Sunday, July 27, 2008

NCRBH #559 INTL: JUSTICE FOR SREBRENICA BEFORE RECONCILIATION

National Congress of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina

ONLINE NEWSLETTER - International

No. 559

July 26, 2008

http://republic-bosnia-herzegovina.com/

CONTENT

1. Karadzic will Tell World What Milosevic Could not

2. SREBRENICA – 13 YEARS AFTER

3. FREE SREBRENICA, THEN WE WILL THINK ABOUT RECONCILIATION

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1. Karadzic will Tell World What Milosevic Could not

24.07.08 11:00

Azerbaijan, Baku, 23 July/ TrendNews, corr E. Tariverdiyeva/ The former President of Bosnian Serbs Radovan Karadzic, who is charged with the massacre of Muslims during the ethnic cleansing in Srebrenica will speak in the International Criminal Tribunal of what his predecessor Slobodan Milosevic could not speak, said Francis Boyle, the attorney of Mothers of Srebrenica organization.

An action was brought against Milosevic because of the all crimes he committed and observers waited for the details of his cooperation with the Western ‘mediators’. He died soon of the heart attack in the prison before the decision of the Hague Court.

“So now we have a second chance with Karadzic,” said Boyle, the former official judicial adviser of Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic and foreign minister Haris Silajdic and representative of the Bosnia government in the International Criminal Court.

The former president of Serbia Radovan Karadzic was arrested on 21 July and the next day the court issued a warrant to bring him before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Everything is ready for his arrival: a cell has been allotted for Karadzic in UN prison of the Hague prison.

The representative of the Attorney General of ICTY Olga Karvan stated that in 1995 ICTY issued an international order to arrest Karadzic, who hided himself from the UN tribunal for 13 years. “Now the Office of the Attorney General waits for the arrival of Karadzic to the Hague prison of UN as soon as possible,” she said.

In summer of 1995, during the civil war in former Yugoslavian republic Bosnia and Herzegovina, Srebrenica in the central Bosnia got under the control of the army of the Bosnian Serbs which was followed by the ethnic cleansing in the occupied town. The ethnic cleansing killed over 8,000 Bosnian Muslims. ICTY accused the then leader of the Bosnian Serbs Radovan Karadzic of the massacre in Srebrenica.

The US human rights activist Boyle believes that now Karadzic will know everything about how the so-called Western "mediators" aided and abetted him in his ethnic cleansing of the Bosnians: Cyrus Vance, David
Owen, Thorvald Stoltenberg, Richard Holbrooke, Carl Bildt, Yasushi Akashi, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Kofi Annan, etc.

“So I will be keeping a close eye on these war crimes proceedings in order to use this new information against these people on behalf of my clients the Mothers of Srebrenica,” Boyle, the attorney of Mothers of Srebrenica, protecting their interests in the ICTY, said to TrendNews by e-mail.

The task of this NGO is not to fight for women rights. The task is to search for more than 10,000 people missing in European largest massacre, committed by Bosnian Serb army, on July 11, 1995, in Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

According to Boyle, there are 2 separate indictments against him: the first for the crimes he committed in Bosnia in general; the second for the massacre at Srebrenica in July 2005.

Boyle is sure that Karadzic He will get a fair trial and an opportunity to defendhimself. In the course of his defense I am sure he will bring out the evidence of complicity by these Western "mediators" in order to absolve his own behavior. That will not make a difference to his own guilt or innocence,” Boyle said.

The lawyer is sure that but he will be able to use his new information against these Western "mediators" and diplomats in order to hold them accountable to my clients the Mothers of Srebrenica and Podrinja for the massacre. At the end of the day Karadzic will be spending the rest of his life in prison, where he should have been for quite some time in any event,” Boyle said.

Boyle was the one who convinced the former ICTY Prosecutor Carla DelPonte to indict Slobodan Milosevic for every crime in the ICTY Statute for the massacre at Srebrenica, including genocide.

According to lawyer, earlier the arrest of Karadzic was undesirable, but possible for West.

