The Independent on Sunday 27th June 1999<\/p>\n
Propaganda wars<\/strong><\/p>\n Phillip Knightley places the Kosovo atrocity stories in their If history is any guide, then many of the atrocity stories from Kosovo\u00a0that\u00a0have dominated the media since the end of the war will turn out to be\u00a0false. Written and filmed by some of the self-styled “mass-grave\u00a0correspondents”, they may at the moment appear to have the chilling\u00a0ring of\u00a0truth: after all, mass graves have unquestionably been found. Some of\u00a0the\u00a0stories may indeed be genuine, but many will vanish under\u00a0investigation, or\u00a0the scrutiny of time.<\/p>\n When passions have cooled – as one hopes that they will even in the\u00a0hate-strewn Balkans – we may even hear the confessions of those who\u00a0invented them. Invented? In the case of Kosovo the inventions will have\u00a0been the work not of British journalists but of those feeding them with\u00a0information. In the Boer War, however, the British press invented\u00a0hundreds\u00a0of atrocity stories – Boer civilians murdered wounded British soldiers;\u00a0Boer soldiers massacred pro-British civilians; Boers executed other\u00a0Boers\u00a0who wanted to surrender; Boers attacked British Red Cross tents while\u00a0brave They were all made up, spun out of the imagination of the journalists,\u00a0rendered more believable by artists back home who specialised in\u00a0atrocity\u00a0drawings. The attack on the Red Cross tent was even deemed worth\u00a0filming,\u00a0and when presented as genuine documentary footage caused great outrage\u00a0against the beastly Boers. It was actually shot with actors on\u00a0Hampstead\u00a0Heath.<\/p>\n But if we want to examine the false atrocity story at its insidious A committee of lawyers and historians chaired by Lord Bryce, a former\u00a0ambassador to the US, produced a report which stated that the Germans\u00a0had\u00a0systematically murdered, beaten, raped and violated innocent men, women\u00a0and\u00a0children in Belgium. “Murder, lust and pillage,” the report said,\u00a0“prevailed over many parts of Belgium on a scale unparalleled in any\u00a0war\u00a0between civilised nations during the last three centuries.” The report\u00a0gave Bryce’s signature added considerable weight to the report and when its\u00a0main\u00a0findings were published around the world they were widely believed. In\u00a0fact, the Germans had committed atrocities in Belgium, but not on the\u00a0scale\u00a0described by Bryce. It was not until after the war – when it no longer\u00a0mattered – that the truth began to emerge. Bryce had not spoken to a\u00a0single\u00a0witness. The report was based on 1,200 depositions, mostly from Belgian\u00a0refugees in Britain, taken down by barristers. None of the witnesses Finally, in 1922, with the Bryce report under attack as British The Bryce report is admired by professional propagandists because it\u00a0achieved its aim. In order for the war to continue, for Britain to win,\u00a0the\u00a0British people had to be made to hate the Germans as they had never\u00a0hated\u00a0anyone before.<\/p>\n The atrocity story is a tried and tested way of arousing hatred. It This is exactly what has happened with Kosovo. President Milosevic,\u00a0from\u00a0being a pragmatic leader that the West could do business with, became a\u00a0new\u00a0Genghis Khan and, significantly, a new Hitler. This link with the\u00a0Second\u00a0World War, a war for Britain of national survival, has strong emotional\u00a0appeal.<\/p>\n So all those in government who supported the Nato war, from the Prime\u00a0Minister down, began to pepper their speeches with words like\u00a0“Holocaust”\u00a0and “genocide” (on whose PR advice, one wonders?) until the idea was\u00a0established that the new Hitler, Milosevic, was guilty not just of\u00a0atrocities but of genocide against the Kosovar Albanians, and that a\u00a0new\u00a0Holocaust was in the making.<\/p>\n Don MacKay of the Mirror worked into a story a reference to This spurious association of Kosovo with the Second World War not only\u00a0aroused the fighting fervour of the nation and brought back our finest\u00a0hour, but made it almost impossible for those who felt disgusted,\u00a0uneasy,\u00a0or just doubtful about the war to speak out in protest without being\u00a0accused of “appeasement” (shades of Chamberlain) or worse, of Holocaust\u00a0denial (shades of neo-Nazism).<\/p>\n While the war was on and British journalists had little access to When the war ended, Nato was naturally anxious to uncover evidence of\u00a0Serbatrocities in Kosovo. If there were none, then the whole edifice on\u00a0which\u00a0it had based its war would have collapsed. Fortunately, the media,\u00a0militarised to a degree unknown since the Second World War, was anxious\u00a0to\u00a0help.<\/p>\n Teams of frustrated war correspondents raced each other into Kosovo\u00a0with\u00a0one story on their minds – atrocities. Who would find the biggest and\u00a0the\u00a0worst? The Ministry of Defence had even prepared a map indicating\u00a0possible\u00a0sites of mass graves to help them. Local assistance was also available.