No deal with proofs of genocide in Bosnia! War Crimes Tribunal must not keep documents from Serbia secret any longer!

In view of the beginning of the trial against Florence Hartmann, the former press officer of Carla del Ponte and for many years the Balkans correspondent of Le Monde, at the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) has called for the opening up of secret documents from the time of the genocide in Bosnia. "There can be no deals on proofs against genocide”, said the chairperson of the international human rights organisation, Tilman Zülch, on Monday in Göttingen. "If the victims’ side continues to be hampered in viewing these important documents from Belgrade the judges of the Tribunal must face the charge of helping those responsible for the crimes against humanity in Bosnia and Herzegovina to get away scot-free.” Florence Hartmann is accused of publishing confidential information of the Tribunal from Serbia from the time of the war in her book "Paix et Châtiment”.

It is a scandal that among other things documents and protocols of the Supreme Defence Council of Serbia on talks of Slobadan Milosevic with the generals of the Yugoslav army on military activities in Bosnia and Herzegovina should remain secret, said the human rights expert. The survivors of the genocide had a right to find out who was responsible for the genocide against the Bosnian Moslems and for massacres, murders, rape and expulsion. These documents must be made available at once to the European media. Since they cannot be used in the case of Bosnia vs. Serbia and Montenegro either Bosnia cannot produce proof that the Milosevic government planned and carried out the genocide and the mass expulsions in Bosnia with the aid of Serb and Bosnian-Serb troops.

Zülch published at the end of 1992 the first book on the genocides in East Slavonia and Bosnia and was awarded the "Sloboda” Freedom Prize of the Anti-War Centre in Sarajevo, the "Srebrenica Award against Genocide” and the Silver Lily of the Bosnian State Presidium.