The Candadian Press reports:
Police are urging people in a three-kilometre radius of the apartment building where a missing Toronto girl lived to search their properties for signs of her, as they check reported sightings.
Staff Insp. Larry Sinclair told a news conference today police have stepped up the search to a Level 3, the highest level, which allows them to call in outside units for assistance.
Mariam Makhniashvili, 17, was last seen by her family when she left for school with her brother on Monday morning, near Bathurst Street and Eglinton Avenue West. She did not arrive home from Forest Hill Collegiate and the school principal said Miriam was not in any classes. “This to the best of our knowledge is completely out of character for her,” he said, as he explained why the search level has been upgraded.
“She’s been in Toronto for less than 90 days, to the best of our knowledge she has no friends, and her only relatives in Canada, North America, are her parents and her brother.” He repeated an appeal for the girl to contact police to let them know she is safe.
Her parents have said there was no dispute that would have prompted Miriam to run away, and police say they have no evidence to the contrary. “There’s nothing to lead me to believe that there’s anything strained with her relationship with her parents,” said Det. Steve McIlwain, the lead investigator in the case.
He added while police say there is no evidence of foul play, police are not ruling anything out. McIlwain said there were no new leads he could discuss, but confirmed tips received by police “from all over Toronto” include reports of people seeing the girl. “Those are currently being investigated and will be evaluated once the investigators report back,” he said
The parents lived in Los Angeles for five years before moving to Toronto, while the girl and her brother lived with their grandparents in the Republic of Georgia. The family was reunited when the parents moved to Toronto in June.
Police have contacted relatives of the girl in Georgia to learn more about her, and say they are looking at the possibility she may have encountered problems with students of Russian background because of the Russia-Georgia conflict.
“That’s something we’re looking at now but right now we’re treating it as a missing person and hopefully we’ll get some evidence that she’s safe and sound,” Sinclair said.
The girl is 5-foot-3 with light-brown, shoulder-length hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing black pants, a light blue shirt and a dark blue jean jacket. She was carrying a large black backpack with a green stripe.
La Russophobe 
Pingback: Scary Stuff: A Georgian in Canada | Secolul 21 ~ 21st Century
Raised by their grandparents in Georgia, Mariam and George were reunited with their parents in June and had just begun their first school year at FHC, near Bathurst Street and Eglinton Avenue, a neighbourhood home to a sizable Russian-immigrant community.
Asked if the long-term Russian-Georgian animosity, which erupted into war last year, could have any possible bearing on events, Staff Insp. Sinclair replied, “That’s something we’re looking at.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/search-for-missing-teen-intensifies/article1292665/
Seriously, constant postings of articles like “oooh, Muslim robbed a shop, Islam is evil!” made me unsubscribed from anti-Islamic blogs even though I hate all religion including Islam – because they are stupid, counterproductive and do not prove anything. It’s the same way how someone is blaming Israel for prostitute trafficking because of actions of Israeli mafia (which most likely exist, but have nothing to do with state or nationality – traffickers exist in many countries).
In this case, the connection is not even proven or pointed at by any evidence. You’ve sunk to a new low.
LA RUSSOPHOBE RESPONDS:
Uh, so what’s your point? Russians WOULD roll tanks into Georiga, WOULD kill dozens of civilians with cluster bombs, WOULD annex Georgia’s territory flouting international law and opinion, WOULD carry out pogroms against Georgians in Russia, but WOULD NOT attack Georgians abroad?
Who’s kidding who, dude?
At least you realize that you hate. To realize is the first step to cure your insanity.
That’s rather well put, LES.
SERGEY, this is being reported IN A CANADIAN NEWSPAPER, you idiot. We are not making this stuff up. And unless YOU can prove she’s SAFE, you are being EVERY BIT as judgmental as we are. Suppose it WAS a Russian attack? Will you man up then? We doubt it. You’d just make a different kind of excuse.
The point is that one case where random person of group X kills, abducts, rapes, trafficks, gives a blowjob, sells drugs, or whatever, to group of nationality Y, or robs a store, or donates to charity, or whatever, doesn’t say anything about either nationality X or Y.
How about that family of Americans who killed adopted Russian child? Ah, those evil, Russian-hating fascist Americans!
Errr… “Russians” (as in: Russian government) would actually not “attack [random] Georgians abroad”.
What the police is “looking at” is the version of Georgian-Russian interethnic “animosity” in this case (involving “students of Russian background”).
LA RUSSOPHOBE RESPONDS:
Errr . . . we didn’t say anything to the contrary.
Errr . . . our point, if you cared to read it, was that Russia’s governmental barbarism was far worse than this and that its people are only carrying out government policy.
> Georgian-Russian interethnic “animosity”
Robert, there is no such thing as “Georgian-Russian interethnic “animosity”. They even belong to the same religion: Eastern Orthodox Christianity”
Yes, the recent tragic hostilities over the fate and the right to self-determination of Abkhazians, Ossetians and other ethnic minorities in Georgia have made the coutries of Georgia and Russia into bitter enemies. But this doesn’t effect the way that ethnic Russians view Georgians. And why should it? First of all, hte conflicts in Georgia don’t effect average Russians in, say, Moscow or Canada no more than a fly effects an elephant. And if it did – it would not create any bitterness among average Russians simply because Russia has won, so what is there to be bitter about?
Some of the most beloved and popular singers, writers, journalists, artists, filmmakers etc in Russia are Georgians, and more so than ever.
And even Russian ultra-nationalists love and worship a Georgian – Joseph Stalin. :-)
If you want, you can compare the relations between Russians and Georgians to the relation between Americans and Serbs. Maybe Serbs cannot forgive Ameircans for raping their country in 1999, but Americans themselves harbour no personal hostilities towards Serbs.
A Russian killing a Georgian in Canada over “ethnic tensions” would be more ridiculous than an American killing a Serb in Canada over “ethnic tensions”.
Wrong again Phobophobe, the Russian government has been deliberately stoking anti Georgian feeling amongst Russians with a deliberate campaign going back many years.
““The government’s willingness to single out an ethnic group for expulsion as a foreign policy tactic is worrisome,” said Cartner. “It suggests that Russia will interrupt peoples’ lives in order to serve foreign policy interests.”
The Russian government’s campaign against Georgians occurred in the context of pervasive racism and xenophobia in Russia. Violent racially-motivated attacks and murders have become common occurrences, especially in large cities. Although there have been some convictions, the Russian government has done little to combat these dangerous trends. Racism also manifests itself in discrimination by employers, landlords, shopkeepers and others, and in racial-profiling by police.”
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2007/09/30/russia-targets-georgians-expulsion
And HRW claimed the Russian massive exaggeration of Ossetian casualties was a deliberate Russian attempt to generate revenge attacks against Georgians.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/13/georgia?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront
“Racism in Russia during the 2000s appears in the form of negative attitudes and actions towards people who are not considered ethnically Russian. Traditionally, this included antisemitism, as well as hostility towards various Caucasian/Central Asian ethnicities (whether of Orthodox Christian or Muslim faith).
In May 2006, Amnesty International reported that racist killings in Russia were “out of control” and that at least 28 people were killed in 2005.[1] In 2006 Amnesty International registered 252 victims of racist crimes, of which 21 died. In February 2007, President Vladimir Putin asked the Federal Security Service to combat racism,[2], but hate crimes still increased. From January 1 to July 31, 2007, Amnesty International registered 310 victims of neo-Nazi and racist crimes in Russia; 37 of those victims died as a result of attacks. Amnesty International criticize Russian police for not doing enough to combat racist crimes, and for often ignoring reports from civilians about threats and crimes.[3] According to the Moscow Human Rights Bureau, from January to March, 2008, 49 people were killed in assaults by radical nationalists, 28 of them in the greater Moscow area.[4]
The number of Russian neo-Nazis is estimated at 50,000 to 70,000, “half of the world’s total.”[5][4]. The director of the Human Rights Bureau, Alexander Brod, stated that surveys show xenophobia and other racist expressions affect 50 percent of Russians.[6]”
&
Hostility towards Caucasians
In Russia, the term Caucasian is a collective term referring to anyone descended from the native ethnicities of the Caucasus. In Russian slang, Caucasian people and Central Asians fall into the category of black. This is not associated with skin colour but with hair colour and non-Slavic facial appearance.[8]
Several pogroms, directed particularly against Caucasian merchants and migrants have been reported in the Russian capital, Moscow, and in other Russian cities.[3] There was a pogrom on April 21, 2001 in Yasenevo Market in Moscow against merchants from the Caucasus, and well-organised attacks on Caucasian businesses and migrants in the eastern Russian town Ekaterinburg on September 9, 2004.[4] Racially motivated attacks against Armenians have grown so common that the president of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan, raised the issue with high-ranking Russian officials.[9]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Russia_during_the_2000s
And
“More and more this is becoming a problem that is reaching the level of government. That’s to say that last autumn, for the first time, the government openly supported discriminatory measures against ethnic Georgians living in Russia,” Kozhevnikova says.
