The Congress of North American Bosniaks (CNAB) welcomes the news of release of Jovan Divjak, former General of the Bosnian Army, in Vienna on Friday. An Austrian court has rejected Belgrade’s request that general Divjak be extradited to Serbia for a false and politically motivated accusation of war crimes in the “Dobrovoljacka” case.  General Divjak is a patriot who served his country Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) honorably when it came under the attack from the forces of Serbia and Montenegro following its declaration of independence in March of 1992.

It is an outrage that Serbia continues to issue arrest warrants in this case, which has been found on numerous occasions to be without merit by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), an authoritative body established by  the United Nations to prosecute serious crimes committed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.  Serbia continues its aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina, using false accusations and frivolous arrests of citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina.  In the case of Dr. Ejup Ganic, the UK court denied the Serbian extradition request in July of 2010 after several months of proceedings that were, in the words of Judge Timothy Workman, “…being used for political purposes.”  Same was the case with Ilija Jurisic; another Bosnian citizen falsely arrested and sentenced by Serbia to 12 years in prison, and was thankfully released after months of protests and appeals in November of 2010.  The latest false imprisonment of General Divjak is further proof that Serbia is not sincere in its efforts to reconcile with its neighbors, especially when it comes to taking full responsibility for its past policies of aggression and genocide. 

Instead of taking responsibility for its actions, Serbian authorities continue to undermine Bosnian sovereignty and the rights of its citizens, and to intimidate their way into averting blame for atrocities committed during the war from Serbia onto other countries in the region. This is particularly easy for them to do in Bosnia where Bosnian Serb representatives also work tirelessly to undermine Bosnian state authority and are continuing a practice of revisionist history to justify their actions. CNAB has warned on several occasions that Serbia continues to be a source of political instability in the region, particularly in its policies towards Bosnia and Herzegovina and the mainly Bosniak southern region of Sandzak.

CNAB demands that all further extradition requests for detainment of Bosnian citizens who defended their country from Serbian aggression, be categorically dismissed by the international community.  Furthermore, we call upon the United Nations, the United States, Canada, and the European Union, to take notice and act swiftly to hold Serbia accountable for its actions of continued infringement on Bosnian sovereignty and destabilization of the Balkans. We also request of the Bosnian government officials to take all means necessary to protect its citizens against attacks on its sovereignty and the freedom of its citizens to travel and not be subjugated to false arrests.

On behalf of CNAB,

Hamdija Custovic, Spokesperson
The Congress of North American Bosniaks
 www.bosniak.org

The Congress of North American Bosniaks (CNAB), the Institute for Research of Genocide Canada (IRGC), the American Institute for Genocide and Education (BAGI) and the Australian Council of BiH Organizations (ACBHO) welcome the news of the arrest of Goran Hadžić in Serbia the last high profile war criminal who was at large for more than seven years, accused of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws rules of war established by the Geneva Convention.

Twenty years after the beginning of the wars of aggression and the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Hadzic’s arrest is another significant milestone in the history of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The arrest of Goran Hadzic is also a significant step that can bring about justice to the victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Croatia.

KBSA, IRGC, BAGI and VBHOA once again caution the UN Security Council, for the sake of a better future of humanity and civilization and in the name of the truth about crimes and justice for the victims of these crimes, to provide sufficient time and resources to the ICTY to fully conduct the trials of Goran Hadžić, Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić in accordance with the standards of international justice.

We also urge the authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina to fully carry out the investigation and prosecution of all other war criminals in accordance with the law and the judicial powers of the War Crimes Chamber established by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. We especially point out the importance of continuing relentless search for war criminals that are at large all over the world and applying international extradition request warrants bringing them to face justice.

Finally we want to underline that it is very important that the war criminals are held fully accountable for their actions as the only way to lasting peace and reconciliation in the region of former Yugoslavia.

Haris Alibašić, MPA, President
The Congress of North American Bosniaks (CNAB)
www.bosniak.org

Prof. Emir Ramić, President
Institute for the Research of Genocide Canada (IRGC)
http://www.instituteforgenocide.ca/

Senada Softić-Telalović, mr. sci , President
Australian Council of BiH Organizations (ACBHO)

Sanja Seferović-Drnovsek J.D, MEd, Chair
Bosnian American Genocide Institute and Education Center (BAGI)
 www.baginst.org

The start of Ratko Mladic’s trial today means that the most important Bosnian Serb war-criminal, alongside Radovan Karadzic, is now facing justice. This trial will be crucially important for two reasons.

Firstly, its proceedings may shed some light on the role of Serbia and its military in the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995. At the time of the massacre, Serbia was in a federal union with Montenegro, and the joint state went by the name of the ‘Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’ (Savezna Republika Jugoslavija – SRJ). Its army, the ‘Army of Yugoslavia’, provided logistical support for the Bosnian Serb army – the ‘Army of the Serb Republic’ – and its Croatian Serb counterpart, though these were formally independent of it. The minutes of the SRJ’s Supreme Defence Council (which comprised the presidents of ‘Yugoslavia’, Serbia and Montenegro) were recently used by the prosecution of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)  in its case against former Yugoslav army Chief of Staff Momcilo Perisic. They reveal that Perisic regularly appealed to the Supreme Defence Council to provide such logistical support to the Bosnian Serb military, and that these appeals continued up until the eve of the Srebrenica massacre. Hopefully, the trial of Mladic, alongside that of Perisic, will provide more information on the role of the Army of Yugoslavia during the Srebrenica massacre. Indeed, it is likely that Mladic’s ability to provide such information was one of the reasons that Serbia’s military shielded him from arrest for so long. This is, however, an optimistic hope, as Mladic is more likely to continue denying responsibility for the massacre and to shield his former protectors than he is to spill the beans.

The second, and more important reason why Mladic’s trial is important, is that it provides the best chance yet to prove that genocide occurred not only at Srebrenica in 1995, but in other places and at other times in Bosnia-Hercegovina as well. The judicial record on this question so far is ambiguous. Germany’s courts have convicted Bosnian Serb perpetrators for offences relating to genocide carried out in parts of Bosnia outside of Srebrenica. One of these, the paramilitary leader Nikola Jorgic, was convicted of genocide in the north Bosnian region of Doboj in 1992, but appealed his conviction all the way to the European Court of Human Rights. The latter upheld Jorgic’s conviction for genocide, ruling that the German courts’ definition of genocide was consistent with the international legal definition. The German and ECHR rulings on Jorgic corroborate the view that genocide occurred across Bosnia from 1992, not merely at Srebrenica in 1995. On the other hand, the International Court of Justice, in the case for genocide brought by Bosnia against Serbia, acquitted Serbia of all genocide-related charges apart from failure to prevent and punish genocide. The ICJ specifically stated that genocide in Bosnia occurred only at Srebrenica in 1992, not in other places or at other times. Mladic, however, stands accused by the ICTY prosecution of systematic genocide across both western and eastern Bosnia from May 1992. If Mladic is found guilty on all charges, the judicial record for a genocide in Bosnia that occurred across the country from 1992 to 1995 will be greatly strengthened.

Be this as it may, the significance of this trial, and of Mladic personally, should not be overstated. News reports have suggested that Mladic was, along with Serbia’s wartime president Slobodan Milosevic and the wartime Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic, one of the three principal perpetrators of Serb war-crimes in Bosnia. In fact, the singling out of these three individuals, to the exclusion of all others, betrays a false understanding of the nature of the Great Serbian killing campaign and of how it was organised. In reality, the Serb military aggression against Bosnia and programme of mass killing of its non-Serb inhabitants was planned and organised by the regime in Belgrade; not merely by Milosevic the despot, but by a much wider circle of top political, military and police officials. This war followed on seamlessly from the prior war waged by Serbia against Croatia in 1991-1992.

Mladic, on the other hand, was merely a run-of-the-mill officer in the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) until well after the war in Croatia had begun. He served as chief of the Department for Instruction of the JNA’s 3rd Military District based in Skopje in Macedonia until January 1991, then as assistant to the commander of the Pristina Corps in Kosovo until July 1991, when he was transferred – still as a mere colonel – to Knin, which was the self-proclaimed capital of the Serb rebels in Croatia. He was appointed chief of staff of the 9th (Knin) Corps at the end of July, and played a central role in ethnic cleansing operations against Croatia. In October, after Serbia together with Montenegro had carried out a coup d’etat to establish exclusive control of the federal organs of rump Yugoslavia, including of the JNA, Mladic was promoted to major-general. From late November or early December 1991, as they were preparing to wind down the war in Croatia and to shift it to Bosnia, the Milosevic regime and the leadership of the JNA set about organising a Bosnian Serb military within the framework of the JNA, something that involved concentrating all Bosnian Serb soldiers and officers in the JNA on Bosnian territory. On 30 December, the rump Yugoslav presidency (i.e. the representatives of Serbia and Montenegro) established a new military district – the ’2nd Military District’ – based in Sarajevo, that had jurisdiction over Mladic’s Knin Corps. At the same time, Mladic was promoted to commander of the Knin Corps.

Thus, when the JNA launched a full-scale war against Bosnia in March and April 1992, Mladic was not even based in Bosnia, but was still in the relatively junior position of commander of the Knin Corps, based in Serb-occupied Croatia. He nevertheless participated in the start of the aggression against Bosnia; his forces captured the town of Kupres in south-west Bosnia from its predominantly Bosnian Croat defenders on 8 April 1992 and helped to organise the future Bosnian Serb army in that region of the country, after which he returned to the Knin region for further operations against the Croatian Army.

On 27 April 1992, Milosevic’s regime proclaimed the new ‘Yugoslavia’ – i.e., the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SRJ), consisting only of Serbia and Montenegro. The Bosnian Serb rebel entity, subsequently known as the ‘Republika Srpska’, had already proclaimed independence a month before. By establishing the SRJ and the Bosnian Serb republic as formally separate states, the Milosevic regime aimed to pretend to the world that it was not involved in the war in Bosnia, and that this war was really just a ‘civil war’. This necessitated a formally independent Bosnian Serb army, separate from the Yugoslav army, and Mladic was handpicked by Belgrade to be its commander. On 30 April, Milosevic and other top officials of Serbia, Montenegro and the JNA met with the Bosnian Serb leaders under Radovan Karadzic to arrange the formation of a Bosnian Serb army, and it was agreed that Mladic – who had been promoted to lieutenant general only a few days before – would serve as its commander. In early May, JNA Chief of Staff and acting Yugoslav defence minister Blagoje Adzic summoned Mladic to Belgrade to inform him that he was to be promoted to both commander and chief of staff of the JNA’s 2nd Military District, based in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. At about the same time, the acting president of the Yugoslav presidency, Branko Kostic, ordered the previous JNA incumbent of the post to surrender his duties to Mladic, whose appointment as commander of the 2nd Military District was reported by Belgrade TV on 9 May.

Mladic subsequently recalled that ‘When I took up duty in the 2^nd Military District I immediately assigned myself the task of assembling men and forming a command and General Staff, partly from the remnants of the 2^nd Military District and partly from the men who had come with me from Knin and from other areas, who were born in Bosnia-Herzegovina. We immediately began the formation of a General Staff of the [Bosnian] Serb Army.’ On 12 May, the self-declared Bosnian Serb parliament voted to establish a Bosnian Serb army incorporating all JNA units on Bosnian territory, and to appoint Mladic as its commander. Yet the law was not promulgated by the presidency of the self-declared Bosnian Serb republic until 19 May. Until that time, Mladic was still formally subordinate, along with all Serb forces on Bosnian territory, to the Yugoslav military command and Yugoslav presidency in Belgrade. Only on 19 May did the the JNA formally split into two separate armies: the ‘Army of Yugoslavia’, made up of troops from Serbia and Montenegro, which formally withdrew from Bosnia on the same date; and the ‘Army of the Serb Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina’, subsequently simply the ‘Army of the Serb Republic’, headed by Mladic and now formally independent.

In other words, although Mladic played a prominent and significant role in the Serb military assault on Bosnia that began full-scale in the spring of 1992, he was far from being its chief instigator or organiser. The latter was the political and military leadership of Serbia, Montenegro and the Yugoslav People’s Army, which handpicked and groomed Mladic for the role. Attributing excessive importance to Mladic as organiser of the war in Bosnia downplays the party that was actually responsible: the regime of Slobodan Milosevic.

War crimes investigators at the ICTY were aware of how the war and mass killing in Bosnia were organised. According to the amended indictment of Milosevic for war crimes in Bosnia:

‘Slobodan MILOSEVIC participated in the joint criminal enterprise as set out below. The purpose of this joint criminal enterprise was the forcible and permanent removal of the majority of non-Serbs, principally Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats, from large areas of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereinafter referred to as “Bosnia and Herzegovina”), through the commission of crimes which are in violation of Articles 2, 3, 4 and 5 of the Statute of the Tribunal. The joint criminal enterprise was in existence by 1 August 1991 and continued until at least 31 December 1995. The individuals participating in this joint criminal enterprise included Slobodan MILOSEVIC, Radovan KARADZIC, Momcilo KRAJISNIK, Biljana PLAVSIC, General Ratko MLADIC, Borisav JOVIC, Branko KOSTIC, Veljko KADIJEVIC, Blagoje ADZIC, Milan MARTIC, Jovica STANISIC, Franko SIMATOVIC, also known as “Frenki,” Radovan STOJICIC, also known as “Badza,” Vojislav SESELJ, Zeljko RAZNATOVIC, also known as “Arkan,” and other known and unknown participants.’

However, at the time of writing, not a single official of Serbia, Montenegro or the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – i.e. of the regime that organised the war – nor any officer of the JNA (excluding officers of the Bosnian Serb army who had previously served in the JNA) has been convicted by the ICTY of war crimes in Bosnia. The weight of ICTY punishment has, so far, fallen exclusively on the Bosnian Serbs, while the regime of Milosevic in Belgrade and the leadership of the JNA have been mostly let off the hook. Only six such officials were ever indicted: Milosevic, Stanisic, Simatovic, Perisic, Arkan and Seselj. Arkan was assassinated before he could be arrested, while Milosevic died while his trial was in progress. This leaves a maximum of four representatives of the regime who could, if the prosecution is wholly successful, receive punishment for organising the worst case of aggression and mass killing in Europe since World War II. None of these belonged to the top rank of officials responsible for organising the war in Bosnia, with the exception of Stanisic, who was head of Serbia’s State Security Service.

Of the other representatives of the ‘joint criminal enterprise’ from Serbia, Montenegro and the JNA high command who were listed in the Milosevic indictment, Stojicic was assassinated in Belgrade before the indictment was issued. Adzic and Kadijevic, the two top figures in the JNA during the war in Croatia and (in Adzic’s case) during the first stage of the war in Bosnia, were never indicted. Neither were Jovic and Kostic, the Yugoslav presidency members for Serbia and Montenegro respectively, and therefore (along with their counterparts for Vojvodina and Kosovo) the individuals in ultimate formal command of all Serb forces in Croatia and Bosnia up until 19 May 1992. Other top officials of Serbia, Montenegro and the JNA also escaped indictment over Bosnia or Croatia – such as Montenegro’s wartime president Momir Bulatovic, and acting Yugoslav army chief of staff Zivota Panic (who died in 2003).

Some relatively minor JNA figures were indicted for war-crimes in Croatia, in relation to Vukovar and Dubrovnik, but over Croatia, as over Bosnia, the weight of the ICTY’s punishment has fallen on the Croatian Serb agents of Belgrade – such as Milan Martic and Milan Babic (and potentially also the still unarrested Goran Hadzic) – while the officials of the former Milosevic regime have escaped extremely lightly.

This extraordinary failure of international justice over Bosnia – the failure of the ICTY to indict more than a handful of the officials of the regime and army responsible for the planning and launching the war, and so far to convict a single one of them – reflects both the inability of its prosecutors to understand the war properly, as well as their poor strategy in issuing indictments. As I have indicated elsewhere, a preliminary draft of a war-crimes indictment for the leadership of the SRJ (Serbia and Montenegro) drawn up in 2001 by investigators – including the present author – aimed to indict Milosevic and other members of his regime together, including Jovic, Kostic and Adzic. But by a decision of Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte, the policy was then dropped in favour of an indictment of Milosevic alone. Apart from allowing his chief collaborators to escape justice, this had the unfortunate effect – as Geoffrey Nice, who led the prosecution of Milosevic, himself noted – that when Milosevic died in 2006, his trial came to an end, and with it, the trial of his regime. This contrasts with the sensible indictment strategy pursued over Serbian war-crimes in Kosovo by del Ponte’s predecessor, Louise Arbour, who indicted five top members of the regime together, including Milosevic.

In her published memoirs, del Ponte’s failure to understand the planning and organising of the war in Bosnia is apparent; it is a failure that found expression in her misguided indictment strategy. She describes Milosevic and Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman as the two figures primarily responsible for the break up of Yugoslavia – as if their respective roles in the process were equal, and as if none of the other leading members of Milosevic’s Belgrade regime was of similar importance. But this is false.

The break up of Yugoslavia and the wars in Croatia and Bosnia all formed part of a single process, planned by the regime in Belgrade under Milosevic’s leadership from at least the spring of 1990, with the goal of creating a Great Serbia (masquerading as a ‘new Yugoslavia’). So far as Bosnia was concerned, this ’joint criminal enterprise’ aimed to destroy the country and kill or expel most of the Muslim or Bosniak population. Most of Bosnia, as well as large parts of Croatia, were to be annexed by Serbia, and rump Croatia was to receive some Bosnian territory as well, with the Muslims or Bosniaks, at best, being confined to an Indian reservation in between. Tudjman was an eager collaborator in this programme of genocide and aggression, whose other leading members were, in particular, the aforementioned Jovic, Kostic, Kadijevic, Adzic, Stanisic, Panic and Bulatovic. None of these has yet been punished, and most of them certainly never will be.

