Survivors of the genocide demonstrate outside the UN Tribunal

Together with surviving victims of the genocide in Bosnia the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) is demonstrating at the beginning of the trial against the presumed war criminal and former President of the Republika Srpska, Radovan Karadzic, on Monday at the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague. About 150 Srebrenica mothers and also representatives of the victims´ organisations travelled directly from Bosnia and Herzegovina. They expect from the court that justice will at last be done. The STP hopes that this will bring the reunification of divided Bosnia one step closer. "The West must reverse the barbaric partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina that Karadzic secured through genocide and Dayton consolidated", insists Tilman Zülch, President of Society for Threatened peoples International (STP-I).

 

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), both located in The Hague, found the army and police forces of Republika Srpska guilty of committing genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Today one of the three principal war criminals involved, Radovan Karadzic, stands before the Tribunal accused of the same crime.

 

STP-I regrets how in the 1995 Dayton Agreement United States and the European Community (Germany, France and the United Kingdom in particular) recognised the separate identity of the territory conquered by Radovan Karadzic, Slobodan Milosevi? and Ratko Mladi? and ethnically cleansed of its non-Serb population as the so-called "Republika Srpska", so making it impossible for 60% of the area´s population to return home and preventing the reunification of the war-torn nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Only 6% of the expulsees have to date succeeded in returning home, under the most difficult circumstances.

 

Instead of restoring the unity of a country with a 500-year tradition of religious coexistence, Dayton rewarded the instigators of war and genocide. Today in the quasi-independent Bosnian entity of Republika Srpska control of local authorities, the police, privatised enterprises, the legal system and central government is in the hands of hundreds of individuals who played a prominent role in the perpetration of war crimes and were responsible for the mass expulsion of the non-Serb population, mass rapes, the establishment of concentration, internment and rape camps, countless massacres including the genocidal slaughter at Srebrenica and the starvation and bombardment of six UN-declared "safe areas".

 

STP-I demands:

 

a) the abolition of the two separate entities, Republika Srpska and the Bosnian-Croat Federation, and their replacement by a rational system of regional government based on economic, historical and geographical principles.

 

b) the amendment of electoral law so that the citizens of Bosnia and

Herzegovina are no longer forced to vote only for representatives from their own ethnic group.

 

c) an end to the division of the city of Sarajevo.

 

d) the removal of hundreds of suspected war criminals from their positions

of authority in the legal system, police and organs of government in Republika Srpska, their investigation and trial, as well as the arrest of the

Serb leader Ratko Mladi? and his delivery by Serbia to the Tribunal in The Hague.

 

e) a new Programme of Returns aimed at ensuring that all refugees and

expulsees are able to return home.

 

f) prompt admission of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina to

membership of the European Union and the inclusion of its citizens in

proposed EU visa liberalisation arrangements.

 

g) pressure to persuade the government of Serbia finally to deliver the third principal alleged war criminal Ratko Mladi? for trial.

 

Tilman Zülch, President of Society for Threatened peoples International

(STP-I), can be contacted for further information at politik@gfbv.de

 

Press Release issued by Society for Threatened Peoples, 26 October 2009 - Notes for Editors

 

STP-International demands that the West fulfils the promises made at

Dayton and reverses the barbaric partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina

achieved in 1995 as a result of genocide

 

Facts relating to the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina:

 

1. 200,000 civilians were interned in over one hundred concentration,

detention and rape camps.

 

2. Many thousands of internees were murdered in concentration camps

such as Omarska, Manja?a, Keraterm, Trnopolje, Luka Br?ko, Susica and

Fo?a.

 

3. Members of the non-Serb political and intellectual elites were systematic detained and eliminated.

 

4. Approximately 2.2 million Bosnians were displaced, exiled and scattered to the four corners of the globe.

 

5. Many thousands of unrecorded deaths are still omitted from the official

statistics, including children, the elderly and sick and wounded refugees.

6. 500,000 Bosnians in five UN so-called "safe areas" (Tuzla, Gorazde,

Srebrenica, Zepa, and Biha?) were besieged, starved, shot at and shelled

and many of them killed over a period of up to four years, among the

survivors of fallen enclaves such as Cerska.

 

7. The four year-long artillery bombardment of the sixth UN safe area, the

city of Sarajevo, killed approximately 11,000, including 1500 children.

 

8. Massacres and mass executions took place in many towns and

municipalities in northern, western and eastern Bosnia (the Posavina, the

Prijedor area and the Podrinje).

 

9. Hundreds of villages and urban areas were systematically destroyed.

 

10. The entire heritage of Islamic religious and cultural monuments,

including 1189 mosques and madrassas, was destroyed. There was

extensive destruction of Catholic monuments including as many as 500

churches and religious houses.

 

11. Remains of approximately 15,000 missing victims have still to be found, exhumed and identified.

 

12. 284 UN soldiers were taken hostage and used as human shields.

 

13. Over 20 thousand Bosnian Muslim women were raped, in rape camps

and elsewhere.

 

14. 8376 men and boys from the town of Srebrenica were murdered and

their bodies concealed in mass graves.