In order for it to not be repeated, genocide must be condemned and not glorified, and to achieve this, the international community must impose a law on the prohibition of genocide denial in Bosnia and Herzegovina, said the Croat member of Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency, Zeljko Komsic, on Sunday in Vienna.
Komsic spoke at a gathering that marked the 26th anniversary of the worst atrocity on European soil since WWII – the systematic execution of nearly 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica on July 11, 1995.
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The gathering was organized by associations of Bosnians and Herzegovinians in Austria. Komsic said that the crime was secretly planned Serbia’s intellectual elite in the 1980s and executed by the Bosnian Serbs.
“Neither the preparation nor the realization of the crime of genocide against Bosniaks was hidden, but was public and open. In the end, only the remains of the victims remained hidden, which we are still exhuming today and trying to bury with dignity,” Komsic said.
Yet, the truth could not be hidden, he said.
“It is today judicially established and known by the entire civilized world, it is known even by those who do not want it to know it because it is still not acceptable to them, and because they still do not have the strength to heal,” he said, adding that healing can only occur after one accepts the truth based on facts.
“Respecting genocide rulings is not just a matter of human honesty or civilizational values, it is also a matter of the rule of law,” Komsic reminded, adding that this also means a ban on genocide denial and glorification of war criminals.
He called on Bosnia’s top international official in charge of overseeing the implementation of the 1995 peace agreement to impose such a law.
“Genocide is not just a matter of culture and people, but of law, politics. It has been designed by politics, it has been implemented through political power, it is celebrated through politics, its beastly and disgusting glorification must be stopped through politics. The time of dialogue of the civilized world with bandits is over,” he said.
It is impossible to reason with genocide deniers so “those who glorify the crime of genocide must be punished, now and immediately,” he said.
“They were given too much time. Instead of using it to distance themselves from the crime by naming the culprits, the opposite happened. They began to glorify the crime of genocide. Why? Because they were not punished,” Komsic explained.
The prohibition of genocide denial is European heritage, as the European Convention on Human Rights and Freedoms draws the line between freedom of speech and endangering someone else's life and freedom, he said.
“And the celebration of genocide is the driving force and motive for all those who would like to take other people's lives again. We must demotivate them, precisely by legal sanctions,” Komsic appealed, warning that if this is not done, “not only will they continue to rejoice over the graves of the victims, to laugh in the faces of the mothers whose children were killed, but they will be additionally motivated in their intentions to commit similar crimes again.”
If the world is not ready to do this, “then there is almost no hope for the survival of civilization,” Komsic concluded.
The burial of another 19 victims of the massacre and the ceremony that marked the 26th anniversary of the crime took place in Potocari on Sunday.
As Bosnian Serb forces, led by genocide convict Ratko Mladic, overran the eastern Bosnian town on July 11, 1995, the Bosniak population sought protection from U.N. peacekeepers, but the outnumbered and under-armed Dutch battalion could only watch as soldiers loaded the men on buses and trucks to take them to death.
Their bodies are being gradually excavated and identified through DNA analysis and buried at the Potocari Memorial Center every July 11.
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