“A whole series of discriminatory measures were taken, including banning [non-Russians] from working in markets. This is politics of an openly
discriminating nature, and it sanctions [the actions of radical forces.”
http://www.rferl.org/content/Article/1076979.html
OFFICIAL RACISM
The Committee said a “thorough investigation” was needed into events in 2006, which Tbilisi at the time said reflected official racism against Georgians, stoking tension between the two former Soviet states.
According to reports cited by the Committee, Russian police rounded up hundreds of Georgians and ethnic Georgians with Russian citizenship, held them in packed jails and deported them to Georgia with little or no legal process.
The review was held before this month’s conflict setting Russian and pro-Russian forces against Georgian troops in and around Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia.
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSLI223190
. The international human rights watchdog Human Rights Watch on October 1 published a report entitled “Russia’s Detention and Expulsion of Georgians.”
The 78-page report documents the Russian government’s arbitrary and illegal detention and expulsion of Georgians. According to the report, a considerable part of Russian broadcasters, the majority of which are owned or controlled by the state, have fuelled anti-Georgian sentiment by portraying Georgians in a negative light.”
In October 2006, the analytical center Sova registered a sharp increase in anti-Georgian statements in the Russian media, which experts found to be directly connected to the authorities’ campaign against Georgians.
“Russian television stations actively supported and justified the government’s singling out of Georgians through daily news programs as well as weekly analytic and political programming and special series. For example, one-sided news coverage in early October on the government-owned Channel One exclusively presented the position of government officials and agencies and regularly connected Georgians to violations of the law, including organized crime,” says the Human Rights Watch report.
“At the beginning of October, the editorial boards of several major newspapers, including Komsomolskaya Pravda, Moskovskii Komsomolets, and Tvoi Den, openly supported the Russian government’s actions against Georgians, while other newspapers questioned the anti-Georgian campaign. Some newspapers emphasized stories involving Georgians in their ‘chronicles of crime.’ An October 5 Komsomolskaya Pravda article, in direct reference to ethnic groups from the Caucasus, including Georgians, accused foreigners in Russia of living by the ‘laws of the mountains,’ rather than Russian laws,” says the report.
The anti-Georgian campaign in the Russian media and the detentions and expulsion of Georgians began after the Georgian Interior Ministry detained four Russian officers on espionage charges. After the officers were expelled from Georgia four days later, Russia imposed tough economic sanctions on Georgia
http://cjes.ru/bulletins/?bid=2662&country=Russia&lang=eng&PHPSESSID=55ea2e18e0fd952262bd0652a8759ce9
@Maybe Serbs cannot forgive Ameircans for raping their country in 1999
Oh? Tell me about this “rape”. Also, did they forgive the British or Italians or Germans or French or Canadians or the rest of the NATO? (Last time I checked, they even wanted to join the NATO.)
NATO did not “rape” Serbia. In fact, it did nothing but finalize what the Serbs had already done themselves over the course of a century: by their arrogance, their discrimination, and their bias, they destroyed Yugoslavia far before any bombs were dropped. NATO just prevented them from taking more innocents with them than necessary.
In addition, while the Serb leadership that entered the war brought it upon itself, the Georgians can hardly be said to have done the same. If Shevvie’s idiots brought about the original secession, the fact remains that the rebels were fighting far past his downfall and violated ceasefires against the very factions that opposed the actions that victimized them.
More than anything else, juxtaposing Georgia and Yugoslavia only highlights the ideological and moral gulf between the West and Russia.
NATO did in Kosovo what Russia did on Ossetia and Abkhazia.
http://wyborcza.pl/1,75477,6825987,An_Open_Letter_to_the_Obama_Administration_from_Central.html
An Open Letter to the Obama Administration from Central and Eastern Europe
Read more: http://wyborcza.pl/1,75477,6825987,An_Open_Letter_to_the_Obama_Administration_from_Central.html#ixzz0S4qGg8nf
Russo-Georgian war… Russia violated the core principles of the Helsinki Final Act, the Charter of Paris, and the territorial integrity of a country
————————–
Didn’t USA and NATO violate the core principles of the Helsinki Final Act, the Charter of Paris, the UN charter, the international law, and the territorial integrity of a country called “Serbia and Montenegro”?
It is an international crime to attack a soveregn country without a UN resolution, and it is a crime to take away part of a country’s internationally recognised territory.
@NATO did in Kosovo what Russia did on Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Invaded, occupied, looted and razed (both military and civilian stuff) the Serbia proper after the ceasefire?
Mistreated and even executed (as in: taken away and shot) Serb prisoners of war?
Used the American redneck militias in their war against Serbia (like in the case of the Russia’s “Cossack” paramilitaries)?
And so on and on -are you still sure about it?
@Mistreated and even executed (as in: taken away and shot) Serb prisoners of war?
HRW:
Execution of Three Georgian POWs
The Ossetian captors took the Georgian POWs into a small room that led off from a gymnasium, where Russian federal forces were among those present.[548] The Ossetians and Russians inspected each of the Georgian soldiers’ hands, apparently in an attempt to determine whether any of them bore the calluses characteristic of artillerists or tank gunners. The captors singled out one of the men as a tank gunner and ordered him into a small shower room next door. The other POWs identified the tank driver as Sopromadze but did not know his first name.[549]
In describing what happened next, Davit Malachini told Human Rights Watch, “They called the tank gunner out into a small room and then we heard shooting. Quite a lot of machine gun fire.” Malachini, Zirakishvili, Kutashvili and one other Georgian POW were then also called into the room. “The tank gunner was lying face down. They had shot him in the back of the head. We saw that his head was open and his brain was exposed. It looked like a watermelon cut in half.”[550]
Although the Ossetian captors claimed that they had shot the tank gunner because he was trying to escape, both Zirakishvili and Kutashvili described the scene in the room as one in which some hasty preparation had apparently taken place. “Some kind of tarp or tent lay on the floor and, from the position of the body lying on the tarp, it seemed that he had been kneeling at the edge of the tarp when they shot him,” said Zirakishvili.[551] An Ossetian militia fighter, who was among the captors, confirmed that the tank gunner was singled out and taken away deliberately. “One [of the prisoners], a tank gunner, was taken away by some of our own [Ossetians] and Russians. I don’t know what happened to him but we had seven prisoners again,” he told Human Rights Watch.[552]
The four POWs were then made to carry the body outside into a courtyard,[553] while the Ossetian captors threatened to kill them.[554] Kutashvili stated that Russian federal troops were also in this yard, and one Russian soldier with a gun, whom, based on his appearance, Kutashvili believed was ethnic Russian, approached him saying, “I’m going to kill you now.” However, another Russian federal soldier, whom Kutashvili described as “a large man with a full beard,” and whom he believes was possibly Chechen, intervened to stop the shooting, claiming that Kutashvili reminded him of his own son who also had been wounded in battle. The first soldier pushed the bearded soldier aside and again made as if to shoot Kutashvili. The bearded soldier punched the first soldier, and then protected Kutashvili from further threats or beatings that night.[555]
The other POWs were beaten again after moving the body outside. Two POWs were made to clean up the blood and remains in the shower room.[556] The Georgian soldiers then carried the body of the tank gunner to a location near a railway line where they were ordered to dig a grave.[557] According to Malachini, by the time they finished digging the grave, it was dark, and so they wrapped the body in the tarp with a rope and left it unburied.[558]
The next day, August 11, the POWs witnessed one of their group, whom they identified only as 21-year-old Khubulov, being singled out and led away, apparently because his surname was Ossetian and he claimed to be ethnic Ossetian. Khubulov was beaten and dragged away from the others, while the captors yelled at him, saying, “You will die! You are a traitor.”[559] The Georgian POWs we interviewed never saw Khubulov again. When Zaza Kavtiashvili asked some of his Ossetian captors about Khubulov’s fate, one of them replied, “We [killed him] because he was an Ossetian traitor.”[560]
@Robert, there is no such thing as “Georgian-Russian interethnic “animosity”. They even belong to the same religion: Eastern Orthodox Christianity
Your attempt to be funny or something?
