Truth Lies Buried in Balkan Hell Holes

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 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.

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.

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.

This report from 2001 is relevant because today, Croatia refuses to turn over their war criminals. The other reason it is relevant is because of Canadian soldiers receiving medals for trying to stop the slaughter of Serbs at Medac Pocket. (see below)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/800767/posts?page=3

There's a report by a UN officer which states that Dutch mercenaries were very active in the killing and destruction during this attack.

I ACCUSE!

Mr. Cedric Thornberry (UNO) wrote about such a case (Foreign Policy, Fall 1996). The Croatian forces made an incursion in September 1993 into the United Nations Protected Area (the Pink Zone) of Medak in Krajina -"The Croatian army assault was well planned. The advancing soldiers killed and destroyed everyone and everything on their path - the few Serb defenders, the mostly aged inhabitants, and all their livestock. Using dynamite and engineering precision, the invaders leveled every single building... (remark by the author: in this mass killing and destruction the Dutch mercenaries were very active)- Our Canadian military experts concluded that the goals of the incursion had been to carry out a program of 100 % scorched earth and slaughter, that it had been systematically planned and that such a planning could only have been endorsed at the highest level of the Croatian army... The UN dossiers, with their voluminous evidence, have been given to the crimes investigators on October 6, 1993. and to the Croatian minister of defence, Gojko Susak. Since then, there has been nothing but silence". How can the Hague tribunal be perceived as fair when such a well-documented instance has brought no follow-up?...

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