Izvor: N1 televizija, 11.Jul.2018, 14:29 (ažurirano 02.Apr.2020.)
Srebrenica commemoration: Reactions
As families were burying their loved ones on the 23rd anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, foreign and local officials expressed their condolences and recalled that the lessons of Srebrenica must never be forgotten.
Bosnia’s top international official, High Representative Valentin Inzko, voiced outrage over the fact that some Bosnian Serbs still deny the atrocity everoccured. "It is horrible that there are still people who deny this genocide has ever happened," Inzko said.
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"Srebrenica was a planetary tragedy," the High Representative said.
Inzko added that the international community was also guilty for what happened and that some international officials acknowledged that."They showed that they were not able to stop this until Clinton and his aides came in," he added.
European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, and Commissioner for EU enlargement, Johannes Hahn, said in a joint statement that the commemoration "reminds us of one of the darkest moments of humanity and modern European history, and of our responsibility to prevent such an atrocity from ever happening again."
The Bosniak member of the country’s three-member Presidency, Bakir Izetbegovic, said during the commemoration in Potocari that "the depth of the crime is understandable only to criminals," and called on those who know where the mass graves that are hiding the rest of the nearly 1,000 victims that have not yet been found to speak up.
"A normal human being can not comprehend that a crime of this magnitude could happen in Europe at the end of the 20th century," Izetbegovic said. "We have been asking ourselves for 23 years what the reasons were."
Dunja Mijatovic, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, urged politicians to show more empathy for the families of the victims and make searching for those still missing a priority."The lack of political will is a phrase, a cheap excuse for covering up war crimes," she said. "It’s time to change that."
"Today, as we are mourning the victims, let’s remind ourselves that by punishing the criminals and by opening a dialogue, this society can meet the requirements for a cohesion and reconciliation. That’s the only way to stand up to the crimes," she said.
Olufemi Elias, the Registrar of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, which was created to finish the job of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, ICTY, after it closed in December last year, attended the ceremony as well and said that some of the perpetrators of the 1995 genocide and other crimes committed during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war have still not been brought to justice. Crimes like this "must not be repeated anywhere in the world," he told N1.
