Austrian writer and Nobel Prize laureate Peter Handke continued triggering reactions, this time after he refused to answer journalists' questions regarding Srebrenica genocide and the fact that two international courts established it as a fact. International media also reported.
Quoting American journalist Peter Maass, who made a connection between the Serb nationalists of the 1990s and the white nationalist violence of today's world, Bosnian-American renown author Aleksandar Hemon tweeted that the Nobel Prize Committee's “callousness (at best) and/or their unspoken belief in white supremacy are now recorded for posterity.”
“A genocide denier like Handke is a supporter for the next genocide,” Hemon tweeted.
A genocide denier like #Handke is a supporter for the next genocide. @NobelPrize Lit Committee's callousness (at best) and/or their unspoken belief in white supremacy are now recorded for posterity. https://t.co/76zYx2zfsU
— Sasha Hemon (@SashaHemon) December 8, 2019
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In a press conference last week in Stockholm, following the award ceremony, the controversial author refused to answer Maass's question on the Srebrenica genocide and the fact that two international courts established what had happened was an act of genocide, calling the question “empty” and “ignorant.”
But, the Austrian author is also known for his controversial stances on the events from the early 1990s in former Yugoslavia. An article published by ‘The Guardian’ in 1999 among other things carried Handke's words saying that Muslims had staged their own massacres in Sarajevo and that he did not believe the Serb troops killed thousands of Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995.
“This is yet another example of the crass & deplorable conduct that reinforces how disgraceful itt is to award him the Nobel prize,” said the Remembering Srebrenica association, a UK-based initiative that promotes Srebrenica Memorial Day.
When asked whether he accepted the genocide at Srebrenica happened, Peter Handke dismissed the question as 'empty & ignorant'. This is yet another example of the crass & deplorable conduct that reinforces how disgraceful it is to award him the Nobel prize. https://t.co/ID7y5btI4M
— Remembering Srebrenica (@SrebrenicaUK) December 7, 2019
Reuters, AFP and other media previously carried that Handke refused to answer the Srebrenica-related question.