As for Mladic, he was merely a middle-ranking agent in the planning and launching of this enterprise – more than a pawn, but not more than a knight or a bishop. So while his arrest and trial should be celebrated, and while we have much to expect from it, let us not pretend that justice is being served.

Originally Published on the Greater Surbiton blog on June 3, 2011

Help Us, Say Women of Bosnia

Bosniak women told a Press conference in London recently about the rape, torture and other atrocities they suffered at the hands of their Serbian captors. Zaharah Othman has the story.

In a voice devoid of emotion, Bosniak Jasmina Kocarac narrated her traumatic experience at the hands of Serbian soldiers who 15 days earlier had mercilessly killed her husband and her in-laws before her very eyes.

As with other victims of Serbian atrocities, there was no time for Jasmina to shed any more tears, for indeed her more important task now was to tell the world about the systematic ethnic cleansing by the Serbs to wipe out Bosniaks from the map and history of the world.

Jasmina was raped repeatedly by three Serbian soldiers after being arrested and taken to a concentration camp. She was handpicked from a group of women and taken to another room where she said there were naked women who had apparently been raped and sexually molested. She knew she was about to meet the same fate but was mercifully spared the humiliation when she passed out.

She wasn’t lucky the next time round and was fully conscious of the brutal reality that those who raped her were her former neighbours. One of them was the best man at her wedding.

In the same monotone voice Jasmina vowed that she would kill her rapists if she found them.

Jasmina was among a group of Bosniak refugees from Zagreb in Croatia who attended the London Peace Conference recently. Like all the others, she acquired her freedom from the concentration camp in exchange programmes for Serbian prisoners held by Bosniaks.

What happened to Jasmina was by no means an isolated case. According to Fatima Kafedzic, president of the Mothers’ Movement for Peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina, age did not seem to be a deterrent. Gang-raping girls as young as seven years old in front of their mothers and other prisoners offered some kind of morbid pleasure to their Serbian captors.

At a concentration camp in Manjaca, near Banja Luka, seven-year-old Mirma was gang-raped in front of her mother and fellow prisoners. Her distraught mother prayed for her daughter’s death to end her trauma. She died eight hours later.

Others, according to Fatima, were not so lucky. At a hospital in Zagreb, where many Bosniaks are taking refuge, teenage girls are awaiting the birth of unwanted babies. Some have to undergo intense psychological treatment and counselling.

“Members of my movement visited a 13-year-old girl who was raped and tortured. She was in a state of shock and was constantly crying. We told her to try to forget what had happened and try to rebuild her life,” said Fatima, her voice betraying her own conviction of her statement.

A mother of 10 children, Fatima fears for the safety of her daughters who are still in Sarajevo. She was in Austria collecting medical supplies and could not return when trouble broke out. Since then she has lost contact with her husband and six children. From Zagreb, her movement tried to help victims pick up the pieces and start life anew. It also helps rehabilitate children who had lost their parents in the war.

Another tireless figure who spends her time healing the physical and mental wounds of the war victims is Dr Alma Muslic. She said she has seen terrible cases of torture, especially of pregnant women who were brutally knifed in the stomach. And there were, of course, little children who were victims of sniper attacks or who were left orphaned without both parents.

One child who was lucky to have both parents around was Jasmin, 9, but he has to live with the constant nightmarish reminder of his days at the concentration camp in Manjaca.

Jasmin was with his mother Aziza and sister Waleeda, 12, on a abus to his aunt’s house in Dobrinja when they were stopped by Serbian soldiers.

Bosniak passengers were marched off for questioning. Jasmin was repeatedly questioned about who was supplying arms to Bosniaks.

When Aziza was taken away for questioning they threatened to rape her children if she did not co-operate.

It was while she was away that Jasmin witnessed men, who were just skin and bones, being tortured.

At the Press conference in London recently, Jasmin broke down while narrating his story and Waleeda constantly hid her face in her hands in an effort to wipe out the memory.

Earlier, before the start of the conference, a brief separation from his mother proved too much for young Jasmin, whose nagging fear was not seeing his mother ever again.

For Aziza and her children, the peace conference which brought them to London for a brief respite from the troubles in their homeland offered little hope for real peace in Bosnia.

However, they received their first good news in months during their stay in London when they heard that her husband was safe in Sarajevo.

However, for Fatima Hodzic, her husband and the rest of the menfolk in her family perished in a mass killing by Serbian soldiers.

Now, her son, five-year-old Mohamed is the only male survivor in her close-knit family of 35.

Putting her sadness aside, Fatima and the rest of the Bosniak refugees in London recently appealed for women’s organisations, especially from the Muslim world, to help them in any way they can.

“This is one occasion to call all women to give us support as we want to return to our country as soon as possible. We do not want anybody to receive us as refugees. We want to return to our country, to work and rebuild it.

“We would like to appeal for financial help to bring back our children who are refugees in Western countries so that we can bring them up as Bosniaks. We do not want them to lose their identity.”

Mr. Adis Šušnjar

PR KoREKOM BiH

Sarajevo: Coalition for REKOM

Kralja Tvrtka 5/5, Sarajevo,
Bosna and Herzegovina

www.zarekom.org

Joint letter by the Congress of North American Bosniaks (CNAB), Institute for the Research of Genocide Canada (IRGC), Bosnian American Genocide Institute and Education Center (BAGI) and Australian Council of BiH Organizations (ACBHO)

The Congress of North American Bosniaks (CNAB), an umbrella organization of all American and Canadian Bosniaks, in collaboration with Institute for the Research of Genocide Canada (IRGC), Bosnian American Genocide Institute and Education Center (BAGI) and Australian Council of BiH Organizations (ACBHO) are supportive of the initiatives that bring forth a comprehensive study about the severity of the crimes committed in the Balkans as a result of Serbian aggression, which includes those that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s neighboring countries. However, all four organizations are of the view that it is imperative to prevent equating of the aggressors and the victims of genocide. For this reason, we believe that all the research should be conducted under the protocol of standard scientific and academic methods taking into consideration the official results of the preceding research done so far on war crimes, genocide and tribunal rulings in this area. CNAB. in collaboration with both institutes in North America as well as with the Australian Council of BiH Organizations (ACBHO) support all projects based strictly on the results of academic research.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is a symbol of suffering of people due to their ethnic and religious affiliation and the continuing agenda and conquering aspirations towards Bosnia and Herzegovina and extermination of Bosniaks.

At the end of the 20th century Bosniaks have once again undergone genocide due to their religious and national belonging. According to the great-Serbian plan, genocide was intended to exterminate Bosniaks as a nation and as a religious group in order to create an ethnically pure Serbian nation. Being involved in the research of genocide and other forms of crimes both against humanity and against international laws, the above-mentioned institutions raise their voices against genocide and war crimes.

Present and future generations from all previous crimes of genocide must, in the interest of the future of the modern world and civilization, draw a historical lesson about the need to strengthen, develop and unite all progressive forces, regardless of national, ethnic, racial, religious, ideological or political affiliation and commit to the strategy of prevention and punishment of crimes of genocide.

The Congress of North American Bosniaks (CNAB), Institute for the Research of Genocide Canada (IRGC), Australian Council of BiH Organizations (ACBHO) and Bosnian American Genocide Institute and Education Center (BAGI) deem that the initiative for proclaiming Regional Commission for the Establishment of Facts about war crimes and other grave violations of human rights in the region of former Yugoslavia should take into consideration all existing academic research based on the crimes done under the aggression of the republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and crimes of genocide against the Bosniak people. We also believe that all verdicts of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice relating to the crimes in the former Yugoslavia should be accepted and recognized, and insist that the Prosecutor’s Office in BiH processes all war crimes.

Mr. Haris Alibašić, President
The Congress of North American Bosniaks (CNAB),
www.bosniak.org

Prof. Emir Ramić, President
Institute for the Research of Genocide Canada (IRGC)
http://www.instituteforgenocide.ca/

Ms. Sanja Drnovšek Seferović, President
Bosnian American Genocide Institute and Education Center (BAGI)
www.baginst.org

Ms. Senada Softić-Telalović, President
Australian Council of BiH Organizations (ACBHO)

Source: Originally Published on March 16, 2011 in Greater Surbiton Blog, by Dr. Marko Attila Hoare.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, as Defence Secretary until July 1995 and thereafter as Foreign Secretary, was one of the architects of Britain’s disastrous policy toward the war in Bosnia. For over three years, on the basis of this policy, Britain obstructed all meaningful intervention to halt Serbian aggression and genocide in Bosnia, pressurised the Bosnian government to accept the dismemberment of its country, and – most notoriously – mercilessly upheld a UN arms embargo that seriously restricted Bosnia’s ability to defend itself. It was, in effect, an intervention on the side of the aggressor and against the victim. As a direct result of that policy, Bosnia remains a mess to this day.

Yet Sir Malcolm has had time to reconsider. Monday’s edition of The Times published a powerful piece by him calling for intervention in support of the rebels in Libya, in which he argues the following:

‘First and most important should be an open and urgent supply of the necessary weapons to the insurgents so that they can fight Gaddafi on equal terms. The UN has imposed an arms embargo and some have suggested that this makes illegal any supply of weapons to either side in Libya. The UN Resolution, however, refers to a ban on arms supply to the Libyan “Jamahiriya”, which is Gaddafi’s invented name for the state he controls. It need not prevent supplies to those trying to bring him down. Otherwise, we will repeat the mistake of the Bosnian war – when the UN embargo had much less impact on the Bosnian Serbs who were, already, heavily armed. Having been Defence Secretary at that time I have, in retrospect, felt that that was the most serious mistake made by the UN.’ [emphasis added]

Indeed, there had likewise been no legal obligation on the part of UN member states to enforce the arms embargo against Bosnia, since UN Security Council Resolution 713 had been imposed on the state of Yugoslavia, not on the state of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Those enforcing the embargo against Bosnia did so because they wanted to, not because they were legally obliged to. So it is with the Libyan rebels today.

As Jesus said, joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance. Former US president Bill Clinton has similarly admitted his error in failing to intervene to stop the genocide in Rwanda: ‘I feel terrible about it because I think we could have sent 5,000, 10,000 troops there and saved a couple hundred thousand lives. I think we could have saved about half of them. But I’ll always regret that Rwandan thing. I will always feel terrible about it.’

One wonders whether Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will one day regret the shameful policy they are pursuing toward Libya today.

The issue of the relations between Bosnia and Bosniaks has to be considered from several aspects of those relations. First of them is the continuity of the name Bosnia and all the related names. Our science has not reliably identified the origin of the name of the state Bosnia, though that onomatology research and the topo-onomatology as its discipline approached the solution of this complex issue. In any case, this name is local and it emerged among its citizens who lived in the areas later known as Bosnia, which name will later on be used in the highest-level international documents as the marking for this state. But, there is no need to engage in the matter of etymology an the origin of the name, and instead it is necessary to consider the scientific facts which serve as the basis of the postulates for the consideration of these big historic, social, and political issues, which did confirm that around the mid 10th century around the source and in the upper flow of the river Bosnia and the surrounding regions, there was a state of Bosnia and its residents known as Bošnjani /int: Boshnian/.

History as a science identified that Bosnia existed, no later than the 10th century, as independent state in its political sense, and that it was not under the political influence of any other neighboring state and it functioned as such the following 500 years. This fact is best confirmed by historic facts that numerous invading wars were organized against Bosnia and its indigenous Bosnian church, with the aim of conquering Bosnia and imposing the Catholicism. Rome (Vatican) organized ample interventions to eradicate the so-called heretics of the Bosnian church, which was the ruling mot influential spiritual institution in the medieval Bosnian state, which had been accused of heresies by Vatican. The teaching of the Bosnia n church, structured as part of Bosnian identity and the holder of its idea of independence, served as a spiritual resistance to the Catholicism and Eastern orthodox teaching and was the cause for numerous crusade wars against Bosnia.

Among the documents, which clearly speak in favor of political and any other independence of Bosnia and the full capacity of the Bosnian rulers is the Charter of Kulin ban, issued to Dubrovnik in 1189. There is a large number of Charters and other documents issued by the Bosnian kings, as well as other sources, which confirm the life of the Bosnian state, its full political independence, specific features on the internal affairs, religious autochthon position and independence.

In addition to the Charter of the Kulin ban, a historic document which confirms the life of Bosnian state and its independence, another important date in the Bosnian history is the fall of the Bosnian state in 1463. This date confirms that the Ottomans conquered Bosnia, as of when Bosnia continues to exist as a province within the Ottoman Empire, without the elements of the state, except those that existed in the minds of people. Bosnians knew of its state, glorious history and they hoped that it would be restored, following the principle that “every force is for some time”, and that the basic right of Bosnians to have their state will be achieved.

Bosniaks tried to achieve it in 1831-1832, in a series of rebellions against the Ottoman Empire, when Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, Vlaška and some other provinces got the national and state autonomy with a big help of the Western countries. However, the Bosnian insurrections, despite some victories against the Ottoman army, did not succeed in restoring its state, primarily because they did not receive any help from the Western countries. Their attempt to restore the Bosnian state was not supported, because the leading force were Bosniaks – of Islamic religion (the Christian Europe did not support the Bosnian resurrection – Movement for the autonomy of Bosnia, because it did not want a state in Europe where Bosniaks Muslims would be a factor). The lack of support produced a counter effect, as it supported the aspirations of other states towards Bosnia, so that Serbia and Montenegro, as well as Austro-Hungary tried to destabilize the situation in Bosnia, by organizing rebellions and movements which aimed at facilitation of Serbian, Montenegrin, or Austro-Hungarian domination in Bosnia.

These attempts had their finale at the Berlin Congress in 1878, when Bosnia and Herzegovina was given to Austro-Hungary, which got the mandate to “occupy and rule the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina”, with the mission to establish the peace and order. In fact, this was the excuse for subsequent incorporation of Bosnia and Herzegovina into Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Bosnia and Herzegovina remained inside Austro-Hungary until the 29th October 1918, and on 1 December it became a part of the newly established common Yugoslav Monarchist state (Kingdom of Serbians, Croatians, and Slovenians, that is, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia). This is one of the crucial dates in the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which just like previous dates (1463 and 1878) prove the life of forces interested in eradicating Bosnia and Herzegovina as a historic and political subject from the European political map. With the introduction of 6th January dictatorship, in accordance with the great-Serbian ideology, politics and practice, the territorial units and specifics of Bosnia and Herzegovina were destroyed, and the compactness of Bosniaks. With the Serbian-Croatian Agreement of 1939, Bosnia and Herzegovina was divided between Serbia and Croatia, while disregarding that the Bosniaks were majority nation.

With the fall and the capitulation of the monarchist Yugoslavia in April 1941, within the framework of fascistic occupation and the destruction of Yugoslavia in 1941, the so called Independent State of Croatia was declared on the 10th April, which incorporated Bosnia and Herzegovina by the decision of the fascistic forces and the intention of the Croatia fascists. Peoples and citizens of Bosnia were not even consulted for such an establishment. Thus, Bosniaks were turned into the object of Croatia politics.

The occupational regime resulted in the overall deterioration of living conditions, especially severe persecutions and expelling of population. This, and the mobilization of the main occupational forces for Yugoslavia to the Eastern front, reduction of the occupation density to the European average of 1 soldier to 1 square kilometer of the occupied territory, was used by the Communist Party to initiate the antifascist rebellion. Government of Kingdom of Yugoslavia in exile placed itself under the protection of Great Britain, after the capitulation was signed, and it did not respond to the call of the Antifascist coalition to organize the Resistance movement in the country, where they waited in London for the fall of the Tripartite pact to take over the authority in Yugoslavia. The Chetnik movement Draža Mihailović joined other collaborators in fighting the Peoples Liberation movement, executing genocide against Bosniaks and other crimes against combatants and supporters of Peoples Liberation movement, and all other antifascists.

The Ustasha collaborationist regime relied more on the Nazi Third Reich and following their patterns, it engaged in persecution of non-Croatian population. The first victims of the Ustasha genocide were Serbians, Jews, and Roma, and in July the Islamic community strongly reacted and opposed to this. Those were well known Muslim resolutions, which were unique phenomenon during the WWII.

All, but the first quisling offensives, were in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the biggest battles, such as Neretva and Sutjeska, which were the turning point in the Yugoslav frontline.

Antifascism in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945, with its victory established the civilization foundations of contemporary mankind. In this war, Yugoslavia, especially Bosnia and Herzegovina, had a signified and prominent position, giving a huge contribution to antifascist combat and the liberation of the country.

Bosniaks in Peoples Liberation War, equally with other peoples and forces made a single antifascist block, in which they opposed occupants and their collaborators, and suffered huge losses on the genocidal background, and yet they secured the biological survival (without antifascist battles Bosniaks would not survive – Peoples Liberation movement helped them survive).

During the antifascist war, there was a crucial change in the political relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Antifascist war against the occupants and their collaborators could count only on the success if all the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina and all the peoples living there were convinced that the war would bring them equality and freedom. That was the decisive factor, which orientated the political life and opinion in Bosnia and Herzegovina towards the common, not the partial political goals. The position stem from this fact that Bosnia and its citizens, peoples living in it, may be free and equal only if Bosnia is equal to other countries, which emerged from the antifascist war. Thus, the dominant position appeared that the war against fascism and the fight for equality of citizens and peoples in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina is possible and efficient only if the Bosnian state is restored and all its peoples equal. This political platform had an absolute and unchallenged support of all the antifascist forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the representatives of all its peoples who on 25th November 1943 adopted the famous ZAVNOBiH Resolution, which restored the statehood of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as the single state of Serbs, Croats, and Muslims (Bosniaks).

