Richard Moore's Straight Talk Columns

War criminal Mladic should be executed

7/6/2011

HOW fitting it is that mass murderer and war criminal General Ratko Mladic should end up in The Netherlands facing charges of genocide.

For it was Dutch troops who allowed the Bosnian Serb military leader to commit one of the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II - the massacre of 8000 Muslim men and teenage boys at Srebrenica in July 1995.

The town, supposedly a haven from the ethnic cleansing sweeping the region, had been surrounded by Mladic's army of Muslim-hating troops, backed by artillery pieces and tanks.

Against Mladic and his forces were 400 lightly armed Dutch troops. The United Nations soldiers, it has to be said, were left out on a limb by their political leaders and were abandoned to do as they saw fit in protecting the Muslim Bosniak villagers.

They had limited ammunition, little food, no heavy weapons to fight Mladic's armour, and were refused multiple requests for air strikes to stop the advancing Bosnian Serbs.

Mladic had a grudge against the men of Srebrenica, who he believed were responsible for attacks on neighbouring Serb villages, and he wanted to punish them. He knew the UN had no stomach for a fight and so he bullied the Dutch into allowing his men access to the Bosniak internment camp.

All men and children of ''battle age'' were bussed away and were murdered at nearby Bratunac.

Up to 8000 are believed to have been killed and their bodies disposed of in mass graves.

Now Mladic faces judgment for crimes his forces committed from 1992 to 1995, in which 100,000 Bosnians died. As happens with many of these monsters, he is now older and more frail and his health is not what it was.

Instead of an arrogant military bully boy, Mladic is playing the ''I'm-not-well'' card.

As the charges were put against him in the courtroom he needed help rising from his chair and even putting his headphones on.

Mladic's excuse for mass murder is that he was defending his country and his people. T

hat's a laugh, considering it was his brother Serbs who invaded Bosnia and started butchering its Muslim civilians. He was also responsible for the terrible four-year Siege of Sarajevo, in which nearly 10,000 people were killed, more than 1500 of them were children. An additional 56,000 Sarojevans were wounded, including nearly 15,000 children.

Why so many killed and injured? Well, Mladic and his brutes regularly shelled marketplaces with mortars, and his snipers had a field day as people risked their lives in the open to find food and water.

One of the most poignant moments of the Siege of Sarajevo was when a couple of young lovers - he a Bosnian Serb and she a Muslim Bosniak - decided to flee the city and were given permission to do so.

They were a sign of hope for a hate-ravaged region and most people prayed for a good life for the Romeo and Juliet of Sarajevo.

They got on to the Vrbanja bridge out of the city when a Bosnian Serb sniper's shot killed Boafiko Brkic instantly. Another shot rang out and the woman, Admira Ismic, screamed and fell wounded. She crawled to her boyfriend, hugged him, and died 15 minutes later.

Their bodies lay there for four days.

Mladic and his Bosnian Serbs were the animals responsible. They could not allow such an expression of cross-cultural love to happen.

Let us hope that the International Court has more balls than the Dutch military at Srebrenica.

Mladic really should be executed, but instead he faces life imprisonment. Already two of his underlings have received that sentence and a third got 35 years behind bars for their roles at Srebrenica.

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AND here's a cheers to the mega-stupid Tauranga mother who allowed her young children to cross Girven Rd at peak hour on Friday to pick up their healthy serving of fish and chips.

It was a grey afternoon and the light was poor but, rather than escort them across, she sat on her backside in her car and sent them on their way.

As I have mentioned on a number of occasions, cars rocket past the shops there at a very fast rate and parents who let their kids navigate their own way across need to be visited by CYFs.

Anyway, a huge squeal of tyres later and we have a child of around 6 flattened in the middle of the road.

Mum was suddenly all care and the kid seemed okay.

However, there but for the grace of God was another little one ending up dead because of the idiocy of someone who should never be a parent.

richard@richardmoore.com