There is a history of great film making from the countries that once made up Yugoslavia. The Sarajevo Film Festival is one of the most famous and renowned film festivals in the region.
Their annual fest is scheduled for August 18th-26th. Here is some information from their website about the film fest.
Sarajevo Film Festival
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Hi Shaina,
I am encouraged to see people like you putting things into proper context and condemning genocide denial. This world is a much better place to live in because of people like you and Owen, and I really mean it.
There is an interesting Anonymous comment about the manipulation of alleged number of "killed Serbs around Srebrenica"; local Serb newspapers were cited among others.
(link: http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/2006/07/thoughts-on-niod-report-chomsky-un.html)
The comment is seemingly long, but interesting, so I will translate only a few interesting points, and also add some of my thoughts.
Anonymous cites from local sources interesting argument made by the ICTY's Spokesperson Florence Hartman. I will translate this paragraph as best as I can:
"Responding to media questions about recently published claims about more than 3,500 alleged Serb victims around Srebrenica, Florence Hartman pointed out that the International Crimes Tribunal has always been careful in using the term 'victim'. In the context of criminal investigation, fallen soldiers and police officers who died in military confrontations cannot be regarded as victims who died as a result of war crimes, such as, for example, mass executions."
Anonymous states that "the list of killed Serbs around Srebrenica" contains only names; no other identifiable information is provided. And this is very important point, because the list of 8,106 Srebrenica massacre victims is well established and documented and contains verifiable names of victims, names of victims' fathers, JMBG (which is comparable to American Social Security Number, or Canadian Social Insurance Number), and the victims' dates of births.
(link: http://www.domovina.net/srebrenica/page_006/Preliminarni_spisak_Srebrenica_1995.pdf)
Another point Anonymous makes also comes from Serbian sources and it states that the list of alleged Serb casualties around Srebrenica contains names of Serb soldiers who fought around Sarajevo, Hadzici, Kladanja, Olovo, Bihac and other cities all over Bosnia, and whose body remains were transfered to the Bratunac cemetery. (Bratunac is a city in Central Podrinje, close to Srebrenica). All of them were counted as "victims of Naser Oric terror".
As I pointed earlier, Sarajevo was under siege longer than any other city in modern history - longer even than Stalingrad. Around 14,000 people died in Sarajevo as a result of daily Serb attacks on the city under siege. When - as a result of Dayton Peace Agreement - Sarajevo was unified (integrated) Serbs dug out graves of their dead from surrounding parts of Sarajevo that were under their control (Hadzici, Vogosca, etc) and reburied their dead in Bratunac. They did this because of Serbian propaganda which brainwashed them that their dead would never have peace in a "Muslim territory". They were told that Sarajevo would be capital of "Islamic state", etc.
I would also like to point out that the war-time Government of Bosnia-Herzegovina fought for democratic, secular, united, internationally recognized, and multi-cultural Bosnia-Herzegovina. These were, indeed, the main objectives of the government. The Serbs were the least secular people during the conflict. For example, their regular war-time military insignia was religiously marked - "God Saves the Serbs". Their hymn has also been comprised of religious overtones. Regular war-time insignia of the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina contained fleur-de-lis emblem. War-time hymn of Bosnia-Herzegovina had no religious overtones.
As a Bosnian boy growing in a war-time Bosnia and being around the soldiers all the time, I learned to cherish values of democracy, human rights, and secularism, because every one of Bosnian-government fighters that I remember of stood for these values. During the war, nobody could influence me to hate other people (aka: the Serbs), because none of Bosnian soldiers that come to my mind even used that word. They even helped local Serb neighbours with food and other necessities. We didn't look at them as "Serbs". For us, they were people trapped in conflict and surviving daily artillery attacks of joint Serbian and Bosnian Serb forces attacking our city.
PS: Just so there is no confusion, I am not originally from Srebrenica.
For Shaina:
http://www.bhtourism.ba
Cheers!
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