ZAVNOBiH Resolution and the emerging of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina constitute key date in the recent history of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the basis which facilitates the complete independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina. ZAVNOBiH is a proof that the common living is not only possible but also logical in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and that their common state can only function for the good of all and as such it can provide good results. Thus, ZAVNOBiH as of 1943 is the most important date in our history, the date which confirms millennium long history of Bosnia and it serves as a model for the development of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which secures full equality and freedom to all its peoples. Independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992) is only a logical consequence and the result of what the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina presented, and for what ZAVNOBiH secured essential political and constitutional prerequisites. The legacy of Peoples Liberation war and antifascist war in the WWII were important foundation of the defensive war 1992-1995 against fascism, aimed at preservation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The mere name of a nation, which has lived in the current territory of Bosnia (Bošnjani) since the medieval times, suggests that it stems from the fact that they were members or the residents of the state of Bosnia and subject of their rulers. First known rulers were called Ban of Bosnia, Rama, Usora, Soli, and Donjih Krajeva (Lower regions), depending on the territorial change of the country until the present day. The important facts are that Bosnia since its beginning has residents known as Bošnjani, and that they called themselves with that name, and that we encounter that name of the Bosnia residents in numerous historic documents. At the same time, we cannot find any other name referring to any ethnicity, and there is no other ethnonym, which would mark its original residents. The ethnonyms used were Raška residents, Zeta resident, Dubrovnik residents, Croatians, Hungarians, but only to suggest a foreigner who temporarily stayed in Bosnia, but they were not known as residents or “good Bošnjani“, as we can often see in the documents issued by the Bosnian Bans and Kings. Once we have such a clear evidence that the peoples of the first Bosnian state was known as Bošnjani (good Bošnjani), the questions are: how was this ethnonym lost, and how was it changed to the territorial name Bosnians; where the ethnic names of Serbs and Croats in Bosnia come from; and if any part of those original residents kept any link with the original name of the Bosnia residents – Bošnjani.

Territorial name appeared as a result of the interruption in the historic development caused by the Ottoman rule. That rule slowed the process of ethnic development in terms of establishment of single ethnicity which would result in the nation of Bošnjani once the historic development reaches the required stage (in the civil society). Thus, Bošnjani continued to exist in the form of marking Bosnians and Bosniaks, as they were renamed in the Ottoman version for all the residents of Bosnia. They were divided into Bosniaks Muslims, Bosniac Catholics and Bosniac Orthodox, and the traces of that division and their common name is very visible in our traditional onomatology. Almost one thousand families, former Bosnian Catholics have the family name Bošnjak, which is most common in that ethnic group. There are also Bosniac Orthodox, though they, at the time of propaganda and political activities of Serbian and Croatian nationalistic movement, started from their religious identity, accepted the offered national names of the Serbians and Croatians. Bosniaks of Islamic religion remained faithful to their name and their state, because they did not look for their national identification or political independence in other countries. Thus, they remained holders of the idea and political reality of the restoration of their state, while the Serbian and Croatian national determination of Catholics and Orthodox implied their separation from other residents of Bosnia, that is, their state and their original identity. It is of course the fact that Muslims remained with its original traditional name, and as such they expressed their ambition to restore Bosnia (Resurrection 1831-1832) which had to be the obstacle to the ambitions of the Serbian and Croatian nationalism, which started developing in the 19th century, which is the reason why these two constantly deny Bosniaks as a nation and ethnicity, which unfortunately they still do.

In this regard, it is important to document this relation in a way which indicates that Bosniaks, not only because of their status in the Ottoman empire when they had the status of recognized groups (military, religious, merchants) and were not exempted from the military service, unlike Catholics and Orthodox, defended Bosnia from the invasions coming from east and west. They continued with that until the last aggressor war, when the Orthodox largely presented their anti Bosnian activities and Catholics supported the invasion and policy of division of the Bosnian territory between Serbia and Croatia. That is the reason why we it should be stated that the Bosniaks are the guarantee of the integrity and life of the Bosnian state, which is furthermore the security of Bosniaks from the repeated genocide, which has happened several times. In this regard, Bosniaks cannot accept whatever the cost, or the international community for the sake of peace and international legality, any undermining of the territorial integrity and unity of the Bosnian state. This integrity and unity of Bosnia as the state is the only guarantee of peace in the Balkans and Europe.

** *

In its major part of the history, Bosnia, and its population, especially Bosniaks were stretched between huge ideological and political divisions in Balkans and European continent. The boundaries between the Western and Eastern Roman Empire went through Bosnia (Rome and Byzanth), eastern and western Christianity, as well as those that separated Venice, Austria and Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and Ottoman Empire.

Numerous crusade war and conquers against Bosnia, which exists for at least mid of the 10th century, and its autochthon Bosnian Church were started in the medieval times. Bosnia, as a respectable kingdom, successfully defended its state independence until the mid 15th century. Weak as the result of these wards and internal conflicts, and under the heavy attacks coming from the Ottomans, without any help from the Christian West, which was expected after the king Stjepan Tomaš was baptized and the coronation of Stjepan Tomašević with the Pope crown, Bosnia finally surrendered to the Ottoman power in 1463.

As the protruded Ottoman province Bosnia served as a polygon for further Ottoman conquers of Central Europe. After the Ottomans were defeated in the Vienna war (1683-1699), Bosnia became a borderline Ottoman province exposed to permanent attacks coming from Austria and Venice. In these wars, which continued throughout the 18th century, Bosnia managed with its forces to defend itself, and succeeded to win the crucial battle near Banja Luka in 1737.

During the 19th and 20th century, Serbia (in the east) and Croatia (in the west) constantly fought around Bosnia, while the Bosniaks were squeezed in the middle. Historically observed, as of the fall of the Ottoman power in 1878, until the present day, Bosnia is the key battleground and the victim of the confronting Serbian and Croatian nationalistic and great state interests. These are the demands which are the part greater Serbian and Croatian hegemonic aspirations towards Bosnia and Bosniaks, with the objective to occupy Bosnia and incorporate it into Serbian or Croatia, and divide, and exterminate biologically and spiritually Bosniaks.

The conquering aspirations of the genocidal character from both western and eastern neighbors are present in Bosnia also in part of Serbian and Croatian historians and politicians. Serbian and Croatian nationalistic historiography and politics deny Bosnia as a state and Bosniaks as people. Denying Bosniaks, the representatives of such historic science and politics deny its history, culture, language, religion, tradition, ethnic background, identity, and status of nation.

Numerous crimes have been committed against Bosnia and Bosniaks based on this nationalistic ideology and great state projects, and the culmination was in the 20th century.

The permanent activities of the Serbian and Croatian nationalism have been apparently present in their attempts to destroy Bosnia and Herzegovina as a historic, territorial, cultural, political, and the constitutional subject, and their attempts to prevent the establishment of the state in its historic form. This can be seen not only in the politics and ideology of the Serbianhood and Croatianhood, but also in the continued state, political, and military activity pursued for more than hundred and fifty years. Presently, these attempts intensify and every new stage they appear in the worse genocidal form. Namely, it is the historic fact that every new genocide is expressed as far more violent form of elimination of Bosniaks from their historic territory.

** *

Bosnia and Herzegovina is facing, lest to say, the crisis of the BiH society: grave economic situation, unemployment, low living standard, corruption, insecurity, isolation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, obstruction and blockade in making constitutional changes, legal operation of fascistic organizations, public announcement of potential fall of Bosnia and Herzegovina, etc.

The world, in addition to the economic, faces also a deep moral civilization crisis. The world is changing, from one to another minute. Leading, mainly political structures in the world are focused on securing enormous wealth, financial resources, gold, oil, and the start of the 21st century is announcing strong fight for drinking water.

The current Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina consists of two entities, one of which is Republika Srpska or the Serb entity, genocidal creation of the great-Serbian Nazism, built on grave violations of international humanitarian law, marked and soaked, mainly in Bosniac blood, and bordered and covered with numerous mass graves and concentration camps, in which fascist organizations legally operate. The so-called international community legalized this genocidal creation and identified it as a constitutional category. Political leadership and other structures of Republika Srpska, in accordance with the great-Serbian genocidal ideology, politics and practice conceal, minimize, relativize and deny genocide against Bosniaks in all possible ways; they equalize the genocide victims with the genocide executors; deny historic, political, legal, and state continuity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, obstruct the strengthening of Bosnia and Herzegovina and constantly pursue the secession and destruction of Bosnia and Herzegovina, by denying the possibility of development and improvement of the quality of common living, whereby they seriously undermine universal human values, freedoms and rights, civilization and cultural legacy. The entity Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose foundation lies in the Washington Agreement (18 March 1994), basically lives as two separate entities, in one of which the collaborators of the creation of Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia operate, whose leadership is currently in trial (for joint criminal enterprise) before ICTY, and their supporters, in cooperation with the Republika Srpska leadership publicly advocate for such a criminal creation.

Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosniaks are again in a difficult situation and they are facing challenges. After the aggression and genocide, now in new conditions, the status of Bosnia and Herzegovina is again at stake. Bosniaks cannot survive without it. Bosnia today (unique in Europe) is challenged by some European and world politicians and especially the political structures of the neighboring states, even from within Bosnia – by those ideologies, policies and practice that carried out the genocide.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is totally helpless.

New borders are drawn again in and around Bosnia and Herzegovina – and they were previously drawn by Austria, Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Dragiša Cvetković and Vlatko Maček, Ante Pavelić, Draža Mihailović, Franjo Tuđman and Slobodan Milošević, “wise” people in the Contact group and many others.

Bosnia and Herzegovina has been at stake at every minute. There are many who want this situation to continue indefinitely. Great-Serbian criminals count on the recognition of the entity Republika Srpska. This scenario is unfortunately, because the antifascist movement has not yet found its place in Bosnia and Herzegovina to be the holder of the idea of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its establishment among the Bosniaks is constantly postponed due to the narrow party and their leaders ambitions.

In addition to imminent denial of Bosnia, which was always the state of tolerance, meeting point of cultures and civilizations, its principal nation is also denied – Bosniaks, the nation which takes the identity from this state, the nation which is clearly profiled – spiritually and politically, nation which attached itself to Bosnia and constantly defended Bosnia, while the others looked for the support in Austria, Serbia, Croatia and elsewhere.

Bosniaks are autochthon European nation, in whose ethnogenesis the initial elements is Illyrian, who equally with the oldest nations in Europe nourish the ancient civilization and culture. They are the only nation in the Balkans that had high aristocracy (big landowners with more than 200,000 ha; nation that had a state, Lords, Captains, merchants, intellectuals, villagers). Bosniaks formulated its living space in historically and internationally recognized borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its natural right to state and territory were built by Bosniaks for centuries along with the orthodox – Serbians, Catholics – Croatians Jews, and other BiH ethnicities and citizens. They have never denied that right to their neighbors. They have always believed that the common living in a common state is a historic and civilization legacy and necessity confirmed in a centuries long history. Bosniaks thus believe that thousand years long spiritual and civilization experience and the corresponding legacy is the basis to preserve the sense of common living in the area.

The entire history of Bosniaks is characterized with the combat for the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, free life and tolerance with other nations. The fight for independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the freedom of consciousness and religion have continued throughout the history and they formed their character and understanding of Bosniaks to such an extent that it became part of their nature and their basic feature. Bosniaks have never spread the spirit of hatred or violence although they were constantly exposed to constant persecutions, extermination, and denial. During the WWII they paid the highest price of its survival, and during the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1991 -1995, they were again the genocide victims. Bosniaks are the only nation on the territory of South Slavs who did not have its own fascistic ideology or movement. Extermination of Bosniaks and destruction of their traces, destruction of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and division of its territory has always been the objective of the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina. Such politics has lead Bosnia and Herzegovina Serbs and Croats to disasters. The only possibility for survival of all in these areas lies in the common living in tolerance and peace. Bosniaks do not see any other alternative to this or accept other solutions.

For more than 100 years, Bosniaks were denied and marginalized as a political nation:

- destroyed physically, economically, systematically, and non-systematically

- humiliated culturally,

- satanized religiously as Asian-Islamic relict,

- pleasantly mingled in the dim Yugoslavhood, “which was the purgatory for the future national determination“

- twenty years they lived under the name of Muslim, which was always possible to ethnogenetically and politically relativize, and in case of the need misuse, moving us further semantically from the feeling about the state, origin, and language,

- without clear political program,

- without the essential political leadership,

- without sufficient appreciation for political, scientific, cultural, and religious authorities,

- without the lack of feeling for every form of organization,

- without sufficient constitutional awareness,

- without insufficient awareness and respect towards own genocide victims, etc.

In the general societal and social regression, caused by historic turmoil in the Balkans developed among the Bosniaks what Alija Isaković defined as “detrimental features which destroy our inner body and soul“.

Moreover, in addition to being Bosniaks- Muslims they are more: Sarajevans, people from Sandžak, Herzegovans, propel from Krajina, which emphasize more their geographic properties as relevant “qualities“.

Bosniaks live with low discipline, local patriotism, political shortsightedness, envy, jealousy, hatred, low tolerance, no unity, slow learning of the lessons related to the repetition of genocide, unproductive awaiting for somebody else’s help, etc. Unfortunately, all forms of extremes can be found among Bosniaks-Muslims, whereby the course of history is one of the reasons for this situation. Alija Isaković wrote “I have never met so well-intentioned people, so naïve, determined, self-sacrificing, ready for every kind of personal and collective sacrifice, and I have never met such individuals and groups who are so narrow-minded, completely self-sufficient, politically slimy, and most of all obsessed with disrespect for its own, its name, religion, tradition, past”.

There are many ignorant people among Bosniaks and wise people who do not have much knowledge or morality.

Concerns and fear for the state and survival are present among Bosniaks-Muslims, not only because of great-state Serbian ideology, politics and practice, and the great-state Croatia project, but also because of incompetence and vanity of some Bosniac politicians, and the intelligence (secular and spiritual) mainly keeps quiet. The intellectual elite instead of being the “herald of spring“, as the criminal Dobrica Ćosić stated – is silent and is afraid. Instead of fighting for the truth and justice, for Bosnia and Herzegovina and its people, the Bosniac intelligence keeps quiet and disregards the sacred mission and the responsibility of the scientists and intellectuals to fight for the truth and identify the forgeries and lies.

There is nothing sacred, unfortunately, among the Bosniaks. There is no authority, no respect. Not only that, there are even ideas among Bosniaks that they are guilty for “war“. Considering this, as a historian, I want to tell you openly now:

- firstly, great-Serbian and great-Croatian genocidal ideology and politics towards Bosnia and Herzegovina would not prevent our different behavior, or any different political structure or political figure from our nation. If we fail to understand this correctly, then we join the aggressor, their collaborators, and their allegations about our guilt or division of guilt. By presenting such assessment, I would not like to be misunderstood. I am not trying to claim that we have always behaved or worked in an organized manner during the defensive war, and I will not say that everything had to happen as it did, especially if we have in mind the Dayton Accord, etc. The basic course of events took its course, as we all know. This was not a civil war, and there was no “ethnic cleansing“. This was the aggressor, invading war – the aggression against R BiH and genocide against Bosniaks – implementation of the great-state projects: destruction of BiH and extermination of Bosniaks;

- secondly, Bosniaks have never provoked Serbs or Croats to cause genocide against our unprotected nation. Their genocide is the result of their plans. Numerous relevant documents, from recent and past history, speak in favor of this. But, we unfortunately, have not learned any historic lessons from this. We have forgotten these lessons in our naïve benevolence and political negligence;

- thirdly, the overall picture of the West-European politics suggests not only insufficiently, but in many things rather hostile attitude towards Bosnia. Why? Because, there lives, despite many genocides, majority Bosnian Muslim population. Europe has been established as anti-Islamic creation even in the 7th century, and a big portion of its history was marked with fighting Islam and expelling of Muslim from Europe – Europe which is the cradle if fascism and the consternation camps. Muslims are not authored of either fascism or genocide. Europe and the international community, including UNSC exposed Bosnian Muslims to aggression and genocide conducted by FRY (Serbia and Montenegro) and the Republic of Croatia, by denying them the fundamental right to individual and collective self-defense confirmed by the UN Charter. Before the eyes of Europe and the entire world, at the end of the 20th century, the genocide was committed against Bosniaks in the heart of Europe, because they feared the “Muslim Bosnia“ and the fact, as Mitterrand stated that “the Bosnian state does not belong to Europe“, and did nothing to prevent it. Results of that history, politics, and practice are present even today;

- fourthly, great-Serbian and great-Croatian propaganda, starting from the European exclusiveness and Muslim phobia, frightens the world with our religion and our, by objective experts found, virtues, as if it is the danger. Bosniaks have always been moderate, pleasant, and considerate, and polite and this has always been treated as our weakness, instead of generosity of our Muslim being.

Anti-Bosnian, anti-Bosniac, anti-Muslim invasions, challenge and hate our spiritual clarity and leave the blood trace while eradicating everything we have touched or enriched with out spirit.

* * *

At this point, in addition to the statements which qualify and identify the genuine nature of the Serbian and Croatian nationalism, of fascistic and genocidal character, it is important to carry out the critique of the Bosniac political opinion, in fact our political opportunism and define exactly what was it in the views of the Bosniac politicians, throughout the history, that made us inferior in defending our interests. It is important for any possibility of finding exit from the current situation. Without this critique and the identification of such politics in our time, and the identification of its contemporary holders and its rejection, there will be no way out from the current situation, and everything will be limited to empty calling of Muslims and Bosniaks to gather, as it has proven to be meaningless, because it is impossible to gather and develop genuine political and historic force without rejecting any politics that deviates from the experience and logic of our position in the structure of European and Balkan political reality during the past 150 years.

