The lack of reaction by the Serb political, intellectual and religious elite regarding the “brutal and morbid insults” of Serb officials at the expense of the Srebrenica victims and Bosniaks in general, is shameful and inhumane, said Bosniak member of the Bosnian tripartite Presidency Bakir Izetbegovic.
According to Izetbegovic, the insults are becoming more often and more aggressive, and are no longer some isolated incidents only.
Denial of genocide against Bosniaks entered the phase of its glorification, said Izetbegovic referring to the recent tweet by the Serbian Radical Party official and Serbia’s MP Vjerica Radeta, who wrote an offensive message for the recently deceased Srebrenica activist Hatidza Mehmedovic.
“The cynical and malicious insults about the late Hatidza Mehmedovic and victims of genocide in Srebrenica written by Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly of Serbia Vjerica Radeta are only the latest of the many,” wrote Izetbegovic in a press statement issued on Wednesday.
He also condemned the statement by Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik on the number of mosques in Bosnia and the daily calls to prayer. According to Izetbegovic, the Serb official offended the feelings of Bosniaks with his words, while members of his political party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), openly offend the genocide victims.
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“This all has been lasting for too long. And it crossed the line. And the leading Serb political and religious authorities in both Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia have not for once clearly, unambiguously and openly distanced from such stances,” stressed Izetbegovic.
“Their silence ominously reminds of the same silence that encouraged and enabled horrible crimes committed during the aggression on Bosnia and Herzegovina, which culminated with the genocide in Srebrenica,” he added.
On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serb forces overran the eastern Bosnian enclave and rounded up the town’s Muslim Bosniaks, separated men from women and little children and systematically executed some 8,000 men and boys. Two international courts, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) later ruled that the massacre was an act of genocide. International and regional courts have sentenced 45 people for what happened in Srebrenica to a total of more than 700 years behind bars.
