News in English     | 03.04.2019. 21:23 |

Victims’ associations insist on protecting the truth about the war in BiH

FENA Muamer Selimbegovic

SARAJEVO, April 3 (FENA) - The associations of the victims of war have requested from domestic and international institutions to protect the truth, the rights of the victims and stop the denial of genocide after the ruling against war criminal Radovan Karadžić, representatives of a dozen of associations announced on Tuesday.

The initiative comes after The Hague-based UN Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals sentenced Karadžić, the former president of wartime Republika Srpska (RS), now a Serb-dominated entity within BiH, to life in prison for crimes against humanity, including the ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks and Croats, the siege of Sarajevo, the Srebrenica genocide and taking UN peacekeepers hostage during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.

“In the Hague, we asked what the next steps will be. Can we expect that anything will change in Bosnia and Herzegovina so that the victims get justice as much as possible, so that the foundations of the criminal organisation, the so-called Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is abolished,” said Murat Tahirović, head of the Association of Victims and Witnesses to the Genocide.

The 12 organisations have adopted a set of conclusions which Tahirović said they will forward to international institutions and UN member countries since it was a UN court which ruled in Karadzic’s case.

He said the victims will ask for the ruling to be implemented so that all the consequences of the crimes which Radovan Karadžić committed along with his followers would be gradually removed.

Kada Hotić from the Movement of the Srebrenica and Žepa Enclaves, said that representatives of the associations will also ask the politicians in power, most of all Bosniak ones, for bringing the situation back to square one according to the ruling.

“Bosnia should be a united country, Srebrenica must not remain in the hands of war criminals, there shouldn’t be a police force there which committed genocide,” she said, adding that the initiative stands ffor the “abolishment of everything that the war criminals achieved with their crimes.”

According to the head of the association of parents of children killed during the siege of Sarajevo, Fikret Grabovica, the court missed the opportunity to sentence Karadžić for his involvement in a joint criminal enterprise.

“Serbia was again left without responsibility and washed away its responsibility for the aggression on Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Grabovica said.

He added that the ruling with which the genocide in Srebrenica was confirmed is continuously being rejected in Republika Srpska and said that a law banning genocide denial must be adopted, as denial is “the final phase of genocide and an intro for even graver crimes that could take place.”

According to the head of the Union of former war camp detainees in BiH, Jasmin Mešković, a lot of things should and must change now after the ruling.

“A grave crime and a terrible genocide took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina under the flag and the coat of arms of Radovan Karadžić. That same flag, the same coat of arms, the same institutions which Karadžić had created are alive and functioning today,” he said.

“If this situation remains as it is, then Karadžuć was completely correct when he sent a message from The Hague a day after he was sentenced, saying ‘I am the winner. The RS is the winner’,” he added.

The associations will also ask for Karadžić’s ruling to be incorporated in the curriculums in schools, he said.

Head of the Women, Victims of War association, Bakira Hasečić, said that the associations need to mount pressure on Bosniak politicians.

Hasečić also had a message for the High Representative in BiH, who is tasked by the international community to oversee the civilian implementation of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the war.

“It is due time for him to remove from duty all those who deny the genocide and glorify war criminals,” she said, urging the current High Representative, Austrian diplomat Valentin Inzko, to use the special powers he has according to the Dayton Agreement.

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(FENA) S. R.

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