An American in Serbia: From a Writer’s Notebook
JULY 23, 2018
VISIT TO TAŠMAJDAN PARK, NATO WAR MEMORIAL EVOKES WARTIME MEMORIES
Maybe it’s because today is the 23rd (day of the month). On April 23, 1999, NATO committed one of its most heinous crimes against humanity. It bombed the Serb TV building. Which is in my neighborhood here.
A walk through the Tašmajdan Park the other day, and again last night, evoked wartime memories of my visits to Belgrade as a Truth in Media war correspondent. And this morning, they bubbled up again like a geyser of emotions.
WHY WE CAN AND SHOULD FORGIVE BUT MUST NEVER FORGET
We can and should forgive someone who shows real contrition for the wrongs he or she had done. The ultimate judgment is not up to us. 
“It is not for us to judge (other people),” Patriarch Pavle told me during one of our many meetings. “That’s something God will do. All we can do is try to do our best. (And trust that) He will weigh everything precisely and fairly.”
But we must never forget. Because everything that happens in life is a lesson. We must not forget the lessons our experiences teach us. Lest we want to come back and relive them again.
Yet I sometimes hear people here in Belgrade shrug when the subject of NATO’s bombing comes up. I hear some even want Serbia to join NATO. Like, “who cares.” Montenegro did it even though it was also bombed in 1999.
Who cares?
The souls of the NATO victims care. Their families care. They will never shrug off the Gang Rape of a Small Country, as I called it contemporaneously in my reports and speeches.
So how dare we forget something like this…
Take a look at this video a posted a couple of years ago on the anniversary of NATO’s attack on Serbia.
VISIT TO THE PARK, WAR CRIME SCENE
After sitting on a park bench for awhile (on July 20), I took a shortcut toward the Palilula market and unexpectedly ended up at a war crimes scene. This is where 16 people died on April 23, 1999 when NATO bombed the Radio and Television Station of Serbia. It was the first such attack on media (Bombing of the Serb TV and other civilians targets in and around Belgrade, 13 images, Truth in Media).
I was actually in Serbia in April of that year covering the bombing as a Truth in Media war correspondent. And I remember coming back here again in September of 1999 to pay my respects to my Serbian media colleagues who died here. But I had nearly forgotten all about it until I took this shortcut to the market.
May NATO war crimes against innocent Serbian people never be forgotten even if they are not prosecuted the New World Order “kangaroo court” in the Hague.
AN ACT OF STATE TERRORISM
Looking at this memorial, I contemplated this terrorist strike that took place here the night of Apr 23, 1999. This was not an act of war against Slobodan Milosevic and his government. This was a war crime, a mass murder of innocent civilians.
And it was an act of terrorism against the two Orthodox churches within a 100 yards of the target, and the tens of thousands of Belgrade residents who live nearby. That would have included me and my current flat.
Here’s part of the report I filed “live” from Phoenix on Apr 22, 1999.
This just in from a TiM source in Belgrade (4:18AM, local time, Apr 23, 1999):
“Horrible scenes shown on Belgrade’s Studio B (independent) TV station. Injured and dead people are being pulled out of the rubble (at Aberdareva Street). It is estimated that there were at least 70 people inside the Serb TV building when it was struck. This was meant to KILL PEOPLE, not just disable Serb TV. They could have destroyed the transmitters to disrupt, diminish and degrade. They chose to destroy and murder. One of the missiles apparently hit the entrance of the building.”
I know what that feels like. I have had bombs and missiles strike close to me when I was in Serbia in April 1999. In fact, the day before the Serb TV bombing, I had just returned from Belgrade to my Arizona home. And had filed a report warning that the Serb TV may be the next target.
Here are excerpts from my contemporaneous wartime reports at the Truth in Media website.
Belgrade 3. Serb TV HQ Next Target? Journalists as “Human Shield”
BELGRADE, Apr. 21, 1999 PDT – We’ve just been advised from Belgrade that NATO has signaled that its next target may be the Serb TV headquarters – by advising the foreign journalists to leave the SerbTV premises. Like NBC’s HQ at the Rockefeller Center, the Serb TV offices are in the heart of downtown, surrounded by residential and other office buildings.
