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The feuilleton titled “Genocide against Serbs in
Sarajevo” the Politika daily has been running since February 23,
once again ruthlessly distorts the facts about the war in
Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992-95. The installments are taken from the
book authored by Milivoje Ivanišević and Dragana Grčić-Gavrilović.
This series of articles is clearly after picturing
the Bosniaks as those committing the genocide. True, crimes have
been committed against Serbs in Sarajevo. However, this feuilleton
is fabricating the facts while denying the responsibility of the
Serbs. Despite many verdicts by the ICTY related to the Bosnian war,
undeniably indicating the crimes committed by the Serbian side,
official Belgrade keeps belittling the attainments of this
international tribunal, and at the same time negating and
discrediting it.
The feuilleton brims with claims such as “Only in
the first year of the war the Muslims have killed more people of
Serb origin than fascists had throughout German occupation in the
WWII.” “No doubt that Sarajevo is still among the biggest crime
scenes with Serb victims, kept away from the public eye. This is
evidenced by 123 concentration camps, brothels in which Serb women
were slaves, over 7,000 killed Serbs and tens of mass graves exhumed
so far. Dead Serbs witness the truth in the most convincing way.
Their bodily remnants can be hidden away but their disappearance
cannot…Rulers dread that their deception would be revealed and they
are afraid of facing up the big lie of Sarajevo and the genocide
against Serbs in Sarajevo,” argue the authors.
According to them, 123 either privately or
state-run concentration camps with several thousand Serb prisoners
per year operated in the Muslim section of the town. Allegedly, many
of these prisoners were killed during interrogation or due to
physical abuse. In addition, say the authors, many Serb women died
of brutal treatment in brothels.
The devastating fact is that over the past five
years the present regime has been systematically denying war crimes
and their responsibility, while promoting war criminals who had been
sentenced for mass crimes committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina above all.
The discourse about recent wars that has been promoted on daily
basis associates the campaigns heralding the 1990s wars. The warring
rhetoric of numerous officials, notably of Foreign Minister Ivica
Dačić, has fueled regional tensions and disturbed relations that had
been on the upward curve before this regime came to power.
The Committee requests the government to stop
misusing the media and start acting according to the spirit of
friendship they have displaying before international factors,
especially EU.
Now, more than two decades after the war in which
the Bosniaks had been victims of genocide and expulsion, we are once
against demanding the international community to put an end to the
process that has been developed before our eyes: the process of
turning the Bosniaks into the Palestinians. The migrant crisis has
so much galvanized Islam-phobia that processes that could easily
lead to explosion in the region are being overlooked.
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