Actual Kosovo vandalism was trivial compared to the genocide rhetoric
Evidence
The gap between actual incidents of vandalism and the language used to depict them is vividly illustrated in one essay, in which the undemonstrated tales of ethnically based rape and genocide are placed next to a year-by-year ledger from 1969 to 1982 of the supposed systematic effort by Albanians to annihilate Serb cultural heritage. The list shows several incidents of vandalism per year: cutting of trees on monastery property, writing of graffiti, breaking of windows-hardly the kind of systematic cultural annihilation that was to occur in Bosnia in 1992.10 As for charges that Albanians were being given lenient treatment, Amnesty International reported that Albanians, 8 percent of the population of Yugoslavia, accounted for 75 percent of prisoners of conscience. — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 178
Categorization
- XREF: Echoes the ‘moral dimension of social reaction’ dynamic from Cohen’s moral panic theory, and the reader’s prior piece on immodesty panics as class signifiers.