{"id":253981,"date":"2024-02-12T12:00:51","date_gmt":"2024-02-12T12:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=253981"},"modified":"2024-07-01T08:20:02","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T07:20:02","slug":"the-staged-sarajevo-marketplace-massacre-30-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/02\/the-staged-sarajevo-marketplace-massacre-30-years-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"The Staged Sarajevo \u201cMarketplace Massacre\u201d 30 Years Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"

5 Feb 2024 – 30 years ago today [5 Feb 1994], the first Sarajevo \u201cmarketplace massacre\u201d occurred, a fully staged false-flag event using actors and bodies of recently fallen soldiers. One year later, the second staged \u201cmarketplace massacre\u201d and the Srebrenica \u201cgenocide\u201d psyop paved the way for the first ever NATO military intervention.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Propaganda in the War on Yugoslavia (SPR)<\/p><\/div>\n

Propaganda in the War on Yugoslavia – <\/em>A Review of Western War Propaganda During the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(German<\/strong>: Jugoslawienkriege \u2192)<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Yugoslav wars of the 1990s are generally seen as regional and ethnic conflicts, but from a geo\u00adpo\u00adlitical perspective, they were about restructuring South\u00adeast Europe after the end of the Cold War.<\/p>\n

The overall American goal was to break up Yugoslavia and to drive back<\/a> the influence of Serbia \u2013 a historical ally of Russia \u2013 in favor of Bosnian Muslims, Croats, Slovenians, and Kosovo Albanians. To this end, the US prevented<\/a> diplomatic solutions and even secretly deployed Islamist combatants<\/a>, with whom it had previously fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and whom it would later call \u201cAl Qaeda\u201d.<\/p>\n

The political and media propaganda concerning the war on Yugoslavia has been well researched and documented by now. Interestingly, however, many commentators are still trying to uphold the official propaganda narrative of the time, in notable contrast to the later war on Iraq, for example.<\/p>\n

There may be various reasons for this tenacity. On the one hand, the propaganda in question dates back to the early days of the Internet and is therefore generally less well known to the public. On the other hand, the implications, especially for Europe, are particularly far-reaching in this case.<\/p>\n

From today\u2019s perspective, it is a rather trivial statement that most Western media outlets supported the US\/NATO war on Yugoslavia, but at the time even critics believed in a \u201cmedia failure\u201d, especially because the influence<\/a> of foreign policy groups on media reporting was not yet broadly known.<\/p>\n

The following sections provide an overview of propaganda in the war on Yugoslavia as well as references to further literature and documentation. Please note that the analysis does not call into question regional aspects of the conflict or any actual war crimes on any side of the conflict.<\/p>\n

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1. The Serbian \u201cDeath Camp\u201d (1992)<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the most notorious cases of propaganda concerns the alleged Serbian \u201cdeath camp\u201d of Trnopolje<\/a> in Bosnia. The story began in August 1992, when three British TV journalists visited a refugee camp whose inmates emphasized<\/a> that they were being treated very well (see video below).<\/p>\n

The journalists, however, went inside a fenced-in storage area right next to the refugee camp and filmed the men on the outside through a barbed wire fence, making it appear as if the men were imprisoned, which in fact they were not (see site map below). The journalists then asked a man emaciated from illness or war-related malnutrition to take off his T-shirt.<\/p>\n

The resulting photograph \u2013 carefully cut to size \u2013 landed on the front pages of most Western media as \u201cproof\u201d of Serbian \u201cdeath camps\u201d, which in turn served as justification for NATO\u2019s subsequent intervention<\/a> in Bosnia, starting with a no-fly zone.<\/p>\n

The Trnopolje death camp deception was exposed<\/a> by a German journalist in 1997. A British magazine republished his article but got sued for libel by the three British TV journalists. The British magazine eventually lost the case<\/a> and had to file for bankruptcy because it couldn\u2019t prove their intent.<\/p>\n

The head of an American PR agency that helped spread the false death camp reports later explained<\/a>: \u201cWe are professionals. We had a job to do and we did it. We are not paid to be moral.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2003, shortly before his death, even former Bosnian President, Alija Izetbegociv, admitted<\/a> in an interview: \u201cI thought that my revelations could precipitate bombings. () I tried, but the assertion was false. Whatever the horror of these places may have been, there were no extermination camps.\u201d<\/p>\n

Video: The \u201cSerbian death camp\u201d deception (2 min., JBS, 2003)<\/h4>\n