'They are not there', 'They killed themselves': Russia is not the first country to deny its war crimes, in the XNUMXth century it had someone to learn from

In the XNUMXth century, many countries denied their own war crimes, using the arguments “it didn’t happen”, “it’s not us”, “they themselves”. Russia today is no exception, reports Meduza.

Photo: Shutterstock

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation officially stated that photos and videos with dead civilians in the city of Bucha near Kiev are “another provocation” and “another production of the Kiev regime for the Western media.” This is the standard reaction of the Russian side not only to the statements of Kyiv, but also to the reports of independent journalists. And the Russian authorities are far from the only ones who guessed to use such “arguments” during the war. Here are just three illustrative examples from the history of the XNUMXth century.

Spanish Civil War

On April 26, 1937, the planes of the Nazi Condor Legion, sent by order of Hitler to support the forces of the nationalists under the command of Francisco Franco, attacked the city of Guernica, the center of the Basque resistance.
The bombing took place under the pretext of destroying the bridge leading to the city and the military-industrial infrastructure of the Republicans - but it was they who did not suffer as a result of the bombing. But the rest of the city burned down almost completely.

Although this was not the first aerial bombardment of republican cities by the Francoists and their allies, the destruction of Guernica gained worldwide fame thanks to the painting of the same name by Pablo Picasso.

Immediately after the air raid and the fire that destroyed the city, the nationalists who occupied Guernica began to eliminate the consequences of the bombing - fragments of bombs and unexploded shells. They also laid out fuel barrels in various places, intending to blame the Republicans themselves for blowing up Guernica.

On the subject: Mass executions, torture, rape: the Russian army staged a massacre in the suburbs of Kyiv

German participation in the bombing of Guernica was evident from the first days thanks to the work of journalists. However, on the personal orders of Franco, his subordinates - for example, General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano and Franco's press secretary Luis Bolin - distributed comments to Franco-controlled radio stations and newspapers that articles in the foreign press about the Franco bombing of Guernica were inventions of "drunkards and deceivers", and all evidence points to the fact that the retreating Republican forces destroyed the city.

Shelling of the Markale Market in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War

The shelling of Sarajevo on 5 February 1994 killed 68 people who were queuing for food that was in short supply under the siege. The Serbs besieging the city claimed that the Bosnians fired on themselves to "arouse sympathy and get help from the West".

Prosecutors at the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found that a 120mm projectile was fired at the Markale market from positions held by the army of the Republika Srpska. However, Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic and other Serbian leaders and the Serbian media claimed that the mortar attack on the Markale market in Sarajevo was the work of the Bosnians themselves. Moreover, referring to the only Serbian ballistics expert who confirmed their words.

For example, a 2005 broadcast by the state broadcaster Republika Srpska RTRS, Pečat, claimed that the projectile that killed 68 people in the market could not have been fired from Serbian positions. Moreover, the program claimed, only a few people died as a result of the shelling itself, and the bodies of the remaining victims were brought to the site of the explosion in advance to enhance the propaganda effect.

Also, the program claimed, specifically in order to document this allegedly prepared provocation, four film crews arrived in its place ahead of time.

In Serbia and the Republika Srpska, this conspiracy version of the events in Markale is still extremely popular.

Armenian Genocide in Turkey

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On April 24, 1915, the Ottoman authorities arrested and then killed about 800 members of the Armenian intelligentsia in Constantinople (Istanbul). This began a campaign of targeted extermination of the Christian population of Ottoman Turkey (in addition to Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians also suffered), which went on until about 1922.

Armenians were deported and massacred with such intensity that in some areas of eastern Turkey, inhabited at that time predominantly by Armenians, they did not remain at all. In total, according to various estimates, from 800 thousand to more than a million Armenians died during these years. Now many countries of the world, including Russia, recognize these events as genocide.

During these events themselves, the nationalist government of the Young Turks explained the need to "get rid of the Armenians" by the fact that they were supposedly traitors who helped Turkey's opponents in the First World War - primarily Russia.
For the next 100 years, the authorities and rulers of Turkey, from Kemal Ataturk to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have been consistently hushing up and denying the genocide at the state level.

Although in 2014 the then Prime Minister of Turkey (aka the current president) Erdogan unexpectedly expressed condolences to the grandchildren of the Armenians "who died in the events of the early XNUMXth century", in Turkey the requirement to recognize the Armenian genocide officially is a criminal offense under an article that punishes "insulting the Turkish nation and its statehood. “Falsifications” are declared to be all testimonies of survivors of the Armenian genocide or Western diplomats that do not refer to the Turkish state archive. At the same time, as it became known from a diplomatic leak from the US Consulate in Turkey, the data on the genocide in this archive are consistently destroyed.

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The Turkish authorities still not only deny the very fact of the genocide, but also position the Turks as "the real victims of the genocide." For example, in the city of Ygdir in eastern Turkey, there is a monument and a museum of the genocide - but it is dedicated to the "Turkish victims of the genocide by Armenians", which supposedly took place at the beginning of the XNUMXth century. There were indeed cases of murders of Turks by Armenians in those years, but their scale is incomparable with the "purges" carried out by the Turks.

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