"The two-month old baby girl in the newspaper photograph looked like the picture of innocence, but she was apparently a tragic product of evil. The caption said that her mother, a 16-year old Bosnian Muslim, had been 'held in a rape camp and deliberately made pregnant by Serbs'. Those Serbs again; bomb the rape camp-running bastards.

But hold on a minute. That story and photograph appeared in the Mail on Sunday on 3 January, and the Independent on Sunday a week later. Which means that the picture was taken in late December at the earliest. Which means that the two-month old baby was conceived around January or February 1992. Which means that the 'rape camp' story must be rubbish, because the war in Bosnia didn't even begin until April."

The saga of the 'rape camps' in Bosnia provides the worst example to date of how a hysterical scare story can be accepted as good coin by the mainstream media. We have been told that between 20,000 and 60,000 Muslim women have been raped in Bosnia, and that up to 30,000 have been made pregnant. Many of the reports claim that the Serbs have been carrying out a 'systematic campaign' of rape or a 'deliberate policy' of getting Muslim women pregnant, organised around 'rape camps'. The campaign has variously been described as an attempt to destroy the 'Bosnian Muslims' national identity, and as a bid to breed more Bosnian Serbs.

What are the facts? No evidence has been produced to substantiate the claims of a 'systematic' campaign centred on 'rape camps'. Neither the International Red Cross nor the UN High Commission for Refugees has come across any such camp in Bosnia. The only evidence is anecdotal.

NORTH AMERICAN NEWS ANALYSIS GROUP To date there has been no evidence to support any of the claims regarding the "systematic" rape of Muslim women by Serb forces.

RAPES: NUMBERS IN QUESTION Jacques Marlino (France 2), Le Point, March 13, 1993. There was a time of horror. Then, the time of doubt. And finally, a time of "malaise".

DR. SANDA RASKOVIC