prijava
SARAJEVO, March 17 (FENA) - Failure of the international community began during genocide, failure to prevent persecution, starvation and murder of civilians in villages and cities of BiH, said keynote speaker of today’s session of “Circle 99” David Pettigrew, professor of philosophy and holocaust and genocide studies at the Southern Connecticut State University.
Commenting on “Problem in the Balkans: Republika Srpska and Failure of the International Community”, Pettigrew emphasized that failure continued with the Dayton Agreement when RS was recognized as an entity within BiH.
“Recognition of RS in Dayton was legitimation of a crime which RS resulted from and an award for committed genocide. Denial of genocide and glorification of war criminals in RS is done to achieve a goal – ethnic homogenization through psychological intimidation,” assessed Pettigrew.
He noted that the Hague Tribunal also was not able to determine that there was a state aggression from Serbia and Croatia and it significantly contributed to establishment of misinterpretation that aggression was a “civil war” between three equally conflicted sides.
He explained that RS has been “linguistic violence” since the beginning, because it implied that what was once a multiethnic territory would only be a Serb one.
“I would like to emphasize that we owe it to the victims to recognize and stress the truth and take effective measures to secure the future of a single and multicultural BiH,” he said.
Pettigrew emphasized that there needs to be a ban for Chetniks to march through Višegrad and other places and survivors should be allowed to erect memorials to victims in Prijedor, Višegrad and other places.
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