{"id":2426,"date":"2022-05-26T22:10:06","date_gmt":"2022-05-26T21:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.balkan-conflicts-research.com\/archive\/?page_id=2426"},"modified":"2022-05-26T22:10:06","modified_gmt":"2022-05-26T21:10:06","slug":"tony-blairs-speech-to-the-newspaper-society-10-may-1999","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.balkan-conflicts-research.com\/archive\/tony-blairs-speech-to-the-newspaper-society-10-may-1999\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Blair’s speech to the Newspaper Society, 10 May 1999"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/span>‘REPORTING THE TRUTH ABOUT KOSOVO’<\/b><\/p>\n

SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, TONY BLAIR, TO THE NEWSPAPER SOCIETY<\/p>\n

ANNUAL LUNCH, LONDON, MONDAY 10 MAY 1999<\/p>\n

Of course the major preoccupation of politicians and media alike in\u00a0recent weeks has been the Kosovo crisis.<\/p>\n

As I have said before, the responsibility of asking servicemen and\u00a0women to risk their lives is one that any Prime Minister takes very seriously\u00a0indeed. You do not do it unless you think it through and you believe it\u00a0to be right. [A minuscule risk considering that NATO’s fighting was high altitude bombing and missiles fired from afar. \u00a0NATO had one fatality in the war – and that was from an accident]<\/span><\/p>\n

Every single political leader in the NATO Alliance has thought it\u00a0through and believes it to be right. The longer it goes on, and the more we\u00a0hear of the nature of the Milosevic regime and the atrocities committed, the\u00a0more convinced I become of the rightness of our course. Our aims have been\u00a0clear throughout. His troops must get out, and the refugees must be allowed\u00a0home in safety under an international military force. These are basic\u00a0minimum demands and they will be met.\u00a0[NATO members didn’t think very hard – they signed up for illegal aggression against a sovereign state entirely on the basis of unproven claims and propaganda]<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the media age, the era of 24-hour news, in which events are\u00a0subject to instant and relentless analysis and commentary.\u00a0As the politicians who ultimately take the decisions to send our forces\u00a0into battle, it is absolutely right that we are subject to such analysis –\u00a0something which President Milosevic does not agree with, but then that\u00a0is one of the many distinctions between dictatorship and democracy. [Milosevic won elections organised and monitored by the international community which were judged to have met all the appropriate standards]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is largely presented as a two-sided conflict – NATO versus\u00a0Milosevic. But it is not as simple as that. There is a third party, the Kosovar\u00a0Albanians, and for various reasons, they are in danger of being\u00a0overlooked and sidelined in the media. That is not to say there has not been some\u00a0powerful reporting on the refugees. There has. There was one such piece\u00a0on the radio this morning. There have been many others and they have\u00a0helped our public understand why we are engaged in the way that we are. [The problem with uncorroborated refugee testimony is that it very often turns out to be untrue or greatly exaggerated. \u00a0This has been the case for many decades, but has become even more powerful with the advent of digital communication and social media]<\/span><\/p>\n

But when I visited Macedonia last week, one of the TV reporters there\u00a0told a member of my staff that he was really pleased we went. My visit, he\u00a0said, meant there was a chance of him getting a report on the news that\u00a0night. He’d been struggling in recent days. His news desk had told him that\u00a0‘refugee fatigue’ was setting in.<\/p>\n

Refugee fatigue. In other words, once you’ve reported one mass rape,\u00a0the next one’s not so newsworthy. See one mass grave, you’ve seen the lot.\u00a0This is a dangerous path, and it is one that benefits the Serbs. The\u00a0reporter said the story told by the refugees became repetitive. That is because\u00a0the Serbs follow a pattern. News doesn’t like patterns. It likes news.\u00a0[‘Refugee fatigue’ sets in because the stories are hugely repetitive. \u00a0The same words, the same incidents are bound to lose their impact, particularly when they are entirely uncorroborated. \u00a0In the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, The Hague Tribunal claimed that it would substantiate its case solely with evidence from the Kosovo war. \u00a0After some 3 years, it found it couldn’t do this and had to persuade the judges that it should be given further time to bring evidence from the Bosnian war. \u00a0But here again they got nowhere]<\/span><\/p>\n

Please understand that this is not an attack on the media but a plea\u00a0for understanding of the full picture, despite – through no fault of your\u00a0own – your limited access to it.<\/p>\n

For the Serbs also benefit from the fact that there is no media access\u00a0to Kosovo, and I fully understand why most journalists would not want to\u00a0risk even trying to get in there.<\/p>\n

