National Congress of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina
ONLINE NEWSLETTER - International
No. 559
July 26, 2008
http://republic-bosnia-
CONTENT
1. Karadzic will Tell World What Milosevic Could not
2. SREBRENICA – 13 YEARS AFTER
3. FREE SREBRENICA, THEN WE WILL THINK ABOUT RECONCILIATION
------------------------------
If you do not want to receive this Online Newsletter just reply with "UNSUBSCRIBE" in the subject line. Then your e-mail address will be promptly deleted.
______________________________
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
______________________________
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
______________________________
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
No comments:
Post a Comment