@And even Russian ultra-nationalists love and worship a Georgian – Joseph Stalin
He was from Georgia (actually the Russian Empire), but he was not “a Georgian”.
Note to Robert: just because they share the same faith does not mean they are of the same ethnicity; see Serbian attacks against Orthodox nationalists in Croatia and Kosovo.
@Note to Robert: just because they share the same faith does not mean they are of the same ethnicity; see Serbian attacks against Orthodox nationalists in Croatia and Kosovo.
You puzzled me now. Croatian nationalists are mostly Catholic, and Kosovo nationalists are mostly Sunni Muslim and some (10-15%) are also Catholic. Serbs are Orthodox.
I apologize, for I thought you were the one who said that.
You are correct about the breakdown of the religious/ethnic factions of the former Yugoslavia, but the history showed that the divide was far more ethnic than it was religious (again, Orthodox Croats tended to lean towards Zagreb while Catholic Serbs supported Belgrade).
Sorry for the confusion.
Turtler,
Your ignorance is amazing. Like most other brainwashed consumers in the West, you know nothing about Yugoslavia. But before I try to explain things to you, let me first understand what you want to say here. Thus, please provide documentation and/or explanation for the following phrases:
> Orthodox Croats tended to lean towards Zagreb while Catholic Serbs supported Belgrade
Who are these “Orthodox Croats” and where can I read about them leaning towards Zagreb?
Given that Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats are the same ethnicity in terms of historical origin and language, the only big thing that separates them is religion. Religion is at the source of many other senseless hostilities, including Israel/Palestine, former Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, India vs. Pakistan, even USA vs. Al Qaeda, etc, etc.
> Serbian attacks against Orthodox nationalists in Croatia and Kosovo
Who are these “Orthodox nationalists” and where can I read about them being attacked by Serbs?
No, the depth at which you have not done the bloody research astounds me.
The Orthodox Croats (Croatians of the Orthodox religion) are found in varying degrees around the country, but as a general rule, they were always more prevalent in Krajina and Southeastern Dalmatria. When the war broke out, they tended to pack up and head West to support Zagreb against the Serb/Montenegrin dominated Yugoslav Army. And before you ask, Serbian Catholics tended to be in the far Northwest (near the Romanian frontier) and in Montenegro and the Southerneast fringe of Dalmatria.
And while you are correct that there is VERY little separating the Bosniaks, Croats, Serbs, etc. from each other ethnically, that does not mean that there is NOTHING there. Yes, all of them are Balkan Slavs, but as a student of Panslavic history as diligent as yourself no doubt knows, they were present as early as the 7th and 8th centuries AD. It is pretty safe to say that most of the differences were a result of the division of the Roman Empire into Byzantium and the soon-to-fall West probably created a good majority of them. As a general rule, those West of the dividing line were in territories swallowed up by the invading “barbarians” while those East of the line remained at least largely in Greek/Roman hands. As a result, the language started to branch out slightly, with those in modern-day Serbia and Montenegro being influenced by Greek and those West coming into the sphere of Germanic and Romance languages (you can even trace some of the different words back to their foreign origins). By the time Byzantium fell, the Southern Slavs were probably about as similar as the Spanish and French: two peoples with a shared common heritage but whose cultural and political division from the shared origin meant they were both distinct. If you ask really nicely, you can even look at some of the old manuscripts from the Medieval era that are clearly separate languages if related ones.
Indeed, it is pretty safe to say that the religion-centric evaluation you used is about as old as the Yugoslav Wars itself: it was only really during the mid-late 19th century that Romantic nationalism started to blend the Balkan Slavs in Yugoslavia into what was viewed as a common nation, and even then it was understood as a Commonwealth between the various ethnicities, as shown by the reactions of the Croats to perceived Serbian prejudice during the interbellum. As this federation started to ideologically fray (which began well before Tito and lasted far longer), the separate nationalisms of the Balkan Slavs (Croats, Bosniaks, etc.) began to split, and since that most immediately manifested itself during the Wars, when religious factors (Bosniak Jihadists, anybody?) were PERCEIVED to be the main thing dividing the Yugoslavs, and while that was not entirely false (as anybody who has a strong enough stomach to look at what happened knows), but was hardly true.
The other conflicts you mention are not as similar as you seem to think, though religion is far more prominent in them than they were in the Balkan Wars. North Ireland was indeed largely religious (Protestants VS Catholics), though it wasn’t always as cut and dry, and if you bother to examine the matter, you can see Protestants in the IRA and Catholics in the “Loyalist” formations. While this became far more religious after the independence of Ireland and the radicalization of the IRA, it still is not entirely religious (as seen by the continuing presence of Protestants in the Prov. IRA and the alliance of the British and Irish governments against them). For India/Pakistan, religion did indeed play a role (I would be an idiot to not recognize that, particularly given the Hindu/Muslim violence prior to partition), but (again) it was not the dominant theme. While the Raj was DIVIDED along religious lines (majority Hindu- India, majority Muslim- Pakistan), it didn’t always stay there, and this is attested not only by the well-known role of Muslim Indians in the conflict against Pakistan, but also of Hindu Pakistanis. And this is further proven when the Muslim-majority Bangladeshis joined with the Hindu-majority Indians in their war of independence against the tyranny of Western Pakistan.
Israel/Palestine you are largely correct, though there are Muslim Israelis and even a few Jewish nutters in the PLO (yes, your ideas about how this happened are as good as mine).
As for US/AQ, the case is not really comparable: asides from some Islamist converts/ sleepers in the US and a few Western agents in the Muslim world, the two forced have never really lived together on more-or-less the same stretch of land and lived together, like the Southern Slavs, the Irish, the Indians and Pakistanis, or the Israelis and Palestinians.
So, there’s your demographic/linguistic lesson for today, and to all a good night!
Turtler,
I have read only the part that talks about Croatia. What you write is highly weird. Please start by giving some references and documentation.
I don’t think your mass media has told you about the genocide that Croatia committed against the Croats of Orthodox persuasion, especially in Krajina. Have you heard of Operation Storm? Read here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Storm
Turtler, could you please provide documentation to explain ot me the difference between “Croatian Serbs, Montenegrins and Macedonians” and “Croatians of the Orthodox religion”? All my Croatian friends told me that that all the Croatians of the Orthodox religion are called “Croatian Serbs”.
> you can even look at some of the old manuscripts from the Medieval era that are clearly separate languages if related ones.
Then how come in modern times Serbs, Bosnians and Croats all speak the same language – the one that used to be called Serbo-Croatian before it became politically incorrect?
http://www.umsl.edu/services/govdocs/wofact93/index.html
CIA WORLD FACTBOOK 1993
CROATIA
Languages: Serbo-Croatian 96%, other 4%
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
Languages: Serbo-Croatian 99%
SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO
Languages: Serbo-Croatian 95%, Albanian 5%
Obviously historical chronology is not Phobokapo’s strong point.
Operation Storm was a Croatian offensive to regain lands captured (and ethnicly cleansed of Croat civillians by the Serbs) during the early part of the war, when the Serbians attacked and comitted massive war crimes against Croatian civillians.
