prijava
POTOČARI, July 11 (FENA) - Attending the commemoration of the 23rd anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica, the Commissioner of the Council of Europe for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović, said that the Day of Remembrance should be marked throughout the region, where too many things are being justified by the lack of political will.
This lack of will, she warned, is just a smokescreen for covering up war crimes.
“It is high time we change that. Twenty-three years have passed since the genocide, and 14 since the court found that genocide was committed in Srebrenica.
In spite of this, many still deny and belittle it. War criminals are welcomed throughout the region as heroes and have prominent public functions through which they promote their nationalistic attitudes, those same, terrifying attitudes that led to so much human suffering during the wars in the 1990s that destroyed not only BiH, but also the lives of so many people,” emphasized Mijatović.
She said that today we remember with sadness and pain more than 8,000 human beings, mostly men and boys, killed in less than a week, with the cruelty that Europe has not seen since World War II.
“I pay tribute to the courage and strength of their mothers, wives and sisters who persisted in their fight for truth and justice. Our words must be loud and strong - stronger than the words of those who deny genocide, today more than ever," Mijatović said in her address before local and foreign officials at the commemoration.
She also noted that the fate of one-third of the 40,000 missing is still unknown, and pointed out that the insufficient cooperation between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, as well as inadequate human and financial resources are obstacles that prevent locating the remaining missing persons.
“All this is happening in the 21st century in Europe, which we call a democratic Europe. I urge the political leaders, primarily those in BiH and Serbia, to show more sympathy for the victims, the survivors and their families, and to put the search for the missing persons as their priority. There is no political reason that can override the duty to establish the truth about a missing person and provide at least some kind of comfort to the families of the missing persons,” underlined the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe Dunja Mijatović.
(FENA) S. R.
