needles to say, in 1992, Serbs expelled Bosniaks from their villages around Srebrenica, and used those villages to set up military bases from which they launched brutal attacks on Srebrenica enclave.

It would be beneficial for James Bissett to focus on Serb war criminals, Gen Ratko Mladic and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. They are charged with genocide, and still on the run from justice. But of course, James Bissett doesn't care about them, because he is one of the most pathetic Srebrenica genocide deniers and pro-Serb oriented war crimes apologists in Canada.