Such as the siege and capture (and rape) of Vukovar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatian_War_of_Independence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vukovar
There is evidence of extreme hardship imposed on the population at the time.[25] Some estimates include 220,000 Croats and 300,000 Serbs internally displaced for the duration of the war in Croatia. However, at the peak of fighting in late 1991, around 550,000 people temporarily became refugees on the Croatian side. The 1991 census data and the 1993 RSK data for the territory of Krajina differ by some 102,000 Serbs and 135,000 Croats. In many places, large numbers of civilians were forced out by the military. This was labelled ethnic cleansing, a term whose meaning at the time ranged from eviction to murder. It was at this time that the term “ethnic cleansing” first entered the English lexicon.
As for the Croatian language.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croat_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differences_in_official_languages_in_Serbia,_Croatia_and_Bosnia
As I erroneously pointed out to Robert, religion and ethnicity are two different things. One would assume you would know this. For instance, the Catholic Serbs and the Orthodox Croats were both minorities amongst their own ethnicities, but during the Yugoslav wars it is no coincidence that they sided with their ethnicity over their co-religionists on the other side.
And you forget that during the Yugoslav Wars and the Sri Lankan war, the diasporas tended to sometimes erupt into violence over what was happening in the old country.
Don’t assume otherwise.
Turtler wrote:
> As I erroneously pointed out to Robert, religion and ethnicity are two different things. One would assume you would know this.
Know what? That you think that you were “erroneous” when you “pointed out to Robert to religion and ethnicity are two different things”?
OK, now I know that you think that your own thinking is erroneous. So what?
Do you understand what the word “erroneous” means?
I do know what “erroneous” means.
As you would know from the above, I accidentally pointed out to Robert that Religion and Ethnicity were different after the massive block of replies above made me think that he was mistaking the two, when in reality it was you.
As such, I wrongly (or erroneously) hit Robert with the rant I meant for you.
Get it now?
Yes, now I do. Convoluted, eh?
But please study the history of Yugoslavia to see that it is indeed the religion that divides the main players: Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks, even tough they speak the same language and, aside from religion, have the same cultures.
Sergy is so full of hate that he can not comprehend that in the West, people care for people, as opposed to the secular uncivilized barbarians in the kremlin where they hate, and plan evil disinformation.
On the streets of moscow, journalists and intelligentsia are killed and beaten, and no one in the kremlin cares.
Meanwhile, one plain ordinary immigrant disappears on the streets in the West, and thousands of people get involved to find her.
The number of officers working on the search fluctuated this weekend, Nealon said. Depending on the time of day, up to 25 officers were working on the case, following up the numerous tips that have come in, most of them potential sightings of the teenager, he said.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5hc48QndDGYVqlEhQn38tkW4y6akw
> they are looking at the possibility she may have encountered problems with students of Russian background because of the Russia-Georgia conflict.
Let me see. The police suspect Russian-Canadians simply because the girl is Georgian? Why not suspect Irish-Canadians or Argentinian-Canadians every time a British girl goes missing? Or Ameircans every time an Arab or Serb or Afghani or Panamanian or Vietnamese girl is missing?
Better yet, given the way Americans have treated Native Americans, Blacks and Japanese, why not imprison all Ameircans, living in Canada, every time a Japanese, Black, or Native American girl goes misisng?
I can even see the prosecutor telling the jury: “The guy is a Russian! What else do you need to convict him? A Russian! Russians WOULD roll tanks into Georiga, WOULD kill dozens of civilians with cluster bombs, WOULD annex Georgia’s territory flouting international law and opinion, WOULD carry out pogroms against Georgians in Russia, but WOULD NOT attack Georgians abroad? Who’s kidding who, dude? Ooops, I meant “whom”…
Soon all Russian-Canadians will be rotting in jail.
Hmmm, Phobophobe.
Has it possibly occurred to your tiny little brain that the police would not have made such a statement unless they had information or evidence of such a threat to the girl involved?
After all, these are Canadian police, not the politcally biased racist thugs of your Russian Millitia.
A Russian tends to be a thug no matter where in the world he resides.
> After all, these are Canadian police, not the politcally biased racist thugs of your Russian Millitia.
Really? But it looks like the American police have already made one mistake concerning the missing girl’s family, when they arrested and falsely accused her father of being a child molester:
/////////////////////////
http://www.680news.com/news/headlines/more.jsp?content=20090916_094441_13416
Vakhtang Makhniashvili, father of missing 17-year-old, acquitted on child molestation charges
Toronto – Vakhtang Makhniashvili, the father of missing 17-year-old Mariam Makhniashvili was acquitted on child molestation charges earlier this year. The Superior Court in Los Angeles confirmed to 680News and CityNews that in April 2009, Vakhtang Makhniashvili faced three charges.
The charges were immoral acts before a child, child molestation, and disorderly conduct by committing a lewd act, but he was acquitted of all charges.
CityNews reporter Pam Seatle spoke with Vakhtang Makhniashvili over the phone, but he would not comment on the charges.
The charges were laid while he and his wife were living in Los Angeles, but according to court records Mariam’s father has been acquitted on all counts.
It’s been over a week since Mariam Makhniashvili went missing, and while police don’t believe foul play was involved, they have not ruled it out.
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Also, notice that even though the police think there was no foul play, they suspect Russian-Canadians of this non-exstent “foul play”.
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Court documents obtained by the Sun from the California Superior Court indicate Vakhtang Makhniashvili was, on Dec. 19, 2008, charged criminally in an incident within the vicinity of a daycare centre.
The documents alleged on Nov. 21, 2008, in Los Angeles he did “willfully and unlawfully, in the presence of a child … induldge in a degrading, lewd, immoral and vicious habit and practice and be habitually drunk.”
They also claim the defendant “did willfully and unlawfully solicit a person and persons to engage in and did engage in lewd and dissolute conduct in a public place and in a place open to the public and exposed to a public view.”
A jury acquitted him of two charges stemming from the incident and a third count was dropped.
“I was shaving,” the 49-year-old unemployed professor of philosophy said in an interview last night.
“I know it was difficult to understand in that country but it is something from the third world to do that. I was a victim of a misconception.”
The prosecution alleged Makhniashvili, who is from the Republic of Georgia, was in his car rubbing his groin in front of a child daycare centre. The document states police “discovered a wide-mouth plastic bottle and a plastic shopping bag” which “contained what appeared to be ejaculate/semen.”
The statement said “the defendant claimed that the material was shaving cream” and then “claimed that the material was sour cream.”
Later the documents state Makhniashvili went to a towing pound where it “appears the defendant removed and has concealed or destroyed the two pieces of inculpatory evidence that are subject to this motion.”
“I was misaccused,” said Vakhtang, who said he had his day in court and was acquitted “by a jury almost unanimously.”
He said the jury understood he was “a PhD and caregiver” who was “living in his car” with “one dollar”.
He was a victim of being a “third-world person” in a “wealthy country,” he said.
Vakhtang said last night when asked by the Sun that he “absolutely did not” have anything to do with his daughter’s disappearance and that he “had a perfect relationship with his daughter and that “his house is sacred for me.”
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Had the Moscow police and prosecutor’s office done to the girl’s fahter what the Los Angeles police and prosecutor’s office had done to him – falsely accuse of child molestation – I bet LR would have written a huge article titled something like “Annals of Russian Shame and Humiliation: Russian Fascist Police Harass a Heroic Georgian Professor!”
That was from http://www.torontosun.com/news/torontoandgta/2009/09/23/11066091-sun.html
Troubled past of Mariam’s father
Charged with public masturbation
By BRETT CLARKSON AND JOE WARMINGTON, SUN MEDIA
And I will freely admit that F*ckups happen in every nation’s legal organs, and the West is no exceptions.
However, while in the West such cases are far more individual and originate further down the chain of command, can we say the same about the riot police and our dear friends in OMON?
Corruption happens everywhere, but what ultimately determines culpability is how the higher ups act and under what circumstances.
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/699491
“On Sept. 13, Mariam and George volunteered for the YMCA at a Dragon Boat Challenge at Marilyn Bell Park on Lake Shore Blvd. She was part of a newcomer youth leadership development group that met at Union Station.
After the afternoon event, the group returned to the subway station, where Mariam was met by her father.”