But just as we should be alert to the dangers of refugee fatigue, so we\u00a0must resist the notion that unless something is on film, it’s not news.\u00a0No pictures, no news. [What was needed was real evidence to support specific allegations. \u00a0This was never forthcoming because no professional independent investigations were ever carried out by The Hague Tribunal or anyone else. \u00a0The narrative of the Balkan conflicts was created by US and other intelligence services and media reporting. \u00a0Even the so-called professional organisation in charge of gathering scientific and DNA evidence was a sham. \u00a0It has never produced any of its primary evidence for independent scrutiny and never will, thanks to legislation giving it complete immunity from all requests to do so. \u00a0The Hague tribunal, of course, saw no problem in admitting its ‘evidence’ as established fact on the basis of a written report of its conclusions]<\/span><\/p>\n

We live in a democracy. We take freedom of speech and freedom of the\u00a0press, for granted. Whatever your criticisms, I defend your right to make\u00a0them.\u00a0The Serb media is State-controlled. It is part and parcel of\u00a0Milosevic’s military machine. Critical editors are shot. Independent radio stations\u00a0are shut down. Western journalists are censored and restricted and the\u00a0bland ‘reporters are subject to certain restrictions’ at the beginning or end\u00a0of their reports does not really convey the full nature of those\u00a0restrictions.\u00a0[Contrary to myth, Radio Television Serbia was noted for surprisingly balanced coverage during the Kosovo war. \u00a0Unlike NATO, it revised casualty totals downwards if new information emerged. \u00a0Unlike NATO, it did not make false and exaggerated claims. \u00a0The restrictions placed on foreign journalists operating within Serbia were far from draconian. \u00a0Serbia also had quite numerous independent newspapers and broadcasters]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If reporters are only allowed to see what the Serbs want, and if their\u00a0reports are censored, then it is very hard, if not impossible, to be\u00a0genuinely authoratitive. If a bomb goes astray, and hits a residential\u00a0area, or the Chinese Embassy is mistakenly attacked, then I’m not going\u00a0to pretend that is not news. It is.<\/p>\n

But if these are the only scenes reporters are allowed to see and this\u00a0becomes the only news they report, then it is far from being the whole\u00a0picture. Several thousand bombs have been used in the campaign. A very\u00a0small proportion have gone astray. We regret, genuinely, the loss of\u00a0civilian life, the pain and hurt they cause. But of course the Serbs\u00a0only show you the damage they want you to see. [Only 2% of NATO’s ‘smart’ bombs hit military targets. \u00a0When NATO had one of its many ‘accidents’, their invariable response was, initially, to deny everything and only correct this days or weeks later when contrary evidence became irresistible]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The fact that the media is not inside Kosovo in my view increases,\u00a0rather than lessens, the responsibility to try to find out what is going on in\u00a0there.<\/p>\n

And as refugees are the prime source, then surely we need to be extra\u00a0vigilant not to fall victim to ‘refugee fatigue’.<\/p>\n

There have been civilian deaths in Belgrade, yes. But how does it\u00a0compare to 1.5 million people driven from their homes? 100,000 men aged 15-55\u00a0missing? The systematic rape? The mass graves? The executions? People\u00a0forced to bury their dead, and then murdered and – thrown in on top?\u00a0[No evidence has ever emerged to support any of these propaganda claims. \u00a0The United Nations, with many staff present in Kosovo throughout the bombing campaign, reported a final figure for war fatalities on all sides of 4,000 and said that half of this total related to deaths caused by the NATO bombing.]<\/span><\/p>\n

If the cameras were in there, able to see these things, the world would\u00a0see a very different situation to the one being reported.<\/p>\n

The conflict does not begin or end on a TV screen.\u00a0You may be wondering why I have a map of Kosovo behind me, and what it\u00a0shows.<\/p>\n

It shows 20 incidents, all since early March, in which more than 100\u00a0people have been killed, or 1000 or more displaced from towns and villages\u00a0inside Kosovo.<\/p>\n

The numbers of dead run into thousands; the number displaced tens of\u00a0thousands. We published the map last week. It made very little impact.’No pictures, no news’. But I believe the fact that there are no\u00a0pictures is part of the story.\u00a0And it is a story that has to be told, day after day, pictures or no\u00a0pictures. [If real evidence of their allegations had been found, does anyone believe that the western allies would not have found a way to provide access to western media reporters?]<\/span><\/p>\n

These are real places, real people. Real stories of burnt villages,\u00a0devastated families, lootings, robberies, beatings, mass executions. \u00a0[Not a single mass grave was found in Kosovo by international forensic teams that arrived there within days of the end of the war. \u00a0Nor did they find any evidence of mass executions. \u00a0They left saying they had been brought there under false pretences]<\/span><\/p>\n

These people are the reason we are engaged and the fact that we cannot see\u00a0them makes us more determined to get in there and give them the help they\u00a0need. This is more than a map. It is a montage of murder.<\/p>\n

Of course we regret the loss of civilian life in Nis and at the Chinese\u00a0Embassy. Every single one of them.\u00a0But are these tens of thousands of lives inside Kosovo worth less\u00a0because there happens to be no film of them? Are they non-people not worth a\u00a0studio discussion simply because CNN and the BBC and the rest cannot get in on\u00a0the ground? \u00a0[Evidence, real evidence, must always be the foundation of any judgement that atrocities have taken place. \u00a0If there is no attempt to carry out objective investigations, that strongly suggests that there was little confidence that real evidence would be found]<\/span><\/p>\n

