Although the truth about what happened in Srebrenica has been verified by international courts, many are still glorifying that evil while Bosnia’s top international official is hesitating to impose a ban genocide denial, said the head of the Islamic community a day before the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica Genocide.
“Evil has to be fought against, it has to be exposed, condemned and despised or it will want to triumph, to present itself as good and useful. We have been witnessing such efforts in recent years,” mufti Husein Kavazovic said during the main Friday prayer.
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“The Srebrenica Genocide evil is crawling upon us, trying to get a voice, lift its head and justify its existence,” he warned.
Kavazovic said that it is not rare that promoters of evil are awarded by institutions like the Swedish Royal Academy which last year awarded the Nobel Prize to Austrian writer Peter Handke, although he has publicly dismissed claims that Serbs had committed crimes during the Yugoslav wars, including the ones in Srebrenica.
“We are also puzzled by OHR’s hesitation to impose a ban on denial of the Srebrenica genocide and crimes committed in other places” in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Kavazovic said, referring to the Office of the High Representative, now headed by Austrian diplomat Valentin Inzko.
The High Representative in Bosnia is tasked with monitoring the implementation of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement which ended the war and contains Bosnia’s Constitution. He has a special set of powers, the ‘Bonn powers’, which allow him to, among other things, impose laws and fire officials.
He said Inzko’s hesitation in the matter reminds of a “cheap trade” and “the appeasing of evil,” something that has been seen during the war when the hesitation of the UN Security Council enabled the genocide in the first place.
Neither a community nor an individual can mentally heal without forgiveness and regret, as those two are an eternal well of goodness and religious beauty, Kavazovic said.
“The dignity of a Muslim is reflected in his ability to let others know that he is remembering good deeds but also pain inflicted upon him,” he said.
The faith of believers demands that here in this life they look each other in the eyes and acknowledge their mistakes and the evil that was committed, in hope that the truth will connect and liberate them again, he added.
True believers must reject the glorification of evil and its perpetrators, religion demands a rejection of fake heroes and killers, the religious leader explained.
“Now, 25 years have passed since those who were the Serb army and police committed genocide in Srebrenica. We all feel the consequences of that evil (…) in many ways in our country and the world,” he said, adding that the evil that fell upon Srebrenica was so strong that even today people are struggling to stop it and prevent its poison from spreading.