In Geneva during the peace negotiations, President Izetbegovic had to go in and shake hands with Karadzic. I walked right past him--I wasn't going to shake his hand because he's a mass murderer and a criminal. And he has been given visas to come and negotiate in Geneva. And in New York. The State Department let Karadzic come to New York to the Vance-Owen carve-up negotiations, with a US visa. The State Department was obliged under the Geneva Convention to apprehend Karadzic, Boyle said. The US had an absolute obligation to apprehend Karadzic if he showed up in New York, and to open an investigation, and to prosecute--instead, they're giving him a visa and secret service protection in New York, he said. “They defended military criminals and those who committed genocide. These are big powers,” Boyle said.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was established by UN in 1993. It is located in the city of Hague of Holland; therefore it is called the Hague. It was established to try those who committed military crimes during the Balkan conflict in mid-1990s.

In 1994, over 160 people were brought before the Tribunal in Hague including both rank-and-file soldiers and generals with the Serbs and Croatians accounting for the greater proportion of them.

“As Bosnian Prime Minister, Haris Silajdzic stated,if you kill one person, you're prosecuted. If you kill ten people, you're a celebrity; if you kill a quarter-of a-million people, you're invited to a peace conference,” Boyle said.

The correspondent can be contacted at: trend@trend.az
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2. SREBRENICA – 13 YEARS AFTER

Jelko Kacin, MEP,

Member of the European Parliament (LDS/ALDE/ADLE)
Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the EP and
Rapporteur of the EP for Serbia

On Friday, the eleventh of July, I took part in the commemoration on the anniversary of the massacre and burial of 308 Bosniak victims of the Srebrenica genocide that had been identified in the past year. At the cemetery in Potocari, tens of thousands of people gathered and remembered the thousands of innocent victims, and accompanied the remains of the victims on their last journey. Before the burial, many acclaimed figures, mostly politicians, gave a speech, headed by the presiding Chair of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Haris Silajdžic, the American Ambassador Charles English, and the high representative of the international community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Miroslav Lajcák, and the vice-president of the European Parliament (EP) Diana Wallis, together with whom I represented the European Parliament. As many others, we laid down flowers and reflected on Srebrenica today. My contemplations are dedicated to the living that struggle with poverty and dream of a future.

Although the name of the city, linked to silver mining, points to a bright past, the present is not nearly as promising.

On Friday, the President of the Government of Republika Srpska (RS), Milorad Dodik, who could have contributed greatly (and decisively) to the soothing and placating of spirits with his presence, was not to be found in Potocari. The next day, however, he was able to come to Srebrenica and take part in a Serbian gathering in the Cultural House in the center of town. The unfortunate Bosniaks had thirteen years ago found themselves, in great numbers, at the wrong time and in the wrong place, in a protected area, and were cruelly disposed of in the aggressive action of »the liberation of Srebrenica from the Turks«, as the then-commanding Ratko Mladic said coldly, and added a frightening conclusion: »»Now the time has come for us Serbs to remind the Turks of what they had been doing to us for centuries…« …« .

The Bosniaks, of course, never had been Turks, since they are part of the Slavic population, which in Bosnia and Herzegovina adheres to three faiths: orthodox christianity, roman catholicism, and islam. Whereas the situation in Sandžak in Serbia and in the north of Montenegro is completely different regarding the peaceful co-existence of different ethnicities, relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina are still very tense. How could they be any different? The best illustration of the current situation, in my opinion, is a thought expressed by a young Bosniak during our conversations with the youth of Srebrenica. »I find it impossible to accept the claim that I live in Republika Srpska, because I live in Bosnia and Herzegovina – but my Serbian neighbor and friend, he cannot accept Bosnia and Herzegovina, because he lives in Republika Srpska.«

Serbia's President, Boris Tadic, publicly condemns the crimes, acknowledges the genocide and apologizes, but his colleagues from Republika Srpska are far from this. The statement that Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadžic are most likely (obviously) in Serbia, made by the British Ambassador days after this are therefore important and reflect the evident two-facedness of the countries in the region regarding their arrest and extradition to the Hague. »More light, more action!«, one could paraphrase Goethe. Without full co-operation of all countries in the region with the Hague Tribunal, there will be no settling down and no European future. Is it not perverse that in the previous government of Koštunica, the only non-Serb, a Bosniak, Rasim Ljajic, was the only one responsible for co-operating with The Hague? These countries, and in particular the less developed areas, populated by Bosniaks, are in dire need of development aid and programs for rural development, which can be guaranteed by the EU. Thus the EU is both the means for, as well as the direction to, the future. The only question is – when?