The Yugoslav federal minister for information, Goran Matic, led a group of 100 domestic and foreign journalists last night on a tour of Serb TV buildings, so as to show them its purely civilian nature. A number of foreign correspondents reportedly decided to stay at the Serb TV building as another “human shield” against NATO’s madness.
https://www.truthinmedia.org/Kosovo/War/day29up1.html
Belgrade 3. Serb TV Knocked Off the Air; Many Civilian Casualties Reported
BELGRADE, Apr. 22, 1999 PDT – NATO’s bombing targets have indeed become amazingly predictable. Just as we warned yesterday that Serb TV headquarters may become NATO’s next target (see Day 29, Update 1, Item 3, Apr. 21), it happened today at about 2:00AM Belgrade time (Apr. 23).
Ron Allen, MSNBC correspondent in Belgrade, has just reported from his hotel in Belgrade that there were apparently “a lot of civilian casualties, and a huge amount of damage over there.”
A TiM source in Belgrade reports that the Church of St. Marko, Holy Trinity, a Russian Orthodox Church, and the professional children theater, “Dusko Radovic” – all within 100 yards of the Serb TV building – were also damaged by the explosion.
“The (Serb TV) building is burning and all of downtown Belgrade is in heavy smoke,” our source reports.
The Yugoslav parliament and Belgrade’s central PTT (post office) are also within a couple of hundred yards or so of tonight’s target. It is unclear what damage, if any, they sustained from this NATO missile strike.
—
This just in from a TiM source in Belgrade (4:18AM, local time, Apr 23, 1999):
“Horrible scenes shown on Belgrade’s Studio B (independent) TV station. Injured and dead people are being pulled out of the rubble (at Aberdareva Street). It is estimated that there were at least 70 people inside the Serb TV building when it was struck. This was meant to KILL PEOPLE, not just disable Serb TV. They could have destroyed the transmitters to disrupt, diminish and degrade. They chose to destroy and murder. One of the missiles apparently hit the entrance of the building.”
—
TiM Ed.: If there were ever any doubt before that Clinton, Blair, Chirac, Schroeder, Clark and other NATO leaders who are responsible for such wanton murder of innocent civilians, may find themselves one day facing a war crimes trial, such doubts were removed today. In fact, a group of Serbian legal experts from the Law Faculty in Belgrade had already drafted articles of such charges earlier this month.
But as in any trial, one first has to have the accused in custody. Which is unlikely to happen, unless the NATO madmen persist with their march to WW III. Which they are surely going to lose. Or at least, not win. For, there may be no winners in a nuclear holocaust.
ANOTHER WAR MEMORIAL
Steps away from this war crime scene, I saw another war memorial. This one is to all Serbian victims of the Yugoslav wars during 1991-2000.
“How many is that?,” I wondered.
THE FORGOTTEN EXODUS
The Wikipedia data, which is based on the”victors” (NATO) statistic for the consumption of the western readers, cite between 35,000 and 40,000 Serbs killed. Additional statistics show that nearly a million refugees (983,000) poured into Serbia, fleeing the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.
And all that happened while the US and western governments and media pinned the blame on the Serbs as “aggressors”. And, in fact, aided and abetted the local warlords in this gigantic act of “ethnic cleansing.”
Check out this Truth in Media page from 1995. We had actually underestimated the number of Serbs driven out of Croatia. Subsequent data put that number at 300,000.
“New World Order” at Work: Serb Exodus (1995)
Over 200,000 Serbs from Croatia, Bosnia were “ethnically cleansed” in the summer of 1995 alone in a U.S.-masterminded and aided “blitzkrieg,” followed by a NATO bombing of Bosnian Serbs in September 1995
TRUTH IN MEDIA: TRUTH TRUMPS POWER EVERY TIME! 
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