NO CONCESSIONS WITHOUT THE ARREST OF KARADZIC AND MLADIC

On the occasion of the impending visit of the so-called troika of the German Foreign Minister, Frank Walter Steinmeier, the EU Commissioner for External Relations, Benita Ferrero-Waldner and the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, to Belgrade on 7th February 2007 the President of the "Society for Threatened Peoples International” (GfbV), Tilman Zülch, has written a letter to these three politicians. He begged them to set down in their talks with the Serb government as essential preconditions for any concessions to Serbia the arrest and extradition of the presumed war criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. The GfbV International wrote last week in the same vein to the heads of all the European states and their foreign ministers, to the European Parliament and the Council of Europe.

As important it is for the future that an agreement of stabilization and association be concluded as a first step towards the inception of negotiations for the entry of Serbia to the EU, it would be irresponsible for the two worst war criminals in Europe since the end of the Second World War not to be brought to justice. Zülch’s letter concludes: "Internationally renowned Jewish figures like the last surviving commander of the freedom fighters of the Warsaw ghetto, Marek Edelman, or the late head of the "Documentation Centre of the League of Jews Persecuted by the Nazi regime” (Dokumentationszentrum des Bundes Jüdischer Verfolgter des Nazi-Regimes), Simon Wiesenthal, have likened the war crimes in Bosnia with "components” of the Holocaust and stood up for the victims. Both have for many years supported the human rights work of the Society for Threatened Peoples for the Bosnian victims. It would be an expression of utter contempt for these men if Europe’s representatives concluded an agreement with Serbia, where the politicians in power have in recent years done all they can to prevent the arrest of Karadzic and Mladic.”

The letter draws to attention the cold-blooded murder of 8,373 unarmed Bosnian boys and men in Srebrenica and points out that to date 6,800 of the victims have been exhumed and only 2,442 identified and buried in the memorial site of Potocari on the place where the victims were selected in the former UN Safe Area. At the same time the human rights organisation reminds us that Karadzic and Mladic were responsible for the holding of over 200,000 Bosnian civilians in internment and concentration camps and for the deaths of up to 30,000 prisoners. It draws attention to the fact that up to 20,000 Bosnian women were often kept for months in rape camps. In Sarajevo alone, which was surrounded for four years and under fire every day, about 12,000 inhabitants were killed. The letter continues: "In almost all the towns and villages of the Drina Valley in Bosnian Krajina and in the northern Posovina countless massacres and genocide-like crimes were committed. In some of the towns of the Podrinja (Drina Valley), as in Zvornik, Foca and Visegrad, the setting of the internationally famous novel by the Nobel prize winner Ivo Andric "The Bridge over the Drina”, thousands met their death during the invasion of the militia of Karadzi’c and Mladi’c”.

Like the War Crimes Tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo at the end of the Second World War the International War Crimes Tribunal (ICTY) at The Hague must not be wound up until those chiefly responsible have been brought to justice and the crimes of genocide in Bosnia, the mass rapes and other crimes against humanity have been examined and the criminals sentenced. It is the task of Europeans to exercise influence on the UN Security Council to this effect so that the work of the Hague Tribunal can be continued until the examinations have been concluded.

The letter closes with the words: "Our human rights organisation welcomes here the unequivocal statement of the US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, John Clint Williamson, who says that it is only when the cases against Karadzic, Mladic and other war criminals who are at present in hiding have been dealt with that the ICTY should close down.