The "balance" of the Paris daily Le Monde

In France, as in other democratic countries, mass media report on the war in Croatia is based on the facts and events during the war. The daily Le Monde unquestionably publishes some of the world's best cartoons on the war in Croatia. French commentators express the whole range of views of the "Yugoslav crisis", but one can detect the traditional pro-Serbian opinion of the other peoples of former Yugoslavia. One can also detect a tendency to rely on Serbian literature in explaining the causes of the "crisis".

One typical example of the French view of the conflict is the historical-political "reflections" of Edgar Morin under the headline "Yugoslav agony" (L'agonie yougoslave). On February 6, 1992, Le Monde printed the first part of the "reflections" under the headline "A Fragile Community" (Une communaute fragile), and on February 7 the second part of it, "The hellish circle" (Le circuit infernal), was printed. Morin's analysis is not a blackand-white picture of Croatian-Serbian historical relations. For example, Morin admits that the Croats founded their independent state back in the 10th century, that the Serbs oppress the Albanians and that they are destroying Osijek and Vukovar (he seems to have forgotten about Dubrovnik). He describes correctly the main goal of the Serbian aggression: to continue to exploit the Croatian territory economically.

However, a general pro-Serbian tendency is more than evident. Morin is unreliable in the facts, and that is the first thing that strikes the reader. So, for example, he writes that the Turks took Constantinople in 1459, whereas the Byzantine capital actually fell in 1453. Morin asserts that Austria annexed. Bosnia-Hercegovina in 1909, but the annexation was carried out in 1908. Morin mentions the head of the Independent State of Croatia five times and he spells his name wrong five times, as Pavlevic. (The head of the pro-Nazi "New Serbia general Milan Nedic, is not written incorrectly - because Nedic is not even mentioned.)

If someone makes use of incorrect historical facts, it is hardly likely that the interpretation based on those facts will be more correct. Let us cite some interpretations which Morin offers the French public as if they are unquestionable and correct:

Here the same propaganda technique used by Teddy Preuss in The Jerusalem Post is in action: a terminological shift. Morin uses the national name of those who carried out massacres of the Serbs (in this case, Muslims), while those who carried out massacres of the Muslims are not identified by their national name (Serbs), but rather by the name of one armed formation (Chetniks). Another propaganda technique is also present here: the order of listing the crimes. The Muslims who killed Serbs are mentioned in the first place, and only then the Chetniks who killed Muslims. Thus the more numerous Chetnik killings seem to be justified as revenge for the allegedly first-murdered Serbs. Morin's "objectivity" comes to the surface in the next sentence:

Here we see the third propaganda technique in action, the one used by Semeniuk in Novoe Russkoe Slovo: it is not enough to blacken the Croats alone, one must blacken other peoples too, and especially those who have a real chance of achieving international recognition of their independence. And those are, in this case, the peoples of the republics of Croatia Slovenia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. Morin's "reflections" offer French readers historical revisionism. He ignores the fact that one of the strongest (if not the strongest) anti- fascist resistance movements in Europe was precisely on the soil of these three republics, under the Croat Tito's leadership. Morin does not mention the fact that the Serbian government of general Nedic was also pro-Nazi. If French historians, proud of the role of de Gaulle in the Second World War, do not forget that Petain existed as well, why then does Morin neglect the Serbian Petain, Pavelic's counterpart? Why too does he neglect the Serbian fascist phalanges from Dimitrije Ljotic's "Zbor"?

Morin compares the position of Kosovo's majority Albanians with the position of the Serbian minority in Croatia. Unfortunately, this French admirer of Serbian writer Milos Crnjanski offers no coherent support for his comparison. He accepts the following Serbian estimation of the number of Serbian victims during World War II:

As we already saw, there are many Serbian estimations of the number of their war victims. These estimations differ significantly and contradict one to another. The figure of 700,000 Serbian victims is only one of them. It is interesting to note that Morin does not mention any Croatian estimation of Croatian victims from that period. Why does the French expert pass over the Croatian victims in silence?

Morin writes that "it is Serbia that is the principle victim of the centrifugal forces" in former Yugoslavia, forgetting that the Croats too are scattered throughout other republics. According to the French scholar, the plurality of residents in Bosnia-Hercegovina are "a Muslim nation, although Serb in origin." We know the source of the assertion on the Serbian ancestry of the Bosnian Muslims, but we do not know any facts which might support it. And so on, through the columns of the French press.