Could it be that when the Canadian police said that this could have been done by a Russian, they meant her father? Americans and Canadians can’t tell Russians and Georgians apart and call all people from ex-USSR republics “Russians” and assume that all of us are KGB agents and members of the “Russian Mafiya”. No wonder her father was faslely accused of child molestation just for trying to shave.
Looks like the fatser preferred the horrors of being pennyless and living in his car in California over the even bigger horrors of living in Saakashvili’s Georgia. Think about it! Better to be homeless in LA than a professor in Saakashvili’s Georgia!
Could it be this profesor fahter was an oposition leader, and his daughter’s disappearence could have been orchestrated by the same man who orchestrated the murder of Prime Minister Zhvania and the torture of Defence Minister Okruashvili: by Saakashvili himself?
Well, it is not surprising that one might prefer to be homeless in the West than a professor in Georgia; with the Russian army only a few miles away from Tbilisi and its historic attitudes towards the intellectuals of a conquered nation, emigration looks quite attractive, even if only temporarily. That, and the true issues with the Georgian political system would also be an incentive, if that was an issue for said individual.
Oh yes, and any proof regarding Zhvania’s death and the accusations of Okruashvili? No? In that case, bring some before tossing out accusations.
> any proof regarding Zhvania’s death and the accusations of Okruashvili?
There is ceretainly no less evidence confirming Saakashvili’s role in Zhvania’s death than evidence confirming the fabrications that Vladimir Putin had ordered the murders of Litvinenko and Politkovskaya.
Except for the fact that Zhvania died from a gas leak, and that Litvinenko & Politkovskaya were both MURDERED.
In case you have forgotten, Litvinenko was murdered by being poisoned by a very rare radioactive material, and Politkovskaya was shot several times in the head.
Both were frequent and outspoken critics of Putin.
Zhvania was a close friend and supporter of Saakashvili.
For the sake of the argument, I will not talk about Politkovskaya (after all, there IS always the chance that she was killed by Georgi the friendly neighborhood living room/purse entrepreneur on his night shift), but Litie is entirely different, given the use of Polonium (an EXTREMELY expensive murder weapon, to say the least). And the fact that he is probably somebody who the US would have bumped off had he been our problem only sweetens the deal.
Now, I know you didn’t mention him in the reply, but I’m tossing him in anyway to cover my bases.
And again, even if we can agree that Saaks had the means and opportunity to kill Zhvania, what is his motive? Politkovskaya was one of Putin’s opponents (unless she was so deep undercover for him that we STILL don’t know about it) , and so even if he and his cronies did not arrange for it, it would have been a pleasant surprise for him in any event. Why would Saaks go out of the way to kill Zhvania?
> Why would Saaks go out of the way to kill Zhvania?
He didn’t “go out of the way”. He just had a couple of his little foot soldiers kill him. No sweat. Too bad these idiots forgot Zhvania’s shoes when they moved him to the new location…
And certainly, given that Zhvania was THE PRIME MINISTER, the most popular politician and thus Saakashvili’s rival for power and money , it would be of more importance to Saakashvili to kill Zhvania than for Putin to kill a little insignificant nutcase like Litvinenko, who made his living by leeching off of Berezovsky (who cut him off just prior to Litvinenko’s death) and blackmailing businessmen with the files that he accumulated during his years as KGB/FSB goon .
The following Wiki article contains good pointers on the Zhvania matter:
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%96%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F,_%D0%97%D1%83%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B1_%D0%92%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87
Here i swaht I just found:
http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Saakashvili/saakashvili.html
The Puppet Masters Behind
Georgia President Saakashvili
By F. William Engdahl, 12 August, 2008
The death of Zurab Zhvania, his prime minister in February, 2005, remains a mystery. The official version—poisoning by faulty gas heater—was adopted by American FBI investigators within two weeks of the killing. That has never seemed credible to those familiar with Georgia’s gangland slayings, crime, and other manifestations of social decay. Zhvania’s death was followed closely by a functionary of the Premier’s apparat, Georgi Khelashvili, who allegedly shot himself the day after his chief’s demise. The head of Zhvania’s research staff was later found dead as well.
Figures allied with Saakashvili reportedly had a hand in the premier’s death. Russian journalist Marina Perevozkina quoted Gia Khurashvili, a Georgian economist. Prior to the fatal incident, Mr. Khurashvili had published an article in Resonans newspaper opposing the privatization and sale of Georgia’s main gas pipeline. Ten days before the prime minister’s body was found, Khurashvili was attacked and his editor-in-chief—citing pressure from ‘security service’ figures he refused to name—issued him a warning.
The late premier’s position on the pipeline issue was believed the direct reason for the murder of Zhvania. Zhvania’s brother, Georgi, also told Perevozkina that not long before Zhvania’s death he received a warning that someone was preparing to kill his brother. Saakashvili was reportedly livid when the US State Department invited Zhvania to Washington to win a Freedom Medal from the US Government’s National Democratic Institute. Saakashvili tolerates no rivals for power it seems.
Saakashvili, who cleverly marketed himself as “anti-corruption,” appointed several of his family members to lucrative posts in government, giving one of his brothers a position as chief adviser on domestic issues to the Baku-Ceyhan Pipeline project, backed by British Petroleum and other oil multinationals.
Since coming to power in 2004 with US aid, Saakashvili has led a policy of mass-scale arrests, imprisonment, torture and deepened corruption. Saakashvili has presided over the creation of a de facto one-party state, with a dummy opposition occupying a tiny portion of seats in the parliament, and this public servant is building a Ceaucescu-style palace for himself on the outskirts of Tbilisi.
Sorry for the typos: it’s too late here, and I am typing too fast.
Turtler,
The Russian peace-keeping army is exactly where the Georgian leaders voluntarily placed it:
They are internationally recognised peace-keepers, and Georgia signed the agreement to have them there:
http://www.rferl.org/content/What_Could_Replace_Russian_Peacekeepers_In_Breakaway_Regions/1192520.html
Radio Free Europe
Radio Freedom
/owned by the US Congress and operated by the CIA/
August 20, 2008
The Russian peacekeepers in both regions have by and large fulfilled their mandates… Georgia’s military onslaught on the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, during the night of August 7-8… In Abkhazia, a Russian peacekeeping contingent was deployed in the summer of 1994 under the aegis of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), two months after the signing of a UN-brokered cease-fire agreement between Georgia and Abkhazia. No date was set for the expiration of their mandate, and they can be withdrawn only with the consent of both the Georgian and Abkhaz sides… Russian contingent in the Abkhaz conflict zone was from the outset the target of attacks and ambushes by Georgian guerrilla forces… Russian military sources claim that at least 1,600 Russian peacekeepers have been killed in Abkhazia since 1994. The unarmed UN Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG), too, has suffered casualties. Its personnel have been abducted at gunpoint on three separate occasions, in October 1999, June 2000, and December 2000. In the fall of 2001, when Shevardnadze co-opted a group of Chechen fighters to infiltrate Abkhazia via the Kodori Gorge, a UNOMIG helicopter was shot down, killing nine people, including five UNOMIG personnel… in light of the pressing need to provide security for all residents of South Ossetia, the provisional peace plan agreed on by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy in Moscow on August 12, an abridged version of which Saakashvili endorsed on August 13, makes provision for the implementation by the original Russian peacekeeping contingent in South Ossetia of unspecified “additional security measures” pending the “international mechanisms.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL8187260
Over 10 Russian peacekeepers killed in S.Ossetia
Fri Aug 8, 2008
MOSCOW, August 8 (Reuters) – More than 10 Russian peacekeepers have been killed during fighting in Tskhinvali, the capital of Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia, news agencies quoted a top Russian military commander as saying on Friday. “As a result of Georgian shelling more than 10 of our peacekeepers were killed and nearly 30 were wounded,” deputy commander of ground forces Igor Konashenkov said.
http://nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=19554
By Dmitri Simes, President Nixon’s policy adviser and the president of The Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom:
President Saakashvili ordered a full-scale assault on Tskhinvali. And mind you, the assault could only succeed if the Georgian units went right through the battalion of Russian troops serving as international peacekeepers according to agreements signed by Tbilisi itself in the 1990s.
Under the circumstances, the Russian forces had three choices: to surrender, to run away, or to fight. And fight they did. Saakashvili was reckless to count on proceeding with a blitzkrieg in South Ossetia without a Russian counterattack.