Bosniaks today, based on assessment of the real situation, external and internal relations which affect the political position of this nation, and the visions of future developments and processes, are forced to express their national interests comprehensively, if they want to preserve the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its nation.

Political ambient in which Bosniaks exercise their national interests is totally broken. On the other hand, a new political ambient is created and the Bosniac involvement cannot be imagined without its own project where the millennium long constants, on which the common living is based, have to be placed in a focus. Their intentional or unintentional rejection would have disastrous consequences for the survival of Bosniaks.

If the Bosniac intellect does not present its fundamental interests immediately, these interests will continue to be dispersed, partial and confronted as naked interests of individual political, religious, intellectual, economic, military-police, regional, mafia, family and other groups. Partial interests during the aggression evolved even to the armed conflict within the Bosniac corpus, and this is the best illustration of detrimental effect.

Partial interests are declared national interests, which among other things discredit the natural aspiration of Bosniaks to preserve Bosnia and Herzegovina and its nation. That is the reason why the natural right of Bosniaks is shown by their enemies as the attempt to install Islamic fundamentalism in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

It became unbearable that Bosniaks do not have an answer to the fundamental issues of our preset and future, that the solutions are found on the case-to-case basis and in compromises to the detriment of Bosniaks, which initiates even bigger mistrust within the Bosniac corpus.

Bosniac collective intellect has the responsibility and the right to present the aspirations and interests of its nation. Only Bosniaks can present them comprehensively and without any bias, the representatives of political, cultural, scientific, educational, economic, religious, military, humanitarian, and other institutions and associations, prominent individuals and true antifascists and patriots, because they individually cannot do that and they have no right to do that.

Bosniaks can preserve their survival and development only in a common state of all citizens and nations of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the state which will guarantee the safety and defense, economic and democratic prosperity, and the affirmation of cultural, religious, traditional and other virtues. Bosnia and Herzegovina has to be organized as a state in a way that it prevents potential genocides against Bosniaks and narrowing their living space.

Thus, national interest of Bosniaks is the preservation of Bosnia and Herzegovina as the state of all its citizens and nations (this interest should be common for everyone living in Bosnia). That is our key, fundamental, highest and the utmost objective. That is the fundamental provision of the Bosniac national program.

Closest to the fight for the survival of Bosniaks is the fight for preservation of Bosniaks as a political nation, not the religious group. Bosniaks will keep this characteristics as long as there is territorial unity, independence, integrity and the sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its institutions, through which they can express themselves. Bosniac national interests is the introduction of legal categories of a single state, and the replacement of aggressive, criminal and genocidal ideology, politics, and practice with the postulates of civil society and state.

Only in a democracy can Bosniaks live safely and freely. Only there where the full religious, national and cultural freedoms are guaranteed can Bosniaks live with the life reserved for a human being. Every terrorizing of political, religious, or national rights, regardless of ethnicity or religion, of a group or individual has always affected Bosniaks. Thus, every form of constitutional establishment of Bosnia and Herzegovina has to be based on universal political and economic principles of a democratic society. Bosniaks regard the fight for democracy as the basis for the fight for preservation and development of sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its political independence.

Bosniaks submit that Bosnia and Herzegovina is a European state, and its citizens Europeans, in cultural, geopolitical, and any other meaning. Therefore, Europe is a natural space and framework for economic, political, civilization, and cultural connections with other European states and European associations. Characteristics of Bosnia and Herzegovina within Europe is that a nation lives in it with Islamic tradition and culture as a basis of its historic and national development. Bosniaks have to strive for maintaining this specifics without disrupting it with artificial and unnatural assimilations or religious violence and fanaticism, that would prevent Bosniaks from fostering and developing its identity on a permanent historic basis, in accordance with the true historic and ethnic name and the contents of its own ethnic being, and its limiting exclusively to religious feature directly results in losing the Bosniac national identity and turning Bosniaks into a religious group and community.

Element of religion is one of the most important pillars of Bosnia tradition, culture and national identity. It has to be nourished and developed independently from any political influence or state favoring. Bosniac nation, despite the Islamic spirituality, is the world of western civilization. Bosniaks have to work hard for the secular state in which the religion will be a private matter of every individual, in which the politics will be separated from religion and will engage in the sphere of public interest. Islam has to be an element by which Bosniaks will enrich the European cultural space and be the bridge between the western and eastern civilization, without disrupting the established relations or challenging the Christian Europe.

Bosniaks have to fight the decades long historic oblivion which contributed that the Bosniaks were constantly exposed to genocide by the same executors and in the same way and that the victim was always caught unprepared. Bosniaks have to strongly oppose to the manipulation with the Bosniac religious and ethnic background, by fighting the nationalistic constructions and synthesizing the ideas about the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, reviving the Bosniac historic memory, and liberating Bosniac intellectuals from the complex of inferiority – which weakened the cultural resistance of the Bosniac intelligence and its capacity to defend from the great-Serbian and great-Croatian criminal ideology, politics, and practice which denies the life of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bosniac nation. In this regard, the mission of national awakening is so important, renaissance, strengthening of national dignity, awareness of itself and others, and appreciating that the science, thoughts, historic experience, and intellectual freedom are the bases of every reasoning of its own nation and that this process is endless.

** *

It is the time for unification, and active engagement of Bosniaks in fighting for Bosnia and Herzegovina and the establishment of the unity of nation. Not only Bosniaks, but all the antifascists and antifascist forces in fighting for human dignity in BiH. That is our sacred mission, responsibility, and holy task. Bosniac intellectual elite (secular and spiritual) plays an important role in achieving these missions, responsibilities and tasks. The Bosniac units in Bosnia and Herzegovina depends on their judgments, engagement, and actions. They are therefore expected to make only adequate decisions, objectively, realistically, without any anger, openly, sincerely, in a civilized manner, and with a lot of wisdom – but only those wise ones that will satisfy all the Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina and even wider. I am convinced that we shall successful in this task, especially because all the genocide victims expect us to do so, as they were killed only because of their national, ethnic, or religious background, and because someone wanted to occupy their living space and because Bosnia and Herzegovina was defended. Our children expect us to do so and they ask to us build one by one brick, while equal and without any regional or party divisions, and without any confrontations to our unity, our concordance and future.

This paper is intended to give contribution to the celebration of the 25th November – Day of Bosnia and Herzegovina statehood and, in this regard, it represents the objective scientific findings related to the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which confirms that Bosnia and Herzegovina is a permanent political, social, and historic category. Within the framework of the selected topic and the space, we shall present four major issues – social and scientific findings, such as: ZAVNOBiH (Anti-fascistic Council of the National Defense of Bosnia and Herzegovina) and its historic relevance, Communists and the issue of Bosniac ethnicity, Restoration and the escalation of the Great Serbian movement, and Planning of crimes and defense of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Around the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, numerous and versatile historic forgeries are present based on political and ideological grounds, which present untruthful facts about the events in Bosnia and Herzegovina that they interpret without any foundation in the documents or the archives, and then they construe political truths applicable in current circumstances. Unfortunately, we are faced with the merciless abuse of science by scientists without any scruples or accountability, as well quasi-scientists. This is particularly characteristic for the Great Serbian intellectuals and politicians who build and establish foundations for the ideology, policy and the practice of crimes.

Considering the lies, deceptions, and forgeries of the Great Serbian intellectual (secular and spiritual) elite, it is necessary, for the sake of human, scientific, and historic truths and, dozens, thousands, hundreds of thousands and millions of victims of the Balkans during the last two centuries, to point out at important facts:

- first, Great Serbian state project, which is unfortunately the reality. The project is of Nazi and criminal character, because it, inter alia, contains two big mutually connected elements: conquering of somebody else’s territories (lebensraum), including Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the extermination of peoples, that is, genocide, crime of all the crimes, including the genocide directed against Bosniacs in Bosnia and Herzegovina (to “finally resolve the Muslim issue”). Although it was militarily defeated in the WWII, when the political program of the Chetnic movement of Draža Mihailović and the Exile government in London, persistently supported by Allies, the Serbian great state project in the second half of the 80-ies of the last century was restored and it escalated in conquering wars and ample crimes against humanity and international law, including the genocide against Bosniacs in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and

- second, the complexity of fighting for Bosnia, restoration of its statehood, and defense of its territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence, especially during the WWII and around the end of 20th century.

Please read the rest of the paper below:
Dr. Cekic -25th November – Day of Bosnia and Herzegovina statehood

On July 9th, 2010, the second floor of the Gladstone hotel was host to the official start of a set of ceremonial activities organised by a dedicated group of volunteers.
Three separate rooms housed three very distinct but connected experiences for the approximately 200 reception-goers, featuring Roger LeMoyne’s exhibit “Srebrenica: The Absence”. This gripping photo series, which began in 1995, conveys the sense of loss, an unwavering need for justice and the importance of preserving history. In the main foyer on the second floor, a bright, eclectic, and mostly young crowd mingled as the Jusuf Dzilic (aka Genocide) video “Srebrenica” played on an iMac. Petition forms and informational pamphlets were available at the information desk, to gain support from the Canadian public on passing the genocide resolution and bill currently in front of Parliament. Owing perhaps to the event’s timing, a large number of street-traffic was welcomed by an always abundant and receptive host group. Windsor-West MP Brian Masse continued to show his support for the Bosniak community and this important issue by personally attending the event.

In the south-facing rooms, traditional Bosnian music, Sevdalinka, and traditional religious songs, Ilahija, were played as visitors viewed images that were both disturbing and impactful. In the north-facing room, pictures of the bereaved, the dead, and the still missing gave the impression of some end, but no closure, to the viewer. An equally heavy melody and visuals by Alma Ferovic played on a video screen, and this song combined with the images brought many visitors to tears.

2. Saturday July 10, 2010 – Silent March

Over three hundred people, all wearing a distinctive bright yellow tee with the words “Never forget / Srebrenica Genocide / July 11, 1995″, gathered in front of the Royal Ontario Museum at noon on Saturday, July 10, 2010. Comprised mostly of young Canadian Bosniaks, but with a healthy contingent of supporters from other communities, the group began a silent march through the streets of downtown Toronto. The lead group walked silently in a file of two, each member carrying a single letter that spelled out “SREBRENICA GENOCIDE” along the left, and flags of Canada and Bosnia on the right. The procession walked on the right-hand sides and north sides of the street so that the placards could be seen by all, informing onlookers of the cause. Continuously handing out informational pamphlets and flyers to a very receptive Toronto public, the group made several stops at major Toronto media outlets such as CTV, CP24, and CBC, as well as major landmarks such as Yonge and Dundas Square, and Nathan Phillips Square. Canadians, Canadian-Bosnians and Canadian-Bosniaks on this day showed the civility, pride, and solidarity of a nation that continues to struggle for justice against those perpetrators of genocide in Srebrenica, elsewhere in Bosnia, and the world.

3. Sunday July 11, 2010- Ceremony

The 2-hour program on the 15-year anniversary of the Srebrenica Genocide began at 7PM on July 11, 2010 at the Bosnian Islamic Association. The hall was decorated with the photos of Roger Lemoyne, various books on the Srebrenica genocide, related poetry, informative quotes and yellow lilies. Yellow lilies being a symbol of Bosnia and the Bosniak people. Near the entrance to the hall stood six large tables on top of which was listed the names of the 8, 372 men killed in Srebrenica 15 years ago. The tables were symbolically draped in green, as the tradition among Bosniaks is to drape the coffins of their deceased in green cloth.

An informative and heart-wrenching 30-minute documentary outlining the circumstances of the fall of Srebrenica and individual stories of the massacre was played to a crowd of 300 that included Parliamentarians Hon. Brian Masse, Hon. Boris Wrzesnewskyj, Hon. Rob Oliphant, as well as distinguished guests.

The Srebrenica Memorial Film was followed by a short video by Tarik Samarah as a preamble to the riveting account of a now 35-year old man who is an Omarska concentration camp survivor (he was held for 202 days). Fadil Kulasic, an experienced speaker, tailored his typically 3 hour talk, to 30 minutes, focusing on 6 of his most vivid and defining memories. Fadil’s stories left the audience speechless and tearful. He showed bravery and strength in sharing these difficult, heartfelt stories with the audience. A common thread amongst the six stories was one of strength and perseverance. Fadil mentioned that throughout his experiences he often heard other victims like himself proclaim “Ne daj se, Bosno!” (Don’t give up Bosna), and he shared this with the audience reiterating that the we should never give up on Bosna and we should never forget the atrocities that occurred there. The reason Fadil believes he is alive today is that he would always look his captors in the eyes and he wouldn’t turn his back to them when they asked him to, no matter what. He believed that if there was any ounce of humanity in his captors, that they wouldn’t be able to hurt him if he looked them in the eye. The final message he gave the audience was that he wanted to remind us to never turn our backs to Srebrenica.

The final half of the program was filled by a rousing set of speeches from the MPs. Hon. Brian Masse’s passionate show of support and the message that Canada must recognize the genocide for the good of its citizens and for the sake of its reputation in the world was received with a standing ovation. Hon. Boris Wrzesnewsky talked about loss and memory and Hon. Rob Oliphant discussed the need for truth and reconciliation and both these messages were warmly received with standing ovations as well. The Bosniak community and their supporters were honoured to have these three distinguished MPs attend the event and show their support for having Srebrenica recognized as a genocide in Canada and having July 11th recognized as Srebrenica Remembrance Day. The evening closed with a moving commemoration ceremony that involved the laying down of yellow lilies, by each attendee, on the tables containing the names of 8, 372 men that were killed. A traditional ilahija, “Don’t Grieve with Tears”, sung by Mensura Bajraktarevic played throughout the hall.

Mrs. Drnovsek talked about her experiences when she lived and worked in Belgrade at the time of Slobodan Milosevic’s regime and reading Mrs. Hartmann’s book brought back those experiences for her. Sanja Drnovsek explained the effect this book had on her due to the fact that Mrs. Hartmann exposes the political doings behind closed doors and as a result Drnovsek’s whole perspective on the aggression of Bosnia and Herzegovina became crystal clear.

Professor Ramic spoke about the judicial consequences private and public deals between foreign politicians and key politicians from the Balkans had in the international tribunal in The Hague. His investigation and data has been deeply acknowledged not only in Hartmann’s latest book but also recognized on the international stage. Ramic’s complete publication can be found here. Florence Hartmann then described her personal experience as an internal source to the Serb aggression and genocide on Bosnia and Herzegovina which also took place individually in certain parts of the country at the very beginning of the hostility. In Bosnian, Mrs. Hartmann spoke about her own work while she was in Belgrade and her trips to eastern Bosnia which was at that time under Serb control. She also discussed the problems she came across as a journalist in Bosnia and Herzegovina and all the pressure she had to deal with from the Serbian Army and many others attempting to censor her. She then talked about her work during her time in The Hague and the consequences she faced as a result of her research and exposing the truth.

At the end of the presentation Florence Hartmann agreed to answer a few questions from the audience and sign everyone’s book.  Both Mr. Hamulic and Mrs. Hartmann invited all individuals with a pro-Bosnian view to use Peace and Punishment as a starting point for future work because, as in the words of Florence Hartmann “the truth belongs to all” and the facts stated in her book need to be used so that good can defeat evil.

– remarkable acts of solidarity and bravery on behalf of their city and Jewish neighbors. The Haggadah was restored and publicly displayed for the first time in 2002 at the National Museum in Sarajevo.

Join us for an exploration of the history and significance of this treasured 14th century illuminated manuscript.

Thursday, May 13th, 6:30 PM Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center – Museum Hall _ Download in PDF _

Featuring: Ambassador Jakob Finci President of the Jewish Community of Bosnia & Herzegovina and Ambassador to Switzerland Dr. Amila Buturovic Associate Professor of Humanities and Coordinator for Religious Studies, York University, Toronto Aleksandar Hemon Author of four works of fiction, including acclaimed novel The Lazarus Project (finalist for the 2008 National Book Award) and President, Bosnian-Herzegovinian American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Adults $10, Seniors (65+) $6, Students (12-22) $6 Museum members complimentary

Reservations by Thursday, May 6: haggadah@ilhmec.org Questions: 847-967-4881

Read more about the Haggadah at www.haggadah.ba

May 8th – 12:30 to 4:30 p.m.
Burien Library – Multipurpose room
400 SW 152nd Street – Burien, WA 98166

The Srebrenica memorial quilt is a collection of sewn-together panels woven in the traditional Bosnian kilim style. It was created by displaced Bosnian women, mostly from Srebrenica, working in the organization Bosfam. Each panel bears the name of a weaver’s family member who was killed in the July 1995 massacre at Srebrenica.
 
The presentation of the quilt has two goals: keeping the story of Srebrenica alive and informing people about the struggle of post-war Bosnians to survive and recover; and raising funds to help the women weavers continue their work.

The quilt and accompanying photographs will be on display at the Burien Library on Saturday afternoon, May 8th. A short film about Srebrenica will be shown. Participants will be on hand to discuss the quilt project and answer all questions.
Women who were displaced from Srebrenica and other parts of eastern Bosnia founded Bosfam, a women’s self-help organization and crafts cooperative, in Tuzla, northeast Bosnia.

