On Mon, 4 Oct 1999, michael perelman wrote:
> I understood from reports during the crisis that many people were
> taken to sea and were not seen again.
I heard the same. But as I remember the reports, it was live people in army transports being dumped into the sea alive. I don't remember a single report of dead bodies being gathered up and hidden in the sea. And yet there were many reports of people being butchered on land. Which bodies, unless they were gathered up, should still be there.
Mind you, such large scale attempts at cover up could have happened, and would have terrible implications of their own. For one thing it would imply a much larger and more conscious involvement and planning on the part of the TMI than anything unviled hitherto. And maybe even low tech burial at sea is easier than digging mass graves, a level of cover-up even the rawest paramilitaries usually engage in. (Although a good deal of work was put into it -- weighting them or carrying them pretty far or both -- I would think at least some such bodies would end up washing back up onshore.) And in the last instance, this report could be simply be bad reporting, a case of a reporter swallowing a spin. I just posted it because it doesn't fit with what else we've heard. And of course, if it did turn out to be true, it would imply a level of exaggeration of atrocities much higher than even critical newsreaders are used to discounting for. Time will tell.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com