| NEW YORK
- February 1 - In 1999, the discovery of bodies in the Kosovo village of Racak
helped push NATO into war. New evidence casting doubt on claims that the
bodies were civilian victims of a massacre has stirred debate in the
European media -- but there has been a virtual blackout on the news in the
U.S. press.
In January of 1999, the American head of the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mission in Kosovo announced that
45 Kosovar Albanians from the village of Racak had been massacred by Serb
soldiers. U.S. diplomat William Walker condemned the killings as a
"horrendous" massacre, stating that the dead were all civilians who had been
brutally executed, many of them mutilated after death.
Once the massacre story was reported in heart-wrenching detail by
media across the globe, pressure for war intensified and previously
reluctant European allies took a major step toward authorizing airstrikes. A
Washington Post article (4/18/99) reconstructing the Kosovo decision-making
process found that "Racak transformed the West's Balkan policy as singular
events seldom do."
Troubling questions soon emerged, however, about whether or not
there had actually been a massacre at Racak, or whether the incident had
been manipulated to push NATO into war-- questions almost completely ignored
by the U.S. media at the time.
Front-page news articles by veteran Yugoslavia correspondents
questioning William Walker's account were published in French newspapers
like Le Figaro ("Dark Clouds Over a Massacre," 1/20/99) and Le Monde ("Were
the Dead in Racak Really Massacred in Cold Blood?," 1/21/99). The German
daily Berliner Zeitung reported in March (3/13/99) that several European
governments, including Germany and Italy, were pressing the OSCE to fire
William Walker based on information from OSCE monitors in Kosovo that the
Racak bodies "were not-- as Walker declared-- victims of a Serbian massacre
of civilians," but were mostly KLA fighters killed in battle.
The Sunday Times of London (3/12/00) reported that Walker's team of
American observers was covertly working with the CIA, pursuing a policy
intended to push NATO into war. "European diplomats then working for the
OSCE claim it was betrayed by an American policy that made airstrikes
inevitable," the Sunday Times reported.
After the massacre, the European Union hired a Finnish team of
forensic pathologists to investigate the deaths. Their report was kept
secret until now, two years later. The U.S. media is ignoring the story,
despite the report's finding that although people did indeed die at Racak,
there is no evidence of a massacre.
According to the Berliner Zeitung (1/16/01), the Finnish
investigators could not establish that the victims were civilians, whether
they were from Racak, or even exactly where they had been killed.
Furthermore, the investigators found only one body that showed traces of an
execution-style killing, and no evidence at all that the bodies had been
mutilated.
The Berliner Zeitung also reports that these findings were completed
as early as June 2000, but that their publication had been blocked by the UN
and the EU.
Except for one brief wire story from United Press International
(1/18/01), not a single U.S. media outlet has run a story on the Finnish
team's findings. News outlets continue to refer to the Racak massacre
without qualification, despite the cloud of uncertainty hanging over the
story.
A recent Chicago Tribune report (1/23/01) about the Albanian
separatist militia in southern Serbia speculated that the Serbs might
"revert to form and respond to an Albanian provocation with a Racak-style
retaliation." (The KLA-linked militia, called the UCPMB, are reportedly
preparing for a new war and recently fired on British KFOR troops-- London
Guardian, 1/26/01.) The Tribune made no mention of any questions surrounding
the Racak incident.
A recent Philadelphia Inquirer story (1/23/01) about Yugoslavia's
relationship with the war crimes tribunal at The Hague claimed that "Serbs
refuse to accept the world's vision of them as aggressors," and noted that
Yugoslav president Vojislav Kostunica "alleges the killings [at Racak] were
staged to look like a massacre to embarrass Yugoslavia." The Finnish team's
findings about Racak, which prompted Kostunica's recent allegations, went
unmentioned.
An Associated Press article (1/18/01) did elliptically note the new
report's existence, reporting that Kostunica wants to discuss with The Hague
"reports attributed to Finnish pathologists saying there was no evidence of
a Serb massacre" at Racak (1/18/01).
With tensions in southern Serbia mounting and fears of a new Kosovo
war escalating daily, the U.S. media's silence on this story is troubling.
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