The Institute for Research of Genocide in Canada asked the Chairman of Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency and the Foreign Affairs Minister to initiate a disciplinary procedure against Bosnian Ambassador Marko Milisav because he failed to follow an official instruction and lower the Bosnian flag to half-mast on Saturday, during the commemoration and 25th anniversary of the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide.
The head of the Institute, Emir Ramic, called this a “shameful and scandalous” act.
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In a Tuesday statement, the Institute reminded of a July 9 instruction by Bosnia’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Bisera Turkovic, who asked all diplomatic and consular missions to fly their Bosnian flags at half-mast on July 11.
“All diplomatic and consular representative offices and missions of Bosnia and Herzegovina (including the residences of ambassadors-heads of diplomatic and consular missions) are obliged to lower the flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina to half-mast on July 11, in accordance with Article 20 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations,” the statement quoted the instruction.
“A large number of people who live in Canada, many of whom are survivors of the aggression and the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, expected that the Embassy of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Ottawa would act according to the Instruction and fly the Bosnian flag at half-mast. That would have been a humane act of honouring the victims of the genocide and an act of respect towards the surviving victims of the genocide by the embassy in Ottawa, that small piece of Bosnian land in far away and friendly Canada,” the Institute’s statement said.
“Unfortunately, this did not happen,” it said, adding that representatives of the Institute filmed the embassy on Saturday to prove it.
“Not only was the flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina not lowered to half-mast, but it was removed completely that day. This anti-civilisational act by the Ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Canada, Marko Milisav, humiliated all Bosnian citizens in Canada, especially the surviving victims of the genocide, and humiliated Bosnia and Herzegovina and Canada, as well as international justice and law.”
“Bosnian diplomats in North America, with a few exceptions, speak with less and less reverence about the victims of the biggest crime in Europe after the Holocaust,” the statement said, adding that the Embassy did not even make a statement in light of the Saturday commemoration.
The statement said that, since the establishment of diplomatic relations between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Canada, the Embassy in Ottawa never marked July 11 as the Day of Remembrance for the victims of Srebrenica, although Canada declared it as such in two of its resolutions.
“Instead of Bosnian diplomats who must represent the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and with that, court, historical and scientific facts about the genocide in Srebrenica, they, who are paid by the state, represent an anti-Bosnian coalition in which the deniers of the genocide and revisionists of history play the leading role,” the statement said.
The Institute asked the Chairman of Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency and its Bosniak member, Sefik Dzaferovic, as well as Foreign Affairs Minister Turkovic to initiate a disciplinary procedure against ambassador Milisav.
“You cannot keep tolerating ambassadors working against their own state, which pays them generously. If they are not disciplined for this, it could strengthen them and show that a lack of discipline and respect for instructions pays off, that they become more valuable in the eyes of those who sent them as well as for the anti-Bosnian coalition which supports them in lobbying against the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” it said.
