Balkan policies of the German government are completely lacking in principles!

The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) is shocked at the announcement of Wolfgang Schäuble, the Minister of the Interior, to remove the visa requirement for Serb citizens and described the Balkan policies of the German government as "completely lacking in principles”. The chief war criminal Ratko Mladic, who is wanted by the Tribunal at The Hague for crimes of genocide in Srebrenica, has evidently been able to lead a merry life under the protection of the Serb government and Schäuble has sat down with a crony of Milosevic and provided an easing of the frontier regulations for his citizens”, criticised the GfbV Chairperson, Tilman Zülch, in Göttingen. Schäuble spoke to the Serb Minister of the Interior, Ivica Dacic, on Thursday in Berlin. Dacic was press officer of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) from 1992–2000, from 2000–2003 President of the City Council of Belgrade, held by the SPS, and from 2006 until the present day President of the Party.

On Thursday on YouTube there appeared six sequences of parties and meetings from 1994 until presumably the winter 2008/2009, which were broadcast the evening before on Bosnian TV and in which Ratko Mladic is to be seen in Serbia or in the Serb-occupied areas of Bosnia. "It is now clear for the world to see that the present Serb President, Boris Tadic, and Serb military and civilian authorities have been protecting this chief war criminal”, said Zülch. So Tadic carries responsibility as Defence Minister for the period 2001 – 2003 for Mladic being able to visit various Serb military installations.

"While the Serb criminals will in the near future be able to travel to Germany without let or hindrance, the mothers of Srebrenica, the women from the Serb rape camps, the surviving victims of the Serb concentration camps of Keraterm, Trnopolje, Omarska, Luke Brcko and Susica, the inhabitants of the Olympia city of Sarajevo, which was enclosed and bombarded for four years, will continue to queue up for a visa to visit their relatives in Germany”, said the human rights expert with indignation. It is disgraceful that Germany does not stand up clearly on the side of the victims.

Zülch drew attention to the fact that the former German government had during the Bosnian war called for an arms embargo against the threatened Bosnians while Serbia had access to all international arms markets and had a number of arms factories of its own. Germany, once a divided land, also agreed to the Dayton Agreement, which cemented the expulsions in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in fact divided this country into two states.

If you have questions, please do not hesitate to contact Tilman Zülch at politik@gfbv.de