A ceremonial session of the Main Board of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) was held today in Zenica to mark the 34th anniversary of the party's founding. Party president Bakir Izetbegovic commented at a press conference before the session on the resolution adopted yesterday by the UN General Assembly, which marks July 11 as the Day of Remembrance for the genocide committed in Srebrenica in 1995.

“If some in Bosnia and Herzegovina do not understand, they will understand better through the reactions of the current leaders in Republika Srpska (RS) and Serbia, especially in Serbia. We have seen that they perceive this as a catastrophe and try to shift the burden of their undeniable, proven responsibility onto the people. They want to place the Serbian people as a buffer between themselves and that responsibility.
This is worrying because it disrupts their plans. They needed to relativize responsibility, to equate all sides so they could claim the right to self-determination, aiming to realize a project whose outline is already clear—the unification of Serbian lands so that all Serbs can live in one state. This resolution has definitively put those plans to rest. Therefore, it is not surprising to see such a reaction, such despair in Serbia and even in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” said Izetbegovic.

However, he emphasized that the resolution removes the burden from the Serbian people. Of course, he says, the people are not to blame, but the Serbian people avoid facing the truth.

“The Serbian people choose and then expect those they elect to tell them that everyone is equally guilty. But that is not true. Of course, individuals are guilty. And when you count all the individuals responsible for ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, mass rapes, the killings of tens of thousands of people, and ultimately genocide, it encompasses the entire structure—state, intelligence, military, even intellectual and religious,” Izetbegovic believes.

The Serbian people need, he emphasized, brave intellectuals who will finally help them face the truth. It is necessary, he added, to read all the resolutions, including the one adopted by the Serbian parliament almost ten years ago.

“To read the verdicts of UN courts and thus make it easier for themselves, not in the way Dobrica Cosic says: We lie to make it easier for ourselves and others. There is no relief in lies. The truth is a remedy, even when it is bitter,” Izetbegovic concluded.