The women of Bosfam create and market items of clothing and handicrafts, including the traditional kilim, or flat-weave carpet. In 2007 Bosfam began to weave kilim panels to commemorate the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and to remember their lost family members. The quilt is created from many individual kilim panels that have been stitched together, each bearing the name of a lost loved-one.

For more information on the Srebrenica memorial quilt : http://www.quilt.qsoup.net/bosfam.html.  A short video about BosFam and the weavers is on line at Weavers for Hope .

Sponsored by the Washingont state Chapter of the Congress of North American Bosniaks.

All information about the Institute is available on the web site www.instituteforgenocide.ca, which was launched on 27 January 2010 on the occasion of the International Day of Remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust, as an important reminder of the universal study of the Holocaust, a unique evil which cannot simply be left to the past and forgotten.

Faithfully Yours,
Emir Ramic
President of the Board of Directors
The Institute for Research of Genocide of Canada

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

1. Thanks to EU and US complacancy in the face of Bosnia’s continuing disintegration, it has been left to Croatia’s president to promise resolute action in defence of this fragile state.

2. The secession of the Republika Srpska from Bosnia-Hercegovina would be catastrophic for stability in the Balkans, and would most likely spark a renewed Serb-Bosniak war.

3. A Croatian threat to attack the Republika Srpska in the event that it secedes makes war less rather than more likely, by deterring an action that would most likely result in war.

4. We should therefore encourage Croatia to act as Bosnia’s guarantor in this manner, while hoping that Serbia will eventually show a similar degree of post-nationalist regional responsibility.

Outgoing Croatian president Stjepan Mesic earlier this month threatened to intervene militarily in the event that Bosnia’s Serb entity, Republika Srpska, attempts to secede and establish itself as an independent state. He was responding to repeated separatist noises on the part of the Republika Srpska’s aggressively nationalistic prime minister, Milorad Dodik, who makes no secret of his hostility to the state of Bosnia-Hercegovina and his designs against its territorial integrity, and whose atrocity denial and friendship for convicted war-criminals indicate a dangerous contempt for the norms of civilised behaviour. Mesic has warned that if Dodik announces a referendum on secession – as the first step toward the Republika Srpska’s unification with Serbia to form a ‘Great Serbia’ – he would send the Croatian Army south across the River Sava to cut in half the Bosnian Serb entity, which ‘would then have to disappear’. Yet the establishment of a Great Serbia is not the only danger about which Mesic has warned. He has highlighted also the possibility that, with Republika Srpska seceding and the Bosnian Croats following suit, it would leave behind an embittered Muslim rump-state, that ‘would find itself in a hostile surrounding, and would be able sustain itself only with the help of a fundamentalist regime.’ Consequently, ‘In the next 50 to 70 years there would be a new center of terrorism. It would be a new Palestine in the heart of Europe.’

German Ambassador to Sarajevo Joachim Schmidt is reported to have said that Mesic’s military threat ‘is not of help’. Yet it would not be left to Bosnia’s western neighbour to issue such a threat if the EU and US had not shown themselves to be quite so complacent in the face of Bosnia’s threatened collapse. Bosnia was lumbered with the unworkable and unsustainable Dayton settlement that ended its war in 1995. To sustain this unsustainable settlement, to make the unworkable work, required a powerful High Representative wielding authoritarian powers, backed up by a large international military presence. The Dayton system enjoyed its golden years in 2002-2006, when the Office of the High Representative (OHR) was held by the energetic Paddy Ashdown, and Bosnia superficially appeared to be making genuine strides towards reintegration. Yet the EU, naively believing that the farcical Dayton constitutional order could actually be made to function without massive outside interference, has since been rushing to wind down the OHR, and has withdrawn its support from Ashdown’s successors. With few international troops now remaining, the OHR has been left as a paper tiger, something that Dodik has taken advantage of to pursue his secessionist policy. It is as if a zoo-keeper had decided that, since his caged tiger had not eaten many people recently, it was now tame and could safely be let out of the cage, not realising that it was only because of the cage that the tiger appeared to be safe.

With the EU and US blithely fiddling while Bosnia burns, it has been left to the Croatian president to behave like a responsible European statesman, and make clear that the destruction of the international order in the Balkans will not be tolerated. Those condemning Mesic forget that his policy toward Bosnia is the exact opposite of that pursued by his predecessor, the chauvinistic tyrant Franjo Tudjman. Where Mesic defends a unified Bosnia, Tudjman joined with Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic in attempting to destroy Bosnia and crush the Bosnian Muslims. And that is really the choice that Europe has, so far as Croatia is concerned: between a Croatia that upholds Bosnia, a la Mesic, and a Croatia that undermines Bosnia, a la Tudjman. It does not take a genius to realise that a Mesicite Croatia is preferable to a Tudjmanite Croatia.

Under Tudjman, Croatia was a corrupt and despotic state that sheltered war criminals, persecuted national minorities and undermined the territorial integrity of its Bosnian neighbour. The Tudjman regime represented a synthesis between the authoritarianism of the Croatian Communist ancien regime – whose child Tudjman himself was – and right-wing Croat emigre nationalism, combining the worst features of both. Yet since Tudjman’s death in 1999 and the electoral defeat of his Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) in 2000, Croatia appears definitely to have made the transition to becoming a democratic European state. Both Ivica Racan’s Social Democratic government, which took power in 2000, and the government of Ivo Sanader, who reconstituted the HDZ as a mainstream conservative party and took power in 2003, have guided Croatia down the democratic European path. Over them presided President Mesic, a reformed nationalist who honourably broke with Tudjman as early as 1994 over the latter’s Bosnian policy. These politicians redeemed Croatia in the 2000s from the disgrace brought upon it by Tudjman in the 1990s: they turned their back on anti-Bosnian Croat irredentism; refrained from pandering to neo-Ustasha sentiment; cooperated with the war-crimes tribunal in the Hague; put on trial war-criminals who persecuted Serb civilians in the 1990s; recognised the independence of Kosovo; and have brought Croatia into NATO and up to the gates of the EU. Croatia’s citizens should be as proud of their rulers’ record in the 2000s as they should be ashamed of their predecessors’ record in the 1990s. Of course, Croatia still faces huge problems of corruption and organised crime, but measured against where it would be now if Tudjman’s policies had been continued into the 2000s, the achievement is monumental.

With the election victory of the Social Democrat Ivo Josipovic in this month’s Croatian presidential election, Croatia has reaffirmed its democratic European path. His opponent in the presidential election, Milan Bandic, was a vulgar and corrupt populist who enjoyed the support of the nationalist emigration, of the better part of the clergy and of war-criminals such as Branimir Glavas and Tomislav Mercep. Bandic waged a red-baiting campagin directed against the Social Democrats on account of their Communist past – despite the fact that he too had been a member of the Communist party. Had he won the election, he would have become a Croatian Berlusconi. Yet Josipovic, a composer and law professor, crushed Bandic, winning 60.26% of the vote. Zivjela Hrvatska !

Josipovic is a civilised, non-nationalist individual who will serve to consolidate Croatia’s democratic transition and guard against any resurgence of Tudjman-style chauvinism. Yet there are indications that he lacks Mesic’s toughness. He has spoken of the possibility of withdrawing Croatia’s lawsuit against Serbia at the International Court of Justice; this would be an error, for although Croatia is unlikely to win the case, the verdict is highly likely to recognise Serbian war-crimes in Croatia in 1991-92, as it did in its judgement on Bosnia’s case against Serbia, when it recognised that ‘it is established by overwhelming evidence that massive killings in specific areas and detention camps throughout the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina were perpetrated during the conflict’ and that ‘the victims were in large majority members of the protected group [the Muslims], which suggests that they may have been systematically targeted by the killings’, and that ‘it has been established by fully conclusive evidence that members of the protected group were systematically victims of massive mistreatment, beatings, rape and torture causing serious bodily and mental harm, during the conflict and, in particular, in the detention camps.’ Croatia can reasonably hope for a similar recognition of its people’s suffering in the early 1990s.

Josipovic has also distanced himself from Mesic’s threat to intervene militarily to prevent the Republika Srpska’s secession, saying ‘sending the Croatian Army to a neighbouring country for me is not an option’ and ‘problems must always be solved through negotiations and with the agreement of all interested parties’. The pacific sentiment is commendable; the naivete less so. The Western alliance, given its past record, cannot be relied upon to take action to prevent the Republika Srpska’s secession; if it does not, and if Croatia does not either, then one of two things might happen. The Bosniaks might be stupid enough not to respond militarily, on the grounds that ‘problems must always be solved through negotiations and with the agreement of all interested parties’, in which case Republika Srpska will become independent at the price of some token concessions to the Bosniaks. Or the Bosniaks might take military action alone, in which case the consequences cannot be predicted, but are unlikely to be good.

It is worth stating again the case against allowing Republika Srpska to secede: it would represent a violation of the right to self-determination of the nearly 50% of the territory’s population that was Bosniak and Croat before 1992, that was mostly ethnically cleansed during the war and that has not been able to return since Dayton; the quid pro quo for international recognition of the Republika Srpska’s existence, with a massively disproportionate share of Bosnia’s territory, was the Serb recognition of Bosnia’s unity and indivisibility, and if the Serbs cease to recognise Bosnian unity then nobody is under any obligation to recognise the Republika Srpska’s existence any longer; the secession of Republika Srpska and its eventual unification with Serbia would derail Serbia’s own democratisation, and send it back down the path of expansionism and regional troublemaking; if Bosnia is allowed to break up, it will create a precedent for the break up of Macedonia and the secession of the Macedonian Albanians to unite with Albania and form a Great Albania, with all the dangers that would bring; and finally, the elements responsible for the bloodbath of the 1990s must never be rewarded. For all these reasons, Republika Srpska should not be allowed to secede. It is for the Bosnian citizenry as a whole to decide whether Bosnia should be divided into separate Serb, Croat and Bosniak states or whether it should remain united as a single state; it is not for either of the Bosnian entities to decide this unilaterally.

A threat, such as Mesic’s, makes a war in the region less rather than more likely, since so long as it is plausible, it will serve to deter an act of secession that would at the very least greatly destabilise the Balkans, and that would most likely spark a new Serb-Bosniak war. Dodik may be ready to pursue a secessionist policy that will result in war if he only has to fight the Bosniaks; he will be much less likely to do so if he has to fight Croatia as well, because he would inevitably lose. Those, such as Germany’s Ambassador Schmidt, who would like to deter Croatia from promising to defend Bosnia militarily if necessary, are contributing to the likelihood of war in the Balkans. Rather than praising him for not doing so, we should do well to encourage Josipovic to adopt Mesic’s policy.

We have spoken of Croatia’s tremendous achievement in turning its back on the politics of the late Franjo Tudjman. Serbia, too, has made tremendous strides in its democratic transition, particularly since the victory of the pro-European parties in Serbia’s 2008 parliamentary elections. Serbia has become a fully democratic state, embraced the European path and put war-criminals on trial, and however misguided its attempt to retain Kosova might be, it is at least using judicial means that are within its rights. But in one respect in particular Serbia scores much lower than Croatia: it has not abandoned its nationalist paradigm vis-a-vis Bosnia. Whereas official Croatia today sees Bosnian unity as its national interest, and refrains from promoting Bosnian Croat separatism, official Serbia continues to see its interest in undermining Bosnia and promoting the separateness of the Republika Srpska.

The day when Serbia sees its national interest as defending Bosnia’s unity and integrity from enemies such as Dodik, is the day when post-nationalist Serbia will truly have arrived.

Marko Attila Hoare is European Neighbourhood Section Director for the Henry Jackson Society

The digital performance commemorates the Srebrenica victims, but Zukic is quick to note that its purpose “is to highlight the massacre not as a demonstration of powerlessness, but as a condition for possibility and agency.”

In 1992, the Bosnian War broke out. Naida Zukic was 16.

“For years, Muslims, Catholics, Jews and Serbs had lived in harmony in my town,” she recalls. “Then our world exploded.” Zukic and her family, who lived in Prijedor in northwest Bosnia, fled the country in 1995 and ultimately settled in the U.S.—but not before the Srebrenica massacre took the lives of 8,000 Muslim men and boys. It remains the most horrific instance of genocide in Europe since the Second World War.

Communicating across lines
Zukic’s chief interest, she says, has been “in exploring questions of power and agency, and how oppressed groups have historically negotiated those spaces and subverted power.”

“Weight of Meaninglessness,” a five-minute film that transcends language, “is borne out of my frustration with the medium of language as a means of expression,” Zukic says. “Over the years I’ve written essays and articles about human rights abuses and violations that have taken place throughout the world, and especially in Bosnia, but could never overcome the limitations of language. So I turned to the medium of digital performance as an alternative means of expressing things I couldn’t necessarily convey verbally.”

Reawakened memories
While memories of the Bosnian conflict have flared anew in recent years with the trials of Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic, “few Americans are aware of the Srebrenica genocide,” Zukic says. “But it is never possible to escape the reality of war, suffering and human rights violations, as we see today in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Some survivors of mass trauma “externalize the experience by trying to forget, or by living in a perpetually wounded state,” she says. “Others must continually relive the experience in order to transcend and be empowered by it—by teaching or writing about it, or otherwise helping to create awareness of human suffering and humans rights violations. In that sense, the need both to forget and relive the trauma is paradoxical.”

In Zukic’s case, an aesthetic, rather than language-based approach has helped her work through the trauma she lived through as a young girl. “As a Bosnian refugee, the last thing I want to be seen as is a victim,” she says. “But the fact is that people who have survived traumatic events are traditionally seen in this way. ‘Weight of Meaninglessness’ is my response to that point of view.”

Naida Zukic on her digital performance — “The Weight of Meaninglessness”
http://www1.bmcc.cuny.edu/video/zukic_video.html

BMCC/ The City University of New York. is a leader among community colleges in the New York region and nationwide by continuing to develop degree- and non-degree programs meeting the educational and workforce training needs of New Yorkers striving to change careers or upgrade their current employment in these challenging economic times—22,000 individuals earning associate degrees in more than 26 fields, and 10,000 continuing education students seeking to upgrade their work skills—from 155 countries.

Contact: Barry Rosen, (212) 220-1238

During Hajj, the world’s largest and most diverse gathering, three million Muslims from all walks of life – including thousands of American Muslims – will stand in prayer on Mount Arafat. The following day, Muslims around the world will celebrate Eid-ul-Adha and distribute food to the less fortunate to commemorate Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son out of obedience to God.

This year, I am pleased that the Department of Health and Human Services has partnered with the Saudi Health Ministry to prevent and limit the spread of H1N1 during Hajj. Cooperating on combating H1N1 is one of the ways we are implementing my administration’s commitment to partnership in areas of mutual interest.

On behalf of the American people, we would like to extend our greetings during this Hajj season – Eid Mubarak.

Barack and Michelle Obama

On this day of BiH Statehood, BAACBH would like to honor the rich history and centuries-old multi-ethnic life of BiH and celebrate the country’s vibrant culture and institutions. The prosperity and democratic development of BiH is significant for the overall stability in the Balkan region and Europe. It is of vital importance that the international community and the U.S. engagement accentuates the necessity for the formation of a comprehensive constitutional reform that will enable BiH’s integration into the European Union and membership in NATO. Such constitutional reform should focus on strengthening civic representation rather than ethno-territorial spheres of influence.

To encourage the necessary changes and enhance democracy in BiH, BAACBH is advocating on behalf of Bosnian-Americans and educating the general public about Bosnian history, heritage, and tradition. It supports a constructive dialogue that will resolve the stagnant political situation in BiH.

The aggression, ethnic cleansing and genocide against BiH from 1992 to 1995 has been an attack on the country’s multi-ethnic life and history. Nonetheless, the people of BiH have devoted their efforts in preserving an indivisible BiH.

Bosniak American Advisory Council for Bosnia and Herzegovina
Contact: Elmina Kulasic
Executive Director
202-291-7080
www.baacbh.org

CONGRESS OF NORTH AMERICAN BOSNIAKS, CHAPTER FOR NORTH AND SOUTH CAROLINA, BASED OUT OF CHARLOTTE, ORGANIZES:

CELEBRATION OF THE STATEHOOD DAY OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA AND THE DAY OF TRADITIONAL BOSNIAN SONG “SEVDALINKA”

The ceremony and cultural entertainment program will be held at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC @ www.uncc.edu):

Address: 106 Woodward Hall
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Charlotte, NC 28223

DATE: NOVEMBER 28, 2009 AT 7PM
FOR QUESTIONS AND INFORMATION CALL 704-236-1159

For interactive map, click here.

Board of Directors

Sarah Wagner’s ethnography To Know Where He Lies examines the innovative DNA technology developed to identify the remains of the estimated 8,000 men and boys killed in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is characterized throughout by remarkable emotional reserve and analytical humility: theoretical ambition is sharply circumscribed, if it is present at all, and the terrible loss and grief of Wagner’s key informants—the bereaved women of Srebrenica—are consistently approached from a respectful distance, with sobriety and sensitivity. In this, says Wagner, she is emulating the dispassionate and somber seriousness, the “careful restraint,” and the dedication to detail and documentation that she observed among the scientists and case managers of the ICMP (International Commission on Missing Persons), the organization most responsible for carrying out the identification process (19). As an anthropologist, Wagner clearly feels greater responsibility to the concrete social and scientific realities she chronicles—the magnitude of the crimes committed in and around Srebrenica, the scope and scientific achievement of the ICMP’s response, the dramatic contrasts between human capacities for cruelty, on the one hand, and resilience, on the other—than to high-flown theoretical debates in anthropology and science studies, which might seem self-important, if not beside the point, in light of her material. Latour and Rabinow are briefly invoked, and Halbwachs’ mentor Henri Bergson pops up here and there to offer guidance on issues of social memory; but otherwise Wagner’s book remains firmly, laudably anchored in the concrete details of the extraordinary story she has to tell.