On Tuesday, mothers from Srebrenica and Žepe in Nova Kasaba laid down flowers at the place where Serbs, disguised as members of the UN Peacekeeping forces, tricked Bosniak refugees to gather at a football court by the river. On the road from Srebrenica, they were joined by the most exhausted and despaired, hoping for an end to agony and for safety, by those who were unable to travel over the river Jadar to the hills and onwards to Tuzla. From there, two thousand boys and men were taken to the killing fields.

In the town Kravice, in the neighboring municipality of Bratunac, only a few kilometers away from Potocari, by the building of the former Agricultural Co-Operative, where Bosniaks from Srebrenica were cruelly tortured, they were not allowed to lay down their flowers. The local inhabitants were opposed to this, and so the mothers and widows were stopped by a cordon of RS police.

As long as anywhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina, laying down flowers in the memory of those killed in war will be a problem, there will be problems there, as well as in neighboring countries and EU member states.

Diana and I decided to suggest to the President's Conference, which prepares and coordinates the work of the EP, to invite the youth of Srebrenica, from both communities, to Brussels. We hope that days of living together, on the road to as well as in the EU, within the framework of EU institutions, will enable them to discover the history, the mistakes, and the revelations of Western Europe. Perhaps this will create new opportunities for dialogue and understanding. Measures – and much effort – are needed to create trust where there is none. Who could do this, if not the youth?

Source: IFIMES, Ljubljana, Slovenia
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3. JUSTICE FOR SREBRENICA BEFORE RECONCILIATION

Dear Mrs. Wallis and Mr. Kacin,

We hope that your intention was not malicious when you invited "the young people of Srebrenica from both ethnic communities" to gather socially. That is truly a terrible idea because the result of such a gathering can only be that young Bosniaks from Srebrenica will be victimized again. Namely, the majority of young Serbs from Srebrenica idolize Karadzic and Mladic. On the other hand, most of the young Bosniaks have lost their families in the genocide. They are a broken and conquered people, genocide survivors, and they probably would not refuse a request from important people from Europe, although such an event would humiliate them. Justice has not been done in Srebrenica, and you cannot have reconciliation while the victims are still victims and perpetrators have achieved their goals.

Real reconciliation will only be possible when justice is done, and the entity Republic of the Serbs, whose forces committed the genocide in the process of its own creation, no longer rules over Srebrenica; when it no longer is able to cloud the minds of the young people there by making heroes out of war criminals and enemies out of victims; when the lesson that conquest and ethnic cleansing are rewarded is finally shown to be untrue in Srebrenica.

It is humiliating to ask a victim to forgive a horrible crime without first getting those who benefited from it apologize and more importantly do everything possible to correct the effects of that crime. The principal motive for the genocide was to put Srebrenica under the control of Republika Srpska, and until that is corrected, there cannot be reconciliation, only further humiliation of the victims.

Dr. Muhamed Borogovac

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

No birdsong breaks the silence in woods haunted by the ghosts of mass murder

source: http://www.bosnia.org.uk/news/news_body.cfm?newsid=2435

Author: Anthony Loyd
Uploaded: Wednesday, 23 July, 2008

Graphic reminder of the terrible, genocidal hatred deliberately ignited and stoked by Radovan Karadzic, by the author of one of the best books written on the war in Bosnia

The fruits of Radovan Karadzic’s hate lay thick in the dense forest west of Srebrenica. Even one year after the July 1995 massacre of more than 7,500 Bosnian Muslims, the ground in the forest was littered with bones.

Some had been killed in ambushes as they attempted to flee the enclave. Their skeletons formed trails along the failed escape routes. Every now and then a single corpse would stand out among the rest. At one point, at a track junction among the trees, the body of a man in a pinstripe suit had been lashed with barbed wire to a concrete post. There were no bullet marks on the post. Knives had been used.

