By John Catalinotto
A team of Finnish pathologists sent to Kosovo in January 1999 to investigate the so-called Racak massacre has at last publicized its findings.
The result is further proof that the U.S. government manipulated both events in Kosovo and media coverage of them as part of its effort to justify U.S./NATO aggression against Yugoslavia.
The NATO powers prevented the truth from being publicized before or during the war. The reason is obvious.
U.S. manipulation of the Racak incident was an essential step in initiating the war.
On Jan. 15, 1999, Serbian police--accompanied by observers from the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission and an Associated Press video team who were French citizens--had entered the village of Racak, a stronghold of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army. A firefight ensued, in which the Serb police bested their attackers.
The next day, KLA members led William Walker, the head of the OSCE mission, and journalists of the international media to a gully at the edge of the village. Walker was also serving as U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia at the time, and had a record of not exposing but covering up heinous crimes earlier when he was U.S. ambassador to El Salvador and Nicaragua.
The KLA took them to the bodies of some 20 people lying there, and another 20 throughout the village.
Before the international media, Walker immediately accused Serbian security forces of having committed a massacre of ethnic Albanian "unarmed civilians." He declared, "I don't hesitate to accuse the Yugoslav security forces of this crime."
The story was spread worldwide. U.S. President Bill Clinton condemned the "massacre" in the most absolute terms. He spoke of "a deliberate and arbitrary act of murder."
The German foreign ministry proclaimed, "Those responsible have to know that the international community is not prepared to accept the brutal persecution and murder of civilians in Kosovo."
The Yugoslav government categorically denied the allegations and called the incident a manipulation. It accused the KLA of gathering the corpses of its fighters, killed in the preceding day's battle, and arranging them so as to resemble a mass execution of civilians.
The "Racak massacre" was without doubt the trigger event that made NATO's war against Yugoslavia a certainty. The Washington Post of April 18, 1999, described Racak as having "transformed the West's Balkan policy as singular events seldom do."
NATO immediately convoked an emergency meeting. On Jan. 19, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called for bombing Yugoslavia as "punishment." The punishment was delayed, however, as Washington went through the charade of talks in Rambouillet, France--at which it imposed demands that it knew the Yugoslav government could not accept.
In the meantime, teams of forensic experts arrived in Racak from Belarus, from Yugoslavia and-sent by the United Nations-from Finland.
In February 1999, the Belarus and Yugoslav experts both said there had been no massacre. But the Finnish spokesperson gave a vague report that allowed Walker's unsupported charges to stand.
Now, after the most brutal war in Europe since World War II, the same team of Finnish pathologists isn't sure there was a massacre after all.
CBC Radio News learned and reported on May 22 that the Finnish pathologists' autopsy report reveals no evidence that the 40 bodies were intentionally mutilated. Only one of them showed any sign of being killed at close range.
The doctor in charge of the autopsies is expected to release a full report within a few weeks. But the most reasonable conclusion is that there was a firefight, that KLA fighters were killed, and that the United States and NATO kept the report suppressed to help confuse public opinion.
There was no massacre--other than NATO's massacre of the Yugoslav people.
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