Nearly twenty years after these events, neither the full truth is widely known nor has justice been served for many of the Serb victims of the Bosnian Civil War.
BRATUNAC — A memorial service in the village of Kravica, near Bratunac, in eastern Bosnia, today marked the 17th anniversary of the 1993 massacre of 49 Serb villagers.
The Bosnian Muslim forces from Srebrenica, led by Naser Orić, attacked the village in January 1993, to kill the villagers and burn their homes.
Most of those murdered were women, children and elderly. Seven were taken prisoner, and died in a in Srebrenica after they were subjected to torture.
More than 1,000 villagers fled, carrying their children and the wounded through the high snow, walking for some five kilometers over mountain passes until they reached the Drina River, and were transported across to Serbia to safety.
From: B92
– News – Crime & War crimes – Bosnian Serb victims remembered
See also: The OTHER Srebrenica massacre
by Jonathan on 31 December 2009
Nebojsa Malic has slammed a recent OpEd in The Financial Times by British politicians William Hague and Paddy Ashdown.
He rightly points out that the piece is the usual mix of anti-Serb whinging, alarmism and multicultural wishful thinking.
The thing that caught my eye in the piece was this, a warning about what might happen in Bosnia if seccesionst elements got their way:
What happens in Europe’s backyard matters…The breakdown of the country into independent ethnic statelets would not only reward ethnic cleansing – surely a moral anathema – but would also risk the creation of a failed state in the heart of Europe; a fertile breeding ground for terrorism and crime
Well that sounds like exactly like Kosovo to me.
A little ethnic statelet has been lopped off from a sovreign European state by force. Its minorities (Roma, Gorani, Serbs) ethnically cleansed, and the resulting failed state at the heart of Europe is a fertile breeding ground for both terrorism and crime.
My advice: Ignore people like Ashdown and Hague, men who were actively involved in Bosnia and are trying to justify their actions and legacy. Rather, keep and eye on people like Ian Bancroft, independent journalists and experts who have put in the time in Bosnia and have a much more balanced and fair view.
by Jonathan on 31 December 2009
Dear Members and Readers,
We just wanted to wish you all a very happy and prosperous 2010.
Kind regards,
The crew at the Belgrade Foreign Visitors Club
by Jonathan on 31 December 2009
by jd on 27 November 2009
One for the paranoiacs…were the BBC trying to hint that the Radicals are like the SS, or is it a statement about “Serbian”?*
"SSerbian MP in parliament shoe-throwing incident"
Here is the corrected article now.
*I think it was a simple typo, but you never know 
by jd on 20 November 2009
Korean member Kuan V being taken to hospital after an attack by multiple muggers on Zeleni Venac. For more pictures, click on the image above.
A Korean member of the Belgrdae Foreign Visitor’s Club, Kuan, was attacked and beaten last Sunday by multiple cowardly muggers.
Six men a woman brutally attacked him in the early hours of Sunday morning on Zeleni Venac. He bravely fought them off, but was overpowered by so many attackers, who kicked him brutally as he lay on the ground.
Kuan has been in hospital since then, with serious injuries. He was operated on today (Friday) and reported to one of the members that he was in agony, but he hopes to feel better tomorrow.
This is the latest in a spate of attacks on foreigners, but this is the first mugging I have heard of in Belgrade in years.
Kuan is a professor of Serbian and a long term resident in Belgrade.
We wish him the very best in his recovery and hope that the police will be swift in catching and locking up his attackers.
The Belgrade Foreign Visitors Club will be organising something for Kuan. If you have any ideas of special requests, please put them in the comments.
The story is online here:
Razbojnici prebili Korejca! – Pressonline.rs (Serbia)
(Google Translate version in English).
by jd on 17 November 2009
On behalf of the members of the Belgrade Foreign Visitor’s Club I offer my condolences to the Serbian Orthodox community on the occasion the death of Patriarch Pavle of Serbia.
Patriarch Pavle oversaw the Orthodox church and the people of Serbia through some of their darkest years of war, sanctions, bombardment, isolation and vilification.
I hope that his passing marks new chapter in the story of the Serbian Orthodox Church and the people of Serbia.
by jd on 15 November 2009
In this graphic from the Economist we see almost all Balkan countries losing population. This will have severe and unpredicatble social, economic and political consequences across the region.
Earlier in the month I posted a picture of The Belgrade Wall and speculated about a Serbia 50 years from now, where Kosovo had been “saved” (i.e. remained part of Serbia) but we ended up with a Nothern Ireland type situation after the ethnic Serb population dropped whilst the Albanian population grew.
This post drew some angry fire from those who thought I was being unfair to Albanians by implying they “breed like rabbits”. For the record, I was making no such claim, but merely posting a thought experiment based on the assumption that Serbia’s population will fall whilst the Albanian populations of Kosovo, Serbia and Albanian would rise. These assumptions were based on current birthrates which show Albanians are the only Balkan ethnic group with a growing population, although there has been a massive drop in fertility rates amongst Albanians too (7.5 to 2.2 since 1950).
The Economist has picked up the story as part of its special series on global population decline.
From “A birth dearth – The tricky politics of population in the former Yugoslavia“:
OUTSIDE a hospital in Belgrade, two parking spots are reserved for parents with babies. A placard shows a stork delivering a baby that is then driven off in a car. What is telling is that there are only two spaces. Serbia’s population is shrinking.
Demography is causing alarm in many Balkan countries. In Bosnia and Kosovo, the issue can be fundamental. In Macedonia, a bid by the government to give financial aid to encourage (low-birth) Macedonians to have more children but to exclude (high-birth) Albanians was struck down by the constitutional court in April.
Goran Penev, a Serbian demographer, says his country has 7.2m people (excluding Kosovo). But Serbia has one of the oldest populations in Europe and a low fertility rate, so the population is shrinking by 30,000 a year. This is not because Serbs are becoming rich and want smaller families. Rather, the war years and ensuing economic hardship have knocked the stuffing out of Slavs across former Yugoslavia, leading to fewer children, lots of emigration and high abortion rates.
The article goes on to discuss the consequence of these dramatic population declines in the region. This is one trend that you should definitely keep and eye on.
You may also be interested in a post on LimbicNutrition that I put up about the effect of population decline on traditional societies and our ideas about the family:
Al-qaeda versus three person marriages