Following a clear and compact introduction, Wagner’s opening chapter relates the background and events of the fall of Srebrenica and the genocide—Europe’s first since WWII—that ensued. Though her emphasis on the shared culpability of the “international community” (in the guise of the UN) is helpful for understanding postwar developments, there is little to distinguish Wagner’s able retelling from histories and journalistic accounts—which she handily reviews in a few pages—already available; thus those familiar with the history may skip ahead to subsequent chapters. In brief: from 1992 on, as Bosnian Serb forces “ethnically cleansed” eastern Bosnia of its non-Serb population, Srebrenica became a rare place of refuge for Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) from surrounding areas. It was declared a UN “safe area” in the spring of 1993, and its population eked out an existence, sustained by UN aid convoys and protected (ostensibly) by a small, lightly armed unit of Dutch soldiers, until July 1995. In July’s opening days, Bosnian Serb forces, led by General Ratko Mladić—now, following Radovan Karadžić’s capture in July 2008, the last remaining major fugitive from the war crimes court in the Hague—tested the UN’s resolve by taking control of key UN peacekeeping positions in the mountains around Srebrenica. Threatened NATO airstrikes never came, and so on July 11th Mladić and his forces entered the town. Most of its population had fled to the Dutch headquarters (“Dutchbat”) in the nearby village of Potočari; some men decided to walk through heavily mined forests toward Tuzla (a harrowing trek that would come to be known as the “March of Death”). At Potočari the Dutch soldiers allowed (and even assisted) Mladić—who promised that no one would be harmed—to separate males, including children and old men, from females, and to send the former away on buses. While the women and girls were bused to Bosniak-controlled territory and released, over the following days the men were taken to nearby fields and warehouses and executed—by the hundreds, by the thousands—in a carefully planned and coordinated action. Many of the men fleeing through the woods to Tuzla were likewise captured and killed. The bodies were subsequently buried in mass graves.

It is what happened next—the unearthing of the remains and their reburial by Serb forces in secondary mass graves—that later propelled the innovations in DNA identification technology that Wagner examines. The Bosnian Serbs, she explains, sought both to annihilate the Bosniak presence from the Srebrenica enclave and to hide all evidence of the deed, “to create the illusion that their victims had never existed” (56). The exhumations and reburials mixed body parts and possessions from multiple individuals, and even scattered parts of the same body across two or more sites; traditional forensic identification techniques were thereby rendered all but useless. Secondary graves are unique in the history of mass murder: as the head of the Bosnian Federation’s Commission for Missing Person explains to Wagner in an interview, they are “a kind of innovation that the Bosnian Serbs patented” (82). One technological innovation (of genocide) compels another (of recovery and accountability). “The technology of violence implemented by the Bosnian Serb forces,” writes Wagner, “required a counterpoint system of technology, one that could take the random and minute pieces of human genetic material and render order to the commingled bones of the mass graves” (15).

The remainder of the book, after a chapter introducing the “people and place of postwar Srebrenica,” focuses on describing the development, implementation, and implications of this “counterpoint” technology, assessing its efficacy both as a technical instrument of identification and as a sociopolitical instrument of post-conflict social repair. The succession of chapters follows the journey of the missing through the entire process, from the technological and forensic work conducted at graves and in labs, to the visits of “case managers” to individual families to gather information and confirm identification, to, finally, the collective burials of newly identified remains, held annually on July 11 at the Srebrenica-Potočari memorial center, completed in 2003 on the former site of the Dutchbat compound. Ethnographic vignettes, clear explanations of technical procedures, and telling (and often moving) details consistently demonstrate the remarkable thoroughness of Wagner’s fieldwork, her mastery of Bosnia’s difficult Slavic language (Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, or BCS), and the intimacy of her access to the social interactions and entanglements generated by the identification process. This level of access, in turn, testifies to the sensitivity and care by which she earned the friendship and trust of her interlocutors. She lived for months in Srebrenica, getting to know members of “Women of Srebrenica,” a support and advocacy organization for the thousands who lost husbands, sons, and brothers; she interned at the ICMP offices and laboratories in Tuzla, learning the technical ins-and-outs of the new DNA science; and—most strikingly—she accompanied case managers on their visits to families of the missing, observing extraordinary, and often shattering, moments of grief as women signed off on papers confirming the identification of their sons’ or husbands’ mortal remains.

The technology works by analyzing and comparing DNA extracted from blood samples contributed by family members of the missing—the more, the better, and including samples from victims’ wives—to DNA extracted from body parts, primarily bones and teeth, exhumed from the secondary mass graves. It is, as one can imagine, and as Wagner carefully demonstrates, an utterly massive undertaking to carry the missing “from grave to grave,” sorting through and extracting genetic material from thousands of bones, not to mention trying to match decayed possessions—articles of clothing, the odds and ends men happened to have in their pockets as they left Srebrenica—to particular sets of remains, even with the aid of advanced software, DNA technology, and unparalleled scientific (specifically genetic) expertise. Wagner takes pains, moreover (and in good anthropological fashion), to show that the achievement of identification is not an exclusively technical or scientific feat, but depends equally on the social relationships forged between ICMP professionals and family members, on the “subjective” knowledge and memories the latter provide, and, ultimately, on the family’s recognition and agreement that the remains identified by DNA technology are in fact those of their relative. Wagner critiques how these social and subjective aspects often become invisible, both in media representations and in the ICMP’s own procedures, and argues for a more holistic approach to the identity of the missing throughout their journey: “In representing an individual as a series of numbers, the technology reduces the missing person’s existence, which travels during this state of prolonged absence along a trajectory of recognition, to too narrow a plane. In short, it prioritizes the missing person’s genetic profile over his social being” (120).

The key point, urges Wagner, is that science and humanism are inextricably intertwined forms of knowing and intervening, and privileging the former as a tool of post-conflict social repair—multi-level recovery in war’s aftermath as a technical operation—risks neglecting the multiple, and multivalent, problems, needs, and processes of social transformation that characterize societies like Bosnia. “Memory, imagination, and supposition, therefore, do not exist on the opposite side of some vertical line drawn between their subjectivity and the objectivity of DNA science,” Wagner observes. “Rather, these different kinds of knowledge gain significance within the process of identification in relation to one another” (150). She is also careful to understand and emphasize the limits of identification to bring about a sense of closure for the bereaved, a resolution to grief, much less the lofty aims of the international community—rejected outright by many Bosnians—of reconciliation and forgiveness. Wagner conveys poignant stories of families who feel the absence of their loved ones like a presence, daily; she evokes the pain of the void in their knowledge of their relatives’ fate (which identification cannot wholly fill), the incomplete and endless mourning, the wrenching permanence of loss. “And for those who had returned to their prewar homes,” she writes, “the melding of memories and imagination gave the fleeting sensation that their children were right there, just around the corner” (158). No technology—however advanced, and however sensitively intertwined with humanist and humanitarian impulses—can fully heal the social, familial, and individual wounds opened by the events of July 1995.

The missing, and the process of their identification, mean different things—and are manipulated in different ways, to different ends—for the range of stakeholders in Bosnia. For the scientists of the ICMP, Wagner observes, the missing are scientific and technical problems to be resolved; for Bosniak nationalist politicians and religious leaders, they are emblems of collective victimhood, proofs of who bears greatest guilt for the social and material devastation wrought by the war; and to Bosnia’s international overseers and humanitarian workers, their identification represents the possibility—the limits of which Wagner has so powerfully evoked—of “sociopolitical repair” and reconciliation (8). In her chapters on the annual memorial ceremony and collective burial at Potočari, Wagner discusses the oft-noted manipulation of Srebrenica for political gain by Bosniak nationalists, and points out the unintended consequences of the identification and reburial process, which include deepening divisions between Bosniak and Serb communities, especially in eastern Bosnia, where Serbs have constructed their own counter-memorials and begun to conduct counter-ceremonies for their own war victims on July 12. This is (to say the least) a troubling outcome, as it reinforces Bosnia’s entrenched, stagnating politics of competing victim claims and unresolved wartime grievances; and Wagner, noticeably, does not venture ideas or suggestions about how the process could be otherwise implemented to lessen divisive ramifications. This omission, perhaps, along with her reluctance to dwell on nationalist manipulations and maneuverings, is made in favor of emphasizing the personal meanings and effects of the Potočari ceremonies for the families of the missing. Yes, says Wagner, the missing, especially via the annual burials, are slotted into different collective categories, to different (and sometimes lamentable) strategic ends; but the individual experiences of the bereaved families, the importance of the ceremonies for their own processes of grief and going-on, consistently exceed and escape, cannot be encompassed by, these collective movements, and deserve as much or more emphasis in any account.

Indeed this accent on individual and intimate experiences of the process of loss, identification, and reburial—as against the concurrently operating collective processes of nationalism, religion, and international interventionism—guides Wagner’s efforts throughout the book. After an interesting final chapter critically exploring the worldwide uses and implications of the Bosnian DNA technology—it has been applied, to differing degrees, for differing motivations, and to differing ends, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2004 Asian tsunami—Wagner reminds her readers in a brief Epilogue that “these aspects of the identification process… are not the main point of this study. Rather, at its core, this book is about why people seek out the remains of their loved ones—what it means to them—and how the advent of a DNA-based system of post-mortem identification has helped transform this process of recovery, remembering, and reckoning. It is a reminder that among the various registers of meaning, the individual is our entry point into the social” (266). It is this strong claim and intention, perhaps—evident, if incompletely achieved, throughout the ethnography—that makes the strange absence of detailed individuals in Wagner’s book stand out: we are introduced to a handful of key characters, including Nura and Hajra, the leaders of Women of Srebrenica, and Enver and Senad, the case managers whom Wagner accompanies on family visits; but we never get to know them in depth, their histories and motivations, their despairs and aspirations. In this Wagner is, no doubt, doing her best to respect the privacy of her friends and fieldwork interlocutors, even as she works to evoke the layered emotions and trajectories of their experiences in general terms—a task in which she is undeniably successful. Yet the power of certain scenes, in which, for example, Enver and Senad work through the final approval of an identification with a bereaved mother (who never appears again in the book), make one wonder how much more effective an ethnography could have been created by tracing at least—or perhaps only—one family and their missing relatives through the entire process, “from grave to grave,” coming to know their experiences and struggles, and the meaning of the new technology to them, personally and in depth.

It is hard to fault Wagner for erring, instead, on the side of respect for the privacy and the grief of her informants, of modesty in argument and of careful, sober diligence in the act of building an ethnographic record of a new and important science. In documenting the ways the Bosnian DNA technology breaks new ground, Wagner herself breaks little, ethnographically or theoretically. Yet this choice is itself courageous, allowing Wagner to produce a remarkable ethnography: a thorough, sensitive, and moving record of an extraordinary and wrenching human and scientific story.

Peter Locke (plocke@princeton.edu) is a doctoral student in cultural anthropology at Princeton University. His dissertation examines trauma and psychosocial services in postwar Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Amnesty appears oblivious to the controversies that surround some of Chomsky’s views on human rights, and in particular the support that he has offered and continues to offer to polemicists who deny the substance, scope and authorship of the worst atrocities perpetrated during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.

In recent years Chomsky has caused particular controversy through his support for the author Diana Johnstone, known for her “revisionist” views on Bosnia concerning the Prijedor concentration camps, the Srebrenica genocide and the existence of the Bosnian rape camps. Chomsky salutes her “outstanding” scholarship and defends her “serious, honest work”.

He represents his support for Johnstone as a defence of her right to freedom of speech while at the same time he denigrates the eyewitness testimony of The Guardian’s reporter Ed Vulliamy whose account of the reality of the Omarska and Trnopolje camps forced the horror of what was happening in Bosnia onto the attention of the rest of the world and in so doing saved the lives of many of the prisoners detained in them.

Without explanation Chomsky characterises Ed Vulliamy’s description of Omarska and Trnopolje as “probably” wrong while at the same time he endorses the claim by Thomas Deichmann and LM magazine that Vulliamy, Penny Marshall and Ian Williams gave a false account of the situation in the Prijedor camps as “probably” correct. Chomsky disregards the finding of a High Court libel action which – following the evidence of a doctor detained in one of the camps – confirmed that Vulliamy and his colleagues had told the truth.

When asked why Amnesty offers a platform to a man who challenges the reporting of human rights abuses that Amnesty itself substantiated and champions the seriousness and honesty of individuals who try to deny those abuses, Amnesty’s response was to observe that invitees are not representatives of Amnesty International nor expected to deliver an Amnesty International policy position within their lecture, but rather they have been invited as having something interesting and thought-provoking to say about human rights in the world today and Amnesty International does not necessarily endorse all their opinions.

When Ed Vulliamy was asked to comment on Amnesty’s invitation to Chomsky he wrote the open letter below. The language expresses his depth of feeling, not only on his own behalf but also on behalf of the friends forced to suffer “the ghastly, searing, devastating impact” of Chomsky’s denial of their experience.

Anyone who shares these concerns can express their views for the attention of Irene Khan, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, at www.amnesty.org/en/contact or Kate Allen, Director of Amnesty International UK (AIUK), at sct@amnesty.org.uk.

Open Letter to Amnesty International

To whom it may concern:

I have been contacted by a number of people regarding Amnesty International’s invitation to Professor Noam Chomsky to lecture in Northern Ireland.

The communications I have received regard Prof. Chomsky’s role in revisionism in the story of the concentration camps in northwestern Bosnia in 1992, which it was my accursed honour to discover.

As everyone interested knows, a campaign was mounted to try and de-bunk the story of these murderous camps as a fake – ergo, to deny and/or justify them – the dichotomy between these position still puzzles me.

The horror of what happened at Omarska and Trnopolje has been borne out by painful history, innumerable trials at the Hague, and – most importantly by far – searing testimony from the survivors and the bereaved. These were places of extermination, torture, killing, rape and, literally “concentration” prior to enforced deportation, of people purely on grounds of ethnicity.

Prof. Chomsky was not among those (“Novo” of Germany and “Living Marxism” in the UK) who first proposed the idea that these camps were a fake. He was not among those who tried unsuccessfully (they were beaten back in the High Court in London, by a libel case taken by ITN) to put up grotesque arguments about fences around the camps, which were rather like Fred Leuchter’s questioning whether the thermal capacity of bricks was enough to contain the heat needed to burn Jews at Auschwitz. But Professor Chomsky said many things, from his ivory tower at MIT, to spur them on and give them the credibility and energy they required to spread their poisonous perversion and denials of these sufferings. Chomsky comes with academic pretensions, doing it all from a distance, and giving the revisionists his blessing. And the revisionists have revelled in his endorsement.

In an interview with the Guardian, Professor Chomsky paid me the kind compliment of calling me a good journalist, but added that on this occasion (the camps) I had “got it wrong”. Got what wrong?!?! Got wrong what we saw that day, August 5th 1992 (I didn’t see him there)? Got wrong the hundreds of thousands of families left bereaved, deported and scattered asunder? Got wrong the hundreds of testimonies I have gathered on murderous brutality? Got wrong the thousands whom I meet when I return to the commemorations? If I am making all this up, what are all the human remains found in mass graves around the camps and so painstakingly re-assembled by the International Commission for Missing Persons?

These people pretend neutrality over Bosnia, but are actually apologists for the Milosevic/Karadzic/Mladic plan, only too pathetic to admit it. And the one thing they never consider from their armchairs is the ghastly, searing, devastating impact of their game on the survivors and the bereaved. The pain they cause is immeasurable. This, along with the historical record, is my main concern. It is one thing to survive the camps, to lose one’s family and friends – quite another to be told by a bunch of academics with a didactic agenda in support of the pogrom that those camps never existed. The LM/Novo/Chomsky argument that the story of the camps was somehow fake has been used in countless (unsuccessful) attempts to defend mass murderers in The Hague.

For decades I have lived under the impression that Amnesty International was opposed to everything these people stand for, and existed to defend exactly the kind of people who lost their lives, family and friends in the camps and at Srebrenica three years later, a massacre on which Chomsky has also cast doubt. I have clearly been deluded about Amnesty. For Amnesty International, of all people, to honour this man is to tear up whatever credibility they have estimably and admirably won over the decades, and to reduce all they say hitherto to didactic nonsense.

Why Amnesty wants to identify with and endorse this revisionist obscenity, I do not know. It is baffling and grotesque. By inviting Chomsky to give this lecture, Amnesty condemns itself to ridicule at best, hurtful malice at worst – Amnesty joins the revisionists in spitting on the graves of the dead. Which was not what the organisation was, as I understand, set up for. I have received a letter from an Amnesty official in Northern Ireland which reads rather like a letter from Tony Blair’s office after it has been caught out cosying up to British Aerospace or lying over the war in Iraq – it is a piece of corporate gobbledygook, distancing Amnesty from Chomsky’s views on Bosnia, or mealy-mouthedly conceding that they are disagreed with.

There is no concern at all with the victims, which is, I suppose, what one would expect from a bureaucrat. In any event, the letter goes nowhere towards addressing the revisionism, dispelling what will no doubt be a fawning, self-satisfied introduction in Belfast and rapturous applause for the man who gives such comfort to Messrs Karadzic and Mladic, and their death squads. How far would Amnesty go in inviting and honouring speakers whose views it does not necessarily share, in the miserable logic of this AI official in Belfast? A lecture by David Irving on Joseph Goebbels? Alistair Campbell on how Saddam really did have those WMD? The Chilean Secret Police or Colonel Oliver North on the communist threat in Latin America during the 70s and 80s? What about Karadzic himself on the “Jihadi” threat in Bosnia, and the succulence of 14-year-old girls kept in rape camps?