Few of us have even heard of Orlate. Look at the map. ‘Village set on\u00a0fire after 200 executions’. Is that not a story of horrific proportions? Was\u00a0that news? Shouldn’t it be?<\/p>\n

Or Malakrusa? Did that get much coverage when we published the map, or\u00a0at any time before and since? ‘112 men shot – bodies burnt to conceal\u00a0evidence’. No pictures, no news.<\/p>\n

These deaths are not the unintended consequences of military action.\u00a0They are acts of policy. Deliberate. Systematic. And evil.<\/p>\n

By controlling the media in Belgrade, or by keeping them out of Kosovo,\u00a0Milosevic hopes that we will be lulled; that if you see no evil, you\u00a0will speak no evil. But you can hear of the evil, and the voices telling of\u00a0it, the Kosovar Albanians have as much right to be heard as the Serb\u00a0ministers or the indicted war criminals who can get themselves out on screen\u00a0whenever they want. Indeed, I would say they have more of a right. \u00a0[The Kosovo Albanians were heard incessantly throughout the war on all western media. \u00a0UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook gave KLA leader Hacim Thaci a state-of-the art satellite phone so that he could pass on directly to Cook any information on claimed Serbian outrages. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If I mention ‘the convoy attack’ you know what I mean, because the\u00a0story ran for days. If I mention 20,000 taken prisoner in Srbica, 50,000\u00a0expelled from Pec, 270 killed in Izbica, it won’t have quite the same resonance.\u00a0[The story of the convoy attack was true and supported by evidence. \u00a0The others were not]<\/span><\/p>\n

No pictures, no news. But these people are the victims of the most\u00a0appalling acts of barbarism and cruelty Europe has seen since World War 2. We\u00a0teach our children never to forget what happened in that war. We must not\u00a0allow ourselves to become sensitised to accept what is happening in Kosovo\u00a0today.\u00a0[We know now that the ‘appalling acts of barbarism and cruelty did not take place. \u00a0We also know that the KLA set up a organ-trafficking business involving the murder of captured Serbians and the extraction of their organs]<\/span><\/p>\n

I believe that the vast majority of the readers of your newspapers\u00a0understand why we are engaged in this conflict. They understand too\u00a0that in conflicts like this, innocent people will be hurt. Like me, they regret\u00a0that.<\/p>\n

But provided the full story of the conflict continues to be told I have\u00a0no doubt that because of their basic decency, and their basic common\u00a0sense, the British people will maintain their support for what we are doing\u00a0until the job is done.<\/p>\n

And the job will be done. Of that I am in no doubt whatever. We have\u00a0taken down Milosevic’s air defences. We have done huge damage to the\u00a0infrastructure that supports his regime, the fuel dumps and refineries\u00a0that keep his artillery and tanks on the move; the bridges, railways and\u00a0roads he needs to supply his forces; the power plants; the high command in\u00a0Belgrade who are directing the ethnic cleansing on the ground. \u00a0[It was no big deal for a huge western military alliance to destroy the air defences of a small, impoverished country like Serbia. \u00a0The ‘huge damage’ done to Serbia’s infrastructure was in the early 1990s \u00a0independently estimated by foreign think tanks as $50-100 billion]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And with all that done, we are doing more and more damage to the ethnic\u00a0cleansers themselves. They are increasingly cut off inside Kosovo.\u00a0Supplies, food and fuel are scarce. They have no air cover and proper\u00a0accommodation. They are pinned down; unable to move freely, busy\u00a0repairing the damage we have done. \u00a0[As it turned out, no ethnic cleansing had taken place. \u00a0The Serbian forces in Kosovo were \u00a0protecting the integrity of the sovereign Serbian state against the invasion of Kosovo by a KLA army trained and armed by the western powers and Arab states in the early months of 1998. \u00a0The west had no legal or moral basis for intervening in any way]<\/span><\/p>\n

I made a pledge to those refugees. I intend to deliver. Refugee fatigue\u00a0may have set in with some TV stations, but it will not set in with me until\u00a0the refugees are home.<\/p>\n

Our objectives are clear. And they must and will be met. And to achieve them, far from slowing down, we will intensify our attacks upon\u00a0Milosevic’s military machine until he accepts what he knows, what I know, what\u00a0every NATO and Serb Commander knows – that he cannot win and that NATO will\u00a0prevail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0‘REPORTING THE TRUTH ABOUT KOSOVO’ SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, TONY BLAIR, TO THE NEWSPAPER SOCIETY ANNUAL LUNCH, LONDON, MONDAY 10 MAY 1999 Of course the major preoccupation of politicians and media alike in\u00a0recent weeks has been the Kosovo crisis. As I have said before, the responsibility of asking servicemen and\u00a0women to risk their lives … <\/p>\n

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