Bosnian Serb leader and State Presidency member Milorad Dodik destroys all hopes for transitional justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina with his Islamophobic speech of hatred, by disputing the integrity of the state and its institutions and by denial of genocide, Southern Connecticut State University professor David Pettigrew said in Sarajevo at a Sunday session of the ‘Krug 99’ association of intellectuals.
“When the SDA (the main Bosniak party) proposed constitutional reform for unification of Bosnia and Herzegovina and for determining the nationality on grounds of the citizenship, president Dodik rejected the proposal as Islamic conspiracy,” said the professor, assessing this proposal as important vision of transitional justice for a civil society recovering from genocide.
“Furthermore, president Dodik defamed the country claiming that Bosnia and Herzegovina is a ‘ridiculous state that was never supposed to survive.’ He threatens with mining the reforms at the state level including the ‘formation of joint armed forces, the state court and police agencies.’ He recently confirmed that Republika Srpska (Bosnia’s Serb-dominated semi-autonomous region) will not give up on ‘its autonomy and statehood,’ and added that the High Representative ‘should be gone.’ Destabilising rhetoric of president Dodik undermines the institutional kind of reform at the state level and trust of citizens who are imperative for transitional justice,” underlined Pettigrew.
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Dr Pettigrew teaches Philosophy and Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the Southern Connecticut State University, is a Member of the Yale University Genocide Studies Programme Steering Committee; Board Member at the Bosnian-American Genocide Institute and Education Center, Member of the International Team of Experts to the Institute for Research of Genocide in Canada and Board Member to the Post-Conflict Research Center in Sarajevo.