<\/p>\n Chris Bird of the Guardian was approached in the street by an Albanian\u00a0“with the hint of the pornographer”. The man whispered: “Il ya un\u00a0massacre\u00a0pas loin d’ici.” And when no one was impressed he added urgently:\u00a0“Twenty\u00a0bodies without heads.”<\/p>\n In this scramble for atrocity stories, prudent scepticism was lost. Mass graves reveal nothing. How did the people in them die? Forensic\u00a0evidence may reveal the answers, but even then we are a long way from\u00a0proof\u00a0that would stand up at a murder trial in a British court. Albanian\u00a0witnesses may be telling the truth but printing what they tell\u00a0reporters\u00a0and seeing how that story stands up under cross-examination are\u00a0different\u00a0matters.<\/p>\n Some correspondents offered sources for their stories. Few impress me.\u00a0Maggie O’Kane of the Guardian is fond of “. according to intelligence\u00a0sources”. Will she tell us, when it no longer matters, who they were?\u00a0Others attribute stories to Nato or army spokesmen. These do not\u00a0impress me\u00a0either. It is interesting to note the complete reversal of the\u00a0relationship\u00a0between the media and the military since Vietnam. In Vietnam the media\u00a0were It was fascinating to watch the British Army’s spokesman being Sad days, but if you feel as I do that truth, the most abused and
\nhistorical
\ncontext<\/p>\n
\nBritish doctors and nurses were treating the wounded.<\/p>\n
\nworst,\u00a0then we need to look at the Bryce Commission in the First World War. If\u00a0as\u00a0you read, the parallels with Kosovo and the Serbs appear striking, it\u00a0is\u00a0because they are so.<\/p>\n
\ntitillating details of how German officers and men had raped 20 Belgian\u00a0girls in the market place at Liege, how eight German soldiers had\u00a0bayoneted\u00a0a two-year-old child, and how another had sliced off a peasant girl’s\u00a0breasts in Malines.<\/p>\n
\nhad\u00a0been placed on oath and their hearsay evidence was accepted at face\u00a0value.\u00a0And although the depositions should have been filed at the Home Office,\u00a0by\u00a0the end of the war they had mysteriously disappeared.<\/p>\n
\npropaganda,\u00a0the Belgian government appointed a Commission of Enquiry. It was unable\u00a0to\u00a0corroborate a single major atrocity mentioned in the report.<\/p>\n
\nfortifies the mind of the nation with “proof” of the depravity of the
\nenemy\u00a0and his cruel and degenerate conduct of his war. Your battle against\u00a0him\u00a0can then be painted as a righteous one, a test of civilised values over\u00a0barbarity.<\/p>\n
\n“Auschwitz-style furnaces” that may have been used to incinerate
\nAlbanian\u00a0bodies in a Serb-run copper mine. Or they may not have been, although\u00a0the\u00a0headline is unequivocal: “1,000 corpses destroyed in mine furnaces”.<\/p>\n
\nKosovo,\u00a0atrocity stories were limited to accusations of “ethnic cleansing”.\u00a0This is\u00a0a confusing and irrelevant term. Tim Allen of the London School of\u00a0Economics pointed out in The Media of Conflict that all wars are ethnic\u00a0wars. So, presumably, all victors could be accused of ethnic cleansing.<\/p>\n
\nReporters seemed ready to believe anything as long as it painted the\u00a0Serbs\u00a0as monsters. A basement used by the Serbian police was described as a\u00a0torture chamber. But the evidence appeared rather sketchy. Did no\u00a0reporter\u00a0ask why it was that the Serb police could spend three days burning all\u00a0their records – television showed us the pile of ashes – but had no\u00a0time to\u00a0remove allegedly incriminating torture instruments and knuckle dusters.\u00a0Could these have been items which the police had seized from local\u00a0criminals? Who knows? Who asked?<\/p>\n
\nreluctant to believe anything the military told them. In Kosovo the
\nmedia\u00a0tend to believe everything the military tells them because the military\u00a0has\u00a0stolen the moral high ground by claiming it is anti-war. It bombs in\u00a0the\u00a0name of peace, to save or liberate, so those who object are the war-mongers, appeasers, Nazis.<\/p>\n
\ninterviewed\u00a0about the deaths of the two Gurkhas. He tried to avoid admitting that\u00a0the\u00a0men had died working on a Nato cluster bomb, so as not to embarrass his\u00a0Prime Minister who had blamed the deaths on Serbs. Meanwhile, Albanian\u00a0war\u00a0crimes against the Serbs appear to have begun. How will they be\u00a0reported?\u00a0Dogmatic journalism with no room for honest doubt, no chance for the
\npublic\u00a0to make up its own mind, has brought us to the point where even to\u00a0express\u00a0the slightest reservation about the latest atrocity story, or to show\u00a0the\u00a0tiniest disagreement with Britain’s policy in Kosovo, is regarded as\u00a0little\u00a0short of treason, not just unpatriotic but immoral.<\/p>\n
\ndisplaced\u00a0refugee, has had a rough deal, remember that even the Bryce Commission\u00a0was\u00a0eventually exposed. So take heart.<\/p>\n