Gerhard Schröder travels to Sarajevo (May 3rd)

In a writing on behalf of the civil rights movement "Mothers of Srebrenica”, the Society for Threatened Peoples (SfTP) asked Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to receive a delegation of mothers for a conversation on Tuesday. Schröder is expected tomorrow in the capital of Bosnia. About 50 of these women who witnessed the mass murder and the burial in mass graves of 7,800 young boys and men by Serb troups in their hometown in July 1995 intend on waiting for the chancellor in front of the Government Building in Sarajevo. Until now, 6,500 victims were unearthed and 1,327 were identified and entombed in the Potocari Memorial Center. Even though Srebrenica has become a world-wide symbol for the genocide in Bosnia and for the failure of Europe, the city is completely cut off from the world and its 4,500 returnees have sunk into poverty and been forgotten.

The mothers of Srebrenica want to urge the German federal chancellor to support the bringing to justice of the 892 suspected Serb war criminals – among them the present police chief of the Republika Srpska, Dragan Andan – as listed by the Srebrenica Commission. These offenders are jointly responsible for the mass murder of ten years ago.

"The mothers,” as put in the writing by the SfTP, "would like to discuss with you the possibilities for the reconstruction of the economy, of the infrastructure, and of the civil society. In Srebrenica, there are neither hospitals nor functioning businesses.” The civil rights movement of mothers furthermore demands a special status for their town. Indeed, the so-called Republika Srpska came into being as a result of ethnic cleansing in the region. SDS, the party of the suspected war criminal Radovan Karadzic, dominates the region. This prevents any improvement for Srebrenica.

The women also want to inform the chancellor about the past of Borislav Paravac, a member of the rotating presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina and one of Schröder’s official interlocutors, as well as ask him to refuse a meeting with Paravac. During the Bosnian war, Paravac was president of the Serb emergency taskforce responsible for the ethnic cleansing and the mass murder of non-Serb populations in this central Bosnian town.

Since the beginning of the Bosnian war, the SfTP has stood up for the victims of the genocide and of the expulsion, has publicized the first documentaries on the genocide, and has coordinated the works of hundreds of Bosnian unions of refugees and guest workers across Europe. Since the end of the war, there exists a Bosnian SfTP division whose steering committee consists of Muslims, Jews, Croatians, Serbs, and Roma Bosnians. The Bosnian division has offices opened full-time in Sarajevo and Srebrenica. The SfTP closely cooperates with the civil rights movement of mothers from Srebrenica and with the former prisoners of rape camps. The Society has continuously disclosed documentation about war criminals to The Hague.