I think I am still a member of AI – if so, I resign. If not, thank God for that. And to think: I recently came close to taking a full time job as media director for AI. That was a close shave – what would I be writing now, in the press release: “Come and hear the great Professor Chomsky inform you all that the stories about the camps in Bosnia were a lie – that I was hallucinating that day, that the skeletons of the dead so meticulously re-assembled by the International Commission for Missing Persons are all plastic? That the dear friends I have in Bosnia, the USA, the UK and elsewhere who struggle to put back together lives that were broken by Omarska and Trnopolje are making it all up?

Some press release that would have been. Along with the owner of the site of the Omarska camp, the mighty Mittal Steel Corporation, Amnesty International would have crushed it pretty quick. How fitting that Chomsky and Mittal Steel find common cause. Yet how logical, and to me, obvious. After all, during the Bosnian war, it was the British Foreign Office, the CIA, the UN and great powers who, like the revisionists Chomsky champions, most eagerly opposed any attempt to stop the genocide that lasted, as it was encouraged by them and their allies in high politics to last, for three bloody years from 1992 until the Srebrenica massacre of 1995.

Yours, in disgust and despair,

Ed Vulliamy,
The Observer.

—

On the heels of its announcement of the Chomsky lecture Amnesty published a report on the ongoing search for justice by the victims of rape in Bosnia. www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=18431

Nicola Duckworth, Amnesty International’s Europe Programme Director, acknowledges that “During the war, thousands of women and girls were raped, often with extreme brutality. Many were held in prison camps, hotels and private houses where they were sexually exploited. Many women and girls were killed. To this day, survivors of these crimes have been denied access to justice. Those responsible for their suffering – members of military forces, the police or paramilitary groups – walk free. Some remain in positions of power or live in the same community as their victims.”

Alisa Muratcaus of the Association of Concentration Camp Torture Survivors, Canton Sarajevo, insists that people who deny that the mass rape of Bosnian women was a strategic element of the war are talking “nonsense”. Her Association, composed of Muslim, Croat, Serb, and Romani members, many of them victims in camps and prisons throughout Bosnia of atrocities including rape and other forms of sexual torture, works closely with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague which has established beyond doubt that rape was used in Bosnia as a weapon of war.

On his recent trip to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Joe Biden, the US vice president, warned politicians there that a descent into “ethnic chaos” needed to be averted.

It is nearly 15 years since the Balkan wars, but the country remains in strife.

Mike Kirsch reported on the conflict in the 1990s and has returned to see how the country has emerged, and what the future holds.

“The life I had, no one would be excited about,” says Nermina Selimovic, the family’s oldest daughter.

From 1992-95, Serb forces constantly attacked Bosniak villages and towns around Srebrenica. Although they signed the demiliratization agreemend in 1993, Serb forces refused to demilitarize around the enclave. They used the surrounding Serb-controlled villages  to launch heavy artillery attacks on the Bosniak refugees crammed in the Srebrenica ghetto. In July 1995, Serbs perpetrated genocide by brutally taking control of Srebrenica, expelling 30,000 Bosniaks from their homes, summarily executing at least 8,372 men and boys, dumping victims into mass graves and later moving victims’ remains into ‘secondary’ mass graves in an effort to conceal the crime.

The documentary recounts the story of the Selimovic family, who resettled in Columbia, Mo., after surviving the 1995 Srebrenica genocide in their home country. The film explores the challenges of starting over in a new place while coping with trauma from the past. A panel discussion with the filmmakers will follow. Both events are free.

They came among us with their bizarre fascist ideas, using aggressive rhetoric to manipulate the minds and hearts of their fellow Serbs, whipping them up into a frenzy of violence and hatred against Muslims and all non-Serbs in Bosnia. Paradise soon became Hell-on-earth.

Bosnia and Herzegovina! For most of the outside world, the name immediately calls to mind the terrible period between 1992 and 1995, when tens of thousands of innocent Bosnian Muslims were killed — ethnically “cleansed” — for the sole “crime” of being Muslims.

Men and boys had their lives wiped away and their potential lost forever; hunted down, murdered, buried without a shred of ceremony by bulldozers, and this in the heart of “civilized” Europe. Concentration camps, brutal murders, the pre-meditated rape of thousands of Bosnian Muslim girls and women (each one of them somebody’s daughter, wife, mother, fiancée); thousands of children traumatized; people wounded beyond healing.

Serbs from both Bosnia and Serbia — supported by the Serbian government — killed approximately 250,000 Muslims; raped more than 50,000 Muslim girls and women; imprisoned thousands in concentration camps; maimed and wounded tens of thousands more. The full list of atrocities and their morbid statistics is too long to recount here. In the now-infamous Bosnian town of Srebrenica — which was supposed to be an internationally recognized safe-zone — Serbs slaughtered an estimated 8,000 men and boys for the sole “crime” of being Muslim. All of this unspeakable brutality, this horrendous and obscene waste of humanity, took place right before the eyes of the so-called “civilized” world.

What was done to innocent Bosnians by Serb forces meets the definition of genocide as stated in Article 2 of the Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was established in Paris on December 9, 1948 and came into force on January 12, 1951. Traumatic memories of intentionally committed atrocities on Bosniaks are still very much alive in the minds and hearts of those who survived.

Even though these massacres happened more than a decade ago, it is not too late for the world to collectively denounce the evil inflicted on innocent people in Bosnia. Both the House and Senate of the U.S. Congress have passed resolutions and the European Parliament did so earlier this year. But the Canadian House of Commons has yet to act.

MP Brian Masse plans to put forward a motion this fall, as soon as possible after the House of Commons resumes sitting in October. He hopes to launch a campaign for a long-overdue Srebrenica Remembrance Day, thus giving Canada the opportunity to stand up and join other countries in solidarity against the heinous crime of genocide and regain our national reputation a true peace-broker in the world.

By passing Mr. Masse’s resolution, Canada will benefit in many ways:

a) Canada’s international image will be respected as it was in the past;
b) Canada will send a clear message to all abusers of power that we will always stand for peace through justice;
c) Canada will serve as the model and mentor to other countries to follow its path in acknowledging the genocide of innocent Bosnians; and
d) Canada will give hope to those whose hope was taken from them.

The above are just some of the reasons why CIC and Canadian Muslims support MP Brian Masse in sponsoring a resolution on the Bosnia and Herzegovina genocides. Furthermore, we believe all Canadians should support it, so that this genocide is not forgotten; so that people can live peacefully together and no one need fear that what happened to Bosnian Muslims will ever happen again to any human being.

CIC and Canadian Muslims thank Mr. Masse for recognizing that Bosnia and Herzegovina underwent the worst case of atrocities and genocide committed against civilians since the Second World War and that innocent Bosnian men, women, children, the sick and the elderly, took the brunt of intentional aggression by Serb forces.

We call upon all Canadian representatives on the Hill as well as all Canadians of conscience to support this courageous initiative to sponsor a parliamentary resolution on the Bosnia-Herzegovina genocide so that justice can be brought to bear on behalf of all who were so brutally massacred.

All Canadians should be thankful that MP Brian Masse cares enough about justice and truth to stand up for their sake in these troubled times! Many Canadians — but especially those whose roots of origin are in Bosnia and Herzegovina — are proud of Canadian politicians like himself, who value honesty, integrity and justice for every human being.

For me, as an Imam and a human being, the philosophy of “caring and respect” springs from three sources:
a) My religious background, which is based on strong principles of justice, equality and care for all human beings. The intellectual tradition of Islam has left a deep mark on my personal choices in regards to human relations. Muhammad (pbuh) once said; “The best amongst the people are those who benefit (all) people.”

b) My family and cultural Bosnian roots, through which I was exposed to great diversity and learned at a very young age to care about all people; and

c) My new homeland of Canada, where everyone is free and encouraged to live his or her faith unhindered and unashamed; where people can openly affirm God’s love for all humanity; where religion is an agent of healing, reconciliation, and peace; where religious people and institutions encourage understanding, cooperation, and respect; where religion promotes the safety, dignity, freedom and potential of every person as a whole human being.

In short, Canada is a place where all are given opportunities to help themselves and in turn extend help to others near and far, including those they have never seen or met. For most Canadians, Bosnians are those unknown people in need, people of goodness forgotten by their neighbors in the heart of Europe – forgotten only because they belong to a different religion.

Our plea to Canada: Do not forget people in need!

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2

In the realm of politics, there are those of us who wear our hearts on our sleeves: proud of what we stand for, we are not afraid to state our positions as clearly as possible, so there is no danger of misunderstanding; we call a spade a spade, and are ready to face the music. On the other hand, there are those who are embarrassed by their own position: they dissemble; muddying the waters so that what they really think is vague and hidden; when confronted by those who recognise them for what they are, they lash out in fear and shame, denying what everyone knows to be the truth.

Two very interesting parallel cases were highlighted in the Guardian newspaper on 17 November. It was reported that David Irving was arrested in Austria for the crime of Holocaust denial. Irving is well known as a Holocaust denier and Hitler apologist, yet when accused of this by the historian Deborah Lipstadt, he attempted to sue her for libel, resulting in his crushing courtroom defeat. Yet he apparently remains ashamed to accept the label that he has inevitably earned. According to the Guardian: ‘Mr Irving has said he does not deny Jews were killed by the Nazis, but challenges the number and manner of Jewish concentration camp deaths. He has questioned the use of large-scale gas chambers to exterminate the Jews, and has claimed that the numbers of those who perished are far lower than those generally accepted. He also contends that most Jews who died at Auschwitz did so from diseases such as typhus, not gas poisoning.’ In other words, lacking the moral courage to say proudly ‘Yes, I deny the Holocaust !’, Irving seeks refuge in the claim that he is merely concerned with the accuracy of details and interpretation. Thus, the Holocaust denier does not merely deny the Holocaust; he denies his own denial. Of course, no rational person would accept such a plea at face value.

On the same day (17 November), a new twist emerged in another saga of genocide-denial: the Guardian printed a grovelling apology to Noam Chomsky for a none-too-flattering interview with him carried out by the award-winning journalist Emma Brockes, published by the Guardian on 31 October, in which Brockes cites Chomsky as having said that the Srebrenica massacre of 1995 was ‘probably overstated’ and was not even an actual massacre. Chomsky prides himself on being a resolute champion of freedom of speech; on this ground, he has defended the right of Holocaust-deniers to publish what they want; and condemned Britain’s libel laws. Yet faced with Brockes’s exposure of his position, he and his circle of fans retreated from their pro-free-speech position, and organised a campaign of denunciation of Brockes, bombarding the Guardian with letters of complaint, and eventually bullying this spineless newspaper into issuing an unequivocal apology and retraction.

In his letter of complaint to the Guardian, published on 2 November, Chomsky writes: ‘As for her [Brockes’s] personal opinions, interpretations and distortions, she is of course free to publish them, and I would, of course, support her right to do so, on grounds that she makes clear she does not understand.’ Yet as a result of the Chomskyite campaign against Brockes, the Guardian readers’ editor reported on 17 November: ‘The Guardian has now withdrawn the interview from the website.’ Just fancy that ! More shamefully still, the Guardian also apologised for having published a letter by Kemal Pervanic, a survivor of the Serb concentration-camp Omarska, alongside Chomsky’s on 2 November. Pervanic said he was ‘shocked by some of the views of Noam Chomsky in the article by Emma Brockes’s.’ Yet in the words of the Guardian readers’ editor’s grovelling piece of self-criticism: ‘While he has every sympathy with the writer [Pervanic], Prof Chomsky believes that its publication was designed to undermine his position, and addressed a part of the interview which was false… With hindsight it is acknowledged that the juxtaposition has exacerbated Prof Chomsky’s complaint, and that is regretted.’ So much for respecting the right of a concentration-camp survivor to state his opinion.

The irony is all the greater, as the Brockes interview revolved around Chomsky’s defence of the writer Diana Johnstone, allegedly on the grounds of supporting freedom of speech. In 2003, the left-wing Swedish magazine Ordfront published an interview with Johnstone, which repeated her revisionist, genocide-denying views of the Bosnian war. This provoked massive outrage on the part of members of Ordfront’s editorial board and readers, leading to resignation of the editor and a public apology by the magazine for the pain it had caused to Bosnian genocide survivors. Johnstone’s Swedish publisher apparently withdrew its agreement to publish her book. This, in the eyes of Chomsky, consisted of a violation of Johnstone’s ‘freedom of speech’, though nobody had prevented her from disseminating her views through other magazines or publishers; indeed, her book has been published in the UK by Pluto Press, and her articles are available all over the internet, should anyone wish to read them. Nor, it should be said, was Johnstone murdered, tortured or driven out of her home, like hundreds of thousands of Bosnian citizens in the 1990s, whose rights Chomsky has never got round to championing. But assuming the right of a Western author not to have her writings rejected by publishers on political grounds is a more worthy cause than the right of Balkan untermenschen to life and limb, it remains to be seen whether Chomsky’s fellow left-wing libertarians will engage themselves in defence of Brockes as forthrightly as they did in defence of Johnstone.

What was it about Brockes’s interview that so rattled Chomsky ? Chomskyite ire focussed on the question-and-answer headline that introduced the interview:

Q. [Brockes]: Do you regret supporting those who say the Srebrenica massacre was exaggerated ?

A. [Chomsky]: My only regret is that I didn’t do it strongly enough.

This was a paraphrase, rather than a literal quotation, and one that was written by the newspaper rather than by Brockes herself, and for which she therefore cannot be held responsible. Nevertheless, it accurately summed up the essence of the matter: Chomsky had supported Johnstone, who claimed that the Srebrenica massacre was exaggerated. In his open letter to the Guardian of 13 November, Chomsky claimed it was simply a matter of defending freedom of speech: ‘The truthful part is that I said, and explained at length, that I regret not having strongly enough opposed the Swedish publisher’s decision to withdraw a book by Diana (not ‘Diane,’ as the Guardian would have it) Johnstone after it was bitterly attacked in the Swedish press… In the interview, whatever Johnstone may have said about Srebrenica never came up, and is entirely irrelevant in any event, at least to anyone with a minimal appreciation of freedom of speech.’

Chomsky therefore claimed his defence of Johnstone’s freedom of speech had been misrepresented as denial of the Srebrenica massacre. Indeed, Brockes’s portrayal of Chomsky’s alleged denial of Srebrenica was at the heart of Chomsky’s complaint. According to Brockes, Chomsky claimed ‘that during the Bosnian war the ‘massacre’ at Srebrenica was probably overstated.’ Brockes elaborated thus on Chomsky’s style: ‘Chomsky uses quotations marks to undermine things that he disagrees with and, in print at least, it can come across less as academic than as witheringly teenage; like, Srebrenica was so not a massacre.’ Chomsky’s outraged response was that ‘with five minutes research on the internet, any journalist could find many places where I described the massacre as a massacre, never with quotes. That alone ends the story.’ The Guardian readers’ editor accepted the validity of Chomsky’s complaint, and threw in an apology to Johnstone for good measure: ‘Ms Brockes’s misrepresentation of Prof Chomsky’s views on Srebrenica stemmed from her misunderstanding of his support for Ms Johnstone. Neither Prof Chomsky nor Ms Johnstone have [sic] ever denied the fact of the massacre.’

The big question is, of course, does Chomsky really deny the Srebrenica massacre ? Or, if he does not deny it outright, does he put such a spin on it that he denies it to all intents and purposes ?

Johnstone, for her part, denies it to all intents and purposes. Her book, Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions (London: Pluto Press, 2002) puts the words ‘Srebrenica massacre’ in quotes (p. 106). She then goes on to argue: ‘In trying to understand what happened at Srebrenica, a number of factors should be taken into account.’ These are, she argues, that Srebrenica and other ‘safe areas’ had ‘served as Muslim military bases under UN protection’; that the ‘Muslim military force stationed in Srebrenica – some 5,000 men under the command of Naser Oric, had carried out murderous raids against nearby Serb villages’; that ‘[Bosnian President] Izetbegovic pulled Naser Oric out of Srebrenica prior to the anticipated Serb offensive, deliberately leaving the enclave undefended’; and that ‘Insofar as Muslims were actually executed following the fall of Srebrenica, such crimes bear all the signs of spontaneous acts of revenge rather than a project of ‘genocide’’. Furthermore: ‘Six years after the summer of 1995, ICTY forensic teams had exhumed 2,631 bodies in the region, and identified fewer than 50. In an area where fighting had raged for years, some of the bodies were certainly of Serbs as well as of Muslims. Of these bodies, 199 were found to have been bound or blindfolded, and must reasonably be presumed on the basis of the material evidence to have been executed.’ She concludes: ‘War crimes ? The Serbs themselves do not deny that crimes were committed. Part of a plan of genocide ? For this there is no evidence whatsoever.’ (pp. 109-118).

