If
the Western press covered this from Macedonia...
PressInfo #
128
August
28, 2001
By Jan Oberg, TFF
director
Few citizens can go to conflict regions to develop an
understanding and form an opinion. Most of us rely on the
dailies, the radio and television. So, the media stand
between the events and each of us. What we obtain is not
necessarily reality but an image of it, a part of it,
some aspects and angles rather than others. In principle,
it can hardly be otherwise.
But what if the coverage is systematically biased and
what if there is a tendency in what is not covered?
Once again there is a Balkan crisis and once again
some of us who have been on the ground for about ten
years ask: do we have a free press on which those at home
can safely rely?
Here follow some 20 examples of what could have
featured prominently in the headlines about Macedonia the
last few months. Most citizens are likely not to have
heard much about them in the mainstream media and may,
therefore, not have thought of these events and their
implications:
- the story of Americans working with KLA/NLA and
investigate why NATO, in contravention of its mandate in
Macedonia, evacuated KLA/NLA soldiers with American
advisers and equipment out of Aracinovo
- why NATO/KFOR and the UN in Kosovo turned a blind
eye to KLA/NLA operations in the American sector and the
demilitarised zone
- which governments, agencies, mercenary companies and
arms dealers have supplied KLA/NLA with weapons since
1993
- what kind of misinformation and propaganda campaigns
the press itself is the object of by NATO and others,
e.g. why it suddenly begins to call Macedonians "Slavs"
or "Slav Macedonians," something they have never been
called before. Or why Macedonians are frequently called
"nationalists" while you never hear that word about
Albanians with guns in their hands
- the suffering and socio-economic deprivation of
Macedonians and not only the Albanians
- the question of whether EU foreign policy chief,
Javier Solana, the S-G of NATO at the time when it bombed
Yugoslavia, and NATO S-G Lord Robertson, then British
secretary of defence, are personally responsible for the
de-stabilisation of Macedonia
- why we get no conflict journalism but only war
reporting and whether there was any ethnic hatred in
Macedonia that could have sparked off a war had Western
countries not meddled in the affairs of
Macedonia
- the story of why one of the best missions in the
history of the United Nations, UNPREDEP, was forced out
of Macedonia in 1999 to allow NATO to (mis)use the
country for its own "peaceful" aims
- why the UN's Mr. Haekkerup in Pristina, the highest
authority in Kosovo, has not been asked why 46,000
NATO/KFOR soldiers in Kosovo did not actually disarm the
KLA in spite of the fact that it was stated officially in
autumn 1999 that it was disarmed and declared
illegal
- how European politicians feel about the fact that
the August 13 Ohrid "Peace" Agreement is completely
one-sided, demands no guarantees or obligations of the
Albanians (except handing in some of their weapons) and
rewards only the Albanian extremists who unilaterally
turned the conflict into war
- the issue of how better human rights can be promoted
by KLA/NLA killing, ethnically cleaning villages and
refusing for months to meet with the press until its
political leader in front of cameras declared himself
pro-peace sitting under NATO, US, EU and Albanian
flags
- why KLA/NLA has been permitted to commit two
international aggressions, one into Southern Serbia and
the one into Macedonia, and are called 'armed thugs' by
NATO and EU and maintain de facto Western support and
have been a negotiations partner of NATO and are being be
offered amnesty
- why the EU, NATO and the United States have worked
together to prevent the state of Macedonia from
exercising its right to self-defence, according the
Charter of the United Nations Article 51, by threatening
to withdraw economic aid if it fought back
"disproportionately" when KLA occupied the country bit by
bit
- the fact that Macedonia was never paid any
compensation for putting up with ten years of Western
sanctions against its main trade partner, Yugoslavia, and
was also never compensated for NATO's turning it into a
combined refugee camp and military base
- why KLA/NLA's leadership has not simply been
arrested by NATO and the UN long ago - they have the
authority to do so - and why Albanian leaders are seldom
mentioned in relation to the Hague Tribunal
- the relations between certain hard-line Albanian
leaders and the trade in drugs, women, cigarettes and
other black market dealings that supply customers in the
region, including international staff, and other European
markets, and provides most of the cash with which KLA/NLA
obtains its arms
- the wider (real) interests of Western countries in
the Balkans, such as oil in the Caucasus, geo-strategic
issues, the US Bondsteel base and its function in Kosovo,
the containment of Russia, the violent spreading of the
market economy, expansion of NATO - rather than just
printing the noble human
rights-democracy-peace-stabilisation gobbledygook of
powerful people
- how Mr. Haekkerup, former Danish minister of defence
and responsible for his country's actual bombing of
Yugoslavia, could be given the top position as peacemaker
in Kosovo (having had no international mission before)
and why it is a Danish general, Gunnar Lange, who now
heads NATO's "Essential Harvest" mission in spite of the
fact that Denmark contributes no troops to it
- why General Lange grossly underestimates the
military strength of the KLA/NLA by requesting it to hand
in only 3,300 weapons to be "disarmed" and
"disbanded"
- how it comes that NATO, after two days in Macedonia,
sides with the KLA/NLA, the aggressor, when it comes to
the estimate of their numbers of weapons - and not with
the legitimate government of the country (whose estimate
is at least 60,000)
- the reasons that General Lange and NATO spokesman,
Daniel Speckard, suddenly state again and again that if
the Macedonian government does not accept what NATO says
and does, "the alternative is clear: the alternative is
war" - an argument for which there is only two
appropriate words: untruth and blackmail
- why a West (media and decision-makers) that
allegedly cares so much for minorities and refugees does
virtually nothing to focus on and help 600,000 refugees
in Yugoslavia, innocent ordinary citizens of Serb origin
driven out of Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and
Kosovo
- the real reasons why the United Nations has not been
involved in the last six months in Macedonia; it is a
classical case for the UN Security Council, and the UN is
the organisation that knows this country best. Why did
Kofi Annan keep quiet? Why was the issue of Macedonia not
taken up in the Security Council? Why has no one
mentioned the perfectly obvious idea of setting up a UN
peace-keeping mission in Macedonia?
If the major media generally do not address issue like
these, can we say they are free in this case?
Should we see them as complicit in power politics, as
servile and politically correct?
Do Western media manage to preserve their integrity
and critical investigative capacities when their own
governments go to make peace but in reality make war?
Does 'free media' in reality mean that you can be as
biased as you please - or have been advised to be by
powerful circles?
The usual argument is that there are individual
journalists, reporters, columnists and editors who
actually address issues like these. That is true. But
unfortunately they remain a tiny minority in the margins
of the generalised media picture on the basis of which
the great majority of citizens form their opinions.
© TFF 2001

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