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And your idea that it is better to be homeless in LA than a rich man in Tbilisi – well, I hope you weren’t serious. I assure you that as long as a wealthy man doesn’t criticise or oppose Saakashvili – he does fine in Tbilisi.
@The Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom
:D
Well Phobophobe, there are plenty of homeless Russians in the west too.
Obviously they prefer being homeless in the USA & EU to living in the horror that is Putins neo-fascist Russia.
Whats your point?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4231653.stm
Zhvania died from a faulty gas heater.
Its not an uncommon occurance in former soviet republics in winter.
It happened to my wife’s aunt last year.
Also Zhvania was a close ally of Saakashvili, and was instrumental in forging close relations between the Georgian government and anti-Russian Ossetians in Tshkinvali which led to the setting up of the anti-Russian & anti-Kokoity pro Georgian administration led by Dimitry Sanakoyev
Sanakoyev is a former defence minister and prime minister in South Ossetia’s unrecognised administration, but is now a firm ally of the Georgian government, which wants to restore control over the territory.
Now the funny thing is that last year the Russians tried to assasinate Sanakoyev too.
So I suspect if Zhvania was murdered, it would be by the Russians, not his own side.
Time to take your meds Phobokapo.
@I don’t think your mass media has told you about the genocide that Croatia committed against the Croats of Orthodox persuasion, especially in Krajina. Have you heard of Operation Storm?
Haha, funny stuff. Them “Croats of Orthodox persuasion”, whose ethnically-cleansed (of their Croatian neighbours) statelet they themselves called the Republic of “Srpska [Serb] Krajina” for some apparently strange reason (to confuse you?) and who had officially seceded from Croatia with the help of the full-scale invasion by the “Yugoslav” army (under General Mladic) and the “Chetnik” bands from Serbia.
Also Operation Storm was no “genocide” (just like the Operation Flash and so on). Btw: what is your opinion about Operation Horseshoe? You know, the one that sparked this “rape” of “Yugoslavia” (Serbia) by “the Americans” (NATO) and ultimately led to the revolution in the “raped” Serbia and the fall of Milosevic. That is, if you “ever heard”.
Oh, and btw. This is your “rape of Yugoslavia” in 1999:
Rape and Sexual Assault
Rape and other forms of sexual violence were used in Kosovo in 1999 as weapons of war and instruments of systematic “ethnic cleansing.”53 Rapes were not rare and isolated acts committed by individual Serbian or Yugoslav forces, but rather were used deliberately as an instrument to terrorize the civilian population, extort money from families, and push people to flee their homes. Rape also furthered the goal of forcing ethnic Albanians from Kosovo.
In total, Human Rights Watch found credible accounts of ninety-six cases of sexual assault by Yugoslav soldiers, Serbian police, or paramilitaries during the period of NATO bombing, and the actual number is probably much higher. In six of these cases, Human Rights Watch was able to interview the victims in depth. Human Rights Watch met two other women who acknowledged that they had been raped but refused to give testimony. Finally, Human Rights Watch documented six cases of women who were raped and subsequently killed.
The ninety-six cases also include rape reports deemed reliable by Human Rights Watch that were compiled by other nongovernmental organizations.54 To the extent possible, Human Rights Watch corroborated these accounts through interviews with dozens of nurses, doctors, eyewitnesses, and local human rights and women’s rights activists. It is important to note that some of these cases may have been double-counted by local and international organizations. Despite this, Human Rights Watch believes that the actual number of women raped in Kosovo between March and June 1999 was much higher than ninety-six, since Kosovar Albanian victims of rape are generally reluctant to speak about their experiences. At the same time, it should be noted that Human Rights Watch was not able to confirm the allegations of rape camps in Kosovo that were presented during the war by the U.S. and British governments, as well as by NATO.
In general, rapes in Kosovo can be grouped into three categories: rapes in women’s homes, rapes during flight, and rapes in detention. In the first category, security forces entered private homes and raped women in front of family members, in the yard or in an adjoining room. In the second category, internally displaced people wandering on foot and riding on tractors were repeatedly stopped, robbed, and threatened by the Yugoslav Army, Serbian police, or paramilitaries. If families could not produce cash, security forces sometimes threatened that their daughters would be taken away and raped; in some cases, even when families did provide money, their daughters were taken away. The third category of rapes took place in temporary detention centers, such as abandoned homes or barns.
As an example of the second category, one rape victim recounted to Human Rights Watch how she was dragged off a tractor by a Serb paramilitary near the border village of Zur (Zhur) and sexually assaulted in front of dozens of other refugees. The victim, a thirty-year-old mother traveling with her mother, mother-in-law, and two children, told Human Rights Watch:
Two uniformed Serbian men stopped us. A big guy with red hair called me from the tractor. The red-haired one came around the tractor and said, “You,” pointing at me. When he told me to get off the tractor, I didn’t. Then he yelled, “You! Get off!” My three-year-old son was asleep on my lap. He kept yelling, “Get off! Get off!” He pulled me off the tractor and ripped my clothes. His pants were already open and his penis was out. He tore off my bra. I started screaming and crying. The other Serb came close and pointed his automatic weapon at my chest. I was wearing dimije [baggy pants] so they’d think I was old. The red-haired one took my pants off, tearing the drawstring. He told me to sit down. He took the 10 DM that I had with me. He took off his pants and pulled me close to him. We were right next to the tractor, next to the driver’s cabin. I had my period. When he took off my pants, he saw the pads with blood on them, so he didn’t have sex with me. Instead he turned me around and grabbed my breasts, trying me on the other side [anal rape]. I contracted myself very tightly and he didn’t succeed. He may have ejaculated. I don’t know. It took three or four minutes, then he told me that I could get back on the tractor.55
Witnesses to this attack, which occurred on June 2, 1999, corroborated the account and provided additional, credible details of the incident. A tractor driver who passed that same point later in the day, as well as his other passengers on the tractor, corroborated the description of the two uniformed men. One eyewitness to the sexual assault, an eighteen-year-old man from Djinovce (Gjinoc) in the Suva Reka municipality, told Human Rights Watch:
He took her onto the asphalt road and raped her right there in front of everyone. Only one Serb raped her. The other Serb hit people with the butt of his automatic weapon and said, “Silence, silence!” We all averted our eyes. It took three or four minutes. He did it right next to the tractor.56
With few exceptions, the rapes documented by Human Rights Watch were gang rapes involving at least two perpetrators. In several cases, victims and witnesses identified the perpetrators as Serbian special police, in blue or blue-camouflage uniforms, or Yugoslav Army soldiers, in green military uniforms. The majority of rape cases, however, were evidently committed by Serbian paramilitaries, who wore various uniforms and often had bandanas, long knives, long hair, and beards. These paramilitary formations worked closely with official government forces, either the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs or the Yugoslav Army, throughout Kosovo (see Forces of the Conflict).
The Serbian and Yugoslav authorities knew that their paramilitaries had used rape and other forms of sexual violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Yet, the paramilitaries were deployed to or allowed to operate in Kosovo by the Serbian and Yugoslav authorities apparently without any precautions being taken to prevent their committing further such war crimes.
The participation of Serbian and Yugoslav forces in gang rapes renders it unlikely that senior officers were unaware of the assaults. Rapes occurred frequently in the presence, and with the acquiescence, of military officers. Several rape victims actually reported the crimes to Yugoslav military officers. Yet there is no evidence that the Yugoslav Army or the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs made any attempt to apprehend or punish those responsible for the attacks. Despite this seeming dereliction of duty, many leading police and military officers from the Kosovo campaign have been honored or promoted within the Serbian and Yugoslav forces since the end of the conflict.