To sum up Johnstone’s position on Srebrenica: she blames everything that happened there on the Muslims; claims they provoked the Serb offensive in the first place; then deliberately engineered their own killing; and then exaggerated their own death-toll. She denies that thousands of Muslims were massacred; suggesting there is no evidence for a number higher than 199 – less than 2.5% of the accepted figure of eight thousand. And she eschews the word ‘massacre’ in favour of ‘execution’ – as if it were a question of criminals on Death Row, not of innocent civilians. It is as if she were to claim that less than 150,000 Jews, rather than six million, had died in the Holocaust; that the Jews had provoked and engineered the Nazi killings; that these killings had been ‘executions’; and that the Jews had then exaggerated their death toll. She is ready to excuse the Srebrenica killings as retaliation for Oric’s earlier killings of Serb civilians – but does not mention that Oric’s crimes took place long after the war had already begun and Serb forces had begun slaughtering Muslims all over Bosnia. She does not mention how Srebrenica became an ‘enclave’ in the first place: through Serb aggression against, and conquest of, East Bosnia in 1992, and the killing and expulsion of the Muslim population that this involved – against which the Srebrenica Muslims were temporarily able to hold out as an ‘enclave’. All in all, this can reasonably be called denial; insofar as it is not complete denial – she recognises less than 2.5% of the massacre – it is an apologia for the Serb forces. The Guardian readers’ editor’s claim that ‘Neither Prof Chomsky nor Ms Johnstone have [sic] ever denied the fact of the massacre’ is, therefore, at least half untrue.

But what about the other half, i.e. Chomsky ? An open letter to Ordfront, signed by Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Arundhati Roy and others, stated: ‘We regard Johnstone’s Fools’ Crusade as an outstanding work, dissenting from the mainstream view but doing so by an appeal to fact and reason, in a great tradition.’ In his personal letter to Ordfront in defence of Johnstone, Chomsky wrote: ‘I have known her for many years, have read the book, and feel that it is quite serious and important.’ Chomsky makes no criticism here of Johnstone’s massacre denial, or indeed anywhere else – except in the Brockes interview, which he has repudiated. Indeed, he endorses her revisionism: in response to Mikael van Reis’s claim that ‘She [Johnstone] insists that Serb atrocities – ethnic cleansing, torture camps, mass executions – are western propaganda’, Chomsky replies that ‘Johnstone argues – and, in fact, clearly demonstrates – that a good deal of what has been charged has no basis in fact, and much of it is pure fabrication.’

In the same letter, Chomsky makes much of an allegedly positive review of Johnstone’s book in a British foreign-affairs journal: ‘I also know that it has been very favourably reviewed, e.g., by the British scholarly journal International Affairs, journal of the Royal Academy.’ He then continues, with his own idiosyncratic logic: ‘I don’t read Swedish journals of course, but it would be interesting to learn how the Swedish press explains the fact that their interpretation of Johnstone’s book differs so radically from that of Britain’s leading scholarly foreign affairs journal, International Affairs. I mentioned the very respectful review by Robert Caplan, of the University of Reading and Oxford [sic]. It is obligatory, surely, for those who condemn Johnstone’s book in the terms just reviewed to issue still harsher condemnation of International Affairs, as well as of the universities of Reading and Oxford, for allowing such a review to appear, and for allowing the author to escape censure.’ The essence of what Chomsky is saying, is that Johnstone received a positive review in a respectable scholarly journal, therefore her book must be good.

There are, first of all, a number of distortions in Chomsky’s claim: International Affairs is the journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, not of the ‘Royal Academy’; the RIIA is a para-governmental think tank, not a scholarly institution, therefore it makes no sense to describe International Affairs as ‘Britain’s leading scholarly foreign affairs journal’; the reviewer was Richard, not Robert Caplan; and his review of Johnstone’s book was far from being as positive as Chomsky suggests. Caplan wrote: ‘Diana Johnstone has written a revisionist and highly contentious account of Western policy and the dissolution of Yugoslavia… Yet for all of the book’s constructive correctives, it is often difficult to recognize the world that Johnstone describes…The book also contains numerous errors of fact, on which Johnstone however relies to strengthen her case… Johnstone herself is very selective.’

Indeed, Caplan was overly polite in his criticisms of what is, in reality, an extremely poor book, one that is little more than a polemic in defence of the Serb-nationalist record during the wars of the 1990s – and an ill-informed one at that. Johnstone is not an investigative journalist who spent time in the former Yugoslavia doing fieldwork on the front-lines, like Ed Vulliamy, David Rohde or Roy Gutman. Nor is she a qualified academic who has done extensive research with Serbo-Croat primary sources, like Noel Malcolm or Norman Cigar. Indeed, she appears not to read Serbo-Croat, and her sources are mostly English-language, with a smattering of French and German. In short, she is an armchair Balkan amateur-enthusiast, and her book is of the sort that could be written from any office in Western Europe with access to the internet.

The quality of Johnstone’s ‘scholarship’ may be gauged from some of the Serb-nationalist falsehoods she repeats uncritically, such as the claim that the Serb Nazi-collaborationist leader Draza Mihailovic formed ‘the first armed guerrilla resistance to Nazi occupation in all of Europe’ (p. 291) – a myth long since exploded by serious historians (see for example Jozo Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945: The Chetniks, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1975, pp. 124, 137). Or Johnstone’s claim that Croatia in 1990 ‘rapidly restored the symbols of the dread 1941 [Nazi-puppet] state – notably the red and white checkerboard flag, which to Serbs was the equivalent of the Nazi swastika’ (p. 23) – a falsehood that can be refuted by a glance at any complete version of the Yugoslav constitution, which clearly shows that the Croatian chequerboard – far from being a fascist symbol equivalent to the swastika – was an official symbol of state in Titoist Yugoslavia (see, for example the 1950 edition of the Yugoslav constitution, published by Sluzbeni list, Belgrade, which shows the Croatian chequerboard as a Yugoslav symbol of state on p. 115; or the 1974 edition published by Prosveta, Belgrade, which shows the Croatian chequerboard – in full colour – at the start of the text). It would require an entire article to list and refute all the numerous errors and falsehoods in Johnstone’s book; Chomsky praises it because he sympathises with her political views, not because it has any scholarly merit.

Perhaps it would be unfair to label Chomsky a Srebrenica massacre-denier simply because he praises uncritically Johnstone’s massacre-denying book and endorses its conclusions. A fuller picture of Chomsky’s views on Srebrenica, however, can be gleaned from his interview with M. Junaid Alam of Left Hook on 17 December 2004, where he states that ‘Srebrenica was an enclave, lightly protected by UN forces, which was being used as a base for attacking nearby Serb villages. It was known that there’s going to be retaliation. When there was a retaliation, it was vicious. They trucked out all the women and children, they kept the men inside, and apparently slaughtered them. The estimates are thousands of people slaughtered.’ The key words here are ‘retaliation’, ‘apparently’ and ‘estimates’; the slaughter ‘apparently’ took place; the thousands killed were mere ‘estimates’; they were, in any case, simply ‘retaliation’ for earlier Serb crimes. Note that while Chomsky raises doubts about the fact and scale of the killings, he is absolutely categorical that they were retribution for earlier Muslim crimes – the slaughter apparently took place, but if it did, then it was definitely retaliation. Read carefully, nothing that Chomsky says actually contradicts Johnstone’s massacre-denying claims cited above.

Chomsky then goes on to compare the Serb behaviour favourably with that of the Americans in Fallujah: ‘Well, with Fallujah, the US didn’t truck out the women and children, it bombed them out.’ Chomsky does not mention the thousands of Bosnian women and children raped and murdered by Serb forces in other parts of Bosnia; nor those blown to bits by the Serb shelling of Sarajevo and other Bosnian towns, choosing instead to focus on the sparing of the women and children of Srebrenica. Johnstone, too, makes much of this: ‘one thing should be obvious: one does not commit ‘genocide’ by sparing women and children’. In fact, the Nazis began the systematic extermination of Jewish adult males in the USSR in 1941 before they began the systematic extermination of Jewish women and children, and the Nazis, unlike the Serb forces a half century later, were not being restrained by the democratic Western media.

Chomsky again compared Serb behaviour at Srebrenica favourably with American behaviour at Fallujah in his article ‘Imperial Presidency’ (Canadian Dimension, January/February 2005, vol. 39, no. 1), where he wrote of ‘Srebrenica, almost universally described as ‘genocide’ in the West. In that case, as we know in detail from the Dutch government report and other sources, the Muslim enclave in Serb territory, inadequately protected, was used as a base for attacks against Serb villages, and when the anticipated reaction took place, it was horrendous. The Serbs drove out all but military age men, and then moved in to kill them. There are differences with Falluja. Women and children were not bombed out of Srebrenica, but trucked out, and there will be no extensive efforts to exhume the last corpse of the packrats in their warrens in Falluja. There are other differences, arguably unfair to the Serbs.’ Not quite massacre denial, it is true; more of a massacre minimisation – since Chomsky nowhere recognises the figure of eight-thousand Muslim dead, it is entirely possible that he reduces the massacre to the fraction suggested by Johnstone, and therefore denies it to all intents and purposes. And he is certainly at pains to contrast ‘the Serbs’ favourably with the Americans.

One might criticise Brockes for not giving a more nuanced portrayal of Chomsky’s vague yet complex view of the Srebrenica massacre – were it not for the fact that Chomsky is notorious for the deliberate use of obscure and confusing language, designed to muddy the waters as to his real views, and the use of verbal trickery aimed at confusing his opponents. Take his 2001 exchange with Christopher Hitchens over the question of whether the US bombing of Sudan’s pharmaceutical factory in 1998 was a crime equivalent to 11 September:

Chomsky stated: ‘That Hitchens cannot mean what he writes is clear, in the first place, from his reference to the bombing of Sudan. He must be unaware that he is expressing such racist contempt for African victims of a terrorist crime, and cannot intend what his words imply.’

Hitchens replied: ‘Since his [Chomsky’s] remarks are directed at me, I’ll instance a less-than-half-truth as he applies it to myself. I ‘must be unaware’, he writes, that I ‘express such racist contempt for African victims of a terrorist crime.’ With his pitying tone of condescension, and his insertion of a deniable but particularly objectionable innuendo, I regret to say that Chomsky displays what have lately become his hallmarks.’

Chomsky then pulled his sleight-of-hand: ‘Hitchens claims that I accused him of a ‘propensity for racist contempt.’ I explicitly and unambiguously said the opposite.’

Given such word games and obfuscation, Chomsky should hardly complain when an earnest interviewer fails to interpret his well-camouflaged position as he would have it. Had he so wished, he could have avoided the entire imbroglio with Brockes by telling her unambiguously: ‘I recognise that several thousand Muslim civilians were massacred by Serb forces at Srebrenica in 1995′. Yet one rather suspects he wanted to have his cake and eat it: to put forward a ‘position’ that was compatible with those of the outright deniers, like Johnstone, but that nevertheless allows him formally to deny being a denier himself.

Instead of taking responsibility for his own insincerity and double-talk, he chose to punish the messenger – Brockes. He has then failed on two occasions – his letter published in the Guardian on 2 November and his open letter to the Guardian of 13 November – to state categorically that the massacre occurred in the way that it is understood to have done: as a massacre of several thousand innocent Muslim civilians by Serb forces. Nor is it true what Chomsky claims, that ‘with five minutes research on the internet, any journalist could find many places where I described the massacre as a massacre, never with quotes.’ I have not yet discovered a single text on the internet in which Chomsky describes Srebrenica as a ‘massacre’; if such a text exists, it is not as easy to find as Chomsky claims. Chomsky’s actual position on Srebrenica must remain an open question until he can actually bring himself to speak and write in plain English – for which nobody should hold their breath. Under these circumstances, the Guardian readers’ editor had no need to issue its apology, and had no right to impugn the journalistic professionalism of Brockes. It is to Brockes, not to Chomsky, that the Guardian should be apologising.

The outrage of Chomsky and his fellow-travellers over his portrayal as a Srebrenica massacre-denier is particularly ironic, given that several of these fellow-travellers are themselves overt Srebrenica deniers. Chomsky is notorious for having gone on record in 1977, in an article co-written with a certain Ed Herman, as claiming that Khmer Rouge atrocities were being exaggerated by the Western media (‘Distortions at Fourth Hand’, The Nation, 25 June 1977). Recently, the same Ed Herman founded a ‘Srebrenica Research Group’ to propagate the view that the Srebrenica massacre never happened. In his essay ‘The Politics of the Srebrenica Massacre’, Herman writes that ‘the evidence for a massacre, certainly of one in which 8,000 men and boys were executed, has always been problematic, to say the least’. Herman concludes: ‘The ‘Srebrenica massacre’ [note the quote marks] is the greatest triumph of propaganda to emerge from the Balkan wars… But the link of this propaganda triumph to truth and justice is non-existent. The disconnection with truth is epitomised by the fact that the original estimate of 8,000, including 5,000 ‘missing’ – who had left Srebrenica for Bosnian Muslim lines – was maintained even after it had been quickly established that several thousand had reached those lines and that several thousand more had perished in battle. This nice round number lives on today in the face of a failure to find the executed bodies and despite the absence of a single satellite photo showing executions, bodies, digging, or trucks transporting bodies for reburial.’

In this way, Chomsky’s close collaborator Herman unashamedly holds a view that Chomsky is outraged to have attributed to himself. Both Chomsky and Herman are regular contributors to the website ‘ZNet’ – a haven for neo-Stalinist die-hards, several of whom are outright Srebrenica deniers. The publication of Herman’s above-cited article was greeted with uncritical approval by ZNet blogger David Petersen, who praised its ‘powerful analysis’. The same Petersen then reacted with outrage when Brockes attributed the same Srebrenica-denying view that he himself endorses to his comrade Chomsky, describing her interview as ‘lies, smears and more lies’. Just fancy that ! If to deny the Srebrenica massacre is shameful – which it is – why do Johnstone, Petersen and Herman do so ? But if they really think that the Srebrenica massacre did not happen, or was vastly smaller and more justifiable than is usually claimed, why should they be so outraged at Chomsky being described as a denier ? The answer brings us back to where we began: the Chomskyites and ZNet people are, at heart, embarrassed by their own position. In this, too, they resemble the controversial British historian recently arrested in Austria.

In this debate over whether or not Chomsky denied a massacre, it is important not to lose sight of something more damning and much less controversial: that Chomsky quite openly denies that genocide took place, either in Srebrenica or in Bosnia as a whole, and makes no bones about putting the word ‘genocide’ in quotes – this despite the fact that an international tribunal, established by the UN, has convicted a Bosnian Serb general of aiding and abetting genocide in Srebrenica. Indeed, the genocide-denial of Johnstone, Chomsky and their circle goes far beyond questioning the Srebrenica massacre. Chomsky was among those who supported the campaign in defence of Living Marxism (LM), the lunatic-fringe magazine that accused the news agency ITN of fabricating the existence of Serb concentration camps in Bosnia, on the basis of the writings of Thomas Deichmann, an amateur journalist and supporter of the Serb-nationalist cause. Deichmann claimed the camps in question were merely ‘detention centres’, and – although he had never visited them himself – presumed to know them well enough to claim that the pictures ITN had taken of them were deliberately intended to ‘mislead’ the Western public as to their true nature. ITN sued LM for libel, and the magazine was unable to produce a single witness who had actually seen the camps at first hand, whereas eye-witnesses such as Vulliamy testified as to their true, horrific character. LM‘s resounding defeat in the libel trial has not stopped Johnstone, in a recent commentary on the Chomsky-Brockes affair in the left-wing American magazine Counterpunch, from repeating LM’s already discredited lies: “The issue raised by LM had to do with the way photographs taken at Trnopolje camp, by focusing on a thin man on the other side of a wire fence which in reality did not surround the Muslim inmates, but rather the ITN crew itself, was used to create the impression that what was happening in Bosnia was a repetition of a Nazi-style Holocaust.” The campaign against Brockes has therefore simultaneously become a campaign to rewrite the history of the Bosnian war to deny that genocide took place.

Chomsky’s denial that genocide took place in Bosnia, even after it has been established in international law that it did, and even after LM‘s lies about Serb camps were exposed as such in a British court, marks him down as a revisionist in the mould of Irving; the general thrust of Brockes’s exposure of him was therefore bang on target. In pandering to him, the Guardian has besmirched its own reputation and insulted the survivors of the genocide. Ironically, it was Guardian journalists such as Vulliamy and Maggie O’Kane who were in the forefront of bringing the genocide to light in 1992. That the Guardian – with this proud record – should have chosen to betray Brockes, its own journalist, by apologising on her behalf to an unabashed genocide-denier, means that this newspaper is now collaborating in the revisionist re-writing of the history of the Bosnian war.

The passageway is close to several cafes, which are popular among local youth.

Novi Sad Assembly Speaker Aleksandar Jovanovic said Aleksic promoted values that the people of Novi Sad also support.

“Srdjan made it clear that values such as tolerance, understanding differences, co-habitation … are, in fact, elements of civilisation that are not bound by space or time.”

There is also a street in Sarajevo named after Aleksic. According to Sarajevo authorities, “Without people like [him] and his heroic deeds, men would lose hope in humanity and without it, our life would be meaningless.”

Aleksic set a swimming record for juniors in the former Yugoslavia and was an amateur theatre actor. On January 21st 1993, he was serving in the Bosnian Serb army in the town of Trebinje when he witnessed four fellow soldiers arresting his friend, Alen Glavovic, and then beating Glavovic for being a Bosniak.

Aleksic raced to protect his friend, only to incur the wrath of the four soldiers. They began beating Aleksic with their rifles. Badly injured, he slipped into a coma and later died. His friend Glavovic managed to escape.

Of the four assailants, one was killed in combat, while the remaining three were later sentenced to just two years and four months in prison each.

Today, Glavovic lives in Sweden and visits Aleksic’s grave in Trebinje every year.

Aleksic’s father attended the ceremony in Novi Sad, and in a speech, said he hopes young people “see Srdjan as a symbol of kindness”.

He encouraged others to seek friends in life, “somebody that you can always rely on, in good times or in bad … That is what Srdjan was like.”

Aleksic posthumously received the Charter of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nearly 120 NGOs proposed that towns in the region name one of their streets after the brave young man.

Aleksic’s obituary read, “He died carrying out his duty as a human being.”