 In August 1992, millions of people were shocked to see
photographs of a supposed Bosnian Serb death camp.
The photos were
produced by ITN, the British TV news giant, from
footage shot by an ITN film crew which spent 15
hours in Bosnia.
Most of the
photographs featured a tall, painfully thin man,
stripped to the waist, apparently penned in
behind barbed wire.
The image was an illusion.
The thin man and other Bosnian Muslims were standing outside
a small barbed wire enclosure. The ITN film crew was filming
from inside the enclosure, thus creating the illusion that the
men were behind barbed wire.
Traveling with
the authorization of Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader, the
ITN crew filmed at a detention center in Omarska
and a refugee center in Trnopolje. The misleading ITN photos
were broadcast worldwide beginning August 6th,
accompanied by sensational captions and comments.
For example Ian
Williams, one of the journalists who accompanied
the ITN crew, appeared on U.S. Public
Television's MacNeil-Lehrer Report on August 6th.
Mr. Williams referred to the Trnopolje refugee
center as a 'camp,' as in 'concentration
camp', saying it was "at the center of
allegations of atrocities." Williams claimed
that:
"Conditions
at this camp were appalling. In 100 degree
heat hundreds of men were forced to eat and
sleep outside in the field behind barbed wire."
[My emphasis]
-- MacNeil-Lehrer Report, 6 August 1992
And indeed, the
ITN photos seemed to show people living outside,
caged like animals behind barbed wire. But Mr.
Williams knew this impression was false. He knew
the Muslim refugees were moving about freely,
that it was the ITN people who were filming from
a fenced-in area where some tools were stored. This is proved in the
Emperor's Clothes movie, 'Judgment!'
How can 'Judgment!'
have proved this?
By luck, a news
crew from Serbian State Television (called RTS)
covered the ITN visit. They went wherever ITN
went, filming what ITN filmed and filming the ITN
crew as well. Thus there is a visual record of
what the ITN people did and what they actually
saw. Using this footage, 'Judgment!' shows, step by step, how pictures of a
humanitarian refugee center at Trnopolje were
transformed into 'death camp' photos that fooled
the world.
'Judgment!'
proves that Ian Williams, now the UN
correspondent for the Nation magazine, and other
journalists who traveled to Bosnia with ITN, lied
to the public.
*Mr. Bush Responds
with Superhuman Speed*
On 6 August 1992,
just 20 minutes after the pictures were
released, George Bush, Senior held a press conference at
a Colorado Air Base:
"Reports say that 20 minutes
after the ITN footage was shown in the United
States, President George Bush changed his
hands-off policy and promised to 'press hard
for quick passage' of a UN Security Council
resolution authorising the use of force in
the Balkans."
-- "The Straits Times, August 16, 1992
"Holocaust images of Bosnia prison camps
make the West sit up," by Lee Siew Hua
The elder George Bush demanded that
the Serbs be harshly punished, including:
"...tighten[ing]
economic sanctions on Serbia so that all
understand that there is a real price to be
paid for the Serbian government's continued
aggression."
Bush, Sr. also
announced that the U.S. would recognize Croatia,
Slovenia and Bosnia as independent from
Yugoslavia. He thus approved the break-up of
Yugoslavia and guaranteed that the Bosnian war
would continue.
Consider the
remarkable speed with which President Bush
reacted.
Some photos are
shown on TV.
Immediately,
President Bush contacts his cabinet members, who,
coincidentally, have also seen the photos.
They confer.
Somehow they determine that the pictures are
genuine.
They contact
leaders of, at least, Germany and England,
possibly other countries. They plan draconian
anti-Serb measures including economic sanctions
that will cut Serbia off from the world.
They contact
congressional leaders. They agree that Bush will
announce the US intent to recognize no fewer than
three new Yugoslav secessionist states.
They call a press
conference at a Colorado Air Base. They write a
press release. They compose Mr. Bush's statement.
The mass media
receives the press release. Film crews travel to
the Air base and set up their equipment.
And all this is
done in...20
minutes?
The impossible speed of this
response by President Bush, Sr., all but proves that the initial TV broadcasting
of the ITN pictures was coordinated between ITN and
either the State Department, the CIA or some
similar body. By holding a press conference immediately after
the pictures were shown, Bush created the impression that he,
like ordinary people, was shocked by what he had seen and was
therefore driven to take action against the Serbs.
Perhaps ITN's trip
to Bosnia, supposedly organized to "investigate claims
that concentration camps had been set up" (Strait
Times), was planned from the outset as a hunt for
footage which could be used to produce such
supposed evidence.
ITN had a prior
history of aggressively anti-Serbian coverage of
the break-up of Yugoslavia. One might ask, why
would the Bosnian Serb leadership give ITN access
to Trnopolje and Omarska, about which the Western
media (for example, Newsday, 21 July 1992) were
already spreading nightmare tales? Perhaps they
hoped that if they just let the ITN people see
for themselves, ITN would be fair. They did not
comprehend the moral standards of the people they were dealing
with.
Get a copy of
'Judgment!' If after seeing it you don't
think we've proved our case we'll refund every
penny.
We cannot bring
back the dead but we can honor them by
telling the truth.
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