Croat and Serb nationalists coordinated attacks on Muslims while denying culpability
Evidence
In May 1992, Boban had met with Radovan Karadiic in Graz, Austria, to draw up plans for dividing Bosnia between Croat and Serb nationalists. By October 1992, Bohan had given up all pretense of alliance with the Bosnian government and ceased all hostilities with the Serb radicals of Radovan Karadiic. … When asked why only the Muslim properties were damaged, a Croat militiaman grinned and said: “The Muslims burned their own homes down with candles.” Before Serb nationalist attacks on Muslim populations, Serb inhabitants were told to evacuate; similarly, Croats in Prozor were ordered to leave before the killing began. — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 260
Categorization
- XREF: The confessional-style absurdist denial (‘they burned their own homes with candles’) parallels the doubled-reality dynamics of gaslighting found across the reader’s genocide/moral-panic reading.
Related
- Croat and Serb militias jointly dynamited mosques across eastern Bosnia (similarity 0.84)
- Bosnian Muslims suffered uniquely methodical persecution from both nationalist sides (similarity 0.82)
- Both Serb and Croat nationalists shared the view that Slavic Muslims converted from cowardice (similarity 0.80)
- Serb Orthodox clergy actively supported the genocide and ethnic cleansing (similarity 0.79)
- Militants engineered revenge attacks to fabricate proof of ethnic incompatibility (similarity 0.79)
- Croat forces destroyed Orthodox churches but not systematically like Serbs (similarity 0.78)
- Plans to destroy Bosnia’s Muslims were known to party founders yet dissenters were tortured (similarity 0.78)
- Croats turned on Muslims they had just rescued from the Serb army (similarity 0.78)