There is also no evidence that the Yugoslav Army or Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs took any measures to prevent rape and other forms of sexual violence, such as issuing orders or warning troops that they would be punished for these crimes, although there were some cases where soldiers or police tried to protect women from paramilitaries. Moreover, soldiers, police, and paramilitaries often raped their victims in front of many witnesses. In addition to actual rapes that took place in front of others, the process of pulling women out of refugee convoys often occurred in full view of other internally displaced persons.
http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/2001/kosovo/
Robert wrote:
> 53 Rapes were not rare…
Not rare? Compare this number of 53 with the statistics for my own country USA:
http://www.paralumun.com/issuesrapestats.htm
Somewhere in America, a woman is raped every 2 minutes, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Over the last two years, more than 787,000 women were the victim of a rape or sexual assault. (National Crime Victimization Survey. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S.Department of Justice, 1996.)
> …. but rather were used deliberately as an instrument to terrorize the civilian population
Really? Then please explain the following as “an instrument to terrorize the civilian population” too:
http://anabwani.com/blog/jimjim/2009/06/19/rape-and-war-the-us-experience
Rape and War: The U.S. Experience
On July 9, 2006, the U.S. Army charged five US soldiers with the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the murder of her parents and 5-year-old sister.
We witnessed a startling example of rape committed by US troops during the Kosovo conflict. A US peacekeeper, US Staff Sgt. Frank Ronghi, who was part of the KFOR team, the “peacekeeping forces”, seized, tortured, and brutally raped and murdered an 11-year-old ethnic Albanian girl in Kosovo. He rationalized the murder on the grounds that he would blame the Serbs for it. He told other KFOR peacekeepers that he wanted to “grab a little girl and rape her, but he would have to kill her to get away with it and blame the Serbs.”
A US soldier committed a brutal rape against an 11-year-old Albanian girl from Kosovo and blamed it on the Serbs. Is this the only case of US soldiers committing rape? Who has deleted this history? Why is it suppressed?
Northern Kentucky University Regents Professor of Sociology and Criminology, J. Robert Lilly, has researched rapes committed by American soldiers in Europe during World War II. This is a topic that has been very meticulously covered-up and censored in US history. Lilly could find no English-language publishers for his book. He planned to publish the book in 2001. English-language publishers rejected the manuscript following 9/11. The book was published in a French translation in 2003. The topic of US rapes during wartime was censored. Rape is something only Serb and Russian soldiers do.
The cover-up and censorship were needed to provide a cover, “an ethical blank check”, or smokescreen for US military interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The War Party and the interventionist ideologues needed this myth and falsification. This is why censorship was required. In totalitarian states, censorship works by government bans on offensive topics, ideas, and publications. In so-called democracies, censorship is more subtle and sophisticated. The information is just not made available. The data is ignored or de-emphasized. This is a subtle propaganda technique known as Emphasis. The information is not banned, merely ignored. The result, however, is the same in both cases: The information is suppressed.
Lilly examined records of cases tried by the US military courts. He found that there were 121 rape victims in England, 181 in France and 552 in Germany. In the UK and France, these were rapes committed by US soldiers in allied countries. He estimated that “American soldiers could have raped as many as 17,080 women in the European theater” because only about one in 20 rape victims reports the crime.
Lilly found that the US Army executed 70 soldiers in Europe convicted of rape “but none of them was convicted of raping German women”. Did the US military condone the rape of German women?
US troops engaged in widescale rape not only in Europe, but in Asia as well.
In Okinawa, US troops are estimated to have raped 10,000 Japanese women during World War II. After World War II, 300 “sex crimes” were committed by US troops. From 1945 to 1950, 278 rapes were reported to have been committed by US troops on Okinawa based on police reports, including the rape of a nine-month-old Japanese girl in 1949. In 1955, a US soldier kidnapped, raped, and murdered a six-year-old Okinawa girl. Since 1972, 130 rapes by US occupation troops have been reported in Okinawa.
In 1996, three US servicemen were convicted of the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawa girl. In 2002, US Air Force Staff Sergeant Timothy Woodland was convicted of raping an Okinawa woman.
US troops have been accused of rapes in the Philippines.
A June 1, 2000 New York Times report “refocused attention on what historians say is one of the most widely ignored crimes of the war, the widespread rape of Okinawan women by American servicemen.” This is what was covered-up and censored:
“As many as 10,000 Okinawan women may have been raped, one scholar estimates. Rape was so prevalent in the months following US subjugation of the island that most Okinawans over age 65 either know or have heard of a woman who was raped in the aftermath of the war. Marine Corps officials say they have no records of such mass rapes, but books, diaries, newspaper articles and other documents refer to rapes by American soldiers of various races and backgrounds. Apparently few if any Okinawan women reported being attacked out of fear and embarrassment, and those who did were ignored by the US military police.”
Estimates of rapes committed by US soldiers during World War II thus are estimated at 17,080 in Europe and 10,000 in the Pacific. This is something that is very carefully censored and covered-up in US academic scholarship and the historiography of World War II.
A September, 1945 Time Magazine report gave an accurate account of the U.S. experience on rape and war:
“Our own army and the British army along with ours have done their share of looting and raping … we too are considered an army of rapists.”
Edgar L. Jones, an American war correspondent and veteran in the Pacific theater, summarized the US experience of war against Japan in the February, 1946 Atlantic Monthly antiwar article “One War is Enough”:
“What kind of war do civilians suppose we fought anyway? We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy civilians, finished off the enemy wounded, tossed the dying into a hole with the dead, and in the Pacific boiled flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their bones into letter openers. … [W]e mutilated the bodies of enemy dead, cutting off their ears and kicking out their gold teeth for souvenirs, and buried them with their testicles in their mouths, but such flagrant violations of all moral codes reach into still-unexplored realms of battle psychology.”
Not only has US historiography glorified war. The experience of war has been falsified and distorted into a delusional mythology of war. Self-delusion and a state of denial result in “the good war”. You have to engage in self-delusion to perceive any war, which is organized mass murder, as good.
But Phobophobe, you are not an American, as you have previously pointed out you are a RUSSIAN, and your loyalties lie with RUSSIA.
Not to mention the fact that your posting times all seem to fit more in the Moscow time zone bracket than in California (unless of course you are working night shift in McDonalds with your “Masters degrees” LOL.
As for “You have to engage in self-delusion to perceive any war, which is organized mass murder, as good.”
Well as horrible as they are, there are wars that are justified and therefore “Good” (means JUST in this usage) wars (as usual being a retarded Russian bigot you misunderstand englishdefinitions), such as the wars against Napoleon, the 1st world war against Imperial Germany, the 2nd World war against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, the Korean war against Soviet expansion, and the cold war against the most evil empire the world has ever seen, the Russian Communist empire, the Soviet Union.
With regards to rapes, well the Russians comitted more than 130,000 to 200,000 rapes in Berlin alone, this is not counting all the other rapes in other easter European cities “liberated” by the Russians. Vienna was estimated at up to 150,000 rapes after its capture, Russian troops raped hundereds of thousands of Polish women.
Russian troops also raped hundereds of thousands of Ukrainian and Belarussian women as they were released from the slave labour camps.
http://usm.maine.edu/crm/faculty/jim/raphael.htm
” Little nineteen-year-old Gerti . . . .described how three Russians hauled her out of the basement into a stranger’s apartment on the first floor threw her on the sofa, and had their way with her—first one after the other, then in no particular order. Afterward . . . they rummaged through the kitchen, but all they found was some marmalade and ersatz coffee . . .Laughing, they spooned the jam into Gerti’s hair, and once her head was covered they sprinkled it generously with ersatz coffee.
This story exemplifies an act of violent sexual domination intended to devalue and humiliate the victim. It is not an expression of overwhelming repressed “drive” for heterosexual intercourse. In fact, none of the reported rapes in A Woman in Berlin indicates explosive acts resulting from sudden and uncontrollable sexual deprivation. What Beevor misses is an important insight about rape: The act of rape violently destroys the woman’s integrity by denying the victim her own will to engage, or not to engage, in sexuality as she chooses. By denying this freedom, the rapist actually creates conditions of dominance, control, and subordination. In other words, regardless of the Red Army rapists’ motives, the act of rape itself is one of domination, devaluation, and violence. And as the diarist notes, Soviet soldiers did not look for “the most attractive” to victimize; “for them any woman will do” (p. 59). Indeed, the Red Army rapists even victimized Jewish women who had successfully avoided Nazi capture (p. 197):
For months the [Jewish] couple had been looking forward to the liberation of Berlin, spending entire nights huddled by the radio, listening to the foreign broadcasts. Then when the first Russians broke into the basement and went after the women, there was a scuffle. Shots were fired. One bullet richocheted off the wall and hit the man in his hip. His wife threwherself at the Russians, begging them to help, in German. Whereupon, they took her into the hallway, three men on top of her, as she kept howling and screaming, “But I’m Jewish, I’m Jewish.” In the meantime her husband bled to death.
This is particularly distressing because Jewish women—during the capture and occupation of Berlin by “their liberators”—were now compelled to escape victimization from both the Nazi’s and the Red Army.
And
Following the Red Army’s capture of Berlin in 1945, one of the largest incidents of mass rape took place. Soviet troops reportedly raped German women and girls as young as 8 years old. Estimates of the total number of victims range from tens of thousands to two million[46]. After the summer of 1945, Soviet soldiers caught raping civilians were usually punished to some degree, ranging from arrest to execution.[47] The rapes continued, however, until the winter of 1947-48, when Soviet occupation authorities finally confined Soviet troops to strictly guarded posts and camps,“[48] completely separating them from the residential population in the Soviet zone of Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes#1944.E2.80.931945_2
So you Russian scum did not stop mass raping in Germany until 1948!!
Historians estimate that at least 2 million German women were raped at the end of World War II. That figure is based on German hospital and abortion clinic records.
Many women, like Schumacher, were raped multiple times. Courts-martial and other records show that there were several hundred documented rapes by U.S. and French soldiers in 1945, but the vast majority of the rapes were carried out by Soviet soldiers in the eastern part of Germany.
Dr. Phillip Kuwert, a senior physician at the University of Greifswald’s department of psychotherapy and psychiatry, estimates that about 200,000 children were conceived by native German women raped by Russian soldiers.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106687768
@Not rare? Compare this number of 53 with the statistics for my own country USA:
Totally public gang rapes? By bands of American soldiers, policemen and irregular militiamen? And nobody is stopping or investigating them, and their commanders are then decorated and promoted?
@Really? Then please explain the following as “an instrument to terrorize the civilian population” too: (…) On July 9, 2006, the U.S. Army charged five US soldiers
Uh? The American policy of terrorizing Iraqi population by charging (and convincing and sentencing each one to around 100 years in prison) American soldiers?
Are you a complete retard?
@A US peacekeeper, US Staff Sgt. Frank Ronghi, who was part of the KFOR team, the “peacekeeping forces”, seized, tortured, and brutally raped and murdered an 11-year-old ethnic Albanian girl in Kosovo.
And so he was sentenced to life in prison.
http://www.stripes.com/01/apr01/ed042801k.html
WWII: About 50-70 (no one even knows!) million people died around the world in the by far biggest war in history. No, it was not a “good war”. But what do you except? Compare it with a conflict in Kosovo, population 1 million? And no, there was NEVER a POLICY of sexual warfare by the US forces. (As in: organize rape camps, or the comfort women service.) This is the difference.
Maybe you will now pay attention? For a while?
Rape and other forms of sexual violence were used in Kosovo in 1999 as weapons of war and instruments of systematic “ethnic cleansing.”53 Rapes were not rare and isolated acts committed by individual Serbian or Yugoslav forces, but rather were used deliberately as an instrument to terrorize the civilian population, extort money from families, and push people to flee their homes. Rape also furthered the goal of forcing ethnic Albanians from Kosovo.
The Serbian and Yugoslav authorities knew that their paramilitaries had used rape and other forms of sexual violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Yet, the paramilitaries were deployed to or allowed to operate in Kosovo by the Serbian and Yugoslav authorities apparently without any precautions being taken to prevent their committing further such war crimes.
The participation of Serbian and Yugoslav forces in gang rapes renders it unlikely that senior officers were unaware of the assaults. Rapes occurred frequently in the presence, and with the acquiescence, of military officers. Several rape victims actually reported the crimes to Yugoslav military officers. Yet there is no evidence that the Yugoslav Army or the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs made any attempt to apprehend or punish those responsible for the attacks. Despite this seeming dereliction of duty, many leading police and military officers from the Kosovo campaign have been honored or promoted within the Serbian and Yugoslav forces since the end of the conflict.
There is also no evidence that the Yugoslav Army or Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs took any measures to prevent rape and other forms of sexual violence, such as issuing orders or warning troops that they would be punished for these crimes, although there were some cases where soldiers or police tried to protect women from paramilitaries. Moreover, soldiers, police, and paramilitaries often raped their victims in front of many witnesses. In addition to actual rapes that took place in front of others, the process of pulling women out of refugee convoys often occurred in full view of other internally displaced persons.
53 The findings of this research are set out in full in a separate Human Rights Watch report: “Kosovo: Rape as a Weapon of Ethnic Cleansing,” A Human Rights Watch Report, vol. 12, no. 3, March 2000.
Now,
KOSOVO: RAPE AS A WEAPON OF “ETHNIC CLEANSING”
http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/2000/fry/index.htm
A fragment:
Rape and other forms of sexual violence in Kosovo took place under the shadow of Bosnia and Herzegovina.19 Women in Kosovo knew that rape had been used as a tool of “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Human Rights Watch received numerous, though unconfirmed, reports that some Serbian paramilitary groups active during the Bosnian war, such as Arkan’s Tigers and Vojislav Seselj’s White Eagles, allegedly joined in the “ethnic cleansing” campaign in Kosovo. These groups had reputations for using rape as a weapon of war in Bosnia.20
The atmosphere of terror, heightened by published accounts and collective memories of recent mass and systematic rapes in Bosnia, motivated families to pack up and leave as quickly as possible. Although there were fewer rapes in Kosovo, both the threat of rape and actual rape were very much a part of the assault on Kosovo. The mere threat was enough to force women and families to flee. The fact of rape in Bosnia had already established the credibility of the threat.
Women recounted to Human Rights Watch their fear that they and their daughters would be raped. Rumors of rape circulated wildly as families attempted to flee their homes. Older women often dressed their daughters in loose clothing and headscarves in an attempt to disguise young girls as grandmothers. Other mothers smeared dirt and mud on their daughters’ faces to render them unattractive. As one mother told Human Rights Watch, “I was most afraid for my daughter. I lost eighteen kilos during the war because I was afraid that my daughters might be raped.”21 In the words of another woman, “The girls were afraid of the police and put on scarves. The police took off their scarves and pinched their cheeks and told them not to act like old women. The girls were screaming.”22 According to a doctor in Pristina, “Rape was our greatest fear. Our main goal was to get our daughters-aged twenty-five, twenty-one, fourteen, and ten-out of the country.”23
The rapes and other forms of sexual violence perpetrated in Kosovo during the conflict did not surprise women’s human rights experts. Sevdie Ahmeti, who documented human rights abuses against women in Kosovo forten years prior to the NATO bombing, had already collected thirty-six testimonies of rape by Serbian special police units and Yugoslav Army soldiers committed in the period February 1998 to March 1999. Serb paramilitary forces and special police used rape on a number of occasions during 1998 to punish female family members of Kosovo Liberation Army supporters before the NATO air offensive.25 A Human Rights Watch investigator who researched rape in Kosovo before the NATO bombing campaign documented rapes of young women, particularly in the Drenica region, considered a KLA stronghold. In total, Human Rights Watch documented six cases of rape by Serbian forces during 1998, although evidence collected by Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, and local human rights groups suggested that the real number was much higher.26
Official state propaganda in Yugoslavia in the decade preceding the war served to dehumanize and stereotype Kosovar Albanian women.27 Serbian propaganda contrasted Serbian women, viewed as “cultured, strong, and worthy of motherhood,” with Albanian women, portrayed as “indiscriminately fecund.”28 According to Ahmeti, “During the late 1980s there was tremendous propaganda against Albanian women-we were portrayed as open-legged, stupid, uneducated women ready to have sex.”29 This attack on Albanian women in the state-controlled media fed Serbian nationalist hysteria, encouraging conflict and abuses. Combined with official propaganda denouncing Kosovar Albanian men as “terrorists,” the images portrayed in the media manipulated the fears of the ethnic Serbian population.30