Among many of the local Serbs in those remote eastern Bosnian villages, a cult of the dead still lingered. It was not just the old who believed in vampires and ghosts and there was widespread credence that the spirit remained near the body for at least a year after death. So for the most part only a few woodsmen ventured into the hills where so many Muslims were killed the previous summer, and the forest remained silent, eerie and empty. I can’t remember any birdsong.

Yet if they were frightened of ghosts, the Serbs had little respect for the bodies. The drivers of the timber trucks that worked the forest lanes preferred to grind the corpses under their wheels rather than roll them away.

Most victims lay not among the trees but in mass graves, having been rounded up, executed in batches and bulldozed into the soil. Most had been driven by coach to the execution sites. Blindfolded, their hands tied together, they were mown down in lines by Serb death squads. The coach drivers – civilians – were then ordered to administer a coup de grâce with a pistol, ensuring their complicity and silence.

It was probably not a task they found distasteful. For Dr Karadzic’s greatest success in Bosnia, one that still outlives his failed war strategy, was his genesis of Serb loathing.

It knew no age barrier. I remember one wounded Bosnian soldier who did manage to escape from Srebrenica telling me that an elderly Serb man had discovered him lying in a hedgerow, exhausted, unarmed, and with gunshot wounds to his arm.

The pensioner beat him with a crowbar, then went away to fetch a knife with which to finish him off. The soldier crawled away and saw the man return, crowbar in one hand, knife in the other, beating the hedge line as if searching for a wounded animal.

There was no compassion or quarter given during those terrible July days of 1995. A handful of wounded men crawled out from the mass graves at night, but hardly anyone survived.

If the scale of Srebrenica was unusual, the genocidal passions behind it were by then familiar. From the start of the war Dr Karadzic had conjured a pathological hatred among the state’s Serbs for Bosnia’s majority Muslim population – Balija, as they were pejoratively known. He engendered his rabid brand of nationalism through a combination of fear and history. Harking back through Bosnia’s fratricidal experiences of the Second World War to the days of the Ottoman Empire, he offered the vision of a Greater Serbia as the only sanctuary against the contrived threat of a new Islamic State.

‘Do unto them now as they shall surely do to you tomorrow,’ was his call. Thus it was that 10,000 died in the Sarajevo siege; women and children were killed for sport by snipers; rape became a weapon of war; massacre was established as a necessary component of ‘ethnic cleansing’ – the new euphemism for purge and pogrom; concentration camps reappeared on European soil; and killing begat killing until by the war’s conclusion more than 200,000 were dead.

If only the Srebrenica victims were my most salient memory of that hatred. They are not.

In the last days of the war I saw something in the yawning doorway of a derelict house outside Sanski Most, in western Bosnia, that 13 years later still zips through my mind untouched by time. The garden outside was an overgrown tangle of grass and a hot afternoon sun bleached the colour from the walls of the building, earlier burnt by advancing Serb troops. A sweet stench weighted the breeze. By then I had seen hundreds of bodies, most Muslim, most civilian, murdered out of combat by knife or bullet. Even so, I was unprepared for what waited in that house.

For a few moments after walking through the door I could not understand what I was looking at. The walls and ceiling appeared splattered in black, undefinable lumps, the floor was concealed by a gateau of twisted limbs and swollen torsos. It was as if an abstract charcoal sketch by Goya had come to life. Slowly, as my eyes became accustomed to the light, I could make out that there were 12 bodies. Then I saw their heads, or what was left of them. For these 12 men had been killed with a sledgehammer.

Before and since I have seen greater numbers of victims of execution. But the level of effort and involvement and hatred required to shepherd 12 men into a room, then smash in their heads with a hammer, left more of an impression than the horror of the mutilation itself and transcended the mere scale of murder.

Separated by time and geography from the scene of crime, Dr Karadzic looks an unlikely war criminal. Even the crimes with which he is charged sound clinical – until the memories come back, and ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘genocide’ stop being words but walls coated in skull fragments and brain.

This article appeared in The Times